Roadkill

Sometimes you can concentrate too hard that you can’t see the flock for the sheep. It was an easy mistake to make, especially when you were as emotionally invested in all of this as my cousin was-the same cousin no one could get away with talking badly about, especially fast-talking pucks. I turned the snarl on Robin in the backseat, for the first time ignoring the demonic King Tut cat sitting on his shoulder.

“That is what I said.” Rafferty looked over his shoulder, then jerked the steering wheel and slammed his foot on the gas. The car tore through the dirt, across the asphalt of the road, and then more dirt that made up the median, and we were headed back the way we came. “When I thought I was better than he is.”

The snarl became a startled gurgle as I again turned my head. The set profile of my cousin was enough to disillusion me that I’d heard wrong. Another gurgle, this time from Goodfellow, was a distant Grand Canyon reflection of mine. “What did you just say? I know you did not say he is better than you. As much as I agree that your ego is as enormously inflated as your social skills are nonexistent, but you told us you could take Suyolak. You were to do the heavy lifting on this little escapade, because apart from having our hearts explode and our brains dribble out our ears, there isn’t much we can contribute to the campaign.”

“We took this job before we knew Rafferty would be available, so that’s not exactly fair,” Niko said. “Behave.”

The puck did not. I wasn’t in any way surprised. I’d only met two other pucks in my life and they had been noise pollution on the hoof. Goodfellow was no different.

“Only if you’re using ‘we’ with the broadest of definitions. He came aboard this ship of death before I did. I expected him to be our lifeboat, our coast guard rescuer in a tight uniform. I dislike having my expectations, especially of living, shattered.” Goodfellow scowled, folded his arms, and slid down in the seat, but he didn’t tell Rafferty to stop the car and let him out. That was huge for a puck. Besides making a good deal of noise, they were accomplished fighters when they had to be, but they were equally accomplished at keeping themselves in one piece. It should’ve been surprising that there were so few of them left. Still, if you thought about it, as I had before of Robin, if you lived forever… did you really want to? They had far too much time on their hands, and it was likely I had too little. The world was funny that way.

I thought I’d picked up enough about Goodfellow from our first meeting and this road trip to know that he was being brave, not suicidal, though, but what about Suyolak? He was going to be more than happy to make sure none of us saw the dawn of the next day, much less forever, and I didn’t want my cousin giving up his life if he had no chance of stopping the bastard.

“Cuz.”

I rolled my eyes back and forth again, but no one was speaking, not the others, not Rafferty. No mouths were moving and it wasn’t my ears that had picked up the word. This was turning out to be the day of playing with my brain as if it were Play-Doh. Grumbling deep in my chest, I closed my eyes again. This time I didn’t see Suyolak. I saw Rafferty. I saw the world around Rafferty. It was from our college senior ski trip. The air wasn’t cold and the snow matted down in my ski boots wasn’t freezing my feet as it had back then, but the vision of it… It was the same as the framed picture on Rafferty’s guest room dresser. Rafferty could’ve stepped out of that picture himself. He was seven or eight years younger with hair that, while it still rivaled a well-worn janitor’s mop, wasn’t as unkempt as it was these days. I held out my hands, gloved and holding ski poles. Hands. I dropped the poles and stripped off the gloves. They were as I remembered: the scar across the back of my right one. Nails chewed short. I’d started gnawing at my paws when I was a cub and never stopped, as a wolf or a human. A plain ring of silver around my right ring finger… just because we Wolves loved to mock that whole silver legend.

“I’m me.” I gave a wide and happy grin. “I’m me and I can talk. No stupid computer, which you skimped on, by the way. You couldn’t fork out the big bucks for a Dell? This one takes an entire century to reboot. And don’t get me started on Windows Vista. That’s what demons pass when they get the Tijuana Trots. And-”

I was silenced as Rafferty tackled me and hugged me so tightly, my imaginary breath whooshed out of my imaginary lungs and I almost slipped and fell down in the equally imaginary snow. It was unexpected, although we Wolves were more touchy- feely than humans tended to be. But Rafferty had been born a grump, not that I didn’t love the hell out of the guy. I did, but it didn’t change the fact this was unexpected. It was even a little bit shocking and it was great. I was me and it was just… great.

