by A. F. Henley
"Vaughn!" Randy shouted, and immediately bit back the name. Or was it Lyle? Was it even really either of them? Was the moment even happening? He shook his head, and turned back to the living room, panting hard enough to hurt his chest. "Gun," he mumbled. "I need my gun."
"No."
Randy recognized the voice immediately, but it took several seconds for his frantic eyes to find her. Hannah stood by the front door, one hand on the lock and the other on the handle. Her yellow Beauty and the Beast pajamas looked oddly appropriate, and Randy spat a hysterical string of laughter. Then, in an instant, reason fell back into place, and Randy killed his hysteria in favor of acting the part of responsible adult. "Hannah, get away from the door. Come here, baby—"
He caught the scene on the front lawn and immediately rethought his request. "Go to the kitchen. I'm right behind you. We need to call—"
"No." Hannah twisted the lock on the door as if confirming she had secured it, and then lowered her arms. She stood, hands folded in front of her, her expression patient but firm. "No calls. No gun and no calls. Maybe we can make some hot chocolate? You look like you're frozen."
Randy barked another laugh as panic attempted to get a hold on his heart.
"It's scary, I know." Hannah stepped away from the door and closer to the living room. "But Daddy says everything's gonna be okay. He says Lyle just has to figure through this part. That it happens to all the new ones."
"What are you even...?" Randy's words trailed as he stared at Hannah's calm expression. Just a child—she was just a child. Why was she so relaxed? Maybe she hadn't seen them. Maybe she didn't even know. Yet when a long, anguished howl rolled through the night, Hannah didn't even flinch.
Randy's shoulders dropped. His muscles seemed to become Jell-O without their support, and Randy's body swayed under the effort of keeping itself upright. When he spoke, his voice was weak and quiet. "I don't understand."
Hannah tilted her head and smiled. "You probably do. I think maybe you just don't want to admit it."
"Vaughn...?"
Hannah nodded.
"And Lyle...?"
She waited patiently for him to find more words.
"Those creatures—" His mouth was suddenly too dry to let him finish. He swallowed, his throat clicking with the strain of forcing air down an unoiled passage. The heat inside the house was too much for his almost-frozen skin, and it was stifling him. He lowered his gaze, held both his hands out in front of him and watched them shake. Real. He was real. Hannah was real. Right?
"And Lyle came for me," he whispered. "He knew. And he came for me. He was going to kill me—"
"He wasn't!" Hannah snapped, her voice transforming her from shy child to wise, angry woman. "He never would. Don't you even think that!"
When she got no response, Hannah stepped smartly into the living room, tiny feet pounding over the carpet like a little soldier marching toward an enemy. "You look at me, Randy. You look at me right now!"
Randy lifted his eyes and found Hannah's. In his peripheral, he saw Isaac step from the stairway and into the room.
"You be nice, Randy. Don't you say bad things when you don't know," Hannah scolded, shaking her finger. "Lyle wouldn't hurt you, Daddy said so. He said that right now Lyle sees you as a con..." She paused in thought.
"Conquest," Isaac finished for her.
"Yes!" Her face lightened into a grin. "A conquest! 'Cuz you were something that Daddy wanted. So if Lyle could win you instead, it would be a way to prove his dom..." She bit her lip and looked over at her brother. "Dominion?"
"Dominance," Isaac corrected.
"Fucking hell," Randy whispered, and when his internal self jumped up to admonish him for swearing in front of the kids, he told it to go fuck itself soundly.
"So he knows?" Isaac asked.
Hannah nodded. "He saw."
Isaac whistled through his teeth and folded both arms over his chest. "Shee-it."
"Isaac!" Hannah gasped. "I'm telling if you say that again!"
"He said the f-word!" Isaac retorted, pointing at Randy.
"He ain't a kid!" Hannah argued.
And just like that, the wise little woman and her general became kids again.
