“Fair enough,” Hylas said. “I sure as fuck wasn’t because what the hell, you know? But still. Tobias is a professional and he helped us out. But… But… what the fuck, man? What was that thing? I mean, okay, I know what it was, but was it really?”
“Huh?” Nick asked. He waved Hylas off when he started to answer. “It was… It was what it looked like. A werewolf.”
“Just as I suspected. That is massively fucked up, but I figure you are aware of that,” Hylas said. “The point is this though: We covered it all up, nice and neat. You got mauled by some big, bad something. Probably a kitty cat, like a cougar and not the sexy kind and then like… no one knows. Are you all right though? That was seriously traumatic.”
“I’m…” Nick hesitated and then shook his head. He wasn’t all right, but he thought that he would be, given enough time to learn to live with it. “I will be.”
“Therapy is good for the soul,” Hylas said. “So is cannabis, should you decide to partake with me ever again. I will be there, hash pipe in hand, to guide you through your crisis.”
“You are a good friend, Hylas,” Nick said with a smile.
“I know this,” Hylas said with a sage nod that he ruined by grinning.
“Thank you,” Nick said. “Seriously, thank you so much. And thank Tobias for me, too.”
“Will do,” Hylas said. “But maybe send him a card or something if you get a chance. My dear brother is really under-appreciated.”
“I will,” Nick said. “Where is Nancy?”
“She’s napping like a pro back at her newly refurbished abode,” Hylas said. “She’ll be in to see you before she starts her shift. She’s been out of her head, fending off the attending on duty to look after you herself. Chick is fierce, too. It’s awesome. I like bad-ass ladies.”
“What about Wes?”
“Poor little dude,” Hylas said. “He’s all beside himself, ya know; really gosh-darned upset by golly-gee.”
“Don’t be a dick,” Nick said.
“No way,” Hylas said. “Wesley is a cool guy. Good writer, too. Know what the best part is?”
“He can spell?”
“You got it in one,” Hylas said. He yawned and slid down in his seat.
“I do try,” Nick said.
“And you succeed,” Hylas said. “Sometimes.” He yawned again and his eyelids drooped, but he forced them up again. “Hey, Nick, now that you’re not nearly dead anymore, will you tell me a hooker story?”
Nick couldn’t very well refuse Hylas after all he had done for him in the last few days, so he nodded.
“Sure,” he said. “I think I’ll tell you about Dirty Danny. He needed to clean. Really bad.”
“Sweet,” Hylas said as he shifted around to get comfortable. He gestured, waving his hand over at Nick as he said, “Proceed, Mr. Lange.”
Nick started talking, but stopped halfway through when Hylas began snoring. Nick left him alone and rang for the nurse to demand his daily dose of pain medication.
He drifted off himself not long after the nurse plied him with drugs and didn’t awaken again until Wes came to visit. Hylas was gone by then and when Wes climbed into the narrow bed with Nick, already weeping and saying he was so afraid Nick was doomed, he didn’t protest. He only slipped his good arm around Wes’s trembling shoulders and told him that everything was going to be all right.
Five days later, Nick had had his fill of the hospital and hobbled his way to freedom once again under the protests of all concerned parties. Just like before, Nick did not listen and he went home where it was nice and peaceful. Wes drove him and then stayed the rest of the day, tending to Nick and making sure he wasn’t going to keel over at any moment.
Wes made a good, if slightly neurotic nurse, though Nick finally shushed him with a handjob while he bit at Wes’s nipples until he was a quivering mess. As far as Nick was concerned, whore logic could still save the day anytime he put his mind to it, even if he was finally and truly retired. He had Wes to thank (or blame, depending on his mood) for that one and found he didn’t mind at all. Wes was better than fucking strangers for money and that was weird, but actually not in a bad way.
Once he was up and about, Nick tried to get Nancy and Hylas both to tell him where they had buried Crash’s body. When neither one would tell him, citing that he didn’t need to put himself through that, Nick told them both to kiss his ass because how dare they, no matter how well-intentioned, try to tell him what he needed.
