Roadkill

11

I was running. I loved to run. All my life, I’d loved it.

“Catcher, wake up.”

Through the grass and into the trees, under a sky bluer than those of the best hundred summer vacations combined.

Running and running, trying to catch something, but I didn’t know what. It felt like something already gone, but it didn’t keep me from chasing behind it. Running and running…

“Catcher, you’re having a dream.” A hand thumped my ribs and I jerked awake with a snap and a snarl. A familiar scent was there, but it was surrounded by thousands of unfamiliar ones-unfamiliar smells, things, and shapes. Where? Who? My panic peaked sharply… what was… who was…

It had happened before. It had. I closed my eyes against the confusion and the unknown. I closed my eyes and concentrated hard. Hard. Hard? Right before the word lost its meaning, before I lost meaning, it all came back. It felt like a muscle cramp that unbunches and finally loosens, but in my brain. I’d stood on the edge, but this time I hadn’t fallen.

My name is Catcher.

I hadn’t fallen. No, not this time-but lots of times before.

My name is Catcher, and I am fine. Just fine.

I exhaled harshly in a hacking morning cough that sprayed saliva, opened my eyes, and smacked Rafferty in the head with a saucer-sized paw. Then I yawned elaborately to show I was still tired. There was nothing wrong with me, so let me dream already.

He knew better. I wished I could’ve fooled him, but I couldn’t, not a healer and not my cousin. It wasn’t like the good old days when I’d once swiped his wallet and his keys, taken his Mustang, and traded it in for one of those Volkswagen Rabbits from the eighties. We looked enough alike that I could pass for his license photo when I signed over the pink slip. He’d given serious thought to killing me and did kick my butt Wolf-to-Wolf, but to see a Wolf driving around in a Rabbit, it was worth it. Was it ever worth it. Our local pack laughed its collective furry butt off at the sight for weeks.

I pulled more than a few good ones on him back then. I’d thought he was too serious. I’d thought it was my job to lighten him up, to show him what a ride life could be. It turned out I had. Only he’d been the one who was right. Life was serious and not a ride anyone could count on. You could get a bullet train rush of speed and an amusement park picture at the end with your hair on end or you could get a rickety wooden roller coaster that crumbled, spilling you into the river far below. There was no way you knew what you’d get when you bought the ticket. It was the luck of the draw.

“You’re moping. Stop moping and eat your damn fries.” Rafferty shoved a bag of fresh, hot, salty-as-the-sea fries under my nose and I brightened. Okay, maybe the ride wasn’t perfect and I was on the downhill slide into the end of it, but going up that roller coaster hill had been great. Family, friends, college, good movies, better food, lots of sex, and running under the skies of every season as human and wolf. I’d had a good life, and it still had high points: family, movies, my head out of the car window grinning in the wind, and fries. Who didn’t love fries? I stuck my muzzle in the white paper bag and went to work on about half a pound of them.

So I had a little hiccup of the brain this morning, and it was morning-after ten if McDonald’s was serving fries, which meant late morning but still morning. I could tell by the smell of the air, the color of the sky, the position of the sun when I peered out the window, and I could also read the digital clock of the bank across the street from where we were parked. I grinned to myself in satisfaction. Just a hiccup and I’d plenty of those. I was still here, all of me, and that’s what counted.

When I did go… if I did go, Rafferty had firmly amended before telling me with a reluctance he’d never shown any other of his patients, it would be one big hiccup. I’d go wolf in thought, as I had many times before, but that time… the last time, I’d never come back to Catcher again. No Flowers for Algernon for me. No gradual loss of intellect or changing bit by bit until my mind wasn’t mine anymore. No, the hiccups would get closer and closer together, as they had, and when it happened, it would be all at once. I’d never know I was going; never know I was gone. I tried to be philosophical about it. After all, chances were I’d be a happy wolf. I was a happy werewolf. I simply wouldn’t be me anymore-not the Catcher me, but a simpler version of me, maybe. I hoped.

