by Rob Thurman
His other hand rested on the side of my head. “And you went and built another gate. After I practically rewired you. Now not only are you bleeding out, but your blood pressure is all but liquefying your brain and making you bleed out even faster while your temperature would blow up a thermometer.”
“Like . . . Suyolak.” I closed my eyes and curled my lips. “Boom.”
“Boom all right.” Robin was on my other side now. All the Ördögs were gone. When their master had died, they’d given one last shriek that shook the trees left standing and had poured away into the darkness. “Please endeavor not to get drunk and try that as a party trick. I don’t wish to be a five- hundred-piece puzzle with four hundred ninety-seven pieces missing. I would greatly appreciate the restraint. But if you must, there is one piece I wish you to promise to leave in place. I believe you know the one I refer to. That would be the glory that is . . .”
“Mercy killing.” I shaped the words to Rafferty, to Niko . . . anyone who could get the job done. My head hurt, I couldn’t breathe, and I was racked with cold from the fever. And through all that, Robin’s voice was still able to cut like a knife. It was comforting. Locations change, enemies change, even my wiring changed, but Goodfellow, his mouth would never change.
There was a snort in the darkness. “Like you deserve a mercy killing. Not today. Sorry about your luck,” Rafferty sniped. Then the heat that flared in his hand on my chest arced through me to the one on my head. I didn’t know if I was glowing like Suyolak had when my gate had gobbled him up, but I felt as if I was. I felt like the sun . . . hot, intense, and far up in the sky. Floating. Not that the sun floated, but I did. And the air that I floated in flowed in and out of my lungs. The pain was gone too, as were the headache and fever. Rafferty had given me that last gate for free.
I opened my eyes and saw the blackness of Suyolak shadowed behind Rafferty’s eyes. “It’s good, isn’t it?” I said knowingly. “Being bad. Ironic, huh?” I coughed and was pushed up in time for the residual blood to spray on my jeans.
“He’s in there. In you.” Niko reached over and almost touched the healer’s forehead, but at the last minute decided against it. “You were supposed to cure the world by killing him.”
“Instead you ate him.” There was blood all over my shirt and, black cotton or not, the color wasn’t helping. I felt the warm stickiness of it everywhere. I peeled it off over my head, then wrapped my no- longer wolf-gnawed arm—Rafferty had healed that too—around Niko’s shoulder and we were up. I got my “living legs” under me again. “Did he taste good?” I asked as if I genuinely wanted to know. And, darkly . . . dreadfully, I did.
“I can’t imagine that he did. Death, any death, is not a taste anyone should want, crave, or have.” Robin hadn’t lowered his sword. “You were to be the cure, not the replacement.”
“It’s for Catcher. With what I took from that murderous bastard I can bring Catcher back. It’s worth it, and when I’m done, I’ll get rid of the rest of Suyolak. And that’s the way it’s going to fucking be, got it?” Rafferty snapped, a wolf snap—one with flashing teeth.
He started to stand until I caught him by the arm and caught him quickly—a little too quickly. I’d noticed that. I kept getting quicker and quicker. “Could you—” I ducked my head to swallow the growl that wanted out, but the Auphe in me could growl all it wanted. On this, I ruled. I pulled Rafferty closer and asked my question close to his ear—where no one could hear if the answer was no. So no one could feel sorry for me, because that’s the last damn thing I wanted.
He considered my request. “Yeah, maybe. I can’t guarantee they’ll stay that way, but I’ll try.” His hand came up to cover my eyes for a second. One second. He had Suyolak in him all right, a supernatural battery that could level this entire park if that’s what Rafferty wanted.
Dropping his hand, he leaned in for a look and grunted. “Good as new, but, like I said, that could change.” They were gray again then, no russet or scarlet marring them—but pure gray, the same gray Niko and I had shared all our lives. If someone looked at us, it was the only sign they would see that we were related. I wanted to keep that. I couldn’t keep the happy, I couldn’t keep the human, but I could keep part of my brother. In the end, that made this a win.
