Unleashed

by Kristopher Reisz

  “Uh, yeah.” The question had really been directed at Misty. Misty knew it too. Daniel caught her scowling at Vial’s reflection in the rearview mirror.

  “You want to call her? We could pick her up,” Val offered sweetly.

  “Uh, she’s on the planning committee for the basketball awards banquet. They’re meeting tonight. I called her earlier, and she almost bit my head off.”

  “Angie’s in health class with me,” Val said. “She’s really nice.”

  Daniel remembered Angie’s comment about staring at Val’s back-fat. “Yeah,” he nodded, inhaling the scratchy hot smoke.

  “Cop!” Marc yelped. “Copcopcop!”

  Daniel looked up to watch Misty ease to a red light beside a squad car. Suddenly remembering to be afraid, he dropped the smoldering pipe to the floorboards. His chest started burning for air, but he didn’t dare exhale.

  They all stared straight ahead. Eric mumbled curses between clenched teeth. Misty fought to hold in a laugh. Watching her shoulders quivering with the effort, Daniel felt laughter surging up his own throat along with the clawing smoke. He smacked her in the arm, but that only made her clamp her hands over her mouth and double over in her seat. Daniel’s eyes watered. He started getting dizzy. Risking a glance at the police officers a few feet away, he saw them talking, their words muted by the squad car’s window.

  Finally, the light turned green. Daniel struggled to hold his breath for a few more seconds while the police cruised up ahead. The moment he saw their taillights, smoke burst from his mouth and nostrils. The car rocked with wild laughter from the others. From the back, Marc reached over the seat and slapped his shoulder.

  “Are you okay?” Misty touched his face. “You looked ready to pop a blood vessel.”

  Daniel hated coming off as a wuss in front of her and her rowdy bunch, but gulping down some air, he said, “If we’re going to smoke the rest of this, let’s get off the road or something.”

  “We could go to the furnace,” Eric said.

  Marc and both girls stiffened. Val nudged her boyfriend hard.

  “What furnace?” Daniel asked.

  “It’s just that old steel furnace off First Avenue,” Misty said. “But let’s not go there tonight. Come on, Eric.”

  Daniel didn’t understand why they were acting strange. “What? Is it scary or something?”

  “No, it’s cool.” Eric grinned. “And it’s about as far out of sight as anyone can get.”

  Daniel shrugged. “I’m in if you guys are in.”

  The ride became quieter, just a few hollow jokes and perfunctory laughs, as Misty drove north into a landscape of warehouses and small factories. She pulled into a lot choked with wildflowers, and headlights flared against a gate. Rusting signs declared it the private property of Victor Development.

  “So how do we get in?” Daniel asked.

  “With a key.”

  Misty took her keys out of the ignition and passed them to Marc. Climbing out, he rushed to unlock a padlock and unwind the chain holding the gate shut.

  “So let me guess,” Daniel said. “You’re secretly the heir of the Victor Development empire.”

  “Yeah, right,” Misty said. “We just sawed through the real lock and replaced it with our own.”

  Daniel nodded. “Clever mind like that, gotta be worth two or three empires.”

  They entered the furnace complex along a potholed memory of a road. Saplings grew to its edges, branches scratching at the car windows. Kudzu and honeysuckle wrapped around the industrial ruins like cloaks. Daniel had never imagined any place in the center of the city could be so quiet.

  A wooden house stood at the head of the furnace complex, maybe the front office once. Now, the windows stood broken and the veranda had collapsed. A pair of lolling-tongued wolf heads, painted in dripping black, watched from the house’s slat wall. Daniel had seen the symbol somewhere before but couldn’t remember where.

  “So this place is just abandoned?” he asked, staring around.

  “It’s a con big companies play,” Eric said. “After a factory closes, they go to city hall and say, ‘Sell it to us cheap.’”

  “Oh, yeah,” Daniel nodded. “Promise to open it back up, but then just get it condemned and build an office park or something. The Owenton Community Council’s suing the people that own the Goodyear plant over that, aren’t they?”

  Eric stared at Daniel for a moment, then, without answering, chuckled and turned to look out the window.

