To the Max

by Julie Lynn Hayes

  He’s moving toward me now, his arms outstretched, in his eyes, what? I don’t know, I can’t tell anymore. “God, Maxie,” he moans, “oh God, I didn’t… I mean… I don’t know what… oh baby, I’m sorry….”

  He tries to put his arms around me, because he knows me, he knows how weak I am, how liable to simply fold and permit him his caresses, his apologies, whatever tender words are attempting to dance from his lips to my ears—

  But instead, I ball up my fist and I strike him squarely in the jaw. He is so surprised that he stops in his tracks, putting his hand up to where I have struck him.

  “You fucking bastard!” I scream at the top of my lungs right before I hit him again. Same place. He recoils again. “You motherfucker!”

  “Max, wait,” he tries again, but I will have none of it, none of him. I’m not listening, not at all.

  “How the hell could you do this to me? You said you loved me, you promised me!” The wolf is too close now and the wolf is angry, very angry. And very hurt.

  Still he attempts to put his arms around me, as if he thinks he can pacify me in some way. And the whole time Morgan Arthur has not said a word, smiling smarmily, the fucking git.

  “Max, it’s not what you think, let me explain,” Richard begins again to fold me into his embrace, as if any explanation he can give can possibly take away the horrible images burned into my heart, as if there is any sensible explanation for what I saw other than the obvious.

  “It’s exactly what I think. I’m not stupid and there’s nothing to explain!” I push him away—the wolf pushes him away—he isn’t prepared for me to use such force on him, and he falls to his knees on the parking lot with a surprised oompf.

  I turn to face Morgan, and oh, how the wolf wants nothing better than to rip his very flesh with my teeth, my claws, to feel the warm blood flow from his main arteries, pulling his life force from him. But not now, not now.

  Now my only thought is to get the hell away from here, to put as much distance as possible between me and Richard Burke, as quickly as possible. Where can I go? I have no fucking clue.

  I glance toward my Monte, but I realize that he has the keys and damned if I’m going to ask him for them or for anything else.

  I throw back my head and howl, a sound filled with anguish and great despair, filled with the death of love and the death of a dream, and without a backward glance, I begin to run, simply run, into the blanket of the night, still howling.

  In pain to the max and watching my world crumble around me.

  Chapter 24

  Binding the Wounds

  I SLOWLY come to consciousness with the sound of “Swan Lake” ringing in my ears. What the hell? I partially open one eye as I attempt to determine just where the hell I am. I’m lying on the ground, damp grass a moist cushion beneath my body, that much I know by stretching out my fingers and tentatively feeling around me. A strange coppery taste fills my mouth, unpleasantly bitter. I spit it out into the grass and am very much surprised to see that it is blood. What can this mean? my foggy brain asks uncomprehendingly.

  The ringing persists, and it finally begins to penetrate into my mind that it is my cell phone I am hearing. I sit up, which only serves to evoke a groan from me, then it is that I discover that I am completely unclothed, as naked as the day that I was born. And my body is crisscrossed in angry scratches and welts like a Christmas ham that has been scored for the oven. I don’t have time to analyze this right now; all I can think of is stopping the music. My head is simply splitting. Glancing about me for the source, I find that my clothes are scattered around me. I reach for my pants, pull out the offending instrument from my pocket, and answer it, giving no consideration to who might be on the other end, which is foolish of me, considering who it might have been.

  “Hello?”

  “Max, thank God!” It’s Rachel’s distraught voice I hear, fraught with fear. What’s the matter with her? I wonder idly. I haven’t fully taken in my situation yet; everything seems to be off-key for some reason, distant, as if it’s happening to someone else. I am the king of aloof this morning. Assuming it is morning.

  “Max, I’ve been trying to reach you all night, honey. Where are you? How are you?”

