Furr

by Axel Howerton

  “Finn?” she whispers. There are tears in her eyes. “You’re beautiful.”

  She sits, hand outstretched, until I creep closer, sniffing at the fingers, unsure of whether the evil has left her entirely. All I can smell, even in this form, is that light, airy perfume, like fresh rain on the wind.

  Emma ruffles my white fur, hands digging deep, fingers pushing hard into my skin, sending waves of pleasure rifling up through my spine and into my head. My eyes roll, and my legs buckle at her touch.

  “Come back?” she says. “Please?”

  I step into the shadows and will Finn back into reality. This time it’s easy. The smoke swirls, and I spin out into the ether, reforming and standing stronger and more powerful than I’ve ever felt in my life.

  The medallion is still lying by the door, still oozing its black evil. I pick it up by the chain and take it to a drawer in the bathroom, drop it in and close it, as far away from us as possible, leaving it in the dark.

  “I don’t understand,” Emma says, holding her drink in her hand. “Aunt Raigan gave me that.”

  “Did you ever take it off? Lose it?”

  “No. I wear it all the time, just like she told me to. Except . . .”

  “Except, what?” I ask, taking the glass from her hand and dumping it into the sink.

  “Hey!”

  “No more of that. For either of us. That’s how he got in, got control of this place.”

  “He’s my husband,” she says, crossing her arms tight against her chest, the same way she’d done when we met.

  I sit next to her on the bed. The fresh boxers I’ve put on feel weird and unnatural now. I understand why Kev and Jamie walk around their house naked.

  “Do you even remember meeting him?” I ask. “He said you met in Seattle, but you didn’t seem to know for sure.”

  “He . . . He . . . The amulet. Aunty Raigan’s amulet. The chain broke. I woke up and the chain was broken. Simon offered to get it fixed in town.”

  Her hand is soft in mine, comfortable, fingers fitting together effortless and true. As if they were made to interlock that way.

  “He’s not who you think he is,” I say. “He’s lied to you. He killed my father, our aunts and uncles.”

  “No. He’s my husband. He wouldn’t . . .”

  My voice is calm and reassuring. Decades of sitting in support groups and listening to Doctor Rhodes trying to keep me calm and talking. I guess it was worth something.

  “When did he come here? He and McQueen.”

  “I don’t . . .”

  “Was that when everyone started dying? My father? The others?”

  She pulls her hand away, puts it to her mouth. I can feel her quivering beside me, the reality of it all sinking in like a ship taking water.

  “Oh God! I brought him here.” She weeps into her hand.

  “No. He sought you out. He’s a magician, a con-man. This is a long con, coming here, taking over, and killing off anyone who poses a threat. Who’s left? With you and Jules under his spell, it’s just an old man and a couple of kids. He needs something. What is it? Why did he bring me back here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why did he send you up here tonight? To seduce me? So he can take control of me too? For what?”

  “He couldn’t have sent me. For that? Did we? He’s my husband, for Chrissakes!”

  “Emma,” I turn her face toward mine. “He’s controlling you, using you.”

  She pulls away and turns to stare at the side-counter full of booze.

  “Where were you, Finn? It was supposed to be you. They’ve been telling me that as long as I can remember. Finn will come back. Finn will be your one and only. Finn will make you whole. Do you know how fucked up that is? To have the memory of some little boy as your one and only hope for happiness? To have everyone around you feeding that insanity?”

  My heart sinks.

  “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” It’s a different misery than I’ve ever felt. Guilt and failure, but tempered with reality. No melodrama, no blame, just honest regret.

  She lets go of my hand. “They’ve told me my whole life, you know? It was supposed to be you and me. Like an arranged marriage. Do you know what that’s like? That kind of expectation from everyone in your life? I went off to college, I was afraid to even talk to anybody, to ever have a relationship. Nobody else would be you, nobody else would be enough for them.”