I dived back in the bag for more fries. I was lucky. I’d gotten to be me longer than I would have if Rafferty had let me die. I dropped a mouthful of soggy fries in his lap and gave him a more cheerful grin this time. My ride had been good, great even, just short. Rafferty’s was long and, if he didn’t let go of his guilt, miserable. The very least I could do for him was not add to that with any gloom-and-doom brooding. And I really was done with it. Resigned, no, not resigned… I was at peace with my fate. If only Rafferty could be too and stop fighting it like the stubborn bastard he was; stop looking for the Cure, the impossible C. Fries couldn’t fix that, though, as much as I wished they could.

“Thanks.” Picking up one fry to watch saliva drip from it, he said what he always said. “You’re a pal. We’re in Utah now. We stopped for gas, if you’re curious.”

I snorted, indicating I was more than capable of smelling gasoline. Even a human could smell that. I could smell something else too: Delilah, and she smelled better than the fries by a long shot. She might be out to kill him, but Cal was still one lucky son of a bitch in my opinion. I gave my cousin a questioning woo and turned to look out each back window for a glimpse of her.

“Jesus, just don’t hump the seat, okay?” He sighed. “I’ll never live that one down.”

“Cheerful one.” Delilah slid into the empty front seat. Niko, Robin, and that naked cat, Cal, they were all off somewhere. “Litter mate? You all the fun, he with none?” she went on, her smile bright and wicked.

She was stunning. Not beautiful, no, but something beyond beautiful. Something wild and dangerous even to another Wolf. Her eyes were naturally amber, not wolf amber, with skin to match and that silver blond hair that still mixed up snow and sex in one happy bundle in my thoughts. I tossed my head to the side, pulling out of range-either a refusal or a negative in wolf-talk. And I definitely didn’t mean it as a refusal.

She looked at us closer, studying-smelling. “Cousins. Tame cousins. Suburban Wolves,” she said with not a hint, but a good helping of scorn. In the Kin’s eyes, there were Kin and there was everybody else. If you didn’t rob, kill, run drugs, pimp succubi, and do other things not worth knowing, you weren’t a predator. You weren’t a Wolf. You were just a dog playing dress-up. But Delilah didn’t seem to mind, just as she didn’t mind Cal… aside from the possible killing- him prospect. Of course Delilah didn’t mind us because of the All Wolf. If she could get Rafferty to do to them what he’d done to me, it was like standing on the mountaintop with your poisoned Kool-Aid and the alien mothership actually swooping in to pick you up: the ultimate reward to them, but an abomination to my cousin. He would never do it. She could talk forever.

I rested my head on the front seat and grinned at her, with the kind of grin that gave her the indication of where my brain, which I still had for the moment, was right now-definitely not in my head. Rafferty might not like her, but I didn’t care what she said. She could’ve asked me to let little children ride me like a pony around the parking lot. She could’ve read the back of a cereal box. As long as I was able to be this close to her, smell her, stick a nose in those long strands of hair, I was good. Happy happy happy. If Algernon had gotten any, he might’ve lasted longer; that was my theory. Poor mouse. Poor janitor. Poor me.

I turned my head further and pawed delicately at Delilah’s hair, radiating that “poor me” scent until I’d flooded the car with it. I don’t know if she’d have fallen for it or not. Rafferty was too quick to grab me by the scruff and pull me back. “She’s Kin,” he snapped. “And she’s a crazy All Wolf. You don’t want that; I don’t care how horny you are.”

“So judgmental.” She crossed her arms along the back of the seat I’d just been yanked from and rested her chin on that sunset skin. She’d left her motorcycle leather top elsewhere and was wearing only a tank top now. It showed a lot of skin, but, truthfully, skin or fur, I didn’t care. It was nice-very nice. A strong hand untangled itself and she cupped my muzzle firmly. “But you… so beautiful. So all that is right. All that is true. We could be as you. Whole. Wolf as Wolf is meant to be.”

This was America, land of religious freedom. She could’ve wanted to ascend to the higher being of a fire hydrant for all I cared. My only concern was about getting some. All right, I wasn’t proud, but I wasn’t ashamed either. It had been a long time. It could be a longer time and by then the Catcher part of me wouldn’t be around to appreciate it. No, there was no shame as I vaulted the seat and landed on top of her. I might’ve howled in glee. I know she howled back. But before she could go wolf, we were interrupted-by my cousin and by Cal, who, to give him credit, didn’t try to shoot me.

