Furr

by Axel Howerton

  The youngest Vargas brother, Jonah, rushes in with some kind of white case, popping a latch and throwing it open to reveal a loose pile of bandages and gauze, tape, and sealed plastic packages of white pads. He clamps a hand to my side, slapping one of the bandages in place.

  “Hold this,” he says, pulling tape away from the roll and tearing it with his teeth.

  “Really, I’m oka . . .” All of a sudden, the room spins, and all the energy leaves me. I flop down on the floor.

  “Okay,” I finish. “Maybe I need a minute.”

  Bob runs out to his truck, head darting in all directions before he ventures out, hustling back with a blanket from the back seat, which he throws around my shoulders.

  “You look like shit, Finn.”

  “Thanks?” I mumble. “I feel like twelve bucks.”

  Jonah Vargas hands me a cup of something dark and warm.

  “Here,” he says. “Drink this.”

  I sip at the liquid, thick and rich. I know what it is, and I don’t care. I guzzle it down.

  “You lost a lot of blood, dude,” he says. “You need to feed.”

  I cough, bringing a swell of it up into the back of my throat.

  Jonah helps me to the front office and brings me another cup of warm, velvet blood before he disappears without a word.

  I wait for Bob, looking around the office until my eyes fall on a photo on the wall. The same garage, thirty years ago, with a different sign. MacTyre Tire and Tow. There’s a man in the picture, tall and blonde, a thick sandy beard and moustache, dazzling green eyes. One arm is around Bob Dylan, but Bob Dylan a lifetime ago. Long black hair, thick and straight, that same lopsided grin. In the man’s other arm is a tiny boy with a shock of white hair. Beside them is a dark haired man in blue coveralls, undoubtedly a Vargas, but with dark circles under his eyes, sneering at three boys of varying size at his feet.

  “You were about four years old there. We used to play with you when we were little,” Jed, the middle brother, says from behind me. “This was your dad’s place. A long time ago. Gave it to me and my brothers when things got bad for him.”

  He hands me a folded pair of the same blue coveralls he’s wearing.

  “Sometimes, when he was in a bad way, he’d get lost and end up here, sick as a dog . . .”

  I feel the eyebrow raise all on its own.

  “Sorry. Bad joke.” Jed says, “Bob used to bring medical supplies out to the clinic on the reservation, and he’d sneak a bag or two for your dad once in a while. We kept them in a little beer fridge in the back. Good thing.”

  “Thank you. You saved me.”

  “Payback. Your dad saved us. Our old man, he was a drunk too, but a real sonofabitch. Used to beat us, beat our mom. Jonah doesn’t remember it so much, he was pretty young. Jerry got it the worst. Until your dad put a stop to it. Mom had kind of lost it by then. Barry MacTyre took us in, gave us this place, something of our own. This is our town, and you don’t shoot wolves in our town.”

  Bob appears in the doorway, a quiet look of concern on his face. He comes in and pats Jed on the back.

  “You see, Finn, we’re all family.”

  Jed nods and disappears behind him.

  Bob sits in front of me, stares deep into my eyes, as if he’s looking for something very small hidden in the black holes that lead inside. I get it. I’m not the only one who has suffered.

  “Magus,” I stammer. “He’s after me. He might have Emma. I don’t know what happened. I thought she got away.”

  I take another deep swallow from the cup, feeling stronger with each drop. Bob still gazing deep inside of me.

  “McQueen nearly cut me in two. Magus turned into a fucking bird, man!”

  “You turn into a wolf,” he says, finally satisfied by whatever he was looking for.

  “They’re all in danger. I have to get back there.”

  “Whoa there, cowboy,” Bob says, holding me into the office chair. “Arthur’s in town. You rest for a minute, and we’ll go find him. I need to get a couple of things.”

  The coveralls are roomy, and surprisingly comfortable. When Bob comes back he’s decked out in buckskin with a pile of necklaces and charms around his neck, black feathers in his hair. He’s straight out of a Hollywood western, except for the heavy workboots still on his feet. He’s got a rifle in one hand, and a hatchet in the other.

  “What are you going to do with that?” I ask, nodding at the hatchet with the black plastic grip.

  “Gonna cut me down a sorcerer.”