Rafferty had risen immediately after changing my eyes back. He was scanning the area for what it was that he wanted to keep. I hoped he was as lucky as I’d turned out to be. “Catcher? Catch?” He caught sight of the one red Wolf, flanked by a white one, in the middle of more dead Wolves. I’d had the feeling that Delilah wouldn’t let there be any survivors. She and the others or just the others had killed Cabal, and Delilah had put down the rest of them. She was born a killer, born a queen, and now she had crowned herself both. I’d known, whichever way that it went, she wasn’t going to lose. She never did.
Catcher lifted his head, although I didn’t know if he understood his name or not. He might have recognized the scent of his cousin; the call of the same whispering in his brain. He catapulted toward Rafferty, leaping over bodies, making a sound I couldn’t identify except for “happy wolf” roo roo. His fur was even more red under the moon and Delilah moving leisurely in his wake was now a nude human statue carved from amber, her white hair now the color of fire.
Rafferty caught the boisterous Wolf that hit him, nearly bowling him over. “Catch. Concentrate. Come back, okay? I need you. I need you now.”
Standing on his back legs with his front hooked over Rafferty’s shoulders, Catcher snuffled, his eyes blinked, confused, and he bared his teeth. But then he butted his head against his cousin’s chest and left it there for several minutes. The first time that Goodfellow or I tried to say something, Niko knowing better not to, the healer glared us into silence. Finally Catcher looked up, face-to-face, eye to eye. It didn’t take a Wolf to see it or a healer. Anyone could see the intelligence in those eyes. Smart guy, he was a smart guy. He knew the scientific names of orchids, had a master’s degree in biology, had gone to college, bought a car, had girlfriends, went on spring break, wanted to save the planet. Hogger of fries and Twinkies, he was blazing with intelligence and he was trapped. No one could fix me, but to see his cousin fix him, that would make things a little better, a little brighter.
Rafferty smiled. It wasn’t much of one, the faintest movement of his lips, but it was the first I’d seen out of him. It counted. “Okay, Cuz. You’re coming home.” He rested a hand on each side of Catcher’s head, his thumbs curving under the Wolf’s eyes, the rest of his fingers cupping the round fur-covered head. I didn’t see the energy that passed from Rafferty, but I felt it in the air. At first it was warm . . . the warmth I’d felt when he’d healed me. I touched the bullet hole in my chest that looked as if it had been healed for years; warm, comforting, right.
But then it wasn’t the same anymore. When Catcher didn’t change, Rafferty did and what was left of Suyolak came out. This power wasn’t the heat and the sun that had coursed through me. This was cold and black. You couldn’t see it, but you could feel it. Catcher felt it too. He snarled, thrashed, and ripped his head out of Rafferty’s grip. “No,” Rafferty protested. “Catcher, I’m getting somewhere. I know it.” He reached out again and Catcher snapped at him, fastened on to his arm, and drew blood. The right- in-his-head Catcher tore a chunk out of his cousin’s arm and looked ready to do worse.
“Catcher.” Rafferty clutched the bite and healed it instantly. Back on all fours, Catcher lowered his head, ears back, hackles raised, and showed every tooth he had. “No,” the healer asserted, “it’s not poisonous. If it can bring you back, it’s not poison. It’s a cure. Can’t you understand that? It’s the only cure there is. It’s this or nothing. Don’t you get that? After all these fucking years, don’t you get that?”
Catcher stared at him. They were talking, somehow or another. . . . Hell, the Suyolak way, they were talking the Suyolak way. Rafferty was in Catcher’s head as he shook his own. “Catch, no. No. Listen to me.”
/> There was a growl. I’d heard many Wolf growls in my day. Wolves loved to fight, like Delilah, but if they could fight and live, they were satisfied with that. They didn’t have the all-or-nothing attitude she did, unless they were taking on their Alpha and it was a kill or be killed situation. There were growls and then there were growls—and the last would be the one where a Wolf chose possible death over dishonor and life.
“Goddamnit, that’s not true. I won’t cure you by turning into him. We can both live. We can both be ourselves. I’m not trading myself for you,” Rafferty said, the desperation he’d kept hidden since I’d known him finally showing.
Catcher stopped growling and simply stared at him. Unblinking. Unmoving.