Rafferty pulled me back over the seat and Cal pulled Delilah out of the car altogether. He must’ve been furious, although again, nice enough not to shoot me. Then he avoided a punch from Delilah that would’ve broken his nose if it had connected-dodged quick, more than human-quick-and he looked at me. For a brief second, maybe I imagined it, but I thought I saw a red gleam in the gray of his eyes: Auphe red.

I decided I wasn’t horny anymore. I further decided it might be a good time for a bathroom break, hooked my paw around the door handle, yanked and pushed the door open with my shoulder. If I hit the asphalt running, it was because I really had to piss-no other reason. I heard Rafferty following after me. I could’ve gone back for the laptop to ask if he’d seen it too or sensed it as a healer, but I didn’t want to know, just as people didn’t want to know years ago when I’d had to tell them I had leukemia, that I was going to die. You could see it in their faces… Take it back. Rewind a few minutes. Make that conversation never have happened. Sometimes it was for me, the not wanting to know. They didn’t want to lose me. They didn’t want me to suffer. But sometimes it was for themselves, not me. Don’t put that on me. Don’t make me carry the burden of your being sick… your dying. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to deal with it.

With Cal, I was even worse, because I felt them both. Sorrow and fear… for an Auphe.

“Damn it, Catcher, wait. Your collar.”

I stopped with an internal and external groan and glumly stood still as Rafferty slipped it over my head. It wasn’t as if Raff wanted to put a collar on me, the most humiliating thing you could do to a werewolf, but it lessened the incidents like we’d had with the truckers the day before. That was why it was bright green with butterflies on it. Butterflies. I couldn’t even have a butch collar with skulls and crossbones or just a plain-colored one. No, I had to have the girly collar to make me look as harmless as possible. He’d tried to put a pink one on me first and that had led to the destruction of a motel room. There was a lot I was willing to do to make things easier on my cousin, but I wasn’t going pink.

I sat down on my haunches and took a look around, trying to ignore the sounds of my tags jangling against each other. One was shaped like a bone. Wasn’t that cute? Wasn’t that sweet? I moaned again and Raff said quietly, “I hear you, Cuz.” He did. It was the only thing that made that thing around my neck bearable.

I leaned against his leg and took in our surroundings. This was a busier exit than the usual ones where we’d been stopping. Several fast-food restaurants, truck stops, gas stations, and the pervasive, big generic food-clothes-auto-electronics-banking-coffee-stand-photo-vision- salon-and-have-surgery-while-you-wait stores you saw everywhere now. “Goodfellow and Niko are in there buying clothes.” He didn’t smile often, my cousin, but he absolutely smirked when he said that, a smirk that dripped with pure evil.

I smirked back, my tongue lolling. Goodfellow buying clothes at the equivalent of Wal- Mart; it was worth the car getting blown up to see that. I wondered if polyester would actually burn his skin or simply jump off his body and scoot away. We’d walked to the McDonald’s curb and Rafferty sat down on it. My eyes drifted back to the car where Cal and Delilah were arguing. It was too far for a human to hear, but for a Wolf, I might as well have been a foot from them.

“I don’t give a damn who you sleep with,” Cal was saying, his tone sharp but cold too. Ice-cold. I’d seen Cal only a few times in my life, but I knew what he was capable of. I wondered if Delilah did or only thought she did. “This isn’t Weres and Vamps 90210. We’re not going fucking steady. You can go bang the bag boy at the goddamn grocery store if you want, but leave Catcher and Rafferty alone. And when you do screw the bag boy, have the damn decency not to do it in the car where I can smell it all day long.” Cal pretended he didn’t care that Delilah might try to kill him, but he cared-too much. But it wasn’t making him reckless; it was making him… less. Less of what he was and more of what he wasn’t-or what he didn’t want to be.

“Told you will do as I want,” Delilah countered. “What I want is not to kill. Not you.” I could smell it on her, the truth and the lie. She might not want to, but it didn’t mean she wouldn’t if it were her only resort. “The Kin can say, but I am Kin too. Better Kin. I do as I please,” she said. Cal looked as if he wanted to believe it, and he didn’t have any reason not to. Her words rang with truth. She was a good liar and when it was only half a lie, it was even easier to be convincing. Cal wasn’t a Wolf. His sense of smell was Auphe, but they hadn’t been able to smell the emotions of truth or honesty; only fear-the dark, sharp scent of a prey’s terror. He had to trust his instincts. I was glad I wasn’t human. It would be like being half blind, depending on only what you could see and hear, on the human oddity of subtext. How they managed to get anything accomplished amazed me.

