by Tisha Wilson
“I never lost it. I was just dressing out of necessity rather than choice before. It looks like you’re on the hunt for more than wolves today,” he said as he eyed her slowly up and down. She wore her leather pants, her red bustier and silver spiked earrings. She felt herself grow warm under his scrutiny despite her earlier resolve to give him the cold shoulder.
“You are right about that sugar,” she said teasingly but he didn’t even crack a smile. Damn but he was serious all of a sudden… and it was turning her on.
“If you are ready to leave, I am.”
“My, my. Starch in the words too? Now this is why I said you could never be anythin’ but a cop.”
She spun and headed back into the room and emerged with the satchel. She followed behind him and noticed that starch had not only returned to his pants and speech. It had returned to his spine as well. His muscled back and torso were stiff and ramrod straight. He would do a state trooper proud. How sexy was it to see a man like that loose control?
Oh how she wanted to take all the starch out of him again, but they had already gone there once and apparently he was through. She wouldn’t review too closely the pang of regret that entered her gut and other organs, but she knew it was for the best. He should have never gotten mixed up with her in the first place, which she had tried to tell him. The ride to the nearest mall was silent and she was glad for the awkward silence. If he had returned to the playful banter of the morning, she might have jumped him before he could even hit the brakes.
The tattoo parlor they found was rundown and crusty looking, just the way she liked them. She pulled out a photo and headed into the shop. Jerry stood outside and waited at her request. She didn’t want any attention taken from her or she might not get what she wanted. She found three very tattooed men in the shop and smiled. Normally the artists wouldn’t work more than one section of the back at a time but with her long legs and big pleading eyes she finally convinced all three to go to work at once.
They were hesitant at first but when she pretended the pain was pleasure and made certain noises they worked with much more concentration and speed. When all she gave them was a few hundred dollars and a smile at the end of the session, they were not at all disappointed. The head tattoo artists insisted that she sign a waiver and wear a bandage so she did, until she got outside and ripped it off, winking seductively over her shoulder as she did. They all watched her amazed from the shop window as she wrapped her bustier back on and zipped it without so much as an ouch.
Had Jerry not been with her she would have had a bite to eat before leaving them, but it just didn’t feel right taking from another man while he was waiting for her outside. She wouldn’t review that too closely either. Night was almost on them and they were in the flatlands when Al’s phone rang. She picked up on the third ring.
“Who is this?” she asked right away since she hadn’t recognized the number. Bateman should have been the only one with this number.
“Put him on the phone.”
Al looked over at Jerry who was concentrating on the road. “Who?”
“The Easter Bunny. Who do you think bitch? Put him on the phone.”
Al clicked the phone closed before turning on Jerry. “Who did you call on my phone!”
He blinked and shook his head. “The only person I called on your phone was Bateman.”
The phone began ringing again. “Then who is this bitch,” she asked as she handed him the phone.
“Hello,” he answered with a question in his voice. She saw his face take on a myriad of changes and then settle on outrage.
“Cherish. I don’t have time to play any games with you. Whatever you have to say to me can wait until I-” Suddenly his face turned ashen and he looked towards Al with fear in his eyes. “I don’t understand. What-”
Al waited as he listened to what the woman was saying. He hung up the phone and handed it back to her. Night had already fallen and they had a full tank of gas. They were speeding along keeping just ahead of the wolves who were running alongside them in the rows and rows of corn, wheat, and tall grass.
“What the hell was that?” she asked as she saw the confusion on his face.
“My… ex-wife says we need to turn around.”
“Why the hell would we-”
“She has my mother and my uncle. She says that you should call Bateman and that he will explain to you about her family. She says to ask him about the name Imam.”
“Merde! How the hell does she know about Bateman! Did you go blabin’ to your Uncle about everything I told you?”
Jerry sent her a sharp look and she relented for a moment. He did do dumb things sometimes but even he wouldn’t have been that dumb. She flipped open her cell and hit the speed dial that connected her to Bateman.
“Al?”
“Hello sexy,” she said in a slightly cheerful slightly sarcastic tone.
“Where the fuck are you! The twins are dead, I’ve had to release a cover up, I thought you were hauling ass back here to Vegas! You should be here all fucking ready and we found your bike ditched in the woods. Fat lot of good GPS does us if you aren’t on the bike! You are completely off the grid and you are carrying a fucking civilian with you! You are lucky your head is still attached to your shoulders and they haven’t split your ass into a million pieces!”
Bateman was not normally one to loose his cool so she could tell that things were getting dicey. “Well. Here’s some news for you, mon ami. The twins, they were mowed down by a horde, yes an actual horde, of wolves who were after Jerry because he is a balance. I did get my ass chewed up more than once because of it. I’m fine by the way, thanks for asking.”
Bateman sputtered as he searched for a reply. “Who told you he was a balance?” he finally stammered out.