He found the answer he was looking for in the one source he hadn’t thought to ask. One day while he was visiting Wes, he saw Tobias out tending to his gardens. It took Nick a few minutes to work up his nerve, but he finally said fuck it and went outside to where Tobias stood pruning a large butterfly bush.
“Hello, Nicholas,” Tobias said before Nick spoke.
“Hi, Tobias,” Nick said. “Can I ask you something?”
“Certainly,” Tobias said, turning to face Nick, hands folded neatly in front of his body.
Nick swallowed then told himself to just spit it out. “Where’d you put him? I mean… it? What did you do with the body?”
Tobias tipped his head, studying Nick with his fathomless eyes. With a barely perceptible nod, he said, “Come with me.” With a crook of his finger, Tobias turned and began walking toward the main house.
He went around the side toward a copse of oaks bisected by a narrow path of crushed granite and quartz. Nick followed behind him into the cool shadows, hands stuffed in his pockets. They went up a small hill and at the top of the rise, the trees opened up on a little clearing ringed with cypress trees. There were four well tended graves there, headstones poking up above a swaying sea of orange and red poppies. Tobias didn’t say a word as they walked past the graves of the Gallagher women who had died tragically within the house’s walls so many years ago. Near the edge of the clearing, Tobias stopped and pointed to what looked like just another part of the poppy field.
“He’s there,” Tobias said. “What better place to bury a body you do not want found than in the one place most people don’t dare to go. He’s safe here from prying eyes should anyone ever feel the need to inquire, though I doubt they will.” He huffed out a soft, unamused laugh. “I suppose there are benefits to being creepy. It does leave one unmolested more often than not.”
Nick looked down at the unmarked grave and through the swaying flower stalks and long, silky grass he thought he could detect a slight rise in the earth. A mound of dirt that had been covered over with flowers and grass thanks to Tobias’s skills as a gardener. If no one was looking then no one would ever know it was there. It was so well concealed that even if someone was looking they would probably miss it.
“Thank you, Tobias,” Nick said. He felt cold even standing in the bright early summer sunlight. “I just had to know.”
“It stands to reason,” Tobias said.
“What does?” Nick asked.
“That you would want to confirm for yourself that the beast is indeed dead, of course,” Tobias said. “It was a magnificent terror.”
“Yeah.” Nick hunched his shoulders against the chill prickling up his back. “He was a living nightmare.”
“That he was,” Tobias said. “Sometimes it’s best that such things are put to rest, no matter how fantastic they are.”
“I thought the same,” Nick said.
“I figured,” Tobias said with a slight smile. “Shall we head back now or would you like a moment?”
“I’m good,” Nick said.
“Then come,” Tobias said with another tilt of his head.
Nick followed and when the path emptied them out into the backyard again, Nick nodded to Tobias and began to walk away. He was more accustomed to Tobias than most, but the man still made him uneasy. With his heightened sense of smell, he was even stranger to Nick. Tobias didn’t smell bad, it wasn’t that. It was that Tobias had no scent whatsoever.
“I hear they’ve hired a new morgue attendant,” Tobias s
aid. “Seems the other one; that angry, odd fellow, went missing a while back.”
“How about that?” Nick asked, stopping with his back to Tobias.
“Yes, how about that,” Tobias said with another soft laugh. “His name was Calvin wasn’t it?”
“He preferred Crash,” Nick said.
“That’s it,” Tobias said. “Crash. Have a good day, Nick.”
“Same to you,” Nick said as he hurried away.
Tobias knew, Nick knew that he knew, but he also thought that Tobias would never breathe a word of it to anyone. He would probably never even mention it to Nick again. He’d only been curious. No matter how uncomfortable Tobias made Nick, there was something steady-on and trustworthy about him. Tobias just seemed like the kind of guy you could always count on, no matter what.
Nick went back to work at the hospital near the end of June and had only been there a week when the Fourth of July weekend rolled around. It was bad enough that he nearly quit on the spot, but he held out because he still needed the damn job. It was also the final piece in getting his life back to normal again, that one thing that had been missing that was a constant because everything else had been shifting on Nick lately; morphing, changing into something new.