  “I didn’t know. Any of it. I’ve been floundering. I’ve wasted a whole lifetime thinking I was someone I’m not. My mother took me away from here, lied to me my whole life. I was a completely different person until a few days ago. Jimmy Finn. Fuck-up. Maniac. Loser. Drunk and angry for thirty years. Until Simon brought me here. McQueen helped me escape from the police, and told me to come here. McQueen told me my father was looking for me. Then I come here and he’s been dead for a year. You want to talk about mind-fucks.”

  She sniffs back tears, rests her head on my shoulder, slides an arm around the small of my back.

  “Finn, I’m so sorry.”

  It feels good to be next to her. Like a missing piece of myself. She’s been a phantom limb my whole life, and now the missing piece is regrown and whole.

  “I dream about you. About us. When we were kids. I’ve felt my entire life like we were meant to be together, and I didn’t even know who the hell you were. If you were even real. I’d ask my mother, and she’d tell me you weren’t real!

  “What the hell does that mean?” I wonder out loud. “How much does that mess somebody up? I’ve dreamt of you every night of my life, and never even knew who you were until yesterday. I couldn’t remember. What the fuck does that mean?”

  “I always hated them, hated being told that some little boy I barely remembered was my destiny. I hated you.”

  I wince, but I understand.

  “I’ve hated my mother every minute of my life for taking me away from this place, even though I had no idea what it was, what we are.”

  “I remember your mother.” Emma tells me, a soft hand on mine, “She was beautiful, but sad. Always so sad. I dream about you too, and her—telling us to run away. I don’t hate you, Finn.” She smiles and puts her hands to my face. Her kiss is light, tender.

  “I think it all means that they were right.” The words start coming more easily, more confidently. “Not that we were destined to be here, but that we have always been together. Raigan said we were joined. That I could see through your eyes. That we’re connected beyond anything my mother, or Simon, or anybody else could understand.”

  I put my arms around her, feeling closer to this woman than I have to anyone in my life.

  And we fall into it.

  Savage and natural, fierce and passionate, the room swirling as we melt into each other. As we merge our bodies and our minds and our fates. Her body gives way to mine, and mine to her, and we come together, in the cascade of moonlight, howling together with the fury of our family exploding in our blood.

  The king and queen of the moonlight. Lovers of the night. Warriors of the moon.

  29

  EMMA IS PACING in the red light of dawn that’s breaking through the window.

  She has a pair of jeans from the drawer cinched up around her waist, and she’s swimming inside of a flannel shirt rolled up to her elbows. She’s still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

  “What if he knows?” she says, chewing at nails that were gnawed away a half-hour earlier.

  I pull on boots and lace them loose enough to kick off, just in case I need to make a quick getaway.

  I’ve thrown on a pair of jeans and a worn t-shirt of my own, no underwear, no socks. I’m trying to think of all the angles. If I need to make a fast turn, the less clothes to lose the better. What I wouldn’t give for a pair of tear-away hockey pants. Not a thought I could have ever anticipated.

  I lift the leather strap from around my neck and go to her, placing it carefully over her head and around her neck, befo
re I take her face in my hands and press my lips against hers.

  “I want you to wear this.”

  “But, what about you? You’re the one he wants!”

  “I don’t really think so. And I have you. Raigan told me we would be far more powerful as a pair. That once we were mated, we’d be unbeatable, especially if we can get Jules back. Family. That’s what all of this is about.”

  “But, Simon. He’s going to know that we . . .”

  “He’s counting on it. He sent you here in the first place. Why would he do that?”

  She stares at me, those olive green eyes searching for something.

  “Mated?”

  “Exactly. Why would he do that?”

  Emma turns to look out the window, wrapping her arms around her chest again, the shy little girl locking herself away.

  “He had Jules attack me when I got here.”

  “Attack you? Attack you how?”

  “You know, like sexually.” Now I hear it. Devil was right. I sound like an idiot.

  Emma turns back to face me, but cinches her arms even tighter.

  “And what happened?” she asks, no effort at all in covering the subtext of that question.

  “Nothing. I didn’t even know what the hell was going on. I hadn’t even come up the hill yet. I got the hell out of there in a hurry. What do you think she was up here screaming about the other day?”

