by Karen Kincy
“Sir,” Randall says, “he hasn’t got one.”
The officer moves the flashlight beam onto his face. “Explain.”
“He doesn’t have his license yet,” Randall says.
“Yeah.” I force a laugh. “Keep failing that test.”
“Let’s see a learner’s permit, then,” the officer says.
My face heats. “See, I kind of left that at home, and—”
“Step out of the car,” the officer says. “Both of you.”
I clench the steering wheel even tighter, claws breaking from my fingernails. My heart thuds hard against my ribs.
Slowly, Randall unbuckles his seat belt. He meets my eyes, and nods.
“What?” I hiss.
He just nods again. What the fucking hell is that supposed to mean? Shit, I’m going to have to take matters into my own hands.
The police officer’s radio crackles on, and he glances down.
I slam my foot onto the gas. The truck’s engine roars, but we aren’t going anywhere. Randall slams down the parking brake—I must have set it out of habit—and the truck leaps onto the road as if kicked severely in the rear.
Behind us, the police officer scrambles toward his SUV, trips, and climbs to his feet.
“Car!” Randall yanks the steering wheel to the right.
We swerve back into our lane, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision with a little blue sedan. I press the gas pedal to the floor and grip the wheel, the muscles in my arms cording. My teeth itch as they lengthen into fangs.
Okay. Calm down. Now is not the time to turn into a wolf.
Sirens pursue us, growing louder and louder. The SUV looks way too big in the rearview mirror. A green sign promises an exit ahead. I yank the wheel and we whip onto the off-ramp, roaring along the curve at full speed. Thank God it’s empty. The SUV skids after us, scraping the guardrail with a shower of sparks.
“Asshole!” I shout. “Get off our tail!”
Randall stares at me, his eyebrows sky-high. “Brock. What the fuck are you doing?”
“Getting us the fuck out of here.”
At the end of the off-ramp, a sign forbids U-turns. Good idea. I twist the wheel and spin the truck 180 degrees. The tires skid and bounce across the asphalt. Behind us, I hear the screech of the SUV’s brakes. Nose in the right direction, I gun the engine again, run a red light, and swerve right onto a side road, then left onto another. I’m sweating hard, terrified I’ll hear sirens again, but we drive deeper into silence.
I blow out my breath and slow to the speed limit. “Okay. We’re cool.”
“We are not cool,” Randall growls. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why not?” I’m grinning now, turbocharged on adrenaline. “It’s not like we made anything worse than it already was.”
“Speak for yourself. And we’re running on empty.”
I groan. Then, a tiny old gas station appears like a miracle on the horizon. I don’t want to stop, but of course we can’t keep going without gas. I glance at Randall, who nods, then pull into the station and kill the engine.
“I’ve got to make a phone call.” Randall hands me a wad of cash. “You pay.”
“Right.”
Still buzzed and jumpy, I walk into the store, feeling like a movie guy on an important mission. A skinny guy stands behind the counter, leaning over some trashy magazine and chewing on a wad of minty gum.
“Hey,” I say, “I need some gas.”
“Sure.” The guy doesn’t glance up.
Maybe it’s the gum, or his laziness, or the fact that we’re running from the cops, but I instantly hate him. I slap the cash on the counter, loud enough that there’s no way he can’t hear. He grabs it and starts riffling through the bills.
“How much?” he says, cracking his gum.
I flex my fingers and try not to growl. “Put it all on pump number two.”
“Sure … ” The guy squints at a twenty dollar bill as if not believing it’s real. “Hey, is this one of those new ones?”
I glance out the window and see Randall across the street, pacing beneath the red-and-white sign of a Grocery Mart. He’s still talking on the cell phone, probably to Winema. I wonder how pissed she is right now.
“Okay … ” says the guy behind the counter. “That’s sixty-two dollars.”
“Sure,” I say. “Go for it.”
I glance back again. This time, I see a police cruiser driving nearer.
I sprint out the store, past the pickup truck, and across the street. “Randall!”
He frowns at me. “What?”
