Bite Me Tender

by Kate Lowell

  “Gram, would you stop that and just sit down? You know I can’t handle it.”

  She stopped, her mouth open in faux surprise, a coffee mug in one hand and a can of tomato paste in the other.

  What the hell was she going to do with those? He shot her a hard look. She cocked her head to one side and looked back at him, to all intents and purposes completely baffled by his request. Instead of rising to her bait, he emphatically pulled out her chair again and thumped it on the floor. Damn, he’d forgotten how much effort it took sometimes to get her attention.

  The thump startled her, but then she smiled, put the coffee cup and the can in the refrigerator, and took her seat like she was attending the queen’s tea. Folding her hands in her lap, she looked at Glyn and waited with apparent patience, as if he were the one who had asked her to meet, instead of the other way around.

  Glyn pressed his thumbs against the acupressure spots above his eyes. As if getting rid of the headache she was giving him would change her—or change him.

  “You know, you don’t have to pull that shit with me.” But it wasn’t all shit, was it? He knew because her blood called to his. His fingers twitched with the urge to do something wild as his witchblood attempted to raise its voice and sing with hers. He opened his eyes and looked at her. She appeared younger than he remembered from her last visit, her hair a touch blonder, her skin a bit smoother. She could have been his aunt. Same gray-green eyes, though. Old as the earth, young as the spring. She reminded him of a poem, one full of imagery and emotion but empty of logic.

  Sometimes he worried that Levi saw the same thing when he looked at Glyn.

  Gram gripped his hand. “Come sit down,” she said, suddenly serious. “I suspect this is a talk better had within doors, despite my preferences.”

  He lined the salt and pepper shakers up with the checkerboard pattern on the tablecloth and sat, trying to think of how to explain.

  Gram saved him the trouble. “You want the wolf to change you.”

  “How did you find out?” He was surprised, though he really shouldn’t have been. Gram often knew things that she shouldn’t.

  “I’ve always kept an eye on your possible futures. And I talked to your mother.”

  “You talked to Mom?” When did Gram ever have time for a normal? Other than Granddad?

  “Of course. Your father said you were fine, but I knew.” She shook her head in disbelief, her voice incredulous. “Sometimes I think the man is deliberately blind.”

  “Now, Gram, that’s not fair. He’s got a lot more to deal with.” Yeah, like being half a witch. Which, to Glyn’s way of thinking, made you more than half crazy.

  She waved that away as if it were unimportant, which he supposed was true for her. He loved his gram, but he’d given up trying to explain to her how hard it was to live with the witch tendencies and not enough power to control them. No wonder his father was drunk or stoned or contrary all the time.

  He sighed and looked down at his hands clasped in front of him on the table. “I’m not like you. When my blood is up, I can’t control it. Crazy things happen, and I can’t stop them. Odd spurts of magic and people around me doing…stuff. Me doing…stuff. I spend all my time trying to put things back the way they were. Or apologizing to Levi. The only thing that works is to stay as far away from the lifestream as I can, to keep it from calling to me. But I look at the futures where the signs say I’m a wolf, and it all stops. And no, Gram, I won’t be bored,” he hastened to reassure her when she looked distressed. “But I want to stop living like this.” He swept his hand in a broad circle to include not just the overly organized and labeled kitchen, but all his little rituals that kept the crazy at bay and the power from calling up his own witchiness. “This is boring.”

  Gram nodded in solemn understanding. “Boredom is never good for a witch.” She smiled, a glorious curve of lush red lips, and pinched his chin. “Even for quarter-bloods. Your grandfather was never boring. There’s a lot of him in you, you know.”

  I hope not. Granddad must have been frickin’ nuts too, to stick it out for more than a decade with a witch. What did that say about Glyn’s gene pool? That the crazy came from both sides. Great.

  “You’ve never told me that before,” he replied, watching as she discovered the candy dish in the middle of the table.

  Gram waved a careless hand—“I just did”—and peeled the wrapper off a chewy caramel.