  “And you think Simon told her to do that?”

  “I know he did,” I answer, putting my hands on her shoulders, gentle and reassuring.

  “Why else would he bring me here? He had this place locked down. Nobody to oppose him. If all he wanted was Arthur’s money, or this place, or you . . . why bring in another person he’d have to control? There has to be a reason he wants us together.”

  “So, what? My own husband brought you here to fuck me? To mate me?”

  She stiffens in my arms, eyes wide and locked on the door behind me.

  “Very good, Finn. Very good, indeed. Though she was supposed to kill you, once you’d served your purpose. So why are you still alive, hmm? And why is my wife in your arms?”

  Magus steps into the room, silent as a ghost, floating past us in his long black coat.

  He turns and stands in the window, back-lighting himself for effect, no doubt.

  A terrible animal funk permeates the air.

  “Sounds like you two had a helluva night, mate. Good on ya. Wouldn’t mind a crack at that ass myself!”

  McQueen is in the doorway, leaning casually with his crossbow cradled like a baby in his arms.

  Hot fury wells up from the bottoms of my feet and boils up like a thermometer in the red.

  “McQueen, please,” Magus groans. “That is my wife you’re talking about.”

  Magus steps forward and reaches for the strap around her neck. Pausing and drawing his long fingers back as he gets close enough to graze it with his long nails.

  “Hmm. Curious. That’s not your necklace. Where is that lovely bauble your aunt gave you, darling? You were not to take that off,” he says, straightening his back to regain his composure. He can’t touch it. She’s safe from his machinations.

  “Mister McQueen,” he says, softly, “would you be so kind as to take my wife downstairs and remove that thing from her neck?”

  I feel a poke at the back of my head as McQueen slides up behind me, the hard metal point of the crossbow bolt digging behind my ear.

  “You just stay right there, boyo,” he says, grinning at me through the scrub of his face. My nostrils are full of his monkey stink, and it makes me want to rip his arms out of the sockets.

  He reaches with his free hand to grip Emma around the arm.

  “You touch her and you fucking die, kiwi.”

  “Kiwis are from New Zealand. I’m a fucking Aussie, you cunt!” He spits at my feet, and I take the split-second distraction to spin underneath his weapon and wrap an arm around his, putting all my weight on his shoulder and forcing him down to his knees. He squeezes the trigger, and the bolt fires, grazing my leg as I come down on top of him.

  “Emma! Run!”

  She steps over top of us, keeping her eyes on Magus as she backs out of the room.

  The magician waves his hand, the same as he did to Jules, muttering something under his breath.

  Emma’s eyes are wide with terror, but she’s still moving. Magus unleashes a hellish banshee scream and leaps for her. My fingers catch him mid-flight, yanking on that ridiculous coat as I force him down on the floor.

  “Run, goddammit!”

  Emma turns and bolts from the room. I hear her feet hit the stairs, land hard at the bottom. I hear the door open and slam shut.

  McQueen twists underneath me, and there’s a sound of ripping cloth, a familiar cold sting and a rush of warmth. The knife flails up past my face, and my strength falters. I grab for my side, where he’s sliced a gash along my ribs. A few inches more give in my hold on his arm and he would have gutted me. I slam my elbow down on top of his head, ramming it into the floorboards with a satisfying thud, and I feel him go limp just long enough for me to make a break for the door. I chance a glance at Magus, who is only just pulling himself up off of the floor, still winded. He whispers something dark in some strange language and burns, a blue flame consuming him, twisting into smoke and fire. The glass of the window shatters, and a huge hawk emerges from the maelstrom, winging out the window to freedom.

  I hammer down on McQueen’s head again, using the momentum to push myself up and stumble toward the door, a gout of blood falling from my side as I rise. I hear him, cursing me as I make the corner of the upper hall. I hear the click of the crossbow bolt. That bloody stuffed bear is looming over me, and I tackle it, bringing it to the floor in a crash of fur and bone. It smashes the bannister, and I tumble with it down into the air, rolling as I fall to land on my feet in a hard crouch, the pain in my ribs screaming, another rush of fresh blood filling my nose as lightning cracks through my brain and in front of my eyes. The arrow whistles past my head and lodges in the door frame, just as I crash, shoulder-first, through the screen and out into the morning.