“They’re coming.”
eighteen
I grab Randall’s arm and drag him into Grocery Mart to hide. Too-bright fluorescent lights hurt my eyes, and the cheery blue-red-and-yellow bunting decorating the store doesn’t look real. We jog past two women talking across their shopping carts, then disappear into an aisle with shelves stocked to the ceiling with pet food.
“There’s got to be a back exit,” I say.
“Brock.” Randall shakes free from my grip. “We’re maybe ten minutes away from the rest of the pack. We shouldn’t split up.”
“Yeah, but if we lead Royle to the werepuppies, he’s going to shoot them on sight.” My voice shakes with rage. “I’d rather kill the bastard first.”
His eyes shine with a mix of sadness and pride. “Let’s get these police off our tail.”
Together, we stride to the end of the aisle and lope along the back wall, trying not to move fast enough to be suspicious. I look down the aisles as we pass, meeting the eyes of a clerk, a baby in a shopping cart, a man in uniform—
I freeze, a classic deer-in-the-headlights, while Randall strides onward.
Deputy Collins. He freezes, too. I’m bigger than him, for sure. He must recognize us, because he looks scared shitless. I raise one hand as high as my head, slowly, to show him I’m not some mindless beast.
He frowns and reaches for his belt—the gun at his belt.
“Brock!”
Randall tackles me and slams me to the floor behind a pyramid of oranges. A gunshot cracks, deafeningly close—then screaming—then something sticky rains down on me. I look up at a burst orange, leaking juice and pulp.
“Everybody out of the store!” Collins shouts.
I’m shaking with fear and rage, my spine bending on the verge of wolf. Randall pins me to the floor and stares me in the eye.
“Do not fight him,” he growls. “Do you understand?”
I stare at him, my skin clammy, my head foggy. He wrenches me to my feet and half-drags, half-hauls me out of there.
“Stop, or I’ll shoot!” Collins shouts, like he didn’t already.
Of course, me and Randall keep running. We dodge behind a display of toilet paper, and the deputy’s boots rap closer on the tiles. Randall shoves the display, and individually wrapped rolls avalanche onto Collins.
It would be funny, if I weren’t so pissed.
My muscles burn with the effort of holding back the beast. I pant against the pain and let Randall lead me onward, away from the deputy and the desire to tear out the asshole’s throat for even daring to shoot at me.
“There’s nowhere to run,” Collins says. “You’re surrounded.”
Fuck that shit. Randall must be thinking the same thing, because he lunges down an aisle at a dead sprint. Collins darts after him, stops, and raises his gun between two hands. In my head, I see Randall falling, bleeding.
I lumber after Collins like a hunchback, my skeleton reshaping, my hair thickening into a gray pelt. A snarl rumbles from my throat. Collins whirls on me, his eyes glassy and wide. I must look like a monster.
“Don’t move!” His voice quavers, but he holds his gun steady.
“Get out of our way,” I rasp.
Collins wrinkles
his forehead. “Put down your weapons—don’t turn into a wolf!”
I laugh a barking laugh. “You have no fucking clue what you’re doing.”
Behind him, Randall creeps nearer, claws curving from his fingertips. I try not to stare and give him away. I teeter on the brink of wolf.
“Turn back,” Collins tells me. “Turn back to human, and lie down on the floor. Do it!”
Randall steals close enough to touch Collins. He raises his glinting claws above his head, then slices the air and hits Collins, who crumples under the blow. The gun skitters onto the floor, and Randall kicks it under a shelf.
“Let’s go,” he tells me. “But not like that.”
I nod, then look at myself. I’m still half-beast, the seams of my clothing strained, my skin shaggy with silver fur. I try to breathe deeper, but it sounds raspy and shallow inside my misshapen rib cage. Fear weakens my legs.
“Can’t.” I cough. “Can’t change.”
“You have to,” Randall says. “You have to choose, wolf or human.”
But what if I can’t change back?
