by Lynn Red
“You’re fine,” she heard in a whisper. “It’ll pass, it always does, but it’s gonna be hell for about a day and a half.”
“Jake?” she heard herself asking. “Is that you?”
No answer came, but she knew it was. She felt it in her bones. And with his voice came an inexplicable feeling of safety. That really didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t like she disliked the guy, but hell, she’d been through a lot in the past day. Anything familiar was better than something not.
She let her breath out slowly, and it rattled at the very end of her exhalation. Another shiver crept through Mali, but this one felt more physical, more real. Was she coming out of whatever stupor she’d fallen into?
A smell hit her nose, but it wasn’t the dusty desert air she was used to. No, it was something entirely different; heavy and earthy, she imagined it was the scent of forest, but that wouldn’t make any sense.
The next time she shivered, she realized it wasn’t a shiver at all, but a shake. Someone, or something, was trying to wake her. And just like that, her strange dream-like fugue, began to fade. Slowly at first, and then with increasingly alarming quickness, she felt herself being forced back into reality like a locomotive blasting through a tunnel with the horn blaring. She felt the physical sensation of her eyelids opening and shutting, and a split second later, saw flashes of green.
Just like in the dream, the world was whizzing by Mali’s face with incredible speed, but unlike the imaginary world, her wrists were apparently bound, and her arms were around Jake’s waist.
He felt her stir. “Sorry,” he said as he turned his head to the side momentarily. “You’re not trapped or anything, I just had to get you on the bike somehow.”
Mali tried to respond, but the only thing that came out of her mouth was garbled and unintelligible. She felt her lips moving, but could also hear the mess coming out of them. In her head, the words were clear, but something was making her body react all wrong to the commands from her brain.
“Oh yeah, that,” Jake said. “Listen, that’s part of the transformation. It won’t last long, but it’ll come and go. You’ll feel like you’re falling to pieces, but I promise you’re not. At least, I don’t think you are.”
“What did you do to me?” Mali finally managed to ask. It wasn’t entirely clear, but it was good enough for Jake to understand. “What’s wrong with me?”
Jake ducked lower and gunned the engine. The feeling of power between her legs, and the soft leather underneath her gave Mali another feeling of security, even if she was tied around this guy she hardly knew, and even if her brain was currently full of something between marmalade and glue. She hugged him tighter, and it felt good.
“You’re all right,” Jake said with a sort of gentleness Mali hadn’t figured him for. “We got a long trip, and I’d like it if you weren’t pissed at me. I know I haven’t exactly been the best date in the world, but I hope you understand.”
“Date?” Mali said, with an involuntary laugh. “Don’t know if I’ve ever had a date that involved being nearly killed. Unless you count the time I got food poisoning from Wendy’s.” She laughed again, and then laughed harder when she heard herself. If her words were slightly garbled, her laughter sounded like she’d been drinking a whole lot, all day long and it was getting really late. So, of course, when she heard that laughter, she went on and on until she was gasping for breath.
Werewolves might be immune to illness and might be immune to bad hair days, but they are absolutely not immune to catching the giggles. He started shaking first, as he tried to fight off the attack. It was no good though. Before long, the two of them were howling out loud, heads back as the wind blasted around them. For that moment, that one, blessed damn moment, nothing hurt. Mali’s entire body, her entire being, was lifted up and she felt like she was flying above the hurt and the confusion and the strangeness all around her.
When they finally stopped cackling like a pair of idiots, Mali unconsciously hugged Jake tighter. He felt good against her. His hard, muscled back was warm to the touch, even through the leather jacket he wore. His scent was entirely his own, and that’s when Mali realized that she was smelling him.
“Oh my God,” she said under her breath. “Why can I smell you?”
He chuckled. “One second.”
He pulled off the highway, but didn’t stop the motorcycle. They puttered slowly toward the trees, and as soon as they were in the forest, Jake switched off the bike, and sighed heavily. “We gotta get in here,” he said. “I don’t know why, but I get the feeling we’re not gonna be alone for long. Those guys aren’t gonna let you go that easily, and whoever’s tooth this is, well, they probably want it back.”
