66Small Town Wolf
by R.P. Evans
Chapter Two
Audrey was so tired. Who would have thought that by mid-afternoon, the snow and ice would have melted, and suddenly everyone and their mother had some sort of pet-related problem. It had been so busy that Audrey hadn't even gotten a chance to talk to the pet food delivery man like she usually did. Dragan, a nice man, sneezed a lot. Also a werewolf. If only he lived in Carlin Cross...but no, she had no idea where his home was. Only that he lived far away, and had to travel a long way to get their shipments to them, hence why she saw him so little. She'd only gotten a small wave in before he'd had to leave. Damn those people and their pets. God, she could have solved half the problems by talking to the dogs, if, you know, it wouldn't expose her secret and all.
She wasn't even concerned about the fact that she now believed not one, but two people had broken into her home yesterday. She just wanted to curl up in bed and go to sleep. She started stripping as soon as she got in the door. Shoes off in the living room, shirt and bra a heap in the hallway, jeans and socks littering her bedroom floor. Wearing just a pair of midnight blue underwear, Audrey crawled into bed and instantly fell asleep.
"Hey, mister."
She nudged the body with her foot. No response. Moving branches aside, she crawled through the bushes on her hands and knees to the body. Blood. So much blood. He'd been shot.
Fingers on his cold, clammy neck. No pulse. Hand above his nose and mouth. Was he breathing?
How loud could she scream?
Audrey awoke with a start. God, the dream again. That stupid memory. Why was this happening to her? Didn't she have enough on her plate to worry about without adding the mysterious werewolf who had bitten her into the mix?
Audrey laid back down and rolled onto her side in an attempt to get more comfortable. Eyes closed, she was almost asleep when she heard a creak, like that of an old floorboard. Her eyes snapped open, she bit her lip to keep herself from gasping. Someone was in the house with her. She sat up slowly, careful not to make a sound. Then she slipped out of bed. She didn't bother putting any more clothes on—if she needed to change, it would go more quickly without them.
Out in the hallway she paused, poised between the door of her bedroom and the bathroom, prepared to run into each room if she needed to. She quietly inhaled a large breath, and exhaled just as quietly. She could smell something, the faint traces of an already-familiar smell to her. It was already familiar because it was the scent of another werewolf. She crept forward. She had never had to fight another werewolf before—the only one she knew, besides herself, was Dragan, and he wasn't a threat to her. But this was different. This werewolf, whoever it was, had invaded her home. Not only that, but the town of Carlin Cross was her territory. She had always been the only werewolf here. How dare someone think they could just come into town, without asking her permission, and then have the audacity to break into her home? Audrey was suddenly mad, no, furious. She could feel her skin itching, wanting to change into the wolf, wanting to fight whoever this was and send them packing.
Audrey made her way into the living room. She tried to make her footsteps as quick and light as possible, tried to make her breathing as shallow as she could. She tried to hunt the creature through her own home. As soon as she rounded the corner from the hallway, though, she stopped. Her eyes went wide. It took all the willpower she could muster not to scream.
It had been twelve years, but it wasn't difficult to recognize the person standing in front of her. Tall, blonde, and handsome, nicely built, and with a bullet-wound scar that decorated his shirtless chest. Standing before her was the man who had bitten her, the man who had turned her into a werewolf, and, as Audrey saw it, had taken a normal life away from her.
She was going to kill him.
It seemed that he had been just as shocked my her appearance as she had been by his. Well, maybe shocked wasn't the right word. He had probably been expecting her, but now that he was actually seeing her, it seemed he was a little stunned. After all, she had grown up. She wasn't a girl anymore, and—
Whoa. Where had that come from?
He took a step forward. Audrey tensed, but she didn't move. She could feel her throat rumble; a low growl escaped her lips. She had no idea how he had found her, or why, after twelve fucking years, he had decided to show up, but just because he was the one who had bitten her, her lycanthropic "parent", if you will, didn't mean she wouldn't fight him.
"Audrey," he said. She flinched. How had he known her name? Had he been spying on her? "Don't do this. I'm here to help."
Here to help. The words broke something in Audrey. Usually she held her anger in. She had a lot of anger and didn't like to explode all over people, opting instead to just change and run out her frustration. But his words, his very attitude, sent her over the edge. "Help?" she cried. "You just broke into my house in the middle of the night—half-naked, I might add—and I'm supposed to believe you're here to help me? Where were you twelve fucking years ago, buddy?"
"I can understand how you might feel upset at me..." he started to say, but Audrey cut him off.
