Cry Wolf

by Aurelia T. Evans

  “Who has a very naughty drawer,” Malcolm added, stroking up her legs and spreading them slightly. He drew her down the bed closer to him.

  “This is true.”

  “I don’t think you got enough out of me,” Malcolm said. “I mean, all that punishment and you were satisfied only once while I got off twice? What manner of justice is this?”

  Kelly propped herself on her elbows and looked down at where he had arranged himself between her legs. “It’s reprehensible,” she managed to say with a straight face.

  “Still hungry?”

  “Famished,” Kelly said.

  “So am I,” he replied, and he hooked his arms under her legs, lifting her hips so that he could swipe his tongue through her wet folds, lapping at the aftermath of both of their pleasures. Cleaning the mess they had left behind seemed to be his aim with the way he lapped around everything but the place where she wanted it most. He pulled and sucked at her folds and dipped his tongue into her cunt until he finally deemed her taken care of—although ‘clean’ was hardly the word she would use, given his saliva and the new draught of arousal from his eager attentions.

  “Have I mentioned lately,” he murmured against her inner thigh, “that I don’t appreciate you nearly as much as I should?”

  “Not lately,” Kelly said. She brought her hands to her breasts and kneaded, the metal of her piercings caught between her fingers.

  “The reason I told you about why I’m dragging you all the way to that ‘witch doctor’, as you call him, is because I don’t want you to think that I don’t like you or that you haven’t done enough,” Malcolm said, watching her intently. “You’ve been more than accommodating, above and beyond the call of duty. Hence, the continued apology. I may not have enough time in the weekend to finish apologising.”

  “It’s truly been my pleasure,” Kelly said.

  The last word had risen in a moan as Malcolm had resumed his erotic meal of her flesh.

  Through gasps, she added, “If I thought it was going to be a chore, Malcolm, I wouldn’t have helped you at all. I’ll have you know I can be a real bitch.”

  “Woman, I am trying to apologise,” Malcolm said, raising his head and mock-glaring at her for monologuing during his efforts at devastating cunnilingus.

  Kelly twisted her nipples for his benefit and for the pleasure that it shot straight to her clit.

  “My mistake,” Kelly said huskily. “Carry on.”

  He had inserted a finger into her and was torturing her by moving his tongue back and forth over her hood piercing with enough pressure to titillate but not enough to help her come, when the pizza delivery guy knocked on the door.

  “Oh God,” Kelly moaned when Malcolm paused. “Don’t you dare stop.”

  “Are you serious?” Malcolm asked.

  “You listen to me, pup, you are not going to stop now,” she growled.

  He cautiously reapplied himself to his task.

  Another knock.

  “Come in!” she shouted. “It’s open.”

  “Kelly?” Malcolm said.

  “What?” she asked. “He’s legal.”

  “You’re nuts, you know that?” But Malcolm showed how much he liked that by curling his finger against her G-spot. Kelly pinched her nipple and keened at the skylight just as the pizza guy came in with their order. It smelt absolutely divine, which only spurred Malcolm’s enthusiasm.

  “Oh, oh shit, I’m sorry,” the college boy said. Kelly sat up, unconcerned by Malcolm’s or her naked state. Or the fact that the pizza guy had just walked in on Malcolm eating her out.

  “No problem,” Kelly said, twitching as Malcolm dragged the flat of his tongue over the hood piercing, tugging it out to make her clit throb. “There’s fifty dollars—oh yes—on the counter. That should cover—mmm—the pizza and drinks, plus tip, since you’ve—fuck, ooooh, yes—been very understanding.”

  She moaned high and tight in her throat as she fell back against the bed, arching her back while the pizza guy just gaped with the boxes in his hand. The finger inside her was joined by another, and Malcolm found a more forceful rhythm with his tongue slick and hot over her clit, over and over and over. Kelly blessed werewolf stamina.

  “Yes, harder, fuck me,” she pleaded. She pounded the bed as he gave her what she asked for, filling her with his fingers and coaxing her orgasm from her. She trembled with the slow, intense pulse of it through her body.