Rafferty fell to his knees and denied one last time. “No, Catch. I’m not trading the world for you either. I’m not. I wouldn’t be like him. I’d get rid of the rest of him before I turned like he turned. I would.” The Wolf walked forward three steps and rested his chin on Rafferty’s shoulder, his head against the other shaggy auburn head. Rafferty wrapped his arms around Catcher’s neck and buried his face in the fur. “I know. I’m lying to you. I’m lying to myself.”
I barely heard the words or the ones that came after them, but I did hear them. I didn’t know if they made me feel better for the cousins or worse.
“You can’t fix what isn’t broken.” Hoarse but accepting.
“The here and now, it’s good. It’s what’s meant to be. I know—I do. The here and now.” He sucked in a deep breath, then straightened before turning away from his cousin enough to plant both hands against the bare earth. Then he released it: Suyolak’s power. I couldn’t see it, ugly as it was and boiling with death and hunger—the same as before—but I felt it. It passed into earth where nothing grew anyway. In the old days they salted the earth after wars, Niko said, to keep crops from growing, to make the people leave. Not very neighborly. Then again, neither was war. This ground held enough sulfur to keep anything growing to several hundred feet back. It was already dead. What was left of Suyolak wasn’t going to make a difference.
And then it was gone. He was gone. Even his arms and legs had turned to dust to be stomped on the next day by a random tourist. Suyolak was nothing but the medium for someone’s footprint and I liked the poetry of that just fine. He’d thought he owned the earth and now he’d be nothing more than a footprint on it.
Off to one side, this time too far to hear, I saw Robin making a follow-up call, to say what he couldn’t before—not that I could know precisely what he said to Ishiah. I could guess, but with Goodfellow, a guess was the absolute best and worst you could hope for. As I watched him talk, it began to snow—just on Robin . . . snow, in the middle of summer. No. It wasn’t snow. It was feathers—white and gold feathers falling from the sky like a cascade of cherry blossom petals that I’d once seen in Central Park that had filled the air like a cloud come to Earth. Talk about when you care enough to send the very best.
Maybe there was a little magic in the world after all.
I looked away, the better to battle off any threat to my testosterone-manufactured stoicism to see Rafferty stand and say, “We’re staying here. There are wolves in the park. Not our Wolves, but wolves. It’s a good place to run and hunt; a good place to live.”
“You’re just going to . . .” I stopped. What could I say? You’re not going to give up everything for your family. What kind of man or Wolf would he be if he didn’t? Catcher seemed to know what I was thinking and he gave a lupine sigh. The promise I’d made him to make Rafferty one of us, to give him reason to live, to make him family, it wasn’t going to happen. Rafferty had made his own choice. He already had a family and he was staying with it.
After Catcher’s sigh of acceptance, the Wolf then perked up his ears and shook his head hard enough that I heard the jingle . . . metal tags ringing against each other. He wasn’t going to need that when he answered the call of the wild. I moved forward and slipped the collar over his head. If it were daylight, it would’ve been fluorescent green with butterflies and dragonflies and about the most ridiculous thing I’d ever seen. “I’ll save it for Salome, Catch.”
He grinned, blew air out his nose, and held up his front leg, this time for a fist/paw bump instead of a shake. “You take care of your family, fur ball, and I’ll take care of mine.” We both knew it tended to be the other way around, but we both had our pride.
Rafferty was stripping off his clothes. He didn’t say good-bye. He wasn’t that kind of guy. “Take care of yourselves. There’s no guarantee we’ll stay here. We might move up to Canada. You guys play rough. Better sniff out a new healer. A good one. Especially for . . .” He jerked his head toward me. “An apple a day damn sure doesn’t keep the Auphe away.” He lifted a hand briefly, shimmered, and a wolf stood in his place. During the day you might have been able to tell them apart, but now they looked identical. I only knew Catcher from Rafferty because he stood on the left.
Catcher put his nose up in the air, sampling the wild smells of a wild place, and yipped happily. He grinned at us one last time, tongue lolling—facing the loss of identity, the loss of his whole, but he was at peace. You could see it. If I’d thought about it, I could see he always had been. He’d known how things would end up, but he couldn’t take away his cousin’s hope, so he’d hung in there as long as he could; as long as Rafferty had needed him to. Now he turned and started to lope toward a far ridge of still-standing trees. Rafferty studied us solemnly with yellow wolf eyes, dipped his muzzle, and swiveled to follow.