The months passed and he fell into a rhythm of work and life with an actual partner, not a string of johns. Wes was a sweet guy, possibly the sweetest Nick had ever known and slowly, he found himself falling in love with him. It was something he kept to himself, the idea of saying those words utterly terrifying, but it didn’t slow their relationship down. Wes was nothing if not patient.
Summer ticked over into fall, which was a lot like more summer in the Deep South, at least for the first half of the season. Near the end of October the days became gradually cooler and by mid-November, mornings were actually downright chilly. By the time the Christmas Carnival rolled around, it was safe to say it was cold, as cold as the Gulf south usually got.
While most of Sparrow Falls was out at the carnival, Nick lay on the back lawn of Wes’s house. Overhead, the full moon shone down like a polished silver disk, the stars bright and cold as diamonds in the cloudless sky. He breathed in the air, smelled the cold, the hint of frost lurking there, telling the secret that the ground would be covered in silver ice by dawn. He stretched and grumbled to himself, content and a little sore. There were still some things he was not used to; did not think he would ever get used to, honestly.
Wes sat down beside him and ran his hand over Nick’s chest, combing his fingers through the thick, pale gold fur that covered it. Nick opened his eyes and looked up at his smiling face.
“This is still so weird,” Wes said as he moved to scratch behind Nick’s ears. Nick grumbled and rolled his head into the pleasant sensation. “In a cool way though. Like, the coolest way in the world. Not many people get to say their boyfriend is a werewolf.”
Nick chuffed, amused and turned his head to lick Wes’s hand when he pulled it back. It had scared the ever-loving hell out of Wes at first, but once he realized Nick really was not going to maul then devour him, he adjusted rapidly—and with great gusto. Nick was right up his alley, a real live werewolf that he could actually hang out with. At least that was how Wes had explained it (babbled it) to Nick once he’d stopped screaming.
What he was had not been easy for Nick at first; the first time the full moon rose and he changed, he had thought he was dying. The only saving grace for him had been that he was still off on sick-leave. He’d since switched his shift to working mornings, though he disliked that and wished he could go back to nights. He was stuck though; the hospital would eventually get fed up with him taking every full moon off work. He could be the wolf whenever he wanted to be, just like Crash had been able to do, but during the full moon, he had to be the wolf. It was something Nick had learned through careful, nervous experimentation. He had decided that if he was stuck with the ability to get furry then he might as well get to know it.
In all actuality, it wasn’t much of a hindrance though. Being what he was actually proved to be helpful more often than not. Nick was stronger and faster; he could smell, hear and see things he’d never even known about before (like the stray cat that had been crossing the property regularly). He never got sick anymore and often wondered if he even could. He had a lot of questions and no one to ask, but he figured he would keep learning as he went.
Wes lay down on the grass beside him, scooting close to Nick’s warmth. He propped himself up on Nick’s chest to look into his face. Nick wrapped his arms around him to add more warmth. And just because he found he liked holding Wes, another new thing that he had gotten used to with surprising ease.
“I love you, Nick,” Wes said. He stroked Nick’s furry cheek.
Nick chuffed and grumbled and listened to the thump of his tail beating the cold ground. He licked Wes’s face and chuffed louder when Wes made an, Argh! sound.
Wes squirmed around to lay his head on Nick’s chest, petting the fur along Nick’s side. “I knew you weren’t a monster,” he said against Nick’s fur.
Overhead, the stars twinkled and glittered and all across the lawn the merry glow of multicolored Christmas lights painted the blades of winter-brittle grass. Nick listened to the sound of Wes’s soft breathing and hoped he was right.
Maybe he wasn’t a monster after all.
Turn the page to read a special excerpt from
Sparrow Falls 2:
FALLS THE SHADOW
1
A murder of crows had gathered in the water oak near the rear entrance of Greene’s Funeral Home. Their shining black bodies were still, oil-bright eyes focused on a subject of great interest to them. After another minute of quiet contemplation, a single large crow took wing, a silhouette burned against the brilliant blue of the late afternoon sky. It cawed once, the sound like a question, before it swooped down to land on its new perch.