"Upset?!" Audrey could feel her skin practically humming with the need to change. She knew her eyes were glowing a bright, wolf-yellow. "I am more than upset! I'm furious! It would have been different if you'd bitten me when I was an adult, but you didn't! I was sixteen!"
"And I'm truly sorry about that, but if you'd let me explain..."
"I don't want to hear your explanations!" Audrey cried. "There are no excuses for what you did. You turned me into a monster, and then you didn't even stick around to tell me what you'd done. Obviously you lived..." Here she shot him a glare. "You couldn't be bothered to help me through what you knew would be a terrifying transition?"
"I knew you'd be angry..." he started to say.
"You're damn right, I'm angry!" she exploded. "You know, that first time I changed, I thought I was dying. And then, afterwards, well, I thought I was just plain crazy. I didn't know what was happening to me or why. Do you have any idea how frightening..."
It was his turn to interrupt her for once. "Of course I know how frightening it is!" he shouted back at her. "Someone had to turn me, Audrey, just like I turned you." Here he lowered his voice. His eyes, too, were glowing that bright amber yellow. "I knew how much you must hate me," he told her. "I wasn't going to contact you. But I knew you were in danger, so..."
"How?" Audrey asked. "What danger, and how did you know?"
"Someone broke into your house, did they not?"
"Yeah, you!"
He waved her comment away with his hand. "Besides me," he said. "A human. Someone who knew to hide their scent with water."
Fear spiked in Audrey. How did he know all this? If he had been watching her, and he had seen a human break into her home, why hadn't he helped then? Or, what if he was working with the human? It didn't seem likely, but then again, just because Audrey didn't like humans all that much didn't mean other werewolves disliked them. She took a step back, prepared to dash to the back of the house and make her escape through the back door.
"I know what you're thinking," he said. "And it's not true. Now, I can explain everything, but we have to get out of this house first."
"Why?" she questioned. "I don't want to leave. Especially not with you."
"I deserve the cheekiness," he said. "But we really don't have time to argue."
"Why not?" Her eyes had never glowed with such intensity—while she was still in human form—as they were right now. "I want some answers, damn it!"
"You want answers?" He came forward, grabbing her wrist, his fingers wrapping all the way around the slender bones. He pulled her to him forcefully; if she'd been human, he would probably have broken her wrist. "Werewolf. Hunters." He bit out. "And one of them is on his way here."
At that moment, the window closest to them shattered. Audrey screamed, but more from pain than anything. Looking down, she saw a bloody hole in her shoulder, the wound smoking. She'd never been shot by a silver bullet before, but the burning sensation, followed by the smoke coming from the wound, seemed to confirm that there really was a first time for everything.
"Shit!" the man who had bitten her cursed. Audrey whimpered; the burning was starting to spread as the silver released by the bullet seeped into her bloodstream. So that's how silver bullets worked, she thought vaguely. The bullet itself didn't kill you. You just died from silver poisoning. The man, growl rumbling deep in his throat, started running, swinging Audrey up into his arms as he went. The jostling caused her shoulder to burn even more; she cried out in agony.
He ran to the back door. Audrey didn't have the strength to wonder how he knew where, exactly, the back door was. He set her on her feet; she almost toppled over onto the tiled floor of the laundry area.
"Take your underwear off," he ordered, already stripping off his own black pants and equally black boxers.
"Excuse m-me?" Audrey asked through the pain.
"You don't want to ruin them when you change, do you?" he asked her.
"Hey, I don't take my underwear off for just anybody," she hissed. "I don't even know your fucking name."
"My fucking name," he said, his tone exasperated, "is Eli. Now will you please do what I ask you to?"
Defeated, Audrey reached down and tried to pull off her underwear. He was right—she didn't want to ruin them when she changed. It was hard removing clothing, though, when one of your arms didn't work, and Audrey had now lost the use of the arm she'd been shot in. "Damn it," she hissed, embarrassed. "I can't."
The mysterious Eli hooked his fingers into the band of the underwear and quickly slid them down her legs. She stepped—or more like stumbled—out of them, her face hot with embarrassment, only partly because of the fact that he'd had to remove them for her. The other part of her embarrassment came from the fact that he'd removed her underwear at all.
Now that they were both nude, Eli threw open the door. The cold January wind rushed inside, causing both of them to shiver. Werewolves, unlike vampires, were not insusceptible to temperature. "We have to change," Eli announced. "Now."
"It won't do any good," Audrey argued. "I can't run with a bullet in my shoulder. And besides, when I change, it could end up being drawn closer to my heart."
