Roadkill

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