“Probably right,” she said. In the distance, Mali could make out individual bird chirps. She cocked her head, confused as all hell, but entertained by what seemed to be burgeoning super hero senses. “Why can I hear birds like this?”
Jake laughed again. “Well, I wasn’t lying,” he said. To explain without having to come up with words, he gently touched her neck. “Weren’t there bite marks there a little while ago?”
“Shut up,” she said, slapping at Jake playfully and then brought her hand up to her throat. “What the hell’s going on?”
“It’s pretty cool, ain’t it?” he asked. “I mean, I’ve never been a human so I’m not sure what it’s like to not be able to hear the way I do, or smell the way I do. I imagine it’s a lot more boring, though.”
“More lonely,” Mali said, not really meaning to unleash such a revelation, but once she did, it felt good. “We’re just kind of alone in our own little worlds. We don’t really... I don’t know, we don’t really mix with the world around us.”
He nodded. Mali realized that Jake had moved his hand to the other side of her neck, and was stroking her gently with curling fingertips that moved against her skin like the softest breeze. “I can’t do this,” he said under his breath. “Not now.”
Mali cocked her head to the side. “Do what?” She asked as she nuzzled Jake’s cupped hand.
“This,” he said again. “You, me, can’t happen. I’ve got a job to do. I can’t get all sidetracked and flustered.”
She nodded slowly. “Right, gotcha,” she said. “Your big important job. You’re willing to screw with my life, you’re willing to turn me, apparently, into a goddamn werewolf, but you aren’t willing to do something nice? Figures.”
He shook his head. “It isn’t like that,” Jake said. “I’ve got to get back to my brother and figure this tooth business out. If this is something that could put Jamesburg in danger, he’s gotta know, and I’ve gotta help. I can’t screw up, not again. I promised him. And anyway, I’m in big trouble for all this. I can’t believe what I did. Even if Erik lets me into town, I’m probably gonna be as good as screwed when he realizes why you’re with me.”
With her eyes narrowed, Mali frowned. “What are you talking about? So you saved me, what’s the big deal? Look, I’ve seen Dracula movies. I know I’m going to have to have someone around to teach me all about being a big furball, and it is your fault that I’m in this situation, so why not be a decent person... wolf-man, whatever?”
“I never said I was leaving you anywhere, it’s just that I might be nailing my own coffin shut by doing that,” Jake responded. Mali noted his hand was still on the side of her neck, only now his fingertips were stroking her cheek. “And whatever I am, I’m not the sort to leave someone when they need me.”
“Need you might be a little strong,” Mali said, her voice soft and almost bashful as he moved almost imperceptibly closer. “More like I don’t want to go crazy the first time there’s a full moon, kill half a village and have a bunch of people chasing me around with silver bullets. But wait, why would you be in trouble?”
She stared at him for a long moment, and then reconsidered what she was doing. “Actually you know what? This is fucking crazy.” She pulled away. “Absolutely nuts. You have me out here in the woods, somewh
ere I don’t have the first clue where I am, and you’ve apparently turned me into a werewolf, which is the stupidest thing I’ve ever...” She forgot the whole notion of his being in trouble as her head spiraled in on itself. One of her specialties was digging herself into real nasty rabbit holes of anxiety and self-doubt, and this wasn’t any different. With every passing second, she was falling deeper and deeper into her own head.
The only problem was that it wasn’t the stupidest thing she’d ever heard. She couldn’t deny her senses heightening, she couldn’t deny that she could hear every single bird, that she could feel breeze in a way she’d never felt.
Something was different, that much she knew. Whether or not it was having a very near death experience and coming out the other side, or whether it was actually turning into a magical wolf creature that didn’t, by the way, exist outside of movies, was another matter entirely.
All she could do was bite her lip.