"Both of you," Randy huffed. "Enough." He held up a hand to point at the kitchen, but the limb barely made it halfway. He stared at it, confused, and then swallowed and eyed Isaac. "Okay, kiddo. I know you're not that big or anything, but..." His vision swam. Something opened up in the floor and started to pull him toward it. "I think I'm going to need a hand here..."
Whether or not either kid heard him before he dropped, Randy would never know.
*~*~*
Randy sat up with a gasp, and both Hannah and Isaac startled. The television coughed out the gruff yet emphatic comments of a yellow, bug-eyed dog, and the sunlight of mid-morning blazed through the window. For a moment, Randy forgot. Then, for the moment following that, he told himself that he could continue to not remember if he just tried hard enough. Then he saw the frozen handprints on his window and reality blew the concept to hell and back.
He looked at the kids, but he couldn't keep his gaze on them. He glanced at the television, but it couldn't hold him either. Nor the clock, the wall, or the cover of the novel on his coffee table. Time and time again, without him seeming to be in control of it, his eyes were drawn back to the window, and the moment he locked onto those horrible prints, the scene played itself through his head with all the drama of an old movie, and all the vivid brilliance of a Photoshopped image. He sat up, buried his face in both hands and scrubbed until his skin tingled. So, now what?
When he finally dropped his hands, Hannah broke their silence. "You want me to make you some toast?"
Randy shook his head and played with his fingers.
"I can't make coffee," Hannah said after another long pause. "Daddy doesn't like me to touch hot stuff."
Randy gave her a weak smile. "Where, uh... is your Daddy, uh... home? Yet?"
Both kids nodded at the same time, but Isaac added, "Both of them, actually. They'll be sleeping for a bit. The nights when they just go out to run on their own isn't so hard on 'em. But the full moon—"
Hannah's elbow met his side and Isaac bellowed an "Ow!"
He hissed and rubbed his ribs. "He already knows!"
"Don't bring it up," Hannah murmured.
"Yeah." Randy lifted an eyebrow and nodded. "Don't bring it up. Actually, you know what?" He coughed a laugh and looked at each one of them as if assessing them for the first time. "Why don't you both go home." It was phrased as a question, but said as a statement.
Hannah grimaced. "But Daddy said—"
Randy shook his head. "I don't care." He shrugged, and tried to ignore the knife that twisted in his guts when Hannah gave him a pained glance. "You two have done whatever it was the great and mighty Vaughn expected you to. Protect me. Fill in the blanks afterwards. I don't even know. Whatever." He waved at the door. "But I have to assume that since you both already know what the hell is going on, and that Vaughn's already talked your little ears off about it all, that I don't have to worry about sending you over there." He leaned back against the couch and tried to tell his muscles to relax. "You've been all comfy-comfy about this for some time, haven't you?"
They both nodded their agreement. "Mom used to tell us—"
Randy shut Isaac down by lifting one hand and shaking his head yet again. "Uh-uh. No more. Glad you guys have it all figured it out. I'm thrilled that this just seems to come with the territory over here in Wolf. But I don't want to hear any more about it. I don't want to know why, or how, or what the hell anyone expects me to do about it."
"Aww." Isaac frowned and curled his lip in a pout that one day would be so similar to the snarl his father wore that Randy thought the expression was going to kill him. "Come on, Randy. I thought you were our friend. Remember? You were our buddy first."
The comment burned through Randy's guts like acid. But buddy or no, whether the kids neede
d a friend or not, and even if destiny had done everything in its power to bring Randy to Wolf in order to meet the lover that he was going to spend eternity with, men that became wolves were men that became wolves. Point blank. End of discussion. And he was going to have no part of it.
"Go home," Randy repeated. "Get your stuff and go. I have things to do."
*~*~*
When Randy had first arrived in Wolf, clutching the printout from the realtor's website, he'd had two suitcases and his laptop bag. They now rested on the bed, open, getting filled at a rate that was surprisingly quick for someone who had to do the back and forth between dresser and bed with a limp. As he packed, his rage grew.