Tobias Dunwalton turned his head to look at the crow on his shoulder and raised his eyebrows. He’d long since stopped being alarmed by his avian visitors; birds liked him though he had never figured out why. He watched the crow watching him, black eyes meeting more black and when the crow began to preen and groom his hair, Tobias allowed it. If it had been the first or even fifteenth time he had ended up with an unwanted shoulder ornament, he might have been more surprised and leery.
The crow plucked contentedly at his shoulder-length black hair and lightly pecked around the pale shell of his ear. It pushed at his hair with its beak like a lover tucking it back to better whisper in his ear. Tobias smoked his cigarette and watched the light traffic move by on the little side road that ran behind the funeral home.
Restless pecking; a gentle, insistent tap, drew Tobias’s attention back to the crow. When he was once more looking at it, the bird stopped its tapping and looked him right in the eye, cocked its head and cawed. It was a soft sound, a hello, Tobias thought. He was no expert on the secret language of crows, but they had been sitting on him on and off for years, he liked to think he had learned a thing or two.
“What is it?” he asked softly. “What do you want?”
The crow leaned forward and pecked lightly at his lower lip. It was a soft, like a gentle buss; an old-timey greeting to a friend you haven’t seen in a while.
“Have we met before?” Tobias asked.
The crow pecked his lip again and made a low muttering sound.
“Maybe so then,” Tobias said as he raised a hand to stroke the silken feathers on the back of the crow’s neck. It crooned at him, as much as crow could croon anyway; it was off-key and raspy as a longtime smoker’s voice, but it made Tobias smile. “Give me a moment and perhaps it’ll come to me.”
Years ago he had gotten into the habit of talking to the birds and if anyone had asked (though no one ever did) he would have happily told them that crows were his favorites to converse with. They were smart; talk to the same crow long enough and enough times, eventually you got the very real, delightfully unsettling feeling that i
t really did understand at least some of what was being said to it. Of course most would assume that was pure, unadulterated crazy talk, but Tobias didn’t care.
He didn’t really talk to anyone other than his twin brother, Hylas and his best friend, Dawn Marie. They happened to be well-versed in the weird that was Tobias Dunwalton.
Down the road, just out of view, Tobias heard the rumble of an engine and recognized the sound of the squealing brake pads on the vehicle. He flicked his cigarette away and leaned against the wall to wait, the crow shuffling itself on his shoulder to adjust to the new position.
“She’s not as late as usual,” Tobias said to the crow. He checked his watch. “Only half an hour today; that’s not so bad.”
The crow picked a stray hair off the shoulder of Tobias’s black suit coat. It hung from its beak like the world’s skinniest fu-Manchu mustache.
“That isn’t a good look on you,” he said as Dawn Marie’s little forest green Beetle came into view. She was driving too fast as usual and hardly braked as she took the turn into the employee parking lot. She bumped over the curb on one side and pulled in, parking beside Tobias’s black Lincoln.
The crow watched the new arrival with bright-eyed curiosity touched with suspicion. The crows roosted in the water oak, they weren’t unused to Dawn Marie, but she wasn’t nearly as welcome as Tobias and they did not want to make her acquaintance. To their credit, however, they had stopped making their noisome alarm calls every time she walked by their tree and accepted her as a regular player in their human-watching.
The crow kept its perch on Tobias’s shoulder, waiting as Dawn Marie got out of her car and slammed the door. Her wild pale auburn hair caught in the hot summer wind and blew in her face as she walked toward Tobias lurking in the shadow of the doorway.
“Damn!” she said, walking and flailing, fighting a losing battle against her unruly hair. “Stop it!”
The crow cocked its head and Tobias unconsciously mirrored the gesture as he watched his best friend struggle her way free of the curtain of hair in her eyes.
Shades of Night (Sparrow Falls Book 1) Page 40
