by Maria Vale
It’s coming closer, the sound of wheels spinning against the loose stones.
“He’s coming,” Thea says, grabbing some clothes from the drawers under the bed and stuffing them into her backpack. She comes from the bathroom with a small bag and adds that as well. Then she starts to lace up her boots.
“What are you doing?”
“Coming with you. Going to clear this up.”
“I don’t—”
“I told you to trust me to take care of myself. Well, I do love you. So taking care of myself means taking care of you too.” A car door slams. She looks toward the window. “He’s here.”
Doug’s footsteps crunch along the small stones. He takes a picture of the license plate of my Land Rover.
“I’ll follow you in my car,” she says.
The heavy tread creaks on her porch. Doug looks through the window. Then he knocks on the door.
“Take mine. It’s got a parking sticker, and…” I fish in my pocket for my keys. “This is for my apartment.”
“Thea,” says Doug’s muffled voice. “I know he’s in there.”
“Is there anything else you want me to hold on to so it doesn’t end up with the property clerk?” she whispers. “Hold on a second,” she calls out. “We’re coming.”
I hand her my phone and my watch and my wallet, taking only my driver’s license.
Thea opens the door to Doug standing with his hand to the back of his belt.
“He doesn’t need handcuffs, Doug. He’s not resisting.”
“He’s a fugitive, The.”
“I’m not a fugitive. I was only a person of interest.”
“You were told to stay put. Hands behind your back.”
I put my hands behind my back, palms out.
Thea’s ironwood eyes narrow, and she slips back into her cabin.
“So you’re just her lawyer, eh?” Doug says, opening the handcuffs. “You should have known better.”
“I wasn’t under arrest,” I say again.
“Well, now you are.” He begins reading me my rights while he tries to close the cuffs, but the hinge pinches tight against my wrist bone and won’t close. “Dammit,” he says and slips the metal cuffs back into his belt, fishing out plastic restraints instead.
“It’s a long drive. At least let me have my hands in front.”
He puts my hands behind my back, tightens the restraints, and then covers my head with his hand as I tumble awkwardly into the back of his car. Through the rear window, I watch Thea pull herself up into my car and adjust the seat forward. She reaches over to put something into the glove compartment and buckles herself in.
My fierce female.
“What are you smiling about?” Doug asks when I face forward again.
“Nothing.”
He looks suspiciously into his rearview mirror.
Thea waves.
I wave back, the ripped remnants of the plastic shackle swinging from my wrist.
Chapter 34
Hāmweard, ðu londadl hǽðstapa, in 1 day
Homeward, you landsick heath-wanderer, in 1 day
If I’d known more about the realities of criminal court, I wouldn’t have smiled. I’d counted on the absence of any evidence against me, on Thea’s testimony, on my innocence to spring me by midafternoon.
My lawyer said to be patient. Thea had given a strong interview, and more importantly, another suspect seemed to have fled the country. But the law is slow, he said, adding that Conradi really seemed to have taken a dislike to me.
But time is the one thing I don’t have, because in thirty hours, I will no longer be human.
In a windowless holding cell deep underground, surrounded by white walls, two low metal benches, bars, a broken telephone, and a metal divider barely disguising the shit-covered toilet, I wait with a revolving cast of twenty-five men who are not yet guilty.
No one has a phone or a watch in the Tombs. There are no windows, and if there were, there would be no light. I try counting one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, but when I get to 2,759 Mississippi, I realize that my grasp of time has stretched and contorted like Silly Putty.
The corrections officer told us that chow is at seven and noon and six. Lights out at nine thirty.
I ask every CO and every man who comes into our bullpen for the time, excepting only a man with one shoe who curls into a ball on the floor near the toilet. He smells of diabetes and frostbite and barely moves.
A CO passes out sandwiches. I don’t know whether that means it’s noon or six. Several of the men flock to him, calling out their preferences, usually steak and lobster, which, as jokes go, is stale from the beginning. I get a sandwich of processed halal meat. When I tell the CO I am vegetarian, he snorts, and my little corner of hell becomes darker.
Because I’ve been so preoccupied with time, I haven’t been paying attention to the emerging trade in strength and weakness that has been taking place around me. Someone has been made the top dog, the shot-caller. He is a thick man with elaborate tattoos starting at his wrist and creeping up the side of his arm under the ripped sleeves of his sweatshirt and up to his cropped skull. He has a long scar along his jaw and a teardrop tattooed on his face.
He looks at me. I do not look away.
The men are not entirely sure who is the alpha here: I am the bigger man by far, but I have a Kiton jacket and a double-twill Egyptian cotton shirt and am wearing driving shoes. Aside from the faded bear-claw scars at my neck, I have no body art. I wear a braided necklace. The men are more familiar with the signals sent by the man with the teardrop, and most congregate around him. Only the very lowest, like the man with one shoe, stay near me, mostly because there is space.
Teardrop’s eyes get harder, and he nods toward my little pack without shifting his eyes from mine. A man with deep pits in his face yells at the sick man for smelling bad, then kicks his bare foot.