I swallow hard and shut my eyes, willing myself to relax into a body. The change ripples through me, and I stagger forward. My eyes snap open; I’m now entirely wolf. I glance around at the shreds of my clothing on the floor. Great.
Randall winces. “Okay, I kind of hoped it would be human. But whatever. Let’s move!”
He jogs toward the doors and I follow him, my claws clicking on the tiles. The smells of the grocery store overwhelm me: onions moldering pungently in a heap, plasticky baby diapers, a pickle jar leaking sharp vinegar on the shelf beside me, the warm bitterness of coffee, cold cuts mellowing in the freezer. Scattered throughout the store, a few customers stand unmoving, shocked and gawking.
A drooly little toddler in a shopping cart seat reaches for me. “Doggy!”
“No,” murmurs the toddler’s mom. “Werewolf.”
This is completely and utterly bat-shit insane. I don’t belong in this mundane place, in this piece of everydayness. I hold my head low and tuck my tail between my legs, as if I can skulk beneath the bright fluorescent and not be seen. The automatic doors swish open and I trot through into the night, feeling all the more ridiculous. Outside, cops scuttle around the gas station and the baby-blue pickup like hornets on jam.
“This way,” Randall whispers.
We slide alongside the windows of the Grocery Mart and hurry down an alley, across the street, and into a park full of whispering cottonwoods. The spicy-sweet perfume of their sap tingles in my nose and snags a memory of the trees beside the river in Klikamuks. For a fragment of a minute, it fills me with wistfulness. I wish I were running for the light-footed joy of it, not fleeing heavy with dread.
A low whistle, like someone calling a dog. I swivel my ears toward the sound.
Grady walks out from behind a tree, dressed entirely in camouflage. He looks like a solider who got lost in the jungle for a few months.
“Over here!” he whispers.
Randall jogs to him. “The cops are on our tail. I tried to warn the rest of the—”
“We know,” Grady says. “Winema sent me after you guys.”
What, to rescue us? I snort, and Grady glances at me.
“Hot damn! Is this the bloodborn? For a sec I thought you were—”
“Grady,” Randall says, “where is Winema?”
He shrugs. “Around here, somewhere.”
“She shouldn’t be. There are a shit-ton more cops than there were originally. We’ve got to get out of here before they follow us.”
I turn around and point my nose the way we came. I don’t smell any strangers.
“Understood.” Grady crouches. “Let’s move.”
Quickly, Randall shucks off his clothes, silver fur already hiding his skin. He changes fast, the wolf breaking free in one convulsion. Grady sheds his ratty camouflage and transforms into a rangy gray wolf.
We zigzag through the park, hiding behind bushes and benches. Why aren’t we just sprinting straight into the hills? Hunched behind a statue of a guy on a horse, I growl softly and nip at Grady’s heels. Move faster! He glances at Randall, who nods. Grady bolts across the field. A gunshot cracks the night and I hunker low, my ears flattened against my skull. Grady swerves, and another gunshot flings dust into the air where he was standing a moment before. He lunges to the left, toward some shrubbery, and—
A third gunshot.
Grady yelps and thuds on the ground. Blood spurts from the wound in his neck, soaking his fur. He struggles to stand, then falls into a puddle of his own blood. He twists his head to look at us. Within seconds his eyes dull, unseeing.
I hear a high whine. I realize it’s coming from me.
I’ve never seen anyone die before. Not Chris, not even Mom.
Sirens grow louder. Through the trees lining the lane, cop-car lights flash brokenly. Randall woofs, then points his muzzle ahead. There’s only one way to go. He leaps out from behind the statue at a dead run.
Gunshots rattle from the darkness, but Randall’s too fast for that—he’s already streaking through the night like a comet. I don’t know if I can keep up, though I have to. Heart hammering, I sprint after him through a fresh hail of bullets. They don’t touch me—I’m going too damn fast—but shit, they got Grady.
Randall skitters down an alley, and I follow him. At the end of the alley, past the weedy outskirts of town, the wild night calls to us. Randall bolts for the chance; I’m only a hair behind him. We’re almost out of the alley and into the clear when a car screeches to stop right in front of our noses, tires smoking on the asphalt.