That’s when Delilah lifted the gun she’d taken from the body of her Alpha—the others had scorned him for it, but she was more open-minded. She knew she couldn’t take Catcher, Rafferty, and the rest of us as a Wolf alone. Catcher was running in the lead, and she aimed the semiautomatic at him. That’s when I pressed the muzzle of my Eagle to the back of her head. From life, to the edge of death and back, but as trained, I’d never lost my gun along the way.
“No, Delilah.”
“There is enough of All Wolf in the Kin to make our own pack bigger than any Kin pack,” she said, the gun not wavering. “With Rafferty we could be free; we could be what we should be. Running. Hunting. Gone into the green to never be found again. If Catcher dies, Rafferty has no reason not to help.”
Because that was how she would’ve thought if she’d been in his place. Friends came; friends went. Family came; family died. But she thought wrong. Rafferty wasn’t like her, not that it made a difference. He wouldn’t have changed her or the others regardless of Catcher’s death. He would kill Delilah where she stood, but because he was a Wolf and a cousin, not because he was anything like the Kin. Or anything like Delilah.
I might be Auphe, but I knew good from bad, right from wrong. I might lose that ability as time passed, but at this moment I still knew.
I made my choice. Delilah had saved me . . . in a way. She hadn’t tried to kill me. She’d given me a chance by arranging for her pack and her Alpha to die in my place—if I were good enough, benefiting us both, although benefiting her in more ways than one. But Rafferty had saved me more than once; he’d saved me three times—and on occasions of considerable inconvenience. Rafferty saved. Delilah killed. I liked Delilah, but I didn’t love her and that was why.
She was too much like me.
“Drop the gun,” I said.
She didn’t look around, keeping her eye on her running target. “You not kill me, pretty boy,” she said with complete confidence. “You not kill what we have, will you?” She thought she knew me, predator to predator. She thought I would enjoy watching her kill, because Wolves did. There was no better sex for Wolves than sex over a kill.
I wasn’t a Wolf. I wasn’t Kin. I might be worse one day; I might be worse now. But not with Catcher and Rafferty. Not when it came to them.
I kept the gun against her head and leaned in to whisper at her ear, “You’re asking the wrong question, Lilah. You shouldn’t be asking me if I’ll kill you. You
should ask if I’ll enjoy it.” They say Wolves can smell truth. She knew mine.
Rafferty and Catcher ran on until they disappeared into the darkness. And not a single gunshot was heard.
Not this time.
But there could be a next time. Back home, before there or sometime after, our being alike would result in one of us being dead sooner or later. It was how the game was played, among her kind, Wolf, and among mine, last of the Auphe. For now, she didn’t push me and for now, I didn’t shoot. And if I wanted to—badly wanted to . . .
No one had to know that but me.
Epilogue
Catcher
My name is Catcher.
I’m running, my brother by my side. No, not really my brother, but he is of my pack and that’s the same thing. He saved my life once, years ago. And I’d saved his soul today. He is Rafferty; I remember now, if I’d forgotten for a while during the fight. I remember more. I remember me. I remember my life. I remember how we came to be running toward the trees under a huge bloodred moon. I remember telling my cousin to go live his life and his saying I was his life; that not only had I saved his soul, but that I’d given him one to save; that I was his family, the best part of him.
He was right. Family should always be the best part of one another.
My name is Catcher and I think this is the last time I’ll know that. Soon I won’t remember that any more than I’ll remember fries and birthday cakes. I won’t remember a spray of freckles across a beautiful woman’s breast and her lips soft under mine. I won’t remember my mother’s Christmas cookies, the brightly colored birds of the rain forest, card games, skiing a black diamond slope, drinking a six- pack and climbing to the dorm roof to howl at the stars. They are the best memories anyone can have. And I had had them. That counted; it did.
But that was then; this is now.
I feel night wind in my fur as I run, the smell of game in the trees, my pack by my side. There’s a life to be made here, a good life for a Wolf . . . or only a wolf. There is a cliff up ahead; it’s waiting for me.