  Glyn smothered a snort. Wayward. Perverse. And oddly enchanting, for all of it. As often as she drove him to thoughts of violence, he wouldn’t trade her for the world. “I wish I could have met him.”

  She dropped the wrapper on the table, eyes glittering with suppressed amusement as she watched him struggle not to pick it up and put it in the garbage. “What is it you need, Glynnie? I could tell from the potentials that you were upset. Not that I’ve ever had much to do with the wolves; they can be so tedious.” She nibbled the end of the caramel, then waved it at him conversationally. “All that howling and butt sniffing. But it seems a fairly simple process. I know I’m not around much, but I do want you to be happy. So, tell your gram what she can do.”

  Glyn took a breath, sat up straight, and pulled his shirt off. His scars glittered in the sunlight, silver and pink and angry red. “That’s the problem, Gram. It hasn’t been. Simple, that is. I haven’t told Levi, but each month I can see the potential futures coming together. As well as I ever see them, anyway. But in each one, I’m a wolf, except for one. And that’s the one that always wins.” Glyn reached into the candy dish himself, needing the burst of sweetness and flavor. He popped a candy in his mouth and chewed, the bright sting of mint prickling his tongue and the back of his nose. “I’ve seen likely futures fail before, but I’m too headblind to see why. Especially when there are so many of them, it doesn’t make sense.” He toyed with the candy wrapper before leaning over to toss it in the garbage can. “It didn’t matter when I was working the stock market. I didn’t want a perfect record there. But I need this to work, and there’s no reason I can see why it shouldn’t!” He swiped a hand across his eyes. Dammit, he wasn’t going to cry!

  Gram nibbled at a licorice allsort, grimaced, and threw it to one side. She reached out, beckoning him closer, then traced the scars with a thoughtful look when he scooted his chair over next to her. “What did your father teach you about reading inside the potentials?”

  Glyn sighed, scooped the bitten candy off the floor, and threw that in the garbage as well. “Nothing. It was Dad. If you said left, he went right. I never got a straight answer out of him.”

  Gram’s eyes narrowed, and he felt the faint, ethereal breeze as she started manipulating the energies around them. Glyn’s vision snapped into witchsight. He could see the futures, blurry and indistinct except where he concentrated, as they blinked in and out of existence around her. She dragged energy into her hands, reshaped it, and sent it eddying off again. “I see. It seems I’ll have to pay your father a visit. One does not leave an untrained witch free in the world. Chaos can be a force for good, but unorganized chaos never is.”

  Glyn didn’t know whether to be scared or amused. He was glad he wasn’t in his father’s shoes; the message she’d just sent had an unpleasant shape to it. Gram was terrifying when her rather random sense of decency was offended. But the comment about unorganized chaos made his lips twitch.

  Gram turned her eyes on him and took his hand again, one thumb circling his palm. He recognized that inward-outward look. She was watching the potentials that spread out around him, constantly changing as his decisions changed. With his own feeble witchsight, he caught glimpses of her as she felt along the ties that bound him to everyone and everything around him. Glyn could never really see himself; that took more power than he could ever hope to claim. Everything he guessed about his own future came from looking closely at people near him.

  She dropped his hand and sat back in her chair. “Glynnie, I think I’d like to meet this young man of yours again. Before
the moon. Where is he?” She was still looking at him with those wide, weird eyes, seeing worlds he never could.

  He cleared his throat. “He’ll be at the bar tonight.”

  “And this bar is?”

  “Uh, it’s called The Nip. Down on Venton, at the east end. Brick front and a green wood door.”

  She nodded and stood up. “Well, then, come on.”

  Glyn gaped at her. Gram didn’t often surprise him, but today seemed to be the day for it.

  She fluttered her hand imperiously at him. “You’re taking me to lunch, correct? I know just where I want to go.”

  “And where is that?” He stifled a laugh, but his lips still curved up in a smile. Seemed she’d settled on a plan and he wasn’t getting any of the details. In other words, life as usual with her.

  Gram ran casual fingers through her hair, fluffing it into shape. “Just a little place down by the park. The one over by the fountain.”