Eli shook his head. "When you change, the bullet will be pushed out," he said. "Trust me."
Audrey looked at him. Trust him? Really? How could he ask her that? She'd only just met him. Because of him, she'd been shot. Not to mention the fact that there were werewolf hunters after her to begin with.
From the living room they heard the sound of breaking glass, as someone, a human, tried climbing through the shattered window.
"We have to go," Eli pleaded with her. "I told you I'd explain, and I will, but first we have to survive this."
Footsteps coming down the hall. Any minute, a gun-toting human would be upon them.
Audrey nodded. "All right," she said.
With a relieved look on his face, Eli ran out the door and across the back porch, Audrey right behind him. They both jumped off the top of the back steps, and then two wolves, one black, the other gold, were racing across the yard, and then vanishing into the night.
—
The hunter stood at the back door. He knew there was no sense chasing after the wolves. By the time he went back to his truck and drove around, they'd be gone, and there was no way he could keep up with them on foot. Still, he wasn't upset as he descended the steps to the snow-covered back yard. He knew there would be other opportunities. And he was patient.
He bent down at the bottom of the steps, where, amidst fresh prints made from wolves' paws, the remains of his silver bullet gleamed in the moonlight.
—
Audrey had led them to her old house, miles away from the hunter. On the front porch of the house she'd grown up in, Audrey changed back into human form a second before the golden wolf at her side did. With her now-human eyes she looked towards the shoulder. There was a faint mark there, but nothing more to suggest she'd been shot. It didn't even hurt anymore.
Eli shifted back into human form and also peered at her shoulder. He ran a finger over the barely-scarred flesh. "See? I told you changing would help," he said, smiling cheekily.
Audrey ignored him, thinking back to her house. "We have to go back," she announced. "Even if one of my neighbors didn't hear the gunshot, they probably heard the glass breaking, and me screaming."
Eli nodded. "You're right. Someone might have called the police already."
Audrey groaned. That was the last thing she needed. A bunch of human policemen poking around her home. She'd never get the smell of human out of the furniture once it sank in!
After catching their breath, both of them changed and headed back towards Audrey's current home. By the time they got back, the hunter had already left, and they could hear police sirens in the distance. They went inside as wolves, changing back in the little laundry area where they'd stripped what little clothing they'd had on. Eli grabbed his pants and boxers.
"The bedroom is down the hall," Audrey told him, not so much caring about his privacy as her own.
"I know," he said before brushing past her. She growled.
Audrey slipped her underwear back on, and then fetched her robe from where it hung permanently on the bathroom door. Then she went into the living room. Glass littered the couch that had been sitting under that particular window. The curtains were ripped where shards of glass had gone through them. Audrey was still growling as a patrol car pulled into her driveway.
"Hey, why don't you change?" she called back to Eli. "I can say you're my Golden Retriever or something."
"You're hilarious," he responded, just as there was a knock at the door.
Turning on a lamp as she went, so that it wouldn't be completely dark in the room, Audrey moved to answer the door. She opened it to find the sheriff of Carlin Cross standing, freezing, on her front porch. "Sheriff Murphy," she said.
"Sorry to bother you so late, Audrey," Murphy, an older, but kindly man, said, tipping his sheriff's hat to her. "But we got a call from Mrs. Feldheim about glass breaking, and screams. We just came out to make sure everything was all right." The deputy standing behind him nodded, too cold to speak.
"Well, it's a good thing you did come over," Audrey said, slipping into that friendly, down-home, Southern act she did when she was pretending to be ultra-human. "I was just about to call you myself."
She moved aside so Murphy and the deputy, whose name was Leonard Scott, could come in. As soon as they walked in they saw the shattered window and the glass covering the couch.
"Good God, Audrey," Leonard said, letting out a low whistle. "What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything!" she exclaimed. "Someone tried to..." She caught herself just in time. She'd been about to tell them that someone had tried to kill her. "Someone tried to break in," she said instead. "The sound of the window shattering woke me up. I came in, saw someone trying to climb through the window, and screamed. That must have been what Mrs. Feldheim heard."
She felt bad about lying to both the sheriff and Leonard; the former had always been nice to her, and she'd graduated high school with the latter.
Suddenly, a noise came from the back of the house.
Murphy and Leonard both reached for their guns. "Is there someone in the house with you, Audrey?" Murphy asked.
"Oh, no..." Audrey started to say, but a voice, coming from the bedroom, interrupted her.
"I'm okay! Just...ran into the dresser...!"