  Since the first ritual in October, Misty’s pack had taken over the furnace. Val had worked out the wolf sign in art class and painted around the perimeter. The homeless living there got the message and moved on, scattering elsewhere.

  Driving to the furnace with Daniel, Misty had fought to keep a calm face over her rising panic. A guilty voice inside her whispered that Daniel would take one look around and, somehow, know what they were.

  Instead, she parked in the casting shed beneath the northern blast furnace. They sat in the car with the radio playing, smoked weed, and bitched about school.

  Eric and Daniel spiked their talk with subtle displays of advantage and dominance. Neither one would let the other think he was smarter or quicker-witted. But even when Daniel slid in the last word, Eric just smiled. Before long, Misty realized why he’d wanted to take Daniel to the furnace.

  Daniel Morning was the prince of McCammon High. Since he’d walked into the deli, Misty had been a little terrified of him. She didn’t know what he wanted, she didn’t know what she wanted him to want, but she was still worried about saying the wrong thing.

  This was their lair, though. The furnace guarded their secrets. No human boy could hurt Misty here. She felt almost as fearless as she did in wolf skin.

  The conversation babbled across ISS, work, good weed and dumb things they’d done on it. Then Val and Eric started making out. The car became suddenly claustrophobic, filled with wet smacking sounds from the lovers and nervous shuffles from everybody else.

  “Think I’m going to walk around,” Marc announced, sliding out of the backseat.

  Misty looked at Daniel. “Want to go to the top of the blast furnace?”

  “Sure. ”

  • • •

  The casting shed stretched the length of a football field. Storms had torn away most of its roof. Following the blue LED glow of Misty’s penlight, she and Daniel walked along a brick-lined trough running up the middle of the shed, where liquid steel had once poured from the blast furnace.

  Watching the ground so he wouldn’t trip, Daniel noticed paw prints crisscrossing the shed’s dirt floor in every direction. “Better be careful. Some dogs have been living here.”

  That made Misty laugh.

  “I’m just—”

  “Why should I be scared? I’ve got a big jock to protect me. C’mon.” Wrapping her thin fingers around his, she led him up some metal stairs.

  The twin blast furnaces were visible from 1-20 a mile away, two rusting ghosts watching commuters zip back and forth. Daniel had glimpsed them so many times, he hardly noticed them anymore. But now he stood at the base of one, craning his neck to see it rise up and swallow the moon. The blast furnace filled him with the same awe he imagined feeling among the bluestone towers above Ithaca.

  The stairs ended, and they started climbing a ladder up the furnace’s chimney, passing one catwalk, then a second, then a third. Icy metal rungs cramped Daniel’s hands into claws.

  Misty stopped near the top, waiting for him to catch up. She hung by one hand and one foot, her free hand resting on her hip. It was a very imperious gesture to adopt while dangling forty feet above the ground. “What’s the matter?” she called down. “You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”

  In the pitch black, with the wind growing strong enough to pluck Daniel off the ladder like a dead leaf, yes. “No. I was just doing dead weights yesterday and pinched a nerve in my shoulder.”

  “C’mon!” She started climbing again.

&n
bsp; Reaching the highest of four catwalks, their view stretched far beyond the furnace grounds. Years ago, Birmingham’s leaders had commissioned a statue of Vulcan, the Roman god of the forge, to overlook their steel town. Daniel could see him standing at the peak of Red Mountain. In the darkness, highways had become molten rivers flowing through the valley.

  Unhampered by trees or buildings, the icy wind lashed at them. Daniel and Misty squeezed into the mouth of an exhaust vent just large enough for both of them. Misty pulled her pipe out and packed it with the last crumbs of weed. Daniel cupped his hands around the lighter’s flame to keep it from blowing out. He’d gotten her to open up some, to let her scowling mask slip a little and share jokes and beautiful views of the city with him. He figured it was time to ask.

  “So when we were in Mrs. MacKaye’s class and that dog got hit, why’d you go help it?”

  Misty shrugged and passed him the pipe. The wind unspooled the smoke from her mouth as she talked. “Felt sorry for him, I guess. It’s a dumb class, anyway.”