  As soon as Malcolm had brought her over her peak and into oversensitivity, he moved down from her clit to the lips of her cunt, lapping at her succulence as though she really were ripe fruit off the vine. She combed her fingers through his hair and massaged his scalp, encouraging him as he lapped through her aftershocks.

  When she sat up again, Malcolm still licking her, she locked gazes with the pizza guy. Through him, she saw a cat-eyed Suicide Girl being pleasured, branded in his memory as something that just didn’t happen to guys like him. No one was going to believe him. It was too much like a porno, although in one of those, she would have asked him to join in. The bulge in his pants certainly suggested that he would very much like that idea.

  But he had no way of knowing that even if Kelly wanted him—which she didn’t—she was way too much for a delicate human to handle. She hadn’t yet learned to soften her interests like Grant had, nor did she want to learn any time soon.

  Malcolm pulled back and met her eyes with a smug grin. She guided him up on his knees so that she could kiss him, the scent of their pleasure all over his mouth. She sucked on his lips and his tongue with relish.

  Malcolm stifled a laugh as she winked at him and got out of bed, not bothering to cover up. She walked over to the pizza delivery guy. His glasses were beginning to fog up.

  “Sorry, just needed to finish up with that. Thank you for your patience,” Kelly said. She took the cardboard boxes from him.

  He had already put the two-litre bottles on the counter next to the money, which he had left untouched. Kelly picked it up and tucked it into his left pocket. His mouth opened, but nothing came out.

  “Have a good day.”

  “Uh-huh,” was all the delivery guy could manage. It took Kelly opening the door for him to snap out of his waking fantasy. Kelly knew that the second he got back to his car, he was going to rub one off in less than a minute.

  It was so easy to control young men like that, but Kelly still had a pleased sway to her walk as she put one of the sodas in the fridge then brought the other bottle and the two pizzas back to the bedroom. Everything was already filthy. They might as well eat before changing the rest of the sheets.

  “That was unexpected,” Malcolm said. He took his box and joined her on the bed. “I wouldn’t have taken you for an exhibitionist.”

  “It was a whim,” Kelly said. “And although we certainly gave an exhibition, I wasn’t doing it for him, so I’m not sure that qualifies as being an exhibitionist. I just didn’t mind him seeing. I wanted my pizza and I didn’t want to get up.”

  “You realise you made that kid’s whole year, right?” Malcolm said.

  She shrugged. “If you say so. He had food.”

  “Yes,” Malcolm said. “Yes, he did.”

  So they stopped talking and instead devoted their attention to the respective boxes in their laps. Malcolm ate his whole pizza, and Kelly ate most of hers, humming with satisfaction as she closed her box and leant back.

  “Just what I needed,” Kelly said. She opened the refrigerator and sent her pizza box towards it with magic.

  “That’s just lazy,” Malcolm said.

  “I don’t want to get up,” Kelly replied. “I’m good right here. By the way?”

  “Yes?”

  “Apology accepted.”

  Chapter Eight

  After a very satisfied sleep until dawn and another run, Kelly and Malcolm set off once more, although they had to stop at a diner for a hearty breakfast and again for more coffee. They arrived outside Hannibal, Missouri, where the GPS on her phone t
old her Salvation would be, in the late afternoon.

  There was a large colonial on the top of the hill, with a sprawling lawn between the highway and the house. On the left side of the house was a cornfield, on the right some laconic cows that might get too tempting if she and Malcolm didn’t keep themselves fed. There was a lot of open land as well as farms along the highway, so staying out of sight while running in wolf skin would take a little extra effort, but it would be doable as long as they didn’t head into town.

  As nervous as Kelly was when she stepped out of the truck onto the well-used, makeshift gravel parking lot, Malcolm was even shiftier.

  Sunset was in about two hours. They had more than enough time to make it to the evening service. Even so, more than a few people were already milling about the giant, butter-coloured revival tent, setting up folding chairs, talking with each other, handing out literature, getting the barbecue ready. It was hard to mistake the dense, mouth-watering scent of humans here, not nearly diffused enough in the air.