It was two thousand and fourteen. It was a world of realistic explanations for the things that people used to think were outside of the realm of understanding. There were scientists, and forensic examiners, and psychiatrists. There was medication to balance those brains that couldn't let go of the psychosis that made them believe that the bumps in the night and the scratches behind walls were anything other than shifting foundations and rodents. Sure, there were fantasy novels and horror movies, of course there were. But nobody really believed in any of that shit. Everyone knew that they were actually safe from creatures that stalked the night. Everyone knew that the Grimm brothers just had fantastic imaginations, and that people who could morph into the otherworldly were merely plot lines. And he was angry—unbelievably and outrageously furious—that Vaughn and his unholy coven, or pack, or flock, or whatever the hell they considered themselves to be had dared to force those safe and proper thoughts from his reality.
He dropped his laptop into its bag and then, just because it dared to move, he punched the lid of the suitcase to the left of him closed, and snapped the locks into place. Fucking Wolf. Fucking fairy tales. Fucking Vaughn...
"We should talk."
Randy turned toward the door of his bedroom so fast that his knee screamed at him. "Your fucking kids don't know how to lock a door when they leave a house?"
Vaughn didn't take Randy's bait and argue back. Instead, he stepped forward, extending both hands. "You're scared. I get that. And you have questions. I get that, too. I'm here. Let's talk."
"Scared?" Randy growled. "I'm not scared, I'm fucking angry!"
Vaughn shrugged. "Okay, angry. Angry is all right, too. We can work through angry—"
"Get out." Randy pointed at the door. "Before you start dropping fleas on my carpet."
He saw Vaughn flinch. He registered the tightening of Vaughn's jaw. And he didn't care in the least.
"Randy," Vaughn said, voice firm. Then he paused, lowered his eyes, and shook his head. When he tried again, he spoke in a lower, calmer tone. "Randy, let me explain."
"Explain?" Randy gaped, exaggerating his amazement with both volume and expression. "You mean you can? You mean there is actually a way to do that?" He laughed and flung out both arms. "Tell you what, Vaughn. If you can think of a goddamn way to explain this ridiculous, fucked-up, bullshit chain of events without using the words 'once upon a time'," he flicked his fingers to quote the phrase, "then I will stand here and listen. Otherwise?" He dropped both arms, limped back to the open suitcase, and began to transfer items from the bed to the case. "Otherwise, leave me alone. I, unlike you, live in the real world." He slammed the suitcase shut and snapped the catch. "I have no intention of being part of your horror story."
He tugged the laptop bag over his shoulder and grabbed both suitcases. He turned to Vaughn, they stood face-to-face, and if the whisper in Vaughn's voice didn't shatter his heart irreparably, the expression of remorse on Vaughn's face finished the job.
"Come on, Randy. You were the one who showed me that I needed to communicate. You were the one who said that—"
"Then I guess you didn't learn shit," Randy said. He pushed past Vaughn, almost worried that Vaughn would try and stop him, but not really surprised when Vaughn didn't. "Because I think you missed a few important details along the way."
The walk down the stairs, with both suitcases bumping his legs and the laptop banging his spine with every hobble of his useless leg, was agonizing. Vaughn didn't try to help, though. He just walked behind Randy in silence, patiently waiting while Randy moved one stair at a time. When Randy made it through the front door and headed to the truck, however, Vaughn put one hand on his shoulder. "Where are you going?"
Randy shoved him off and stepped further away. "Don't touch me. Don't you dare lay your paws—" The word stuck in his throat. He swallowed it back down into his guts, and it seemed to fall like a rock. A wave of nausea hit him, and he fought it by throwing both suitcases in the bed of the truck with enough force to make the back end of the vehicle shudder. "Just don't touch me."
"You can't drive," Vaughn pleaded. "Not with that leg. You'll get yourself killed."
When Randy began to hitch to the driver's side without paying his comment any mind, Vaughn tried a different tactic. "If you get pulled over—"
Randy looked up from the handle of the door, glared into Vaughn's eyes, and then smiled coldly. "If I get pulled over, I'll just tell the officer that the guy I was fucking out in Wolf turned out to be a fucking werewolf, and that I had no choice."