  “Is that what we’re going to call him? Sorcerer?”

  “What do you want me to call him? A wizard? This ain’t Harry Potter, man.”

  “You got one of those for me, then?”

  He gives a little huff through his nose and tucks the handle of the hatchet into his belt

  “You’re a Strong Wolf, Finn. You got more magic, and more power, than any damn sorcerer.”

  I reach a hand inside the coveralls and feel under the bandage at my ribs. Dry as a bone, and no more than a ridge of scar left to remember McQueen’s knife by.

  “Can I take one of those rifles until we get out of town? I already freaked out a bunch of people running down Main Street. I thought that old Troll Doll woman from the pie place was going to steal a car just to run me down.”

  “Mary-Ellen? She’s harmless. They talk a lot of bullshit.”

  “Maybe armed men in the street will keep her mouth shut?” I ask, peering out the office window into the empty street in front of us. “Aren’t there any cops around here? I would have expected sirens by now.”

  “RCMP is about ninety kilometres away.” Bob moves the tangle of beads and charms around his neck aside. There’s a metal badge pinned to his buckskin shirt. “I’m the auxiliary constable until they get here.”

  Bob Dylan giggles—an honest-to-God, schoolgirl giggle—and hands me the rifle.

  “Now you’re my duly appointed deputy.”

  THE STREET IS a wasteland of absolute silence. Not so much as a bird squawking, or a chipmunk’s twitter.

  I can feel the eyes on us, every single person in town barricaded inside and terrified to breathe. This is Canada. People don’t barrel through the streets firing off machine guns at stray animals. Indian braves and dirty mechanics don’t walk the avenue with hunting rifles. The tension is electric and alive, like a blanket of crackling voltage between the buildings. We pass the jeep, a handful of guns and bags of ammo drenched in monkey sweat are just lying there, like cast off food wrappers. I sniff the air, and under the still-strong stench of cordite and gunpowder, I smell blood. I search the ground and find it, a small spatter on the sidewall, a smear on the seat. McQueen is bleeding and hiding somewhere nearby. I try to play bloodhound and follow the stink of him, the smell of the blood, but it’s lost a few feet from the car, cut off by the impermeable concrete and the smells wafting down from the diner, the bakery, and the little corner store that sells nachos with processed cheese and some kind of pork-grease chili.

  I show Bob the blood, silently pointing to the dribble leading away from the car. He gives me some kind of hand signals, two fingers to his eyes, then pointing off down the street.

  “What? What is that? You want me to look over there? Or are you going to search that side?”

  “Navy SEAL signs. It’s what they always do in the movies. Keep your eyes on that side. I’ll go over here,” he whispers, shaking his head. “Come on, man.”

  I shrug and follow his signal, taking the south side of the street, while Bob creeps up on the north sidewalk.

  I can hear people whispering inside the stores, huddling down against the baseboards. I see the tops of heads popping up in windows ahead of me, only to disappear as I get closer, with gasps and creaking floors. Bob peers into the wide window of the hardware store, waves to somebody inside, then puts a finger to his lips and moves along.

  As we reach the middle of the main street drag, a strange scent fills the air. Sulfur and rotten
flesh. Like somebody burned down a fish market with a truck full of matches. Bob stumbles out into the middle of the road.

  “Finn!” he calls, spinning on his feet, eyes up to the sky.

  The clouds are swirling black above us, a vortex of darkness and ice-cold wind.

  “What the hell is that?” I’m screaming it, and Bob still doesn’t seem to hear me over the din. A cyclone is coming, picking up the dirt and the garbage off of the street, turning it into a wild funnel of filth, a dust devil trying to devour us. We huddle in the centre of the street, rifles up at the eye of the storm, looking for some sign of the man we know is causing the chaos.

  A hawk flies over us, seemingly unaffected by the winds tearing at the buildings around us. It swoops down as if coming in for a landing, but instead spins and twists into a fist of blue flame, growing larger and brighter and hotter, until it sputters and reforms and stretches itself into a new shape. The tall, thin figure of a man in a long black coat.

  “Come, Finn.” His voice booms out at me, bouncing from the buildings, pent in by the black sky above us. We’re in a cave of his making, and his voice echoes like thunder. “We have unfinished business, you and I.”