Cal bowed his head. He had yanked Delilah out of the car either because she let him-human strength was less than werewolf strength-or because of that concept I didn’t want to consider, that thing I didn’t want to know-the other half of Cal that was growing, spreading. I shifted my weight on my paws and Rafferty murmured, “I know.” But knowing and being able to do something about it weren’t always the same.

Now Cal had her backed against the car, and Delilah, being who she’d shown herself to be, was enjoying it. He wasn’t. His fists were clenched, knuckles white. “Then don’t ignore me either. Change your mind and do your best to kill me, but don’t fucking ignore me. I’ve been happy, except for that damn Suyolak, for the first time in my life. The Auphe are gone. I’m free. Don’t ruin it, got it? Don’t goddamn ruin it.”

Cal was human, Cal was Auphe, but Cal might have the spirit of the wolf in him too. Being dead, being killed in battle, being seen; it was better than being nothing. It was better than nonexistence or the wrong kind of existence. Cal knew that.

“Happy,” Rafferty murmured at my ear. “He has been less moody than the other times I’d seen him.” Happy? Okay, everything is relative. What I paid attention to was that an upbeat Cal equaled a downbeat cousin, but Raff didn’t elaborate on why it did. We both already knew. As I’d thought, as I’d seen, as I’d smelled, the Auphe in him was growing.

“Puppy!”

I turned my head just in time to have a McNugget shoved up my left nostril-or at least a good attempt at it. A toddler with a dandelion fluff of wispy blond hair was trying to pet me with one small hand and gift me with questionable chicken parts with the other. Puppy he knew; the difference between a nose and a mouth, not so much.

I loved little kids: manic balls of energy with four limbs waving like drunken windmills. They always were up for Frisbee, grabbing their bikes and going, running and shouting, racing, playing hide-and-seek. They were just like wolves, except at the end of hide- and-seek they didn’t eat what they caught. They lived in the moment-not yesterday or tomorrow or even the next minute. It was a good philosophy, especially for my life now.

I opened my mouth and patiently let him stuff the food down around my tonsils while he giggled and his mother looked horrified, frozen, clutching several paper bags. I waited until the little boy withdrew his hand; then I swallowed the chicken and held out a polite paw to the mom. See how harmless? Shake the doggy’s paw. See what a good doggy?

She didn’t take it, but only grabbed the child and swept him up with one spare arm to bolt to her car. “You should have that thing on a leash,” she told Rafferty in the most righteous of tones over her shoulder.

“Humans,” he muttered, and looped an arm over the barrel of my body.

I chuffed in agreement to make him feel better, but actually I didn’t mind humans. I’d dated enough of them in college. It was true that most of them started out fine, but some usually went wrong and lost their sense of play. Those you just ignored. I’d long since stopped taking it personally when I’d gotten locked in the fur coat. If I hadn’t, I would’ve eaten someone and been in my right mind when I did it. I had to let it go, and I did. Bad emotions will eat you up as fast as any cancer. I saw that in Rafferty every day as another tiny piece of him was gobbled up by guilt and despair. But no matter what I said or did, I hadn’t been able to change it. That was who he was, spending his life trying to stop the unstoppable, with me and every other patient he took on. In the end, he would always lose. For a Wolf and a healer, he was remarkably blind about death-stubborn to his lupine bones, denying nature itself, and he’d never be any different.

I would’ve given anything to hear him laugh.

Niko-another one who didn’t do much laughing, not on the outside anyway, although I could often smell the silent humor on him-walked up to us across the Wal-Mart parking lot while carrying a bag in each hand. He looked down at us with a neutral gray gaze. “Have you seen-” Interrupted by the ring of his cell phone, he switched one bag to his other hand and answered it. “Yes, Ishiah?”

I’d never liked caller ID. It took the surprise out of life, and life could use all the surprises it could get as far as I was concerned-good ones at least. Of course, with the way things were going, this wasn’t a good one. But I didn’t know that yet.