  I head straight for the treeline. I know if McQueen makes the field before I’m out of sight, I’m a dead man.

  I collapse into the trees, scrabbling backwards on my back, kicking the boots away as I drag myself further into the brush. I’m praying that Kevin and Jamie are safe, that Emma made it to her car, or one of the cabins. I know I’m bleeding to death. My only chance is to change and heal. To run. Regroup and form a plan. I shrug out of the pants and crawl onto my knees, feeling the blood pouring through my fingers, sticky and warm. I take my hand away to pull the shirt over my neck, and my legs buckle. I’m on the ground, everything growing dim. I hear a scream in the distance. Emma. Then black.

  30

  RUN.

  That’s the only thought going through my head, and I listen, legs pulling and stretching, galloping harder and harder, springing over rocks and roots, through trees and over the earth, the dirt road just in sight beyond the trees. I run hard until I come to the edge of the woods, the edge of town. I can smell people and food, chemicals and gasoline, coffee and asphalt.

  I creep out between stores, out onto Main Street. I know I shouldn’t be here, but I need to find Bob, Arthur, the boys. Anybody.

  I creep low and long, from building to building, ducking away beside stairways and under parked cars as feet approach and pass me by. I smell the diner, with its rare burgers and chocolate ice cream, and I finally have my bearings. A straight shot down the road to the Vargas Brothers garage. I have a reassuring feeling when I think of that place. Safety. Friends.

  Run.

  As I come out from under the tires of the truck I’d been hiding under, I hear a wild scream. I catch a whiff of blueberries and sickly-sweet raisin pie. The Troll Doll stands frozen in the sidewalk, screaming and pointing with one pink-nailed hand. Her entourage of fat, make-up caked women all take up the siren call and wai
l as if the world is coming to an end. Everyone in the street. People are running out from shops and leaning out of windows.

  I bolt, trying to outrun the sound, sailing down the middle of Main Street as fast as I can, car horns sounding behind me, adding to the cacophony. My legs are burning, but I’m close. So close. I can see the curve in the road. Two blocks and I’ll be there, safe and silent. Somewhere to breathe.

  As I round the curve, a jeep screeches to a halt, and the firecracker sound of a hundred bullets take the air, whistling past. One clips my ear. And I stumble and roll, crumpling to a stop in the shade of the yellow tow truck.

  I can smell Bob just past the bay door of the garage. I hear his voice, hollering something. My ears are ringing, and the world is so loud and distorted, like my head is underwater.

  Little bits of the ground around me keep jumping out as if they were alive. Bullets still seeking me out, even as I crawl under the truck for cover. Then three sets of blue legs appear on the other side of the truck, and I feel vibrations above me. Bob comes rushing toward me, crouching down, reaching under the truck. I let the thought of me take hold, feel the world spinning, the water clearing from my ears, the pain fading as the smoke swirls and becomes skin.

  “Run, Finn. Come on. Run with me,” Bob says, pulling me out from under the truck. The Vargas brothers are behind us as we run, sending their own hail of gunfire at the jeep in the road. As Bob and I fall into the safety of the dark garage, I hear tires squeal, and the explosions of gunfire finally stop.

  The oldest brother, Jerry, backs into the open door.

  “Everybody okay? Bob?”

  Bob pats me on the back. Then he steps away.

  “Jesus, Finn! Did he get you?”

  I look down at the blood pooling at my feet. The drip is slow, and the puddle is tiny. My fingers go to my side, where McQueen had opened me up, the ten-inch gash now barely an inch.

  “I think I’m okay. It’s almost healed.”

  I feel at my ear, and my fingers come away sticky. “Fuck.”

  “What happened, Finn?” Bob asks.