Running with the Pack Part 21

Tastes.

Pull hair.

Lick skin.

Bite.

Feel the air, the moving air, the wind.

Feel the real.

Howl!

Wait, what was he doing? What was Anastasia becoming? What was the biting doing to-stop!

Stop thinking. Feel. Go with it, truth, life.

Howl!

Time for Prime to become Primeval.

Hair, sprouting. Fangs, growing. Claws, extending. Nose, blossoming. Eyes, sharpening. Ears, encompa.s.sing. Body, transforming. Becoming a better . . . being.

Time for Primeval to take his mate.

On all fours, hunching, biting, howling, coming, with the scent of blood spilled from the s.e.x for the first time. An honest mating. The best.

Running through the night, howling again, with wind, with his true family, his pack.

He belonged. He had his place.

He had his mate.

He had his pack.

It was going to be a long-term relationship.

Primeval howled with satisfaction.

He'd been picked up.

THE GARDEN, THE MOON, THE WALL.

AMANDA DOWNUM.

The ghosts follow Sephie to work again that day.

They stand outside the windows of the bookstore, staring in with hollow eyes-more of them now than a few days ago. She tries to ignore them. At least they never come inside.

Most of them, anyway.

The light dims as she's shelving books, and Sephie turns to find her ex-boyfriend grinning down at her, pink filming his long ivory teeth. He tilts his head, shows her the still-wet ruin a bullet made of the left side of his skull.

Her hands tingle with adrenaline shock as the smell of his blood coats her tongue-copper sweetness, and beneath that the familiar salt-musk of his skin.

A wink and he's gone, and the air smells like books and dust and air freshener again. Sephie wobbles, and the stack of books in her arms teeters and falls, hardbacks and trades thumping and thwapping one by one, echoing in the afternoon quiet. No blood stains the worn green carpet.

The third time this week. Cursing, she crouches to pick up the books, and pauses as she reads the nearest t.i.tle.

Lycanthropy: An Encyclopedia Caleb always was a smart-a.s.s-she shouldn't expect that to change because he's dead.

"Are you okay?" Anna calls from across the store.

No, she thinks. Not even a little.

The sky darkens as they close, October nearly over and autumn chewing the days shorter and shorter. Purple eases into charcoal, and the grinning jack-o'-lantern moon rises over the jagged Dallas skyline.

The moon doesn't bother her, never mind Caleb and his lousy jokes.

Sephie lights a cigarette as Anna sets the alarm and locks the back door. Her hands shake, the itch in her veins more than nicotine can ease.

"You want to get some coffee?" Anna asks, pocketing her keys and pulling out her own cigarettes. Her nails are orange and black to match her Halloween hair. Her lighter rasps, and the smell of cloves drifts through the air.

Sephie swallows, her mouth gone dry. The shakes are coming on for real, her stomach cramping. "That'd be nice, but I need to run some errands. Maybe some other time." She likes the bookstore better than any of the other jobs she's had, and doesn't want to get fired because someone thinks she's a junkie.

It's not like she can tell them the truth.

"Sure," Anna says, waving as she turns toward her car. "See you tomorrow."

"Yeah. 'Night." Sephie ducks down the alley toward the street, trying not to think about Anna's bemused little smile.

Tonight will be bad-she hears it in the hollow roar of traffic, sees it in the halos bleeding off the street lamps. But cold sweat p.r.i.c.kles her scalp, her neck, and chills crawl up and down her back; she can't wait another day.

Hunching her shoulders, she slides into the ebb and flow of downtown streets.

For a few blocks everything's okay. The night hums and chatters, traffic and voices, the cacophony of city-noises. The air tastes of exhaust and asphalt, the sewer-stench of the Trinity fading now that summer's pa.s.sed. She catches a whiff of decay, of meat, and saliva pools on her tongue. But it's only a dead dog, not what she needs.

Then it happens, that sideways lurch in the pit of her stomach, and she's alone on the sidewalk. No more neon and shining gla.s.s, no more noise. Dusty brick and stone instead, grime-blind windows and the moon grinning overhead.

And the ghosts.

She's learned not to stop, not to listen to their whispers. Keep walking, eyes on the sidewalk-don't look at those pale faces peering out of the shadows, bruised and b.l.o.o.d.y or just empty, eyes burning with a junkie's aching need.

She knows the feeling, all too well, but she can't help them. She can barely help herself.

Her nose wrinkles against the smell of this place. The city stinks, but at least it's a living stench. This is dry bones and dust, old tombs.

The wind that sighs from black alley-mouths is worse-sulfur and ammonia, sickness and pain. It aches like a bruise when it touches her, makes her eyes water.

Her footfalls echo as she lengthens her stride. It will pa.s.s. It always does. She has to keep moving, out of the between-places.

But she's a between-thing now, and she may never leave this place behind.

A breeze eddies past her, and Sephie stumbles to a halt. Rose gardens and evergreen, the smell of evenings as summer melts into autumn. The smell of her dreams.

The scent leaks from under the door of a narrow shop, its windows curtained and dull. She reaches for the k.n.o.b with a trembling hand.

But her stomach cramps again, and already the braver ghosts are moving toward her, murmuring, pleading.

She turns and runs, and doesn't stop until the world slips back to normal.

Bobet & Cask Funeral Services is long closed, but a light burns in the back. Sephie crouches in the shadow of a hedge, holly p.r.i.c.king her back as she finishes her last cigarette and tries to slow her breathing. Her legs cramp from exercise, but that's nothing to the pain in her gut. She wipes clammy sweat from her face and drags her fingers through the curling cowlicked mess of her hair.