“The twins, before they stayed behind and gave their lives so I could get him away. The wolves have gone crazy trying to get to him and have risked exposure several times to try and get to him. They are biting people and turning them quicker than I can kill them. They are coming from every where and they are organizing attacks, Bateman. What is a balance and what the hell is going on!”
“Look. It’s too much to tell you on the phone. You just get him back here. We can protect him better than you can out there on your own.”
“There’s something else,” Al said as she looked over at Jerry who was taking the next exit. He crossed the bridge and got the onramp headed back the way they had come.
“Look out,” she shouted as a few wolves left the cover of the tall grass at the side of the road.
Jerry plowed through them without slowing down at all. She grabbed a stray arm that had come in through the window and tossed it out. Jerry used the windshield wipers to clean away blood, hair, and other debris as he shifted gears and went even faster. Her heart sped up as she saw him really let loose for the first time. With his hair whipping in the wind and a gleam in his eye he looked wilder than she could have ever been. Damn that was sexy!
“Al? What the hell was that, are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said a little huskier than she meant. She cleared her throat and focused on the phone call. “Apparently Jerry’s ex-wife has kidnapped his mother and uncle.”
“What does that have to do with-”
“She said that I should call you and tell you her original family name. Imam.”
The phone was silent for so long that Al thought he wouldn’t continue. Finally she said his name again. “Yes. I am here.”
She waited again as it sounded like Bateman started up his computer and shuffled through a ton of papers. “Bateman,” she prompted yet again.
“Okay. Al. Here’s what you need to know. Jerry is a balance and the wolves want him.”
“Duh. I think I figured that out all on my lonesome, cher. What about it? Why do they want him?”
“Okay. Once every thousand years there is born what is called a balance. Usually a balance doesn’t come of breading age until his late to mid-thirt
ies, but there is always something in them that attracts the wolves. Like you, he was born with something in his blood.” Some papers shuffled in the background and then Bateman tapped away at the keys on his computer.
“When the balance comes of age he releases a pheromone that calls to the wolves but…”
“But what?”
“But they would have to be near him in order to notice the smell. He is something of a magnet, like you are, but his scent is not nearly as far reaching as yours. He is a weak magnet and instead of making the wolves hungry, his scent makes them want to mate.”
“Mate? You mean with each other?” she asked as she looked over at Jerry. He had a single minded purpose at the moment. To get back to his Mother and Uncle. He obviously wasn’t even paying attention to what she was saying on the phone.
“No. Not with each other.”
“But… but there were males too.”
“Yes. Their goal is to ensure that a female is mated to the balance.”
Al had a sudden vision of one of the grotesque monsters mating with Jerry. She had to scrub her mind of such images. If she could throw up she would have done it. “What happens if they mate?”
“If they are successful in the mating then they will produce a day walker.”
She blinked a few times as she leaned forward. “A what?”
“A wolf… that looks like a human, that talks like a human, that walks in sunlight, and who is not ruled by the need to feed. They eat and change only when they choose or need to.”
She cursed viciously and this time Jerry looked over at her with a worried gaze.
“What?” he asked. She shook her head and put up a hand to silence him.
“So what does this have to do with Jerry’s ex?”
“The Imam are the only day walkers to ever come into existence,” he tapped at the computer again before he said more. “They are hunted, but they have also hunted the balances throughout the ages. We usually keep a good eye on them, but recently a small part of the family broke away. We believe they have changed their looks and their names and gone completely off the grid. Their numbers have gotten so small that they need this balance with a fierceness. They can not breed with their own males. They need the balance.”
It was a lot to take in and she was digesting it for a moment before she spoke again. “And Jerry’s ex-”
“She’s a day walker and apparently she’s already had him. If a day walker attempts to mate with a balance before he has come of age, then their children will not survive. But once he does come of age…”
Al looked at Jerry again. No wonder he had been so weird when she’d asked him weather or not he had any kids. Apparently they had tried and failed to have children.
“I’ll call you back,” she said as she hung up the phone.
“What? What did he say? The wolves want to mate with me?”
“Tell me about your ex-wife.”
He looked at her like she was nuts. “What does that have to do with-”
“I said tell me about your ex-wife,” she said in a more commanding tone.
He licked his lips and took a deep breath as he looked forward. “In the beginning it was good. She made me believe she was in love with me… then when we got pregnant she acted as if I didn’t even exist. I thought it might have been pregnancy hormones but soon she didn’t even want to touch me. Then…”
“Then what,” she prompted more gently.
His mouth was set in a firm line but he clearly forced the answer from his lips. “Then she lost the baby in the middle of the night. She was inconsolable and insisted that we try again almost immediately. I thought it was strange but gave in. I just wanted my wife back so I did it. We got pregnant again and again it was as if I was just an after thought. When she lost that baby it was as if she were angry with me. It was as if she blamed me for it. She…”
She waited patiently for him to go on. “She became abusive. She berated me because I wouldn’t hit her back but I had my career to think about. I gave her what she wanted and she almost carried that baby to term. That was when I found out her dirty little secret.” Moisture gathered in his eyes and she could tell that he hated for her to see the weakness there.