A Wolf’s hearing is more than exceptional and I had no ethical problems listening to Ishiah’s side of the conversation. I wasn’t entirely the goody-goody suburban Wolf Delilah labeled me. No Wolf alive was. And, hey, I was nosy. My life had been limited for a long time. Eavesdropping was a minor sin for a little entertainment value.

This Ishiah, the monogamy quandary-or victim, depending on your opinion of Goodfellow-didn’t waste time on pleasantries. “Where’s Robin?”

There was a thrum under the voice that vibrated the air in a way a human couldn’t hear-in a very unique, deep, and musical way. A peri. A puck and a peri: That had my eyes crossing. The profane and the pure. It wasn’t precisely a Match dot com dream come true.

“I was about to ask my traveling companions the same thing. Still in the store, I was assuming.” Niko looked over his shoulder back at the building. “Although considering the type of store it is, I would’ve thought he would have been in and out in five minutes.”

“He just called me and he doesn’t sound… himself. He sounds drunk and confused. You need to find him. Now.” All right, a righteous and pure peri, but a pissed-off one. And worried too.

“Now,” Niko confirmed, flipping the cell shut with a brisk snap that showed how concerned he was. “It has to be Suyolak. Robin certainly wouldn’t drink any alcohol he could purchase from liter bottles in that store. Rafferty, Catcher, can you find him?”

I was already on my feet, nose in the air. Thousands upon thousands of scents, but a puck was easy to pick out, a piece of bright green yarn in a mass of bland tan ones. Rafferty was most likely feeling for him with his healing talent as well as following with his own nose, but four legs were faster than two, and I streaked through the parking lot with my cousin and Niko behind me. I had Goodfellow’s scent off the bat. There were many scents actually: several kinds of cologne; silk; shampoo that cost more than the car we’d been riding in. He did like the finer things in life.

A few people shouted as I ran past them, but I was so quick that most were left gaping, mouths opening and closing like brain-damaged goldfish. I didn’t care. I was running, I was tracking, and while I was apprehensive about Goodfellow, I was also doing what wolves did best… besides kill. I couldn’t help but enjoy the adrenaline.

To run is to live and I was living.

I left the parking lot, ran through grass, passed Goodfellow’s dropped phone, and vaulted a massive drainage ditch as if it were a puddle. He’d walked around it. I passed over it as if I had wings, and I caught him. I caught the puck a split second before he stepped into the first lane of four lanes of busy, extremely fast- moving traffic that ran in front of the shopping center. I snagged the back of his expensive if now-dusty and sweat-stained shirt and yanked him backward hard. He hit the grass and rolled several times back down into the graveled ditch. If it had been a cartoon, you would’ve heard the splat. In the real world it was more of a combination of a thunk and thud.

Whoops.

I jumped down beside him as he lay spread-eagle on the dried, cracked mud. His eyes were half open, but he wasn’t seeing me. He was talking, but it was all Greek to me… literally. And I took Russian and Japanese in college, so I didn’t have a clue. I licked a broad tongue across his face, figuring that would disgust him so much he would have to come around. He didn’t.

Rafferty, Niko, and Cal came sliding down beside us, the latter wasn’t going to let us go tearing off without following us. “What’s wrong with him?” Cal demanded.

“He looks like he was sleepwalking. With Suyolak, that’s certainly an option,” Niko said.

“And into traffic to be run down-what a damn fun party trick that would be to him. The bastard,” Cal muttered. “What’s he saying?”

“You don’t want to know,” his brother answered dryly but disquieted as well. Worried. “Rafferty?”

Rafferty was kneeling beside Goodfellow, his hand resting on the puck’s head with the brown curls springing between his fingers. “Huh. Never thought I’d actually get to diagnose the good old ‘dead in a ditch’ in my lifetime.”

Cal snapped, “Rafferty, he’s our friend, all right? So don’t fuck around. Fix him.” Fix him, because Cal didn’t seem to have too many friends and he didn’t want to lose those he did have. Being half Auphe wasn’t going to make for the most popular kid on the playground. Poor guy. Although even if he hadn’t been half Auphe, I still wasn’t sure he’d win any congeniality contests. Like my cousin, he had a temper.

Snorting, unimpressed by his cranky counterpart, Rafferty took a more serious tone, “He’s asleep, like Niko said, and thanks to Catcher’s quick and heroic action, he also has a concussion.”