Even that was more sensitive than ever before. She felt around the inside of her mouth with the tip of her tongue, and found surfaces and textures she’d never noticed before. Jake was watching her with a raised eyebrow. Mali could tell that he knew what she was thinking, even if he didn’t notice the bulge of her tongue and the look of disbelief on her face. “Is everything like this?” she asked. “I mean, assuming you didn’t just give me a bunch of acid or something and then convince me I was turning into a magic wolf.”
“Everything,” he said. Before, Jake had been light and almost jokey. He was suddenly serious as he stared into Mali’s eyes and continued swirling his fingertips on her cheek. It seemed like every single hair on her cheek had a new bunch of nerves in it. She shivered, but not out of chill. “Everything,” Jake said again. His eyes were so intensely focused on Mali’s that she felt an almost physical presence in his gaze.
She took a step closer to him and inhaled deeply, breathing in his scent. The smell of sweat and leather and the road filled her nose, all aromas that sent squiggles of pleasure down through her belly. “I, uh,” she said softly, “maybe overreacted a little bit with the whole refusing to go anywhere with you thing.”
Mali took another tiny step forward and craned her neck. She brushed her lips against the stubble on Jake’s chin, relishing the rough scrape. Jake put his other hand on Mali’s shoulder and framed her face with his thumbs. With every tiny stroke against her skin, electric surges worked through Mali’s entire being, and a moment later, she felt a pulse of heat radiating outward from her core. “Everything?” she asked, brushing her lips against his neck.
Instead of answering with words, Jake responded with a kiss. It was so soft, so gentle, that it may as well have been a breeze blowing across Mali’s lips. She felt herself quail slightly. When he pulled back, she chased him a couple of inches, and sucked his bottom lip gently between her teeth. Jake braced her head with his hands, holding her still and then devoured her with a kiss that forced her head back.
He breathed her in, running one hand down her back and tangled his fingers in her hair. He grabbed, pulled her head back and kissed her first on the chin, then the neck. As he traced a line to her ear, then sucked on her there, Mali felt her knees wobbling. She let out a gasping laugh, and pressed herself against Jake’s chest. She slid her hands down his back and underneath his shirt. His skin was so hot that Mali felt herself melting into him. His kisses running down her throat gave Mali another jolt of pleasure before he trailed back to her lips.
“This is crazy,” Mali said, and was surprised that Jake had said the same words at the exact same time.
She shook her head, as though trying to clear her thoughts, and then frowned. Jake watched her face, his thumbs framing her and his other fingers cupping her neck gently. Something was bothering him. The way he wrinkled his nose, and put a little crease in his forehead was a tell. Even in their limited time together, it was a dead giveaway that not all was well in sexy werewolf land.
“Talk to me,” Mali said.
Jake grumbled something under his breath and then looked back up, staring straight into Mali’s eyes. There were tiny flecks of gold in his irises. She was sure that was new, but then again, it was always possible that it was just another benefit of her wolfie eyes coming to her. “It’s nothing,” he finally said. There was such a delay that if he wasn’t already obvious, then he gave it away right then.
“Come on,” Mali said. “You turned me into a werewolf, remember?”
Just then, for some reason, it hit her right in the stomach like a sock full of soap chips and quarters. Werewolf? She gulped, and hard. Mali’s left eye started twitching, and she got a salty taste in the back of her throat. She knew what it meant: she was either going to start giggling uncontrollably, or throw up. One of the two was definitely going to happen. Thankfully, she just giggled for a second, and regained her composure. Well, ‘composure’ is probably being generous. Her eye still twitched, and her fingers were wiggling uncontrollably. With a sigh, she squeezed her fists closed and remembered the third thing that happened: her palms were so sweaty she could probably have cleaned a window with them and a rag.
“This is real, isn’t it?” Mali said after a few seconds of rattling breaths and trembling. “This... this isn’t a dream. It can’t be. My head doesn’t hurt like this from dreams. Well, some dreams I guess, but those are really sweaty and more exercise than I—what?” she asked with a sheepish grin. “Did I say something?”
