Dreams of Gray

by Maurice Lawless

  “Yes.”

  “One, two, three.” He snapped, and Whitney became perky again. I noticed, with a little satisfaction, that she had the decency to blush a deep crimson at the realization she’d just pretty much flashed the whole club.

  “Oh, you suck!” She shoved Lupin, but her smile told everyone she didn’t mean it. He led her down off the stage and the crowd cheered. “Bartender! Whitney’s table is on me tonight! Thanks so much!”

  Whitney’s friends cheered and everyone else settled in for the next bit. He got another volunteer and went through the usual kinds of things: you’re getting ready in the morning, you only see my head floating without a body, and for irony’s sake, the old cluck like a chicken routine. He chose a dozen volunteers by the time it was done, but always women. I wondered if he couldn’t hypnotize men.

  Slate was restless. She had let go of my hand halfway through the act. Now that Lupin was winding down, she grabbed it again. He whispered to the emcee on his way out and went down a hallway behind the stage.

  “Okay, folks!” the emcee said. “Let’s hear one more round for the A-MAZE-ing Lupin!”

  When the clapping died down, the emcee said the next group was a band. “It’s gonna take a little while to get them set up, so please take this opportunity to freshen up your drinks or make some room for more!”

  Tables emptied, and Slate pulled me from ours. I waved a hasty goodbye to Rob and his friend, who threw their hands up in confusion. I yelled back, “Girl stuff. Sorry, bye!”

  Slate pulled us to one side of the hallway Lupin had used. I asked what we were doing, and she shushed me. We waited as calmly as possible, and soon enough Whitney’s lighted bobbles came bouncing through the crowd.

  A thick man in a black security shirt stood just inside the hallway. He stopped her, recognized her from the show, and let her through. Apparently lady callers for Lupin weren’t anything new. Color me not surprised.

  Slate waited to see which door Whitney went in and motioned me to follow. The security guard blocked our entry. “Let me guess, more fans of The Amazing Lupin?”

  Slate took the lead. “Relatives, actually.”

  His eyebrows went up. “Can’t say I’ve heard that one before. You got proof?”

  She opened her jacket and grabbed the back of his head. Before I knew what she was doing the guard’s head was planted firmly between her breasts and shaking. Slate let go, leaving her jacket open. The guard staggered back. “What the fuck, lady?”

  “That work for you?”

  His confused expression went sly, and he laughed. “Damn, you’re a freaky girl. Can I get your number?”

  He looked at me for the first time, up and down. “Your friend’s, too?”

  Slate smiled and slinked up next to him so her breasts brushed the front of his shirt. She put a hand on his cheek and said, “Ask Lupin at closing time.”

  The guard looked a little shell-shocked but nodded and waved us through. He watched Slate’s every move down the hallway. She buttoned her top and whispered under her breath, “I hate having to do that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was a proper girl once. Before this.”

  Somehow I doubted that. Before I could stick my foot in my mouth, we reached Lupin’s door. I heard Whitney’s voice inside. Slate reached down to slip off her heels. I did the same.

  “He will run. Follow my lead. Together, we can take him.”

  “Okay.”

  She didn’t ask if I was ready. Her foot struck the door, and it flew open.

  28

  Whitney was on his lap, and her blouse was open again. This guy moved fast. We entered, and his eyes went wide and flashed amber. I couldn’t tell if it was just surprise or recognition. He quickly hid himself behind the girl, hand on her throat.

  “Lorelei? My God! Please, I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Slate said, and she charged toward him. He was just as fast. He pushed Whitney at her and flew out the door before I had time to react. Slate dropped the confused girl and was out the door in a blink. I followed.

  He bolted through the rear fire exit, which had been propped open by someone. We passed by a group of waiters having a smoke break. Lupin ran for the next alley, with Slate on his heels. I struggled to keep up, and I lost them around the corner of the next building.

  Desperate, I focused some of my anger and frustration into trying to smell them instead. With each breath, more and more of Slate’s scent came to me.

  I ran to the end of the alley and slipped through an opening in the chain link fence. The strip center ended in a marsh, and I saw two dark shapes moving through it low and fast. Lupin’s dress shirt hung from a barb of the small wire fence that surrounded the marshland.

  I shed my clothes and dropped to all fours. I thought of revenge. I changed quicker than last time, but it still hurt just as much. I could almost see their scent rails now. I bounded over the fence and took off in pursuit.

  The full moon was behind a cloud tonight, barely a shimmer. The darkness didn’t bother me. I flew across small ponds and splashed through soft earth with purpose: find Alpha, and find our enemy.

  I burst through a line of brush and into a small copse of trees. I heard sounds of a struggle - growls, whimpers, and brush being snapped and rustled. I followed my nose and ears and came upon the fight.

  Alpha was already bloody from a gash in her shoulder. Her fur was matted black around it. The other wolf was larger than both of us, and his coloring was different. He was nearly all black, with red tips around his eyes, muzzle, and tail.