It is meant as a challenge, and as tedious as it is, I know that challenges must be met. I ignore the man with the deep pits. It is never worth interacting with subordinates. Instead, I go to the shot-caller himself, who has reserved one entire bench for himself.
I ask him what time it is.
He asks me if he looks like a fucking clock.
I take his wrist as if to check the watch he doesn’t have, and when I press with my thumb, it bends, then breaks.
And I sit back down. By the time the CO has come to see why the man is screaming, everyone else is seated too, looking at the floor. Now many of them are congregated in my corner. They leave the sick man alone.
At chow time, I easily trade my processed halal meat sandwich for peanut butter.
At nine thirty, the lights go out. Most of the men try to carve out a piece on the floor and get a little sleep. I can’t. I stare at the now-dark lights and try to decide if it is possible to stand with my bare feet on the metal bench, stick my tongue into the light socket, and immolate.
• • •
Hāmweard, ðu londadl hǽðstapa.
Homeward, you landsick heath-wanderer.
It is sometime after the arrival of the corn flakes and tiny cartons of icy milk that the CO finally calls my name. I pick up the thin plastic bag with my driver’s license and follow the police officer to the door, blinking at the sight of the bilious yellow sky. At first, I think it’s the afterburn of exhaustion and all those yellow walls, but then I realize there’s a storm coming.
A hand touches my arm right above my elbow. “Elijah? Hey, I’m—”
“What time is it?” My throat is dry, and my voice is cracked.
“What?”
“What time is it? Please, Thea.”
She hesitates for a moment, then checks her watch. “It’s eleven forty. What’s up? Are you okay?”
I hold on to her wrist and look at her
watch myself, like it’s some kind of talisman. “I have to be home in six hours. I’m not sure I can make it.”
“Not the apartment?” she asks, looking alarmed. She raises her hand for a cab.
“No, not the apartment. Home. I have to get to my car. I have to leave now.”
From the cab, I stumble down the ramp toward the garage. Where’s my car? Where are my keys? I slam my fist into a sign that reads MAXIMUM CLEARANCE 6’9”. Thea’s voice bounces around the cement. I can’t pinpoint it.
“Elijah! The car’s over here.”
“Where are the keys?”
“I’ve got them, love. I’ve got them.”
Love. My mind is swimming. Bleep. Bleep. Door open. Door close. Seat belt. Cell phone in cradle. Homeward. Passenger door opens, then closes.
“You can’t come with me. I have to do this on my own.” I reach across to push her door open again, but she holds it locked.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know you’re in no shape to drive.”
“I can drive jes find,” I say.
There’s a sudden jerk and crunch of metal. Thea falls forward sharply, her hands bracing against the dashboard. I look in the rearview mirror for the jackass idiot driver.
It’s a cement column.
“Let me drive,” Thea says softly.
“I need to go home.”
“I hear you. You’re going home.” She unfastens my seat belt. “Just tell me how to get there.”
We trade places, and I show her the blurred directions toward the Great North that are now on the Homeward app. I rub it against my shirt. “I’ve got it,” she says, disengaging from the column. “Seat belt.”
“Promise me. Promise. Soon’s we get there. You churn around and go back home. Promise me, please?”
“S’okay. I promise.” She takes the belt buckle from my shaking hand and snicks it into place. “I’ll take care of it.”
I wake up with a jerk, my muscles cramping and my mouth like the bottom of a birdcage. The last thing I remember is a sign for the West Side Highway.
It’s dark, and I can’t see anything. Just two red blurs of taillights through the rain-drenched windshield. Thea shakes me again. “It keeps saying something I don’t understand.”
Then the voice of Homeward’s Offland wolf reverberates through the cocoon of the car.
Ond swa gegæþ þin endedogor.
And so passes your final day.
Thea’s hands are tight on the wheel and her eyes on the road. “What was that?”
“Nothing. An alarm.”
She strokes my arm. “Do you feel better?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“We’ll be there in forty-five minutes. Maybe a little less if the rain lets up.”
Doesn’t matter if we fly there. It’s too late. And so ends my final day.
Not quite. There’s one more thing I have to do. Inside the glove compartment, the bag with the WD-40 and the lighter has been shoved to the side to make room for something that wasn’t there before. I feel around, my fingers finding an unfamiliar shape.
“You brought your gun?”
She frowns a little and shrugs. “You were in handcuffs. Wasn’t sure what we were up against.”
We.
I close the glove compartment. I can’t do it. This woman who is so fiercely I has joined herself to me in an even fiercer we. I can’t do this. I can’t jump out of the car, set myself on fire, and leave her to wonder what the hell happened and how she was to blame.
I’d rather have her know exactly what the hell happened. Let her see the truth. Let her fear me. Let her hate me.
Kill me.
And let her feel the relief of knowing she’s rid the world of a monster.
I unzip my jacket and toss it into the back. Then I peel off my shirt, followed by my shoes and socks.
She checks the rearview mirror and then hits the turn signal. “What are you doing?”
Lifting my hips, I tug down my pants. I don’t want my last moments to be sealed inside. “Do you mind if I open the window?” The heat of the change starts to hit, and I peel off my boxers, sitting beside her naked while the rain needles my bare shoulders.