  I look around me dispassionately. “I don’t know.” Answers both questions, actually. I run my tongue around the inside of my mouth, wondering if I’ve bitten it somehow. No, doesn’t seem that way. Then I notice the blood on my fingers as well, but instinctively I know it’s not mine. “Hang on a second, Rach,” I say, setting the phone down so I can pull on my clothes, grimacing at the pain, just in case someone comes this way. Wherever I am, it seems secluded, but I’m not taking any chances on being caught in a vulnerable state. I have to search for a minute to find all the pieces, and then when I do, I make another gruesome discovery, one that causes me to double over in the grass and heave my guts out.

  It’s the corpse of a rabbit, brutally torn apart. Oh God, oh God, oh God, what have I done? This jars me from my uncaring condition in a rather brutal way.

  I pick up the phone, wiping puke and blood from my lips first. “Rachel, I need you,” I say simply, “I think I may have done something horrible. Where are you?”

  “I’m at the cottage. Richard asked me to wait here for you.”

  Richard. The last name I want to hear right now, as the events of last night thrust themselves into my mind’s eye in startling clarity. “Is… is he there?” I manage to ask.

  “No, he thinks you don’t want to see him right now. Max, what is going on? What happened?”

  I sigh as I begin to look around me in an attempt to get my bearings. I am starting to focus now and recognize my surroundings. I’m not all that far from home, just a little ways down 94, actually. I rise to my feet, stumble through the trees, damn near hitting my head on some low-hanging branches—just what I need, a concussion—until I find myself at the edge of a vacant field filled with tiny yellow and blue wildflowers whose name eludes me, beyond which I can see what appears to be an asphalt road. Yep, it is. “Rach, I think I’m almost up on 94 now, maybe two miles south of the house. Can you come get me, please?” I’m deliberately not answering her questions, but I know that I’ll tell her everything when she comes. I always do.

  “Of course, I’m on my way now.”

  We hang up, and I drag myself cross the field and carefully sit myself down along the side of the otherwise empty road, too weary to move any farther, too sore, both physically and emotionally. Simply drained. And I start to make a little sense out of my situation, bits and pieces are coming back to me, like an emotional montage of events. At least up to a point, that is.

  I’m not sure, once I left the parking lot of the hotel, how long it took before the realization really hit me that I needed to get home, and as quickly as possible, before the pull of the full moon began to take its toll on me. I wasn’t thinking rationally enough to call Rachel or anyone else, which would have been the most logical decision as they weren’t all that far from me at that point, but I did manage to catch a cab that had luckily just let out a fare on Manchester Road, although he looked at me askance at first and I thought he was about to refuse the fare. It wasn’t until I gave him the directions to the cottage and the promise of an extra fifty dollars if he got me there in record time that he relented and told me to get in the back. Maybe something about the wild look in my eye persuaded him, or maybe it was the color of my cold hard cash. Doesn’t really matter, does it? I think that I must have stared at the face of my watch the whole way, praying that I wouldn’t transform before I got there—that wouldn’t have been good for either one of us—and that Richard didn’t follow me. Which, come to think of it, why would he? Why would he want to? He was with Morgan now. And even if he did, for some odd reason, surely he would think that the last place I’d go… and it would have been, under other circumstances.

  My next memory is of reaching home, paying the driver and sending him on his way with the promised tip. I am sure he
was glad to see the last of me as I had rebuffed every attempt at conversation he made, my mind too full of what was about to happen to me. Of course there was no Monte parked by the house, although I admit that I looked, but I had not expected there would be. At least I shouldn’t have. No doubt he was with Morgan. No doubt they were…. It didn’t matter anymore what they were or weren’t doing. I didn’t have time to worry about that at the moment. But at least I had made it. I was home, safely—

  Or was I?

  Oh no, not yet, it’s begun. I whimpered as I flew madly through the house, fled feverishly to the outbuilding behind it. I was almost there, almost… don’t let it start, don’t let it start….

  But there was nothing I could do about it. I was too late. I felt the transformation begin once more as it had so many times before, although never under the direct gaze of the lunar orb itself, as my bones began to break and reform and my own cognizance began to drift in and out, lifting my head to howl in frustration at the selenic bitch, and then I knew nothing more until the sound of my own phone awakened me.