  He charged Alpha, and I leapt in his way the last minute. We collided, and I grappled with him, claws and teeth searching for purchase. I found his foreleg and bit down hard. He yelped and scrambled out from under me, snapping wildly at my neck.

  I righted myself and faced him. My hackles were raised, and I growled low and loud. His blood dripped from my jowls and I licked a bit of it. Good as any rabbit, and less bitter than Charlie. I could stand to have more.

  He limped back, facing both of us. Alpha charged again, and I followed. We hit him almost in unison; her mouth took his neck, and mine took his rear leg. We flipped him sideways and all went tumbling.

  He sunk a good bit into my back and threw me off of him. Slate laid into him behind his head, and he howled, but managed to shake her off. She hit a discarded tire rim, and I heard something crack. She lay still.

  Lupin backed away again from us both. I saw him shudder and change. Suddenly, he was human again and covered in bites and blood. He dropped to his knees.

  I hunkered down, ready to spring despite the searing bite on my neck. He screamed, “Dreama, wait! Let me speak. Kill me later if you have to, but let me speak!”

  I was in no mood, but didn’t immediately strike. I paced him in a half-circle, back and forth in front of the prone form of Alpha. I could hear her breathing heavily. The tension in Lupin’s shoulders relaxed and I saw the tattoo across his chest. In a rough, amateurish script surrounded by roses and thorns was one word: “Lorelei.”

  29

  Lupin was winded, but his wounds were closing up immediately. He looked frail as a human. You’d never guess he was a jet-black monstrosity under it all.

  “She didn’t tell you everything, did she?” he asked.

  I reluctantly changed back so I could answer. I remained kneeling and held onto my rage just in case.

  “What more is there to tell? You cursed her. Cursed me. How many others have you done this to?”

  He shook his head. “I love her, Dreama.”

  “Funny way of showing it. Forcing her to lose any semblance of a normal life and change into this monster to kill and feed?”

  “I didn’t mean for that to happen. You must believe me.”

  I didn’t buy it. “Then how the FUCK do you explain what you did to me? To the others?”

  “It wasn’t supposed to be you,” he said.

  “What?”
>
  He rubbed some of his wounds, smearing the blood surrounding them. The skin was unbroken now. “Your friend, PJ. She was with you that night.”

  I growled without thinking. “What about her?”

  “She’s a Mackenzie, right?”

  “Okay, enough of this bullshit. You hurt Slate. She might die. I’ll hurt you, too.”

  I dropped down to all fours and cleared my head to change. Lupin threw out his hands. “Wait! Lorelei is her name. Was her name.”

  “I don’t really care. You’ve nearly killed her and sure as hell ruined my life. You need to pay for it.”

  “Lorelei Mackenzie.”

  That stopped me. I rolled back into a crouch and let him continue.

  “I met her on her father’s farm. I was with a traveling carnival at the time. We fell in love. I wanted her to come with me. Her father wasn’t happy.”

  Whatever. So you took her anyway and made it so daddy wouldn’t want her anymore. Enough of this.

  I shook my head and focused every bit of rage I could into changing. Once I was a wolf, everything would be clearer. The transformation was almost complete when a weak voice behind me said, “Stop, Dree.”

  I finished shifting and looked back. Slate was human again and limping toward us. Her arm was bent at an awkward angle, and she cradled it, wincing with every step. I went to her and licked her calf.

  “Wait, Dree,” she said.

  She knelt a good distance from Lupin. He showed no signs of wanting to attack. He just looked tired.

  “Lorelei, please. I loved you. I still do.”

  She chuckled softly. “You loved a little farm girl who’d never seen the world. A ripe little berry you could pluck off the vine and throw away when it spoiled.”

  “Dreama,” he said, “I want you to see something.”

  He turned around. The pattern on his back was the same as my and Slate’s tattoos, but these weren’t smooth ink. The runes were thick, pitted scar tissue. The knots surrounding them were ragged cuts that looked old, but still only partially healed.

  Slate muttered to herself, “Daddy always did have a temper.”

  “He cursed me, Dreama. I didn’t realize the full reality of it until afterward. I tried to take Lorelei with me anyway. The carnival wanted to move on. Too much trouble in that town.”

  Slate spat her words at him, “So you took me! In the back of that stinking trailer, surrounded by your freak friends. You made me a freak too.”

  Lupin shook his head. “I didn’t know! I swear it. I hadn’t changed yet myself. How could I know what would happen?”

  Slate just stared at him. Lupin tried again.

  “I didn’t force myself on you, Lorelei. You loved me too, once.”

  She got to her feet in one fluid motion. It must have hurt because she let out a yowl. She closed the distance between her and Lupin. He made no move to stop her.

  With her good arm, she grasped his throat. Her hand lengthened and claws extended, biting into his flesh. The tattoo of her name rose and fell with his labored breathing. She spoke with an accent I’d never heard her use before.