  Glyn grinned. “The one with the wrought-iron railing? This wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain waiter, would it?”

  She shrugged gracefully, and her grin flashed like sunshine. “What can I say? I like pretty things.”

  Glyn laughed as he stood and reached for his jacket on the hook beside the back door. “Is that what you told Granddad?”

  Gram turned to him, suddenly serious. “Your grandfather was never just a pretty thing. And that man who took him from me”—her eyes grew dark and dangerous with the memory—“well, his day is coming, and very soon.” She looked at Glyn, her eyes empty of humanity. “Witches don’t forget.”

  Glyn shivered. He’d hate to be that poor bastard. “We should probably get going.”

  Like flipping a switch, she was dotty, fun Gram again. “Yes, we should. Places to go, bums to pinch.” She turned on her heel and headed for the door.

  Glyn followed after carefully locking the house behind them, catching up to her just in time to persuade her to take the passenger’s seat instead of the driver’s. Maybe Levi would have been brave enough to ride with Gram behind the wheel, but he wasn’t.

  Bar None

  Levi unlocked the delivery door at the back of the bar. We need an early pickup on the Dumpster. He wrinkled his nose at the smell and added it to his mental list of things to do. Halfway through the door, another smell caught his attention. What is that? He sniffed again and almost missed it under the rancid odor of meat scraps and rotting vegetables. The smell of fur. Like a dog, but not exactly. Wolf? Tucking his keys inside his jacket pocket, he propped the door open with the laptop case and cautiously approached the Dumpster.

  The smell was stronger the closer he got. Definitely wolf. A couple of wolves, but only one with the heavy, acrid smell of death on it. The others—not pure wolf. Werewolf, then. He gripped the edge of the plastic lid on the Dumpster, ready to slam it down if something moved inside, and lifted.

  A dead wolf met his eyes. Not one of his, thankfully. Not even a werewolf. Levi breathed a sigh of relief and inspected the animal’s wounds. Its legs were broken, and a loop of intestine peeked out from underneath the furry belly, draped over the plastic garbage bags beneath it. The face had been shredded, long, heavy claws tearing ragged gashes from the crown of the head, over the eyes, and down the length of the muzzle. He pushed gently on the shoulder, feeling the grate of broken bones beneath his fingers, the flesh cold and already relaxing from the stiffness of death. Hard to say which of the wounds had killed it.

  The message was clear, though: belly up, or this will be you.

  Fuck you, McCourt. You may be the big dog outside town, but you’re not getting this pack. Come at me, and I’ll shred you like you did this poor animal.

  Levi let the lid fall closed in disgust. He imagined there was a wildlife park somewhere nearby missing a wolf right now. The native ones had moved out when the werewolves moved in, self-preservation being pretty high on the list for wild animals. He grabbed his laptop case and shouldered through the doorway, then dropped the computer off in the office as the heavy exterior door swung closed behind him.

  Like any bar, it smelled of sweat and spilled liquor, with an undertone of grease and meat. It was almost enough to wipe the smell of death out of his nose, but not quite. Levi followed the scraping sound of a broom in use, pushed open the door labeled Bar, and stepped into the main room. Bryan, his business partner and one of the five pack council members, was sweeping the floor in short, efficient strokes.

  “Good, you’re here,” Bryan said, straightening up and leaning on the broom handle. “We need to talk.”

  Fuck. Levi knew what this was about. “Not now, Bryan. You need to come and look at something.” He spun on his heel and headed back to the Dumpster. Bryan followed. Levi could hear his heart picking up speed and feel the energy of his wolf crawling closer to the surface.

  Outside, he showed the dead wolf to Bryan.

  “Did you check the security footage?” Bryan leaned in to sniff, curling his lip and growling at the smell.

  “Camera’s still broken.”

  “You think it was McCourt?”

  Levi gestured at the body. “Probably. Who else would do it? Explains the camera, though—I bet he took it out with a .22 or maybe an air gun so they wouldn’t get taped. He would have had to steal the wolf from a park the night before last for rigor to be gone, so it wasn’t like this was spur of the moment.”

