Alex: A Rylee Adamson Short Story (3 page)

R
ylee came out
of the room exactly fifteen minutes later, dressed in clean clothes, her hair pulled into a low pony tail, and the faint scent of soap clinging to her. Nothing overpowering, just clean.

She glanced around, took in the rug crunched up against one wall. “Well, at least you didn’t break anything.”

I bobbed my head. “Alex is goody good.” Oh crap, she was going to think I was a fool!

Laughing softly, she said, “Sure, okay.”

The doorbell rang, interrupting this stellar exchange, and she strode toward it, opening the door to reveal a very tiny man.

“Hello, Charlie. What have you got for me today?”

Charlie, who stood maybe three feet tall, sauntered into the room despite missing a leg, and handed a sheet of papers up to Rylee.

“Should bees an easy peasy case for yous. Kid’s fifteen, sassy mouth on her from what be my understandin’. Unless she was snatched by a real ugly, you should have no problemo finding hers.” He put his hands through a pair of suspenders that had one strap black and one strap white. And then his eyes fell on me. “Shit me pants, Rylee. What the feck are yous doing with a werewolf in yous living room?”

“Oh, his pack was chasing him earlier. He’s here for the day.” She didn’t look my way, just waved at me while she read her papers.

I lowered myself to my belly and tried to grin up at Charlie. If I really wanted to stay with Rylee, then I would have to get her friends to like me. At least, that was how it had worked in the clubs when I was trying to get information.

“Stop with the grinning, wolf, it’s fecking awful.” Charlie turned from me with a shudder and I got a whiff of daisies and fresh cut grass, my brain translating that into
brownie
.

That didn’t make sense, a brownie smelled like chocolate, not daisies and grass.

Charlie shook his head. “Rylee, yous understand what he is, don’ts yous?”

She paused in her shuffling of the paperwork. “What do you mean? He’s a werewolf, what else is there?”

I was totally confused and yet completely engrossed. This was information I needed if I was going to figure out how to get out of this situation. I crept forward so that I was at her feet, pressing up against her lower leg. That physical contact soothed my nerves, and eased the fear tightening in bands around my middle.

Charlie snorted and pulled his suspenders out and then back again, stretching them. “He’s stuck, he’s a submissive, which means he won’ts be coming back from this. How yous sees him is hows it will be for him for the rest of his fecking life. All of it.”

No, that couldn’t be. I pressed harder into her leg, clinging to her jeans, a whimper slipping out of me.

Rylee lowered her papers, but didn’t acknowledge me at her feet. “Then why would his pack be chasing him, if he’s stuck like this? Wouldn’t they protect him?”

“Probably trying to kill him. There’s a reason we don’t see submissives.”

Rylee went still, I could feel her muscles go silent, like her entire body was processing what he said.

A shiver ran through me. “Alex scared.” Damn, when I wanted to speak, I couldn’t and when my emotions got the better of me I couldn’t shut the hell up.

She dropped a hand to the top of my head and I tightened my grip on her, feeling in her hand the safety every fiber in me screamed I needed. Humbled to my core, every bad thing I’d ever thought about strong women went out the window. I needed her on a level I couldn’t begin to process.

Rylee was the one thing standing between my survival and my death; I couldn’t let her push me away. “Please, Alex stays.”

Her jaw flexed and she stared at the papers in her hands. “You can come with me, just this one time, and we’ll find you somewhere safe.”

“No, no, no. Ryleeeeeeee keeps Alex.”

“Shits, Rylee,” Charlie muttered. “He’s a clingy bastard, isn’t he?” He lifted a finger in the air. “Wait. I have something on this.” Two strides and he was through the open doorway and disappeared.

I started and gave a woof, shock filtering through me. “Gone.”

“Yeah, Charlie is a brownie, they can use doors and windows to travel wherever they want. Sweet deal; it’s too damn bad they can’t take people with them.”

A few minutes passed and then Charlie reappeared with a thin leather book in his hands. “Heres it is.” He cracked it open and handed it to Rylee.

She read it out loud, her fingers skimming along with her reading. “A submissive is made when the human soul is broken. The first twenty-four hours, the human soul is still aware of its surroundings, but with each passing hour it slips further into the recesses of the wolf’s mind until there is naught left but a shadow of its former self.”

She glanced down at me. “But how do we know how new he is?”