Not just any car. The red convertible.
“Get in,” Jessie says, “but try not to get any blood on the seats, if you’re bleeding.”
Isabella holds a back door open. Me and Randall lunge inside. Cyn, sitting shotgun, twists back to stare at us with huge, dark eyes.
“Where’s Grady?” Jessie says. “Is he—?”
Randall nods.
“Jessie,” Isabella says, her voice tight. “Go!”
A cop stands in the alley, his legs braced in a firing stance, and raises a gun.
“Hold on,” Jessie says, and then she guns it.
Wind whistles through my fur and I flatten my ears. Another gunshot, but it sounds miles away. Jessie peels out of there, zooming past the outskirts of town, leaving the cops literally in our dust. She doesn’t hit the highway straightaway, but takes a crazy twisting path on a network of roads through the fields. We hit a gravel road, the wheels spitting pebbles, dirt rising in a choking cloud that makes us all cough. Finally, we see the highway again. Our speed levels out to a cruise, the wind whipping past, my eyes watering.
Cyn twists back again, her eyes looking straight into mine. “Who … ?”
I shrink down in the seat, trying really hard not to look so huge and bristly and wolfish, but yeah, that’s impossible.
“Randall, honey.” Isabella eyes us both. “And his bloodborn.”
With a woof, Randall nods.
Cyn’s eyebrows go so high they disappear beneath her bangs. We’re running from the cops at about ninety miles an hour, I almost got shot, and now just happens to be when she first sees me as a wolf.
Could things get any more ridiculous?
“Brock.” A smile creeps across Cyn’s face. “This is so … strange.”
I snort. Exactly what I was thinking.
“Can you change back?” she says.
I nod, then shake my head, because then of course I’d be buck naked.
“Not in my car!” Jessie says.
Randall makes a soft growl and rests his nose against Jessie’s headrest.
“All right, all right,” she says. “Stop breathing down my neck.”
The tires squeal as Jessie hits the brakes
and swerves off onto the shoulder of the road. The low rumble of the engine undercuts the rustling of wind in a nearby cornfield. Isabella opens the door and hops out to let me and Randall past. He trots away from the road, shakes as if flinging water from his fur, then starts to transform.
I look away and prowl deeper into the cornfield. I don’t want Cyn to see me change.
“Don’t go too far,” Randall calls after me, his voice still hoarse and growly.
But once I start walking, I don’t want to stop. Out here, my nose full of the grassy sweetness of ripening corn, I can imagine I’m back in Klikamuks, just going on a nighttime walk. Down in the valley, fog overflows from the river and spills over the sleeping fields. The thick wet air tickles my throat, scented with river mud, wet grass, ripening corn, and the roast beef of a recent dinner trickling from a window.
I can’t ever go back to that, can I? I’m Other now.
Cyn walks through the rows of corn, a bundle in her arms. Great. Now I have an audience. “There you are,” she says.
I give her a look, but she isn’t going away.
“They’re waiting,” she says. “Unless … ”
Unless what? Does she think I can run away with her like this? I can’t pretend like I was never bitten. Cyn’s just going to have to graduate high school and move away to college and keep on living a normal life without me. Anger chokes my throat. I close my eyes, as if that gives me more control over the dark.
“Brock, are you going to change back or not?”
Well, shit. There’s no point in pretending anymore. She’s already seen Brock the Beast.
With a sigh, I flip myself inside-out, my fur shrinking to bare skin, my paws reshaping into toes and fingers digging into soft earth. Human again, I open my eyes, climb to my feet, and dust off my hands.
I’m not looking at Cyn. She’s got to be totally disgusted right now.
“Brock?” she says.
I can hear a million questions in the way her voice rises at the end. “Yeah,” I say, “I’m okay. I got shot at, I almost got us arrested, and I keep changing into a wolf whenever I get angry. But other than all that, really, I’m okay.”
I’m still not looking at Cyn, but she marches up to me. “You’re not.”