  “You want to go back to the trailer?” Kelly asked.

  Malcolm nodded.

  “When we attend the service, we’ll all be packed in,” Kelly said, unlocking her trailer door. “It’ll smell even stronger. Think you can handle it?”

  “Just breathe it in and try to get used to it,” Malcolm said, repeating the mantra she had told him when he’d been overwhelmed by Ki’s dried blood scent.

  “We’ll sit in the back, easy access to the exit, aisle seat. I’ll sit on your other side next to a human if I have to,” Kelly reassured him. She sat on her small couch and coaxed him down to join her.

  Malcolm laughed. “It sounds like I have an inconvenient disease like a prostate or bladder problem the way we’re talking about it.”

  She slung an arm around his shoulder. “I’m glad you can see the humour in it.”

  “Can we run before the service?”

  “I think it’s advisable,” Kelly said. “We’ll have to act like we’re taking a walk and store our clothes somewhere.”

  These people talked a good game about werewolves and witches and vampires, but who knew whether any of them had ever actually met one of these creatures. Witches and vampires could be pagans, goths and sanguinarians, and Kelly had heard certain mental illnesses referred to as lycanthropy. Some self-righteous, ignorant fanatics could have interpreted all these things too literally or read too much Landover Baptist propaganda without realising that it was fake.

  She just didn’t know what to expect from this evening. All she could hear from the minds of the small crowd outside were whispers, each voice indistinguishable and unintelligible.

  * * * *

  “I know we have a lax dress code on the sanctuary, but has anyone ever told you how weird it is that you dress so conservatively when you do wear clothes?” Malcolm asked after they left the trailer for their ‘walk’.

  Kelly looked down at her filmy, long-sleeved ivory shirt and a grey tweed jumper dress tailored to just under her bust, with thick straps like suspenders over her shoulders. She wore charcoal tights underneath.

  “I like it,” Kelly said. “Besides, people get weird about tattoos. When I go out in public, I usually try to cover all the bases. Given where we are and the kind of rhetoric they use, I figured more coverage was better.”

  “I wasn’t complaining,” Malcolm said. “It’s just strange to see you covered completely from head to toe.”

  “When I’m usually naked?”

  “Yeah. I mean, this is the person who had no problem with a full frontal in front of a pizza delivery guy.”

  Honestly, Kelly liked clothes. She didn’t have a lot of opportunity to wear them, especially since she also liked being naked and the weather wasn’t a deterrent for her in that respect. Because she didn’t need a lot of clothes, she had a modest wardrobe with some pieces from her old life and a few from her new, but they were all pieces she adored.

  She was used to surprising people. This was just one more way.

  After they had stripped their clothes and stored them in a bag, they ran. She smelt other werewolves, but the scent was faded and musty, which could mean several things. It could mean that this Salvation organisation really did deal with real magical creatures, which meant that the Father might actually be able to do what he claimed. Kelly thought that was highly unlikely.

  Another possibility was that Salvation had driven the werewolves from the area by their reputation or by force, like St. Patrick driving the serpents from Ireland.

  Kelly preferred to believe that a werewolf pack had just passed through. The other two possibilities disturbed her.

  As the sun set, the sharp, savoury smell of barbecue reached their noses. Kelly led them back to the copse of trees where they had transformed, and they pulled on their clothes once again.

  There were more humans in the area now, as well as some werewolves and a sharp stone smell that Kelly thought could possibly be vampire. The hollow place under Kelly’s chest chilled at the scent of true magical beings among the humans. It meant that Malcolm wasn’t the only person who had taken Salvation’s claims literally.

  “What is that?” Malcolm asked, wrinkling his nose at the sharpness of the smell, the way a human might jerk back from strong alcohol.

  “Pork, beef, human, werewolf, vampire,” Kelly said.

  “Wow, that’s a vampire?” Malcolm said. “Well, Grant did say they existed.”

  “You mean you thought they didn’t?”

  “I didn’t know one way or another. I’ve never smelt anything like that, even in dog form.”