Jake was grinning. “I might know what you mean about those particular dreams. Although mine are usually pretty nice ones,” he said with another grin, “I don’t remember the last time a sex dream ended with a headache.”
“Maybe yours just aren’t as exciting as mine,” Mali said. She leaned in again close enough to feel Jake’s breath on her cheek. She tilted her head and got up on her tiptoes, closed her eyes, and then spun around on her heel. “No, you’re right,” she said. “Of course, you’re right.” She laughed bitterly under her breath. “You’re absolutely right. This is crazy and we have to stop. I don’t understand anything that’s going on, but I know that part, at least, is true.”
She looked back at him, then took a step backward. “Come on,” she said a second later. “There’s something so important that we have to do, somewhere so important we have to go, let’s just get it over with. I’m tired.”
“Mali, no, I—” as she kept walking away, Jake took a pair of steps toward Mali. He reached out and missed her shoulder by about a half an inch, but she kept going. “Wait, Mali. Just wait. Let me explain something.”
“No need,” she said, without turning back. “You saved my life once. You don’t need to do it again. I shouldn’t expect anything from you. I just...” She took a few more steps and rested her hand on the seat of Jake’s motorcycle, and smiled though she was looking at the ground. “You say this is all real, and I keep seeing... things... that prove it, so fine. I can see the hairs inside my pores.”
Her observation was flat and nearly hopeless sounding, but there was also a hint of amusement in the background. She looked up, started to turn to face him, then let her head droop down again, defeated. “There’s gotta be a way out of this,” she said. “There has to be some way to get back to normal, get rid of this whole werewolf thing and... I don’t know, go back in time to when things made sense.”
“Two days ago?” Jake asked, not touching her with his hand, but caressing her nerves gently with his voice. “Did things really make much more sense then?”
“Of course they did! I was a normal person with a boring job and a handful of friends to go drinking with. Now I have to deal with some paranormal army bullshit that I can’t honestly believe is real. I think... can I be honest with you?”
“Haven’t you pretty much always been?”
“Well, anyway,” Mali said with a grin, “I guess so, yeah. I think I’m going crazy. There, I said it out loud. That means I’m not going crazy, right? Because I said it?”
Jake shut his eyes tight and squ
eezed the bridge of his nose. Mali felt the currents of air shift behind her, even though she didn’t look. “I, uh,” he began, but trailed off momentarily. “I... is that the sort of thing humans actually think? If so, I’ve got some cousins that really defy your wisdom. They’re happy to say how crazy they are, and yeah, they’re fuckin’ nuts all right.”
Mali laughed despite her anxiety, and just doing that gave her a little wave of calm that slid down her back, between her shoulder blades, and relaxed her ever so slightly. “I guess it’s time I started forgetting all that stuff, huh?”
She finally turned around and when she did, she found Jake looking in her direction with a kind, gentle look on his face. “No,” he said, “I don’t think you should. I don’t think there’s a single former-human in our pack, although my brother is mated to a full human, who somehow managed to have his pup...”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa cowboy,” Mali said. “You gotta take it slow with some of this info dump. A little bit at a time, you know? You mean to tell me there’s a pack of werewolves, and your brother, one of those werewolves, has a human mate? And that she had his baby? Do they look like puppies?”
Jake first lifted his hands in a defensive gesture, but then let them drop to his sides. “Well, yeah, I guess they do sometimes. But they look like humans sometimes too.”
Mali took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as though she was trying to convince herself of something. “Okay, look. I’m having a lot of trouble with the ‘acceptance’ part of this whole grieving process for my former humanity.”
“Understandable,” Jake said.
“But I could take a whole lot of shit to see a werewolf puppy.”
“They are pretty cute,” he scratched his chin as he answered. “Although Frederick ate my glasses once. Really nice ones, too. Tom Ford frames. Cost me like four hundred bucks.”
“So much is happening right now with that statement that I can’t even really process the first part. The cub is named Frederick, and he ate your glasses. You wear glasses?”
