Roadkill

11

Catcher

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