I laid back my ears and growled. Rafferty used his free hand to shake my ruff. “Kidding, Cuz. A concussion is better than his ending up as roadkill.” He closed his eyes. “ Niko, Cal, go scare off the rubberneckers up there and I’ll work on the concussion and then wake him up.”

It didn’t take long. The pale face regained a healthy color, the blood seeping out on the gravel beneath Goodfellow’s head stopped flowing, and after five or so minutes, the puck’s eyes cleared and he blinked dazedly for a second before his gaze sharpened. “Where am I and what is that I feel on the back of my shirt?”

That would be a little bit of good honest Wolf saliva, but I looked away and pretended an interest in a lethargic frog hopping down the ditch away from us. Just as I liked kids, I liked frogs too. A biologist couldn’t not like frogs. They were fascinating. They came in all colors; some were poisonous; some could switch sexes. Amazing.

By the time it had hopped out of sight, Goodfellow was sitting up and talking to the peri on his phone either Niko or Cal had retrieved for him. “I’m fine, Ish. Lassie helped me out somewhat. What happened? Ahhh… some sleepwalking. Not anything to worry about. Didn’t I say Lassie saved me? So how much danger could I have been in really? Other than falling down a well or getting trapped in the ‘old mine’?” I bared my teeth and Goodfellow bared his back at me. Not only did he speak Greek, but he spoke Wolf fairly fluently as well. “No. You don’t need to come. Our doggy healer can handle it, he’s quite sure. Oh, and anything I might have said while asleep that was of a sexual nature I promise to back up when I get home. No, back up was not a euphemism. I don’t use euphemisms. If I meant that, then that’s what I would’ve said. I am sitting in a filthy ditch at the moment, but if you want to discuss details right now, we can.” Apparently Ishiah, thank Fenris and all that runs with fur, didn’t. He was far more interested in the issue of Goodfellow’s safety.

Ishiah didn’t seem too reassured from his reply regarding the subject, but in the end, the puck convinced him, more to keep the peri out of harm’s way than for our sake, I thought, and we were out of the ditch and headed back to the car and McDonald’s. After all the excitement, I was hungry again. I was thinking strawberry sundae.

Goodfellow tried to wipe the dirt from his clothes and hair, glaring at me when he reached back to touch the wet patch on his shirt. Whatever the male version of a diva, he was it. I saved his life and he turned up his nose at a little spit. He kept walking back to the Wal-Mart after Cal tentatively slapped his shoulder, and Rafferty and I stopped at the McDonald’s, claiming our same spot on the curb. Cal then headed back to Delilah, who was languidly leaning against the car, and started up their argument again while Niko kept the puck company. With Suyolak pulling even more tricks out of a bottomless hat, the buddy system did seem the way to go. Keep your buddy from drowning or falling asleep midstep. It was the same thing in this situation.

Fifteen minutes later Goodfellow was back, and I was wearing a now-empty plastic sundae container over my nose. I pawed it off and licked away my ice-cream mustache as Goodfellow stopped directly in front of us.

“I guessed you didn’t want to leave your cousin long enough to shop yourself, Doctor. I couldn’t bring myself to dig you a nice pair of discarded jeans out of the Dumpsters, but I estimated your size.” The smile he gave my cousin was more wolfish than any we real Wolves had in us. “I’m very good at estimating sizes, although I’m more than willing to confirm it by hand.”

Five bags were dumped on the curb beside me. I raised my eyes to see Salome, who’d hopped out of the car to follow the puck into the store. She must’ve thought she’d been lying down on the job earlier and wasn’t about to let that happen again. Curled around Goodfellow’s neck, she returned my gaze with an interest that made me feel much like that McNugget I’d eaten earlier. As a werewolf, I wasn’t used to feeling that way. A two- hundred-pound machine of pure muscle evolved to kill, facing off against a hairless, seven-pound Mr. Bigglesworth stand-in. I put my head in one of the bags and pretended to investigate the contents. If that made me a chickenshit, so be it. A furry lover of peace; that was me.

“That monogamy lasted, what, a whole day? But then again a dick has no morals, yeah?” Rafferty said as I sniffed denim and cotton.