  Rachel pulls up while I am lost in thought, and before I know it, she is helping me into her car, but not before she hugs me, and I try not to wince too obviously. “Oh Max, you’re hurt. Let’s get you back to the house,” she says softly. Not until I am inside the vehicle do I realize it’s my Monte.

  “Where… how… did you get this?” I ask.

  She waits until we are safely at the cottage to reply. Helps me up the steps and onto the couch in the library—at the moment, I just can’t face the bedroom—and goes to the bathroom for a few necessaries: hydrogen peroxide and cotton balls as well as warm water and a cloth. When she returns she makes me strip, and first she sponges off the dried blood, gingerly as I wince, and then she dabs the cold peroxide onto my wounds with the cotton balls, watching as they bubble up, undoubtedly full of germs, before she answers my question. “I was talking to Maggie after she gave me your message, Max, when Richard came flying into the room, grabbed me, and pulled me out to the hallway. He thrust the keys to your car into my hand, begged me to get it back to you, and said he had to go, that you were upset with him and needed time to cool off.”

  “That’s an understatement,” I half-snort, half-moan as she tries to be gentle, but some of the gashes are deeper than others, and my muscles ache in a way they haven’t in years. I feel like I was in a fight, or more than one, even, which considering the fact that the wolf was allowed to run free last night is entirely possible.

  “Max, honey, what did he do to you?” She stops what she is doing, raises her head, and looks directly into my eyes.

  “Well, it’s not so much what he did to me, as what he was doing to someone else,” I spit out bitterly, seeing in my mind’s eye that horrid image of Richard and Morgan together in the parking lot. “Playing tailor, to be precise, and taking Morgan Arthur’s inseam measurements manually!”

  Rachel’s eyes blaze indignantly. “That bastard!”

  “That’s what I called him too,” I say, closing my eyes and simply sighing. “Rachel, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I mean, it’s one thing when I don’t see it, when he’s not here, but dammit, I saw it and how can I pretend I didn’t? And oh God how it hurts!” I can’t help it; the tears I didn’t have time to shed last night are falling now in hot drops that sear my eyes, and a pain fills my heart as if it is expanding to ten times its normal size. Why does it not just simply burst and put me out of my misery? She puts her arms around me, and I lean against her strength and simply sob. “Dammit, Rach, why do I have to love him so much?”

  “Sshh, sshh, Max,” she says as she attempts to comfort me, “don’t think about him now. Let’s get you back on your feet. I don’t care about him, only you. How did… I mean… how did you manage to lock yourself in last night?”

  “I didn’t, Rachel. I didn’t.” I can’t even face her now. “I knew I should have come back earlier, but I didn’t and I changed too soon, and God only knows what I did. But I killed, Rach, I killed something for the first time.” I turn my tear-stained face to her as I try to absorb the horror of what I have done.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I found a dead bunny near me when I woke up, and I think that it was its blood I tasted in my mouth. Rachel, I’ve worked so hard not to hurt anyone or anything. I should have gotten back here sooner, but after I saw… I just couldn’t… I took the coward’s way out, and I ran.”

  “Max, it’s not your fault. It’s his. I know you tried.” She attempts to soothe me, to assuage the guilt that consumes me in overwhelming waves, but I cannot be appeased. Maybe I did worse than that and I don’t even know it yet? Maybe there is a dead body lying around somewhere with my teeth marks in its throat? Maybe it’s just a matter of time ’til the villagers really do all rally together to kill the monster? Perhaps they are right to do so, perhaps I don’t deserve to live, since apparently I am a danger to others.

  I shiver a little; I don’t know if I’m cold or just upset. Rachel goes into my room, brings back my faded black comforter, the one we’ve had forever, familiar and cozy, wraps it around me, and cradles me gently against her. Much as I try to stop it, I spit out the question that is burning in my mind. “Did you see them together, Rach? Richard and Morgan?” I don’t know why I ask. Do I really care? But the words have a mind of their own apparently.

  “No, but after Richard gave me the keys and left, Morgan came in shortly thereafter, and I noticed he had a black eye—whatever that means—and he didn’t seem very happy about it.” Rachel shrugs. I know she isn’t concerned with Richard’s welfare at the moment. So why am I?