Audrey clenched her teeth, trying to think up another quick lie. "I mean, no one's here with me, except..." She paused, unsure of what to say.
"Except her boyfriend," said Eli, coming into the living room. Audrey frowned when she noticed he now had on a pair of men's pajama pants. Where had he found those? She certainly didn't own any. He came to stand beside her and put an arm around her waist, pulling her close to his side. Heat radiated off of him in such waves that his skin was almost hot to the touch. Audrey tried not to fight him, tried to look like she was comfortable being this close to him. Eli, smiling as if nothing was wrong, stuck his hand out to the sheriff.
"Hi, I'm Eli Tallant," he introduced himself.
Murphy eyed him warily as he took Eli's outstretch hand. "Audrey, I didn't know you were dating anyone," he said.
"Well, sheriff," she said, "it's such a recent development that sometimes it's like I don't even know I am." She felt Eli tense beside her. She resisted the urge to smile. It served him right.
Still skeptical, the sheriff introduced himself and Leonard to Eli, and then started asking him the standard questions. It was like an interrogation. Where was Eli from? How long had he known Audrey? He lied on each one of them with great finesse. Finally, the sheriff got around to taking their statements, and promising to send someone to fix the window as soon as he could. It was almost three in the morning when they left.
"I hope you wrote that bullshit story down," Audrey said as she locked the door behind Murphy and Leonard. "Because I'll never remember it."
"What does it matter?" Eli asked. He gave a one-shouldered shrug.
"Do you not realize how small of a town this is?" Audrey questioned. "Both of them will go home and tell their wives about you. By mid-morning, the whole town will know you're here."
He shrugged again. "Good," he said. "That way, it'll send a message to the hunter. Or hunters."
Audrey frowned. "I thought the whole point was to avoid the hunters, not start up correspondences with them."
He didn't answer, just stood there, staring at her. It made her uncomfortable. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other nervously, a very human gesture. He found it sort of endearing.
"Where'd you get those pajama pants?" she asked finally. It seemed to Eli like she was avoiding asking a different question.
"My suitcase," he answered with a smile.
"Oh. That's what I heard hit the floor."
"Yeah. Had to tell the fuzz something."
They fell into an awkward silence, with Eli looking at Audrey, and Audrey looking at the floor. Finally, she looked up, mouth open, about to ask another, potentially more dangerous question. He interrupted before she could.
"Listen, I know you have a lot of questions," he told her. "I would, too. But let's not do this tonight. We're both tired, so let's just put off the whole interrogation thing until morning."
She nodded, because she couldn't argue with that sort of logic. "You can sleep on the couch," she told him. "It pulls out. There are quilts and things in the hall closet. I expect you know where that is, too."
"You going to make me sleep in the room with the broken window?"
She just smiled. "Goodnight, Eli," Audrey said, and headed back to her bedroom.
Back in bed, Audrey found that she couldn't sleep. She kept thinking about the man sleeping just down the hall on her couch. Sighing, she held her wrist up. The moonlight from the uncovered window hit it just right, illuminating her scar. The scar she'd gotten from Eli. It was so weird, having a name to put with the face she'd been carrying all these years. She'd never thought she would see the man who had bitten her again, and now he was sleeping on her couch.
How had she gotten herself into this?
It was more, she realized, than her shock over Eli's return that kept her awake. She was worried about how close she'd come to getting killed tonight. If that silver bullet had been any closer to her heart, she probably wouldn't have made it. The silver had spread too fast for comfort.
Taking her eyes off the scar that had made her into a monster, she turned onto her side and actually attempted to go to sleep. It didn't work. She kept seeing a certain blonde-haired, blue-eyed werewolf. Would she have her dream again? Would it be more vivid now that she'd seen him again? She wasn't eager to find out.
How had he known to come back? That was one of the questions she wanted to ask. She hadn't seen him in twelve years. Had he been keeping tabs on her all this time? And how had he known the hunters were after her, of all the werewolves in the world?
Audrey closed her eyes, trying to wipe all thoughts from her mind, and, eventually, she managed to fall asleep.
—
Sometime around sunrise Audrey heard the door of her bedroom creak open. She was so tired that she didn't even look up—besides, she didn't smell anything threatening. Something jumped up on her bed. She opened one eye to see a great yellow wolf curling up at her feet. She got the feeling of being cold, and it seemed that it was coming from the wolf, before she fell back asleep.
So there was the second chapter, reposted. I know, I know, those of you coming back will have already read it. Don't worry-we'll get to the new chapters soon enough.
-P.