“Clever. By dick I can choose whether you mean me or the splendor that precedes me like Excalibur. Bravo.” He clapped in appreciation. If hands could be facetious, these were.

I rolled my eyes back to see that unwavering Pan smile turn more conceited. I almost lost my breakfast into the plastic bag, but decided it would be a waste of good fries and kept searching through the bags with vague curiosity.

“Oh, help me.” Rafferty dropped his head into his hands.

“And I haven’t made up my mind yet about monogamy.” Although from hearing him talk to Ishiah on the phone, I was beginning to doubt that. “If I had decided against it, I’d do you. I don’t like you, despite your helping me with the concussion, you being the exceptional ass and all, but I’d do you. You’re doable in a shaggy, natural man-wolf of the wild way.” He folded his arms. “And if I had decided on monogamy, it wouldn’t mean that I couldn’t still look or fantasize or talk the talk. I simply couldn’t walk the walk. Unfortunately for my decision-making process, I do truly love walking the walk. Besides, considering our current situation, I don’t believe making choices about monogamy should be my primary concern. Staying alive long enough to ponder it at a later date while surrounded by naked flesh in a succession of strip clubs is slightly more important.” The last words were so faint, even my wolf ears barely heard them. “Or naked flesh and feathers.”

For someone who feared monogamy, he sure did like to talk about it, I snorted to myself. When a creature is forever like a puck, could monogamy be forever, though? I came to an instant conclusion. When one is forever, nothing can be forever. But something doesn’t have to be forever to be good, and I knew that Goodfellow did have it good now, whether he’d completely come to realize it or not. I could smell it on him. I could see it around him like a halo… like an aura of I’m-getting-laid-and-you’re-not. But not just laid; more than that-something extraordinary.

Right now I’d have settled for the just-laid part.

Lucky puck.

As I considered biting him just for the getting- laid part alone, his foot nudged one of the bags he’d dropped toward me in particular. When I found what he’d bought for me, I forgave him… just a little. I felt my tail wave back and forth in pleasant surprise and I dragged out the two calendars. One was swimsuit models, and one was Wolves in the Wild. “For you, for having some vague part in perhaps saving my life. Or so the others have told me. Despite soiling one of my best shirts with… never mind.” Goodfellow cleared his throat. Pucks were so very good at fake emotions that real ones were something of an effort for them. It made the gesture all the more meaningful. “I tried to find one with the most female wolves on it,” he added, “but a few shots were uncooperative in determining that, so you may have to lust after a male wolf too. The diversity will be good for you.”

I held up my paw again as I had to the irate mother almost a half hour ago. This time there was no humiliation to it. I was reaching across a communication void to say, “You’re welcome” and Goodfellow accepted it in exactly that spirit. He gripped my paw and said sympathetically, “I can’t say I know personally what it’s like to be in a consummately… ah… awkward situation. But even if I don’t know, I’ve seen Cal ’s preoccupation with not passing on the Auphe genes. I also have an excellent imagination. I hope these help somewhat.”

Pucks. They were rapacious in all they did-sex, money, trickery-but Goodfellow wasn’t such a bad guy. I’d go as far as saying he was the king of good guys, for a puck. I was glad I saved his life; I just wished I’d left more saliva on his shirt. I picked up the calendars with my teeth and slapped them against Rafferty’s chest. Open. Open. I didn’t need my laptop to get that point across. He grumbled and ripped the clear plastic off them and I stuck a wet nose to each page to flip it for a look. Wow. I looked back and forth between firm asses and plumed tails and couldn’t have been happier.

I stayed that way until we were all back in the car, Cal smelling more Auphe than usual, but I had booty and a great sense of denial, so I ignored it. Happy, happy. But unfortunately what I couldn’t ignore was when Niko, now in the passenger seat while Robin drove, asked my cousin, “You are sure we’re still on Suyolak’s trail? Obviously he left another trap for us here that Robin fell into, but he’s clever. I don’t want to be doubtful, but…” He let the silence finish the sentence for him. He did doubt. A careful, meticulous man, if he had doubt, he was going to want it resolved. “You can still sense Suyolak?”