“I wish I’d figured this out without copying it from Suyolak,” Rafferty said gruffly at my ear. “We would never have needed a computer. We could’ve talked… even if you talk too much and carry on about the plight of the whales and shit. But we could’ve actually talked and you could’ve been the other part of yourself, if only in your head. I screwed up and I’m sorry.”

I stepped back out of the hug. Since Rafferty was not the hugging type, that meant he felt guilty, he was scared, and he needed some good down- home counsel-pack style. He’d tackled me with the hug. I tackled him to the ground and rubbed snow in his face. “Awww, you’re so sweet. You’re like Lassie or Lady. Maybe we can find Tramp for you and you can share spaghetti and meet in the middle. Very cute.”

Jumping up before he could kick me off, I continued. “We’re here now. We’re Wolves, Rafferty. We might fool ourselves by running around half the time looking like humans and buying houses, cars, going to college, but the bottom line is we’re Wolves. And being only in the here and now is what we were in the beginning. I’m not saying let’s go crazy and join the cult of All Wolf like Delilah, but we can’t forget either that ‘now’ isn’t so bad.” I reached down and grabbed the hand he wasn’t using to wipe snow from his face and pulled him to his feet. “And right here, right now”-I grinned again at the play on words-“is the best.”

“It is pretty good,” he admitted, and nailed me in the hair with the snow he’d scraped from his face and balled up in his other hand.

And it truly was the best. I hadn’t had a better moment since before getting sick, but Rafferty was driving and how he was managing that and this at the same time was anyone’s guess. Then there was Suyolak.

“You can’t take him.” I brushed nonexistent snow from my hair and went on with some trepidation. I didn’t want to make things worse for Rafferty with doubt. “That’s what you said. If that’s true, then we should get out of here. Saving the world is never a bad thing, don’t get me wrong-I had my car bumper covered with stickers that said the same thing-but if you can’t take him, I don’t want you dying for no reason. The world will have to find a different solution.”

“I didn’t say I couldn’t take him.” He scowled automatically at being told there was anything he couldn’t do, the cocky SOB, but he sobered. “I said he was better than me. You’ve played blackjack with me. Football at Thanksgiving in your parents’ yard back in high school. You’ve fought me roughhousing around during hunts. You know me. Being better than me doesn’t mean someone can take me.”

He was right. He… I… we all thought he was the king when it came to healing, but I was smart, in math and physics as well as biology. I could count cards; learned it second semester of college. That didn’t stop him from beating me in games of drunken twenty-one in the dorm laundry room while we waited for our clothes to dry. I was a little bit bigger, faster, and stronger than he was as a wolf too, but he still kicked my tail more often than not.

Stubborn, ruthless, would cheat in a heartbeat, and was sneaky as hell; it usually gave him the advantage over me. It might do the same for him with Suyolak. In my heart, though, I was as tame as Delilah mocked me for being. Rafferty while in human form was a healer, first, last, and always, but as a wolf, he was Wolf. He hunted with no regret and killed enemies with a double helping of glee. He wasn’t ashamed of it either. He was who he was… to the brink and beyond. He simply happened to be two widely different creatures.

As a healer, he healed and he didn’t ask if you deserved to be made whole. As a wolf, he killed and whether you’d deserved it or not, I didn’t ask. Because he was the normal Wolf, the predator. I was the one in the butterfly collar and if I hadn’t been sick and stuck, I might have merited the ridiculous thing regardless.

“Not better than him, but you can take him.” I nodded before having my last look at the trees, the snow, the blue sky that was a different blue to human eyes than wolf ones. I had already studied my hands; now I felt my face. Stubble, lean jaw, thick eyebrows. I’d missed this face. It was only half of the whole of me, but I’d missed it.

“I can take him.”

“Okay, then. You can,” I agreed with the same confidence Rafferty was putting out there,