  “I got pregnant, you sack of shite. When Daddy found out, he beat me till I bled. Bled your bastard right out of me. Did you know that, Amazing Lupin?”

  Lupin’s eyes were wide and rimmed with red. Apparently, he didn’t. He tried to say something, and she squeezed him silent. Her mouth was practically in his ear at this point.

  “Did you know that when my father found his own daughter wearing his handiwork on her back he took me to the fields to kill me? My first change was in front of him. My own father. He led me out there with his rifle and told me to strip. I pleaded with him, and he decked me with the stock.”

  Slate was breathing hard. She shook her injured arm, and I heard something crack. She cried out, but I watched as it healed perfectly before my eyes. She ran her free hand through Lupin’s hair and grabbed a clump of it, pulling hard.

  “Daddy watched me change. Every agonizing second. He waited for it to finish, and then he chased me off the farm like a common wolf come to rustle the chickens. He meant to kill me. You should have seen his eyes. Did you think of any of that while you were touring around and bewitching farmers’ daughters into your bed?”

  Slate’s face was blood red and streaked with tears. I half-expected her to let out a howl and tear his throat out with her human teeth.

  “Nothing to say, Lupin? Or are you still little fucking Danny MacGregor, gypsy bastard and breaker of girls’ hearts? Where’s Danny tonight? Oh, he’s having a grand old time with his latest whore. You’re nae worth a docken to him.”

  The more she ranted, the less intelligible it became. Her speech started to sound less like the Slate I knew and more like Poppa Mackenzie. When she was done, she let him go and he gasped for air. His first words were, “I didn’t know. God, I swear I didn’t know.”

  She stood and kicked him in the chin. He fell flat on his back. Straddling him like a lover, she pinned him and sunk two sets of claws into his chest.

  “Like ‘ell you didn’t! Whit’s fur ye’ll no go past ye, Danny boy. You’ll get what’s coming to you. She was a girl, you know. I named her Grace, and buried her by my mum in the dead of night so my poppa wouldn’t know. I covered the grave with rocks so the wolves wouldn’t dig her up. Other wolves like us.”

  “Your father said you ran away. Took a ship to America. I left my band to follow you.” Lupin’s voice was raspy. Had Slate pierced his lungs?

  Slate nodded but kept her claws inside him. “Aye, that much was true. I searched for you for three years, Danny. Three years on the road starving myself and feeding off chickens when I changed. I prayed at every cross I could find along the way, fat lot of good it did me. I gave up and ended up a stowaway. I had to whore myself to the captain to pay for it.”

  She shuddered. Lupin tried to put a hand on her arm, and she shrugged it off. “You have no idea what I went through after that. When I caught wind of you starting up a troupe in the States, I followed you.”

  Lupin’s face went pale. “That was you? I thought I was doubly cursed when the women I was with kept disappearing.”

  Slate’s laugh was cold. “Oh, I know where they are. All of them. You were years on the road, and I was your shadow. I waited for the right time to take you. I followed you here. And then I find you laughing it up and trying to dick your way into my great grandniece.”

  Lupin lay there shaking his head. He didn’t try to escape, or even move at all. “I thought you were gone, Lorelei. Dead. It gets lonely on the road. She reminded me of you so much.”

  “So you thought, what the fuck, I’ll curse her too? One cursed Mackenzie not good enough? Fuck you, Danny. Fuck you. You deserve a slow death, and I’m going to give it to you.”

  I felt like the worst kind of voyeur during this exchange. I shifted to human form again. This many shifts were taking a toll on my body. I hurt all over, and my brain felt like it was fractured in two.

  “Wait!” I said. “You’re talking about PJ? What does she have to do with this?”

  Lupin sighed, but Slate shoved her claws in further. She looked like she was ready to scoop his heart out and eat it. “Answer the question.”

  “I didn’t want to turn her,” he said, “I didn’t want to fuck her either. I just needed her blood.”

  Wrong answer.

  Slate threw a slap across his face. Her clawed hand left deep gashes in his face, which began to heal immediately.

  “Just a few drops, Lorelei! Over the years, I managed to find out that the blood of an untainted Mackenzie daughter could end it. Think of that, Lorelei! End it all!”

  Slate shook her head, but pulled her claws out of his chest. “You mean it would kill you. Daddy was not the forgiving type.”

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The bubbly rattle was diminished. “Aye. It will kill me.”

  I had to ask. “Will your death end the curse? For us all?”

  I
was on my feet now, looking down at both of them. Lupin shook his head. “Vengeful old bastard your poppa was, Lorelei.”

  To me, he said, “No. I don’t think so.”

  The puncture wounds from Slate’s claws had healed. Aside from the blood, he was entirely whole. “Could we have really killed you, Lupin?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, Dreama, I just don’t know. I’ve tried to die many times. Silver helps, but I can’t touch it long enough to slit my own throat. Your friend’s necklace burned me when I touched it.”