  “Weren’t you worried about getting into trouble, though?”

  Misty looked at him. She looked down through the catwalk’s metal grate to the ground below. “I’m so stoned right now, I don’t know how I’m going to get down from here. I’m not even worried about that.”

  His lungs full of smoke, Daniel’s laugh turned into a hard cough.

  “ISS isn’t any more boring than normal school is,” Misty said. “Who cares what room they stick you in if you’re just going to be writing a bunch of definitions or whatever either way?”

  “Yeah.” Daniel stared out across the city. He was the shooting star, and he had his future to think about. He always had his future to think about. But Daniel wished, just once, he could sneer at the rules, just as openly, with just as much reckless grace, as Misty had.

  “I do worry about stuff. Just important stuff,” Misty said.

  “What’s important?”

  “Marc. He’s the one who’s always getting into real trouble. Fights and stuff.”

  Below, they could hear Marc smashing bottles against one of the buildings.

  “Dumbass,” Misty added. “Got any brothers or sisters?”

  “Two brothers.”

  “Older or younger?”

  “Fischer’s thirteen and Mack’s five.”

  “Five?” Misty perked up. “Oh, I bet he’s cute. Got any pictures?”

  They huddled together on top of the world. Daniel tried to probe deeper into why she’d saved the dog, but didn’t get any better answer than the one Misty had already given him. It had been an impulsive act. She hadn’t considered the consequences before, or apparently, since. She started getting annoyed with his questions, so Daniel let it drop.

  Instead, their conversation drifted back to globetrotting. They made up imaginary itineraries and lists of things they’d never seen. They wondered which country had the best castles and where you could drink at eighteen. While they talked, cars and people floated through the streets below like fish in an aquarium.

  Sometime after the weed was gone, they turned to the subject of Misty’s ex-boyfriend.

  “When I started going out with Andre, I thought he was really mature and cool. Toward the end, though, I was pretty much dating him ironically. You know, like how everybody was wearing trucker hats a couple years back?”

  Daniel laughed, rocking backward and banging his head against the exhaust vent. Misty winced at the dull clang it made. “Ow! Relax. It wasn’t that funny.”

  “It was. But mostly you’re just a lot different than I thought.”

  “Really, what’d you think?”

  “I’m not sure. Just … different.”

  Misty’s grin faded. “You know, I’m not some monster.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s just people talk a lot of shit at school, and maybe I’ve done some stupid stuff, but, I mean, yeah, I set Andre’s clothes on fire, but it’s not like he was wearing them when I did, you know?”

  “So why did you set his clothes on fire?”

  She glared at him. “Because he pissed me off.”

  Daniel nodded. He watched her for another second, then felt himself leaning forward, felt damp-breath vapor and the soft resistance of Misty’s mouth.

  Misty closed her eyes as Daniel kissed her. His soft curls brushed her forehead. Her hand reached out to touch the firm muscles beneath his shirt. She wanted to sink into him, and that scared her, because it meant he could hurt her, even here in their lair.

  Daniel pulled away, and Misty relished the slight ache left behind. “Just don’t piss me off,” she whispered.

  Chapter 5

  Leaving the furnace, neither Misty nor Daniel spoke much. After he’d waved good-bye, Misty didn’t mention the kiss to Val or the boys, pretending such a small detail had slipped her mind.

  She was still in in-school suspension Friday. The ISS room had bare walls and papered-over windows. Misty sat at a carrel with wooden partitions keeping her from seeing the other students around her. Nobody was allowed to speak or leave except to go to the restroom. The isolation had a crushing weight like deep water.

  Her back aching from sitting hunched over, Misty did busywork until three. After school, she went to the deli. Every time the electronic door chime sounded, Misty would glance up, then silently scold herself for hoping it’d be Daniel.

  Her shift was supposed to end at eight, but Ilie needed her to prep a bunch of dough for tomorrow, and she ended up staying past nine. When the day was finally over, Misty gathered with her pack at the furnace.