  “Richard wasn’t hurt, was he?”

  “I didn’t notice any bruises.”

  “Okay,” I sigh. Just then “Swan Lake” begins again. I pull out the phone, glance at the ID—I’d know that number anywhere. It’s Richard’s. I flip the phone closed, not bothering to answer it, and when it finally stops, I look through my inbox and see a number of messages from Richard Burke. I delete them all without opening any of them and toss the phone away from me as if it were a snake. An apt analogy, I must admit.

  “Sweetie, you’re too good for him.” Rachel holds me closer. “Don’t think about it. Don’t think about anything. I’m here for you; I’m watching out for you.”

  Her arms feel good, and the warmth and love in her voice are just what I need as I lean against her, worn out, exhausted, and heartsore. Can’t think about Richard now, can’t think about the wolf, just need to sleep… My eyes begin to close of their own accord, and then I am gone.

  Wishing that I could turn my heart off, but feeling every little thing to the max, and not knowing how to cope with it.

  Chapter 25

  Making a New Start

  FOR all intents and purposes, Rachel has moved in with me, and she refuses to leave me although I tell her I’m fine and that she needs to attend to other things. Like Mark, for instance. God knows what he thinks of this; she doesn’t say, and I don’t ask, because to be honest I’m very glad she’s here. And I am actually far from fine, although I am reluctant to admit it, and I am grateful for her presence, especially at night when I spring up from the couch in a cold sweat, my heart racing, from the dreams which will insist on disturbing my slumber, variations on a couple of themes: either it’s the wolf, slavering and feral, blood-thirsty creature of the night, gone wild and rampant upon some sort of killing spree; or it’s Richard, which in its way is just as bad, and these run the gamut from the two of us making love to me finding him with Morgan Arthur all over again, reliving it time after time after bloody time.

  I won’t allow her not to go to work, although she has offered to take a leave of absence. I tell her that’s silly. After all I’m a grown man, aren’t I? So she goes every day, as she should, rather than argue with me. I can be quite stubborn, if you haven’t noticed. Very hardheaded, in fact. And it’s not like I’m alone during the day either, not with the loyal friends that I have.
It seems as if the village is busy safeguarding their idiot, and yes, that is exactly how I feel, like the world’s biggest idiot. For letting him get away with it all these years and then having my nose rubbed in it. As I said once before, how do you spell stupid? M-A-X!

  Cat and Sebastian come together as well as separately. I feel a little more comfortable talking to Cat alone, because some things a woman understands more instinctively than another man would. And let’s face it, Sebastian is more than happy to utter vile deprecations about my lover—I mean, my former lover—without thinking twice about it, and I really don’t need to hear that at the moment.

  I wonder where he is staying. But why do I even care? Then I wonder how he is, and if he misses me. Dammit, I need to quit thinking about him, or if he has clean clothes to wear, or if he’s remembering to eat properly. It’s not my business now. But neither is it Morgan Arthur’s apparently, as he has left, right on cue, for Hollywood and stardom, black eye and all. So again I wonder, where is Richard staying? I know that he hasn’t followed the boy blunder because of the phone calls he places, to the same friends who are sheltering me from him, apparently looking for news of me. Why, I cannot imagine. And even though my brain responds that he can rot in hell, my heart continues to worry about him.

  “Max?” Cat’s concerned voice breaks into my thoughts. We sit together in the library. I haven’t slept in the bedroom since the last night Richard was here. I just can’t bear the thought of sleeping there at the moment, alone, so I let Rachel have the bed, and I camp out on the sofa, which is plenty comfortable for me. I look up at her, having forgotten the cup of tea in my hand, which by now must be stone cold, and I take a hasty sip, confirming my suspicions.

  “Um, sorry,” I reply, flustered. “I don’t mean to be inattentive.”

  “I know, Max. It’s okay.” She lays a sympathetic hand on my arm. “I was just thinking that something doesn’t make much sense, you know?”