“She was married in Pakistan.”
“Non! She was married?” Al asked incredulously.
“It wasn’t officially documented on her passport but it was an unofficial ceremony and she had the certificate in her things. When I asked her about it she laughed in my face and said that she was married to a real man. She said that she wanted a white son and that was the only reason that she was with me. She said that I would stay with her because of our son, and even if I didn’t, I would always be his father and therefore I would always have to be in contact with her.”
Al felt fire enter her veins as she saw the anguish in his face. She would rip the woman limb from bloody limb. Jerry didn’t deserve to be emasculated for being a good and decent guy. He shrugged as if it was of no consequence to him but she could see how much his ex-wife had hurt him.
“And what happened?” she asked softly.
“I had the divorce papers drawn up, she signed them without argument, she went into labor soon after, and the baby was still born. She was outraged and tried to worm her way back into my life. She told me she hadn’t meant it and that the ceremony with her husband had been performed when she was young. That it couldn’t be reversed even if she wanted to. She tried everything she could to get me alone, but I kept my mother or fellow officers around when she was nearby.”
“The one time she happened to catch me alone she pleaded and cried and then tried violence.” He took a deep breath and shook his head. “I should have called someone but I was just so tired… I hit her back. I had taken about all I was going to take from her and I hit her hard. She laughed afterward and said that she had me now. She told me that if I didn’t give her a child, that she would go to her father and the media.
“I told her she was crazy and kicked her out. The next day her adoptive father, who happens to be a senator, went public with it. I was ruined. My father was a highly decorated officer and I had more than a few commendations beneath my belt, but it didn’t matter. The one and only place I had hit her, in the face, was plastered all over every television and sleazy magazine… soon I was made out to be a monster.
“I tried to leave Cherish behind, I applied to several other departments in metropolitan areas, areas where I was sure they needed people bad enough that they wouldn’t mind the record, but the scandal followed me as did her father. He was relentless and any recommendation I might have received was overshadowed by her father’s vehement claims that I was a monster. So I went back to the town I grew up in, where no amount of badgering from the Senator could convince people that I was anything but a good cop.”
The wind was the only noise in the car for some time after he finished. She digested that with what she’d learned from Bateman. Cherish had been using him for a baby but not because it would be half white, but because it was the only way she could have a human baby.
“She’s one of them,” Al finally said.
“She’s one of who?” he asked.
“She’s a wolf.”
The car swerved a bit and he struggled to regain control as he sent her a sharp look. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? I thought you said-”
“Apparently there are some things Bateman neglected to tell me, like about the fact that there is a man born once every thousand years that can get down and dirty with the creatures and produce a human wolf.”
“And that man would be me?”
“Corriger, Correct!”
“So there are wolves born between a man and a wolf and they can… transform back and forth! This just keeps getting better and better. And I attract these human wolves and apparently all the wolves on the continent? Why is this happening now? I’m thirty two and I never knew anything about any of this!”
“Apparently you didn’t go through
your balance puberty until recently.”
He laughed crazily as he dashed a hand through his hair. “So once every thousand years, all the wolves on the planet go crazy and run the balance to ground to apparently… hump him to death, and people have been able to keep that under wraps?”
Her brow furrowed in thought as she chewed on her thumbnail. She flipped open her phone and got Bateman back on the phone. “Why are all the wolves going so nuts over Jerry? I thought you said he wasn’t as strong a magnet as me and I don’t make them run from across the country to come and tangle with me.”
“I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I think the answer is in the Imam woman. She has figured out a way to strengthen the signal. There seems to be a pull to Taming as well because even though you two have left, the wolves still seem to be out in strong numbers there. I’ve had to feed the press a story about wild animal attacks in the area. The mayor is hopping up and down saying that we are ruining their tourism and those hick idiots are going out on mass hunting parties, strengthening the number of wolves.”
“Well I can tell you that they are still after us if the shaking cornstalks beside us are any indicator.”
“Don’t worry. The lights will kick up as soon as you enter the compound. They won’t be able to get you here. Just-”
“We are not coming there.”
“What-”
“The creatures have his mother and uncle. We have to go back.”
“To hell with that. He’s too important to-”
“You think you are going to lock him away in your lab while he’s worried about his family out there. No. We are going back and then I will bring him to you.”
“Al!” She hung up on him before he could say anything else. She saw the smile on Jerry’s face.
“Shut up,” she said and his grin got even wider.
“I didn’t say anything darlin’. Except maybe you are fallin’ in love with this old country boy after all,” he teased in his best North Carolina drawl.