  “Vampire smell is kind of like a dog whistle—it’s usually not strong enough for anything other than werewolves or other vampires,” Kelly said. “I’m guessing it’s some kind of magical pheromone, given it has an effect on creatures that can’t small it like us.”

  “You’ve met a vampire before?” Malcolm asked.

  Kelly shrugged. “A few. Most wolves try to avoid them.”

  “Why?”

  “Because vampires take advantage of us. I can fight against it as a witch, but most other werewolves aren’t as lucky.”

  “Take advantage?”

  “It’s a symbiotic thing. I didn’t stick around to ask,” Kelly said.

  They dropped the empty bag off at the truck then joined the rest of the people in the field. The dense crowd made both of them salivate, but the barbecue also contributed.

  Standing on tiptoe in her Mary Janes, Kelly whispered in Malcolm’s ear, “Be sure to eat until you’re full.” She curled her arm around Malcolm’s.

  He tried to appear nonchalant, but beads of sweat formed on his forehead, and his hand over hers was moist.

  “Relax,” she said. “It’ll be easier if you relax.”

  “I bet you say that to all the boys,” Malcolm replied.

  Kelly laughed.

  The two men at the grill smiled at their approach—too widely in her opinion, but she was also on edge, and she wasn’t inclined to be kind after they had checked her ring finger to see if the man she was obviously comfortable with had done right by her.

  “Fresh meat?” asked the one on the right, a young man with frosted hair. It somehow worked for him.

  “If you mean you’re offering us porcine products, absolutely,” Kelly said, smiling back with all the training her Southern upbringing had taught her. “If you mean to ask if we’re new, yes.”

  “Then welcome. Welcome to Salvation,” Frosted Tips said. “I’m Brother Tim and this is Brother Peter. You can drop the Brother, of course, if you don’t feel comfortable with it. We don’t stand too much on ceremony.”

  “If I knew how easy it was to get to Salvation and how good the food would smell, I’d have come sooner,” Malcolm said.

  The lack of sarcasm in his statement immediately put the two men at ease. Malcolm shook hands with them and accepted a sturdy paper plate of bratwurst with a deceptively easy smile. Perhaps they wouldn’t notice how tight his teeth were as
he did so.

  Peter, a middle-aged man with a slightly receding hairline but a strong jaw, held out his hand for Kelly, who paused for a beat before taking it.

  “I’m Kelly and this is Malcolm.”

  “You find us on our website?” Peter asked.

  “Through some family friends,” Malcolm replied, making a plate for Kelly too.

  Peter continued to smile, but he didn’t blink as Kelly took a bite of bratwurst from her full plate. “We have some salad, too, over on that table there. You know how the ladies can be, am I right?” he said, nudging Malcolm with his elbow. “Always watching their figure.”

  Kelly bit back the lascivious retort that she preferred other people to watch her figure. That would have been disproportionately defensive right there, not to mention inappropriate for the venue. But she had heard enough of Brother Peter’s thoughts to learn that her plateful of meat was more suspicious to him than Malcolm’s because she was a woman.

  So Salvation did know about real werewolves and some of the ways to discern them. He at least suspected what she was.

  Now Kelly was the uncomfortable one fighting not to tip off what she was. Malcolm, on the other hand, had slipped into the role of curious, friendly visitor as though he were made for it.

  “She watched her figure earlier knowing what was in store, right, babe?” Malcolm asked, kissing her forehead.

  “Right,” she said. “Iced tea sounds good, though.”

  “Iced tea it is,” Malcolm declared. “What would a barbecue be without iced tea? Good to meet you, brothers, and thanks for the meal.”

  “Feel free to come back for seconds,” Tim said, saluting Malcolm with his spatula.

  As they headed towards the salad and drink table, Kelly said, “Wow. What were you, a retail monkey in another life? I’ve never seen you so animated.”

  “There’s nothing a dog knows better than how to give an effusive greeting,” Malcolm replied. “You tensed up on me over there. What’s wrong?”

  “They suspect,” Kelly said. “And they don’t like it.”

  “Suspect what?”

  “That I’m a werewolf,” Kelly said, “because I’m eating a lot of meat and no salad.”