Rafferty wasn’t offended. He wasn’t anything except a mass of fury and determination at the mention of the antihealer’s name-so overwhelmingly so that I couldn’t believe even nose-blind humans couldn’t smell it. “I have him,” he said flatly. “He’s ahead of us. Far ahead, but I’m not losing him and I’m not falling for any more mirrors of the bastard. As for the traps, they’re small, harder to detect. Especially when all it does is make you sleep-walk. That does trip the healer radar. It’s quiet, like a grenade, until it goes off, but I’ll do what I can to sniff them out.” He’d been looking out the window at nothing… again… but now he shifted his attention back to everyone in the car. “You don’t get it. Do you think I took this job to save the world? I don’t give a crap about the world right now. Catcher does.” He locked a hand in the ruff at my neck. “He pushed me to take it, and I did… but for him. If I can take the life from Suyolak the way he’s slowly sucking it from his driver, I can make Catcher as he was. His healing power and mine combined, I’ll have enough to do it then. I’ll be able to fix my cousin. So don’t worry about my losing his trail. It won’t fucking happen. Period.”

Suddenly all the enjoyment of my calendar lust disappeared. He was right. They didn’t get it. I hadn’t gotten it either. I’d thought he’d done it for the right reason. He was a healer. Saving the world was what he did, one person at a time. I thought taking out Suyolak would put him closer to a balance again and help him see that curing me couldn’t be the end all and be all of his existence. He was a healer and that meant he belonged to everyone who needed him; not only to me. True, I’d come to regret the decision once I saw what Suyolak was capable of and wished we’d never come to be part of this. Family protecting family and the hell with the world; that’s what I thought.

That was also Rafferty’s point of view exactly. Hypocrite, me.

But it still wasn’t right-stealing life force, no matter if it was tainted-not for a healer. I was turning my cousin into something that years ago he would’ve killed in a heartbeat. But there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Nothing. I took the current calendar, swimsuit issue, grabbed it in my jaws, and tossed it aside in frustration. Cal caught it. “Whoa! Not enough tits for you? Need six more per model?”

He was in a better mood now, somewhat better; it was a subtle sniff of a difference, but I was Wolf enough to catch it. He and Delilah had come to a wary sort of trust, or so it seemed. I wasn’t poking my nose into it. After all, I had calendars to occupy me, not the real thing like some half-Auphe bastards.

Not fair. No, that wasn’t fair. Putting that on him, when I was really upset with myself. I pulled in a breath and released it, letting some of the anger go. It wasn’t Cal ’s fault.

Although, I noticed, despite the mood change, he seemed twitchy too, which distracted me from my own problems. Tapping fingers on his knee. Unloading and reloading his gun. Playing with his knives. Changing positions often. Fingering the bracelet around his wrist. Except it wasn’t a bracelet. They were mala beads for Buddhist meditation. I’d dated a Buddhist girl in college, not Wolf, but I hadn’t planned on marrying her, and I wasn’t prejudiced like most of my kind. I’d dated a lot of human girls. They were sweet and if they were jealous, they didn’t threaten to castrate you with their teeth. You couldn’t say the same about the she-Wolves you brought home to meet Mom and Dad.

This girl had been nice, with coppery hair, cheerful blue eyes, and penny-bright freckles across the top of her pale breasts. And clothes on or off, she always wore her mala beads. I knew Niko wore two or three of the bracelets as well, but unlike his brother, Cal definitely didn’t come across as the Zen kind. But he was going through the motions, fingers moving from one bead to the next while his lips framed soundless words-his mantra, because I sure couldn’t see him praying. He wasn’t the praying type. Niko was watching him and, unlike his brother, he wasn’t happy, eyes dark over his hawkish nose. I could sample it in his scent as well. He was watching Cal… closely… and when Cal caught that look, he settled down, dropping his hands into his lap and the calendar onto the floor. “It’s okay, Cyrano,” he said with an assurance I wasn’t buying. What exactly was okay? Or not okay? I didn’t think this was about what had happened to Robin. It smelled darker. Much darker.

I was about to get on the laptop and ask Rafferty what was up. If it was what we’d suspected, smelled-that Cal was more Auphe now than he had been last time we’d seen him. But that was pointless. What else could it be? I didn’t need Rafferty to verify what both our noses had told us. But life decided we got a nice close shot of it anyway.

Something else showed us in brilliant, unforgettable detail that Cal might be less human than my werewolf cousin and I.

The Ördögs.