Charlie let out a sigh. “Probably very new, if he’s nots been killed yet. The packs, they has no tolerance for weakness. No ways to tell for sures.”

I clung to Rylee’s legs. I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t let go of her. Not even if I’d wanted to, which at that moment, I knew in my bones that she was my only chance. Somehow, I believed she would help me.

“What the hell am I supposed to do with a gods-be-damned werewolf?” She threw her hands into the air, then flipped the book back Charlie.

“I never said yous have to keep him.” Charlie grinned at her. God, I hoped that was a good sign.

She glared at him. “You’re looking at me like I should, though.” Charlie let out a laugh that seemed too loud for his tiny body. I ended up laughing with him while I clung to her legs.

Charlie shook his head. “Good lucks to yous with getting rid of that one. You going after the kid now?”

His abrupt change of topic didn’t seem to throw Rylee, and I struggled to put it back together, the pieces of what was going on. Like a thick fuzz was layering over my brain.

The submission makes you dumb. You are losing what is left to it. In less than a day you will be gone and the Alex they see is all that will be left.
My mouth dried up as those words rippled through my head. I wanted to ask who he was, how he knew these things.

I am the spirit of the Great Wolf. When I am born again, you will know me, and then a chance to be who you are again will be presented. But you must be brave. You must stay with the Tracker, and you must protect her despite your fears.

This was not happening. I couldn’t lose who I was, that was… .

“Ridiculous, yuppy doody!” I barked out. A weird mixture of excitement and desire to belong rippled through me. Rylee would keep me, she had to, so as she strode out of the house, I followed, and I forgot that I was supposed to be trying to find a way out of this.

All that mattered was that I was with her. She was my pack.

Protect her.
Yes, that much I could do. Maybe I could do that.

I fiddled with the door of the Jeep until she opened it for me, and I leapt up and in, my tail crunching under my butt. But I didn’t care. I was with Rylee… no, I had to remember who I was. I could do that much. I was Alex, I had been human just last night.

“So tell me about yourself, Alex.” Rylee slid into the driver’s side and clicked on her seatbelt before starting up the Jeep. The words tumbled in my head, bouncing off one another as I fought what I wanted to say.

“Shoe salesman.” I spit the words out, which was so stupid I wanted to laugh, but no, I couldn’t even do that when I wanted to. My asshole father had been the shoe salesman.

“Hmm. Sounds exciting.”

“Yuppy doody,” I yipped, slurping my tongue along the edge of the window. And as we drove, I stared out the window and recounted as much of my life as I could. My last name was gone, as was the name of my dead mother and asshole shoe salesman father. There was a sister, she was younger than me. Everything in me fought to hang onto her, she had been the reason I’d stayed home, to try and help her. But I hadn’t helped. Name, what was her name… ‘D’ it started with a ‘D’.

“Deidre,” I barked out.

Rylee shifted in her seat. “How did you know the name of the salvage we’re going after?”

Eyes wide, I turned my head and stared at Rylee. “Deidre?”

“Yeah, that’s the name of the kid who’s gone missing, she’s been gone for months, and it looks like a runaway. We’ll go see Giselle first, make sure it isn’t anything major we need to worry about.” She flicked the blinker on her Jeep and I struggled to comprehend as my brain seemed to slide into another level of simplicity. Deidre had run away, and I’d tried to hire a woman who specialized in finding kids, someone I’d heard about on the street. Was the paperwork the stuff I sent to her?

I snuffled the papers on the dashboard until I could see the handwriting and even in my simple state, in the signature, the words were undeniable. It was my handwriting, my words.

This was the woman I’d contracted to find my little sister. And now I was going to help her find Deidre and bring her home.

G
iselle’s home had
ghosts, and I don’t mean ghosts of the kind that people didn’t talk about. Hell, I could see them floating between the walls, pushing their way around so they could get a better look at us. Five of them, four women and one man, all dressed in strange clothes from what looked like different time periods. Rylee didn’t seem to see them, though, walking through one of them. I, on the other hand, worked my way around them, the very idea of walking through them giving me the willies.

“Giselle?” Rylee called out as we walked through the living room. I pressed myself against her leg, the specters and their empty eyes unnerving me, the hair along my spin rising into a semi-stiff peak.

“Ghosties,” I whispered.

Rylee ignored me. “Giselle, where are you?”

Her voice floated