Peter waits by the back door, even though she's early. Hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, eyes flitting back and forth-he looks like a really bad spy.

"You should start smoking," she says, moving out of the dark. "It'd look more natural."

He jerks, presses his back to the door. The smell of his fear cuts through the muggy night and Sephie's stomach growls.

"I-" He swallows, Adam's apple bobbing. "Come inside."

He always invites her in; he's read too many books. She follows him down the corridor, down the stairs to the morgue.

The air smells of chemicals and death, and she rubs her arms against crawling gooseb.u.mps. Her sweat gels in the cold, sticking her shirt to her back. A body lies on a metal table, and her stomach clenches again. Peter glances at her, blue eyes narrowing, like he thinks she'll start gnawing on an arm.

She's not sure what would happen if he weren't here.

He opens a refrigerator, takes out a lidded plastic bowl. "It's heart, and liver, and some other things . . . A car crash, so I could take a little more than usual."

"This guy?" She nods toward the corpse in his funeral suit, wrinkled face coated in makeup that can't simulate living color, no matter how skillfully it's applied.

"No, he had a heart attack. The accident was a few days ago."

Sephie smiles, close-lipped. "Thank you." She tugs a roll of bills out of her pocket, trades it for the container. He tried to give the money back, once, but she makes him keep it. She's afraid he'll ask for something else if she doesn't.

He stands there watching her, gangly and awkward, while her fingers tighten on the plastic and she swallows hungry spit. Finally he ducks his head and retreats. "I'll be outside if you need me."

When his footsteps recede, Sephie sinks onto the cold tile floor and opens the container. Thin slices of organs-pomegranate heart and pinky-brown liver-and slivers and cubes of fat-marbled flesh. Once he gave her an eyeball, but it was salty and bitter and too gross even for her.

She saves the heart for last, chews it slowly, sucking b.l.o.o.d.y juice out of the muscle. Shudders ride her, and she closes her eyes against a flood of scattered images and sensations. She doesn't want to know about the person whose heart this was.

"This is what you left me for?"

She opens her eyes to find Caleb crouching in front of her, long hands dangling between his knees. Blood and brains drip onto the floor, vanishing when they hit the tile.

"Leave me alone!" Her voice cracks. The empty bowl falls from her hand and rolls in a lazy spiral.

"Tell me this is what you want. Tell me you don't miss me."

She closes her eyes, pulls her knees tight against her chest.

"Tell me you wouldn't rather eat that boy of yours. He might like it."

A hand touches her knee and Sephie gasps, but it's only Peter. "Are you all right?"

Caleb's vanished again.

She stares up at Peter-she feels his pulse through her jeans, hears the nervous rhythm of his heart. He wants her. He's afraid of her. He smells like food.

Caleb knows her too well, d.a.m.n him. She's had more than one daydream about f.u.c.king Peter on a cold steel embalming table. Some of those fantasies end with her tearing the poor boy's throat out. The smell of warm flesh fills her nose.

She pulls away, crab-crawls across the floor and stumbles to her feet. Peter gapes; she's getting faster.

"I'm fine." She nibbles a drop of coagulated blood from under her nail and straightens her blouse. "I need to go."

Peter frowns, and she can see him searching for the nerve to ask her to stay. He's like the ghosts, needing, wanting. Whether he wants a girlfriend or a pet monster, she's not sure, but she can't offer him either.

"Thank you," she says again, cutting him off. "I'll be back next month, okay?"

He nods, shoulders sagging. "Yeah. I'll see you then."

And Sephie flees up the stairs, into the dark, and hurries for home.

The apartment is empty. Seth's gone a lot lately, looking for work-jobs that pay cash and don't run background checks. Sometimes, like this week, it's out-of-town work, leaving her alone. Hard enough to sleep most nights, even with his steady snoring drifting down the hall. When it's her and the echoing silence, it's nearly impossible.

The ghosts never come too close when he's here. This week she's seen a few lingering near the stairs.

Even if the ghosts don't find her, the dreams always do.

She slips one of Seth's ca.s.settes into the old tape deck by her mattress. Sephie teases him about his music, sad bluesy stuff a few generations before her time, but some of it's pretty. Billie Holiday's husky-soft voice chases away the silence, wraps around her like a blanket.

Her gun is a hard lump under the pillow; she always sleeps with it when she's alone.

Tell me this is what you want.

She thought she was rid of Caleb six months ago, when she left him sprawled in a cooling pool of blood on a dusty Oklahoma street. Not that she could even do that herself-she had to find someone else to pull the trigger for her.

His words echo in her head. Is this what she wants? The cramped apartment, the string of lousy jobs. Gravemeat and ghosts. Seth is gone half the time, and she doesn't dare make other friends, not even something as simple as getting coffee with Anna.

She's wanted lots of things over the years-travel, excitement, glamorous jobs that turned out to be too little glamour and too much work. But the one thing she's always wanted, as long as she can remember, is to not be afraid anymore.

"I've done a great job of that, haven't I?" she whispers to her pillow, to the gun beneath it.

The tape clicks over to the B-side before she finally drifts off. Lady Day's voice follows her into the dark.

She dreams of the wall again. A wall in a dark forest, stones pitted and pocked with age, veined with moss and ivy. Too high and sheer to climb, so she follows it on and on, searching for a door. Her fingers bruise the green, filling the air with its musty-damp scent, and sap clings sticky as blood on her skin. Yellow eyes gleam in the shadows around her.

The werewolves.