  Not much of the stuff from horror movies turned out to be true. They didn’t transform into wolfmen, walking on two feet, hands tipped with vicious claws. They just became ordinary wolves. The boys were disappointed about that, but Misty loved charging through the night on four long legs.

  When they were human, they didn’t crave raw meat or have tufts of hair sprouting over their bodies. It had taken five minutes to explain to Marc why getting shot with a silver bullet would hurt whether he was a werewolf or not.

  And the full moon didn’t have any effect on them. Only the ritual allowed them to shift. The rot-eater god’s putrid eucharist turned their minds animal-pure, devoid of emotion or memory. Then their stomping, sweating, screaming dance summoned their most primal selves to the surface.

  At first, the wolves had only emerged for a few seconds at a time. They just raced around the furnace grounds. Slowly, Misty and her pack had learned to suppress their humanity for minutes, then hours, at a time, and had begun venturing into the city.

  Now, Misty crouched near the fire, its light turning her breath a pale, poisonous yellow. Watching the Amanita muscaria smolder, she remembered how desperate she’d been to show Daniel she wasn’t a monster. Before that night with him, she hadn’t realized that she wasn’t entirely certain herself.

  Val started turning up the music. Misty stopped her. “Hey. What if we’re doing something really wrong with all this? What if the rot-eater god is really, like, the Devil?”

  Eric was scratching spirals into the dirt with a piece of rusted metal. “Think you’re going to hell?”

  “Well?”

  “For what? Dumping your prick boyfriend? Helping that dog the other day? When that dog got hit, how many good, Buckle-of-the-Bible-Belt Christians saw it, and sat there, and didn’t do shit?”

  Misty didn’t answer.

  “But you did,” Val said. “Eric’s right. Wolves aren’t evil. Just strong.”

  Even before Misty had learned what lay beneath her skin, if she’d heard that dog whimpering, she would’ve felt the same urge to help it. She didn’t know if she could have stood up, though, cowed by the thought of Mr. Fine lecturing her in the main office and Andre telling her she’d acted like a fool.

  But now, even when Misty wore her human shape, she walked through school like a wolf—strong; proud—knowing she was something Mr. Fine, Andre, or any of the other yapping hand-lickers
could never intimidate into submission.

  “You’re right,” Misty told Val. After another moment of thought, she reached for one of the smoking mushrooms.

  Soon they were dancing, letting the energy chained down in classrooms and crappy jobs break free. Misty’s worry and wondering burned away. Her memory of Daniel’s face burned away. The wolf heard Misty’s chanting calls and appeared in the firelight.

  Their clothes disappeared with their humanity. The pack tore naked through the streets. They didn’t notice the cold; their pelts trapped body heat so well, the snow didn’t melt on their backs.

  Through the wolf’s night-stalker eyes, colors were washed out to a eternal dusk, but Misty could see infinite flickering movements all around her. Birmingham was in constant, rippling motion like the surface of a lake. The wind filled with delicate blushes of scent. She smelled trash and exhaust fumes, a fire-gutted house blocks away and spring welling up beneath the frozen ground.

  Even though people didn’t see anything but a pack of big dogs, that was enough to make them wary and keep their distance. Val slipped back into human skin twice, just long enough to spray paint their sign on an overpass and the wall of a gas station. But mostly, the wolves just ran as fast as they could, moving across the city like a thunderhead. Southside belonged to them. Maybe rats, sneak-thief racoons, and humans scuttled along its edges, but it belonged to the wolves.

  It was nearly dawn when Amanita muscaria’s magic began to fade, making it harder and harder to keep civilized thoughts from seeping into their minds. One by one, they tumbled back into their human skins—and tanker boots and hoodies—and were unable to shift into wolves again. The night’s prowl was over.

  Legs threatening to crumple with every step, they returned to the furnace for their cars. Val came home with Misty and Marc. Prowling always left them famished. After getting to the apartment, Marc grabbed some food and vanished. Misty and Val stood in the kitchen eating cold fried chicken and licorice. And water. Before she’d become a wolf, Misty had never realized how delicious crisp, cold water was. They were still gorging when Misty’s mom came home.