  31

  SIMON MAGUS IS floating in front of me, looming ten feet tall, the same grey mist that I had seen coming from Emma and the medallion seeping from his skin like steam.

  I shoot from the hip, on instinct, the rifle kicking back against me, but it’s nothing but noise and motion. The bullet freezes mid-trajectory and falls, as if it were no more than a fly, swatted out of the air. The cold terror of mortal doubt takes hold and climbs through my veins, frozen spiderwebs creeping across every muscle. The rifle clatters to the ground, useless.

  “Child’s toys,” he calls, his voice coming from all around us.

  Bob is behind me, panicked, swinging left and right, trying to make sense of the whirling chaos that surrounds us.

  Rage and rebellion begin to boil through the terror in my veins.

  “What do you want, Simon? If you’re so goddamn powerful, what is it that we have that you can’t just take?”

  “First? You on your knees, mongrel.”

  As he says it, the sky explodes with light, and blue tendrils of electricity crackle through the air, stabbing into my shoulders, knocking me to my knees, coursing through my muscles and bleeding out through my hands and feet into the earth, pinning me to the ground, like an insect on display.

  I scream out, despite myself, and twist my muscles against the steel girders that have replaced my bones.

  “That’s right, good dog.” He laughs. My muscles are bleeding away, I can feel them coming apart under the strain. I can’t fight it. I fall limp under his spell.

  “Secondly, James,” he taunts, his proper English accent lost as he bellows over the din. “You were only brought here to stud, and you’ve only impregnated one of my pets. Jules is so anxiously awaiting her turn.”

  The girders twist and bend and take me with them, up off of my knees, straight as an arrow, sliding toward the sorcerer, my feet dragging behind me in the dirt. I’m like a bendy toy with hard-wired limbs. I stay right where he wants me to be.

  He’s looking down on me, breathing his hot stench of sulfur and dead fish.

  “Now you will come with me and finish the job.” Close enough that I can taste it. “Then I believe I shall let Mister McQueen mount your head for my wall.”

  Something flies past my ear, spinning, something flat and cold, and it glances off of the sorcerer’s head, taking a sliver of red with it as it goes. Magus stumbles back with a screech, and his spell is broken. My arms and legs are my own again.

  “Run, Finn!” Bob hollers, rifle at his shoulder.

  I drop and roll as the bullets sing over my head. I hear them land—thud thud thud—and I look up to see Magus stagger into his own fog. I don’t wait to see him come back up. I’m already running for Bob, on one knee in the centre of the street, when I see Arthur emerge in a crouch from the cedar door of the diner.

  “Finn, my boy!” He waves, hobbling out to join us, as if we were just ducking from a little rain.

  “Arthur! Get down!” I scream, diving toward him as the rat-a-tat of McQueen’s machine gun sounds in my ears for the second time in as many hours. I feel the hot sear of one passing through my shoulder and catch it in the corner of my eye as it lands in the cedar of the door jamb. I roll over Arthur and pull him with me, into the dark of the small space between the diner and the hardware store.

  “My word!” He says, clutching at his cane, “What in hell’s bells is going on here?”

  “Emma.” I groan, clutching at my shoulder, blood already oozing through my fingers and darkening the blue of the coveralls by three shades. “He’s got Emma, and Jules, maybe the boys . . .”

  “Got them?” He repeats, “What do you mean he’s got them? You’ve been shot, boy!”

  “Arthur, we need to get out of here. Right now. We need to get back to Bensonhall before Magus and McQueen.”

  Bob is calling from the cloud of dust that used to be Main Street.

  “Let’s go! Finn! Now!”

  I grip Arthur by his coat sleeve and pull him along behind me.

  “Stay low, and don’t make a sound.”

  We’re halfway to Bob when the bullets rain down again. I drop to the ground with my hands over my head. I hear Arthur shout.

  “Bloody hell!”

  His coat tears away from my grip. I turn, and he’s already lost to the swirling cloud of grit and earth flying around us.

  McQueen’s voice comes close and clear.

  “Up and at ’em, you filthy cunt.”

  I feel the muzzle of his gun pressed into the small of my back, the heat singeing my skin, even through the thick cloth of the coveralls. I stretch my arms above my head, wincing and pulling back with the right as the new hole in me tears and bleeds again.