  Bryan looked down at his feet, then back up at Levi, his expression a mix of misery and determination. “You know what you need to do. I’d do it if I could, but I can’t.”

  “You mean you won’t.”

  “Can we just talk logically about this?” Bryan took a last look at the wolf in the Dumpster, then turned away to stare at Levi.

  Levi laughed, though there was little humor in it. “What’s logical about this?” he demanded, waving his hand at the two of them. “No. I have to look at that security camera, the shelves have to be stocked, and I need to get the accounts up to date, or Glyn will have my hide. And something needs to be done with that…corpse. I don’t have time to talk.” He spun about and strode back into the bar.

  “Glyn is what we have to talk about.” Bryan followed him inside, ignoring the hunch in Levi’s shoulders and the warning growl that slipped out before he could clamp down on it.

  Levi lengthened his stride, but Bryan just sped up to stay with him. Damn man didn’t know when to leave well enough alone. Levi barged through the first door on the left, the one marked General Storage, flinging it out of his way as if it had done something to offend him. It smashed against the wall with a ringing clang, denting the sheet of steel he’d installed since the last time he and Bryan had had this talk. Never let it be said that he couldn’t learn from experience.

  “Levi, you’ve been trying for over a year. Don’t you think, if it was going to happen, it would have happened by now?” Bryan stood in the doorway, blocking his way out. Forcing him to listen.

  He didn’t want to listen. “Leave it alone.” They were low on whiskey, he remembered. He grabbed a dolly and hauled it roughly along behind him.

  Bryan was talking again. “Look, we know. No one is happy about it, but it’s not about happiness—it’s about survival. McCourt’s making a new wolf every couple of months. We’re a big pack, and we have resources, but they’re going to outstrip us soon. And what happens then?” He took a few steps inside the room, one hand held out in supplication. “We’re not asking you to leave him. Just take a couple of months out for the good of the pack.”

  Levi slammed the dolly against the floor next to the stack of whiskey boxes and heard the metal groan in protest. “Just a couple of months,” he said, his tone caustic enough to strip paint. With savage glee he watched his friend wince and bow his head in appeasement. “Just once?” he asked. “What? Maybe once a year would be better? How about twice? Would that be enough for you? You expect him to sit at home while I cheat on him? On a regular basis?” He began shifting boxes onto the dolly but recon
sidered when the first ones broke, the bright crack of shattered glass and the smell of whiskey rising between them like a protest. “You want him to invite another man into our bed and watch me fuck him six ways from Sunday? Every day? For months?” Levi put a foot against the box of broken bottles and shoved. The box slid to the other end of the room and exploded against the wall in a fountain of glass shards and amber liquid. “You’re supposed to be my best friend. If it’s that easy, why don’t you do it? You’re married—it’s not like she’s going to up and leave you, right?”

  For the first time since they’d begun having these conversations, Bryan actually looked ashamed.

  Good. He should be ashamed.

  “Levi, you know I don’t swing that way. Every time I’ve tried to change a man, you’ve had to step in and finish the job.”

  “So? Just try harder.” He hefted another case of whiskey and set it down on the dolly with exaggerated care. “It’s not like you’ll notice, once it starts. It’s just a couple of months of hot, mindless sex. The wolf doesn’t care if it’s a man or a woman.”

  Mindless was right. He’s done this more than half a dozen times already, and it was always the same. The driving need to touch and possess while your wolf fed pieces of itself into the other person until a new wolf finally emerged. Levi felt his arousal start just from the memories and could have cried, he wanted it so badly with Glyn. He walked away, putting some space between them before he tore Bryan to ribbons, and ended up at the opposite side of the room, hands and forehead pressed against the wall. God, he was such a bastard this close to the full moon.

  He heard Bryan take a breath behind him, and even without looking, he could almost see the man square his shoulders, preparing for a fight. Or maybe to give up his best friend for the good of the pack. “Levi, we’re woman heavy right now. Some of them are good fighters, but most of them don’t have the mass to go one-on-one with a man without getting ripped to shreds. It’s not fair.”