I take out the gun and put it in the cup holder and then slam the glove compartment closed.
“Elijah? What—?”
“I’m sorry, Thea. I really am.” I pull her hand to me. “I didn’t want—” Even as my lips are pressed against her hand, my mouth begins to change, pushing out, the teeth grinding in my jaw. The hand that is holding hers elongates, the fingers shrinking and bending.
There’s a jerk on the steering wheel, a car horn sounds. We swerve, and I don’t hear anything anymore.
My body churns and swerves, and my knees find the floor as I slither out of the seat belt, my elbow banging painfully against the side panel. My eyes see nothing but a pale, opalescent haze and my ears hear nothing but a dull roar interrupted by the thump of my heart.
Then my muzzle bangs awkwardly in the tight space at the foot of the passenger seat. Something bounces against my head. I know what I look like now. Even Pack, for whom the change is revered, normal, still find this midpoint, when we are neither one thing nor the other, grotesque.
I keep waiting for it, wondering what the bullet will feel like. Will it be hot like fire? Or cold like steel?
Or like rain splashing through the window. My senses are starting to return. My sensitive nose smells the tart mineral rain and Thea’s fragrance, more pungent now and thick with salt and old leather, the smell of fear. And my eyes see her, staring straight ahead, her hands clenching the wheel, her knuckles straining against her skin, her gun on her lap.
She refuses to look at me.
She didn’t kill me.
Shit. She didn’t kill me.
Chapter 35
Now what?
I hadn’t planned for this. I’d been so sure she would kill me that I hadn’t given a single thought to what would happen if she didn’t. If she just kept driving to the Homelands. As soon as we leave the smooth asphalt, I recognize every bump and turn and gully and root and rock of the road to home.
At the top of the path, the car comes to a stop, headlights shining brightly on the raindrops, making them glow white like snow. What she can’t see, what she doesn’t know to look for, is farther under the canopy of the trees. The pale-green distant reflection of hundreds of eyes.
Thea reaches across me, her arm just brushing my fur, and opens the door, letting in the rush of air that’s cold and damp and fragrant.
I rub my muzzle against her arm one last time. There are so many things I wish I could tell her. Most of all, I wish she knew that of all the humans and wolves I’ve known, she was the one who saved me. Not my body; that’s forfeit now.
But my wild soul.
I hop out and, putting my weight against the door, make sure it shuts properly so no wolf can get in and she is safe.
Then I trot toward the line of eyes. With Thea, I have brought Offland home, which is a crime punishable by death. No, punished by death. Punishable makes it sound like there is an alternative.
There isn’t.
Joelle, Gamma of the 10th, is the first to reach me, her teeth bared. I could kill her easily, but I won’t. I know what I am; I am strong enough to be vulnerable. Strong enough to love. And strong enough to die for it.
I won’t fight them, but I will stand as long as I can, because it’s important that they remember I never submitted.
Joelle’s claws rip through my flank, her jaws on my neck holding me while the rest of the Pack descends. I lock my legs, refusing to crumble under the weight of a dozen wolves. It’s like when we were pups, all this roiling fur and warm wolf breath. Except now it hurts.
Above the growled anger is a dull thud and rapid footsteps
and a deafening shot. The Pack freezes as Thea pushes her way through the crowd of giant wolves, firing again. The Pack retreats, confused. The headlights blazing behind her cast an oversize shadow of a woman beside a wolf. My legs wobble as blood trickles down.
Joelle moves forward tentatively, testing Thea, who, with a slow breath, takes aim. Then there is a bang and the 10th’s Gamma jumps, but the bang isn’t from a gun; it’s from a door slamming shut near Home Pond. Heavy human footsteps pound along the damp ground.
“Stop! Alpha, I need her.” Tiberius slides to a halt in front of the black wolf standing front and center. Then the proud man falls to his knees in front of her, his eyes lowered, his chin to his chest. Rain gathers in his short, black hair and starts to stream down his dark face. “Please, Alpha, please. She’s dying. I can’t do this alone.” He lifts his head, his ringed eyes staring frantically at Thea. “I need help. Please. I need…help.”
Evie looks from the Shifter to the human to me. I am felasynnig, and Thea is the collateral damage of my sin. By law, she must die to protect the Pack’s secrets.
But this is what it means to be Alpha. Making the hard decisions, the unpopular ones, and with a sharp bark, Evie turns to her Pack and orders them back. A few wolves waver, but Evie is fully recovered from her lying-in. She is wicked strong and fearsomely fast, and with a growl, she darts forward. A young male who hesitated a moment too long loses a chunk of his hide at the shoulder. It is a bloody and painful flesh wound, a warning. Evie widens her chest, drops her head slightly. Her thighs are tense; her eyes scan for dissenters.
The glowing green dots back away and then slide into the darkness.
Tiberius grabs Thea’s arm. “Come now!”
“No!” she shouts, pulling out of his grasp. She points to me. “You don’t understand. They tried to kill him. He’s not like them. He’s human. He’s… I don’t know. He was…human. He was human.”