  “Gotcha, eh? That’s what you get, you bloody bastard.” He jabs at me with the barrel. “Get up!”

  Arthur’s cane is lying in the dirt, just out of reach.

  “Pretty good shot for a kiwi.” I laugh, tensing my muscles for the blow I know is coming. It lands just to the left of my spine, and I use the momentum of it to slide the two inches I need.

  “I told you I’m a fucking Auss—”

  The thick silver head of the cane connects with the side of his face with a sickening crunch. He drops, clenching his fists and spattering the ground around us with fire. I roll the opposite direction and am up on the sidewalk before he can swing toward me, and I lay a boot directly into the same side of his head that the cane has left its mark. McQueen drops to the ground, groaning and nearly still. I step over him to kick the machine gun away, calling out to Arthur. There’s only silence.

  “Bob?” I holler into the cloud. “Arthur?”

  “Finn! Get the hell out of here,” Bob is yelling from somewhere in the dark. I hear the vague patter of feet on the sidewalks through the maelstrom. A lot of feet.

  McQueen is still lying in front of me, but I sense someone at my shoulder.

  “Arthur!” I spin, and come face to pink lacquered talons with Mary-Ellen, the pie troll.

  Mary-Ellen’s chubby face is twisted into a hellish grimace. Strange, guttural mixtures of vowels pour out of her throat in a squeal of anguish as she swings wildly at me, tearing and lurching like some kind of rabid pink wolverine.

  She swipes at my face and catches me just above the eyebrow, opening me up, red filling my vision as the blood streams down into my eye.

  I hear Bob in the street, telling someone to stay back, a bunch of someones.

  “Don’t worry, Finn. They won’t kill you.” Magus laughs from somewhere above me, cackling and booming through the streets, as more shadows move toward me through the dust. “But they will kill your friends and leave you short everything but your one useful appendage.”

  “People. Please!” I shout. “He’s controlling you!”

  I
shove Mary-Ellen back with the head of Arthur’s cane, and her eyes clear, just for a second, before the grey mist seeps over them again, and her teeth begin gnashing as she throws wild arcs with her clawed hands.

  I back into the street, holding the cane out in front of me, a makeshift shillelagh ready to swing for the fences. The troll doll and her friends and neighbours don’t want to touch it, so as long as I keep them in front of me, I might have a chance.

  I press up against someone, back to back. Bob turns, blind, and swings the rifle toward my head. I duck just in time for it to crack, shoulder-stock first, into the broad side of Mary-Ellen’s cotton candy head. She crumples to the ground in front of me, but five shadows lunge forward to take her place.

  “Aw shit, Mary-Ellen!” Bob yells, spinning his own makeshift bat toward his side of the street. “We gotta get out of here. What the hell is this?”

  “Like you said, buddy. Goddamn sorcerer.”

  I swing the cane in a wide arc in front of me. “Get back!”

  Magus cackles from the clouds again.

  “There’s no escape, you fool. I own you. Just as I own your whole accursed family. The heeled mongrels of Binn Connall.” He laughs again, and the air around us crackles and burns.

  The cyclone spins faster, thicker, and the bodies press in on top of us. We’re about ten seconds from doom. Bob presses closer, and we turn in a slow circle, holding the mindless horde out in front of us.

  Then we hear it. It sounds a mile away, a high whistle, the fingers-under-the-tongue whistle perfected by untold numbers of boys to call their friends across the ballpark, or down the street at sundown.

  It’s followed by the roar of an engine and the squeal of tires as the jeep skids to a stop a dozen feet away. Bob grips me by the arm and shoves. I’m tumbling across the ground, through the collected townspeople like a cannonball. They split like bowling pins, and I’m scrambling toward the sound of the jeep, praying that we can make the few feet before we’re crushed by the entire town of Pitamont.

  “Not on my watch, you bastards!” McQueen’s voice rises from behind me, and I can hear the click of the first bullet hitting the chamber before it fires. I’m leaping through the air, diving for the car, and I hear it again, the pop-pop-pop in slow motion. This time they’re muffled mid-air and accompanied by a bloodcurdling howl.