"Let me drive you."
"I'm not getting in a goddamn car with you!" Randy's voice was suddenly edged with panic, as if just speaking the word had finally cemented the description of Vaughn in his head.
"You've been in a car with me," Vaughn said patiently. "I've never once come even close to harming you."
"Until that time you turned into a wolf," Randy said. "You and your crazy kid. I'd say that was pretty close. Too fucking close for me, anyway."
There wasn't another word exchanged between them, and Randy didn't look up while he forced his leg to cooperate. He didn't look over when, sweating and cursing, he managed to find a position that was only somewhat agonizing. And he didn't look back as he drove the truck out of the driveway and away.
MARCH
Loss...
Pain...
Fear...
Shame...
The wolf lifted his nose to the sky and howled a cry that his human self would have heard as, "Why?"
And all the life in the fields, the trees, the skies, and the rivers, shrank back. Even the moon slipped behind some clouds as if to hide its face and avoid the question.
Randy closed his eyes and ran a palm over his face. He'd been staring at the screen of his laptop for way, way too long. It was stupid, really. He'd done so much Google searching in the past three weeks that he could recite most folklore by memory. Yet even so, what he'd learned, in his opinion, amounted to absolutely nothing. It all held too much fantasy for him to wrap his head around any of it.
What he should have been doing—as he'd told himself well over a dozen times since he'd been informed—was returning the call his mother had taken from the realtor out in Wolf. She had, after all, called over an hour ago. He lifted his eyes to the alarm clock on the nightstand that stood beside his child's self's bed, and corrected the thought—three hours ago.
"Time flies when you're having fun," he murmured. He pushed the desk chair out and turned to the right to stretch his leg. He wasn't wearing the brace anymore, and according to their family doctor, he was healing up quite rightly. The ache was mostly gone, unless he walked for too long; the ache in his knee, at least. The other ache, the one in his chest, didn't seem to be healing quite so 'rightly' at all. Which was almost as stupid as Google searching werewolves, he figured. After all, nobody had kicked his ass to the curb. He'd been the one to walk away.
"Run," Randy told the empty room. "I was the one to run away."
"I see we're talking to ourselves now."
His father's voice startled him, and Randy twisted in the chair. No matter how old he got, he never could get over his mother's rule about leaving the bedroom door open unless one was dressing. Not that she would have imposed it on him now, he was sure. Mostly sure, anyway.
"Hey, Dad
." He slumped back in the chair and reached out to lower the lid of his laptop.
"House hunting?" His father's gaze flicked down the hallway, then back into the room. "Can I come in?"
"It's your house," Randy said with a smile. "And yes, I was," he lied. "Though I won't really be able to do much until I can get rid of the property back in Wo—" He stopped, smiling at his tongue's refusal to utter the word. "Wyoming."
"Which you won't be able to do until you start returning the realtor's calls." His father sat on the edge of the bed, clasped his hands in his lap, and held Randy's gaze. "So you want to talk about all this yet?"
Randy grinned. "Trying to get rid of me? Am I cramping your style or something? No more Saturday afternoon games in the living room with the cat o' nines and the thigh-highs?"
His dad snorted a laugh. "I'm almost afraid to ask who you imagine in the thigh-highs, Son."
"And I am most terrified that your mind even went there, Dad." Once again Randy stretched out his leg, wincing at the pull of muscle. He really needed to do something other than tuck his legs underneath a desk meant for a twelve-year-old. "So, what's up? Mom send you up to check on me? See if I've reconsidered her suggestion to call up some of her legal-beagle buddies?"
His dad shook his head, but the look of concern on his face grew. "I'm worried about you, kiddo. I'm thinking I've maybe made some mistakes with this whole supportive parent thing I've been doing."
Randy lifted an eyebrow. "Oh? You do? Or Mom does and she told you to say it was you?"
"I do," his dad said firmly. "See..." His father's voice trailed while he appeared to put his thoughts in order. "Randy, when you were little, and you didn't want to stand up to those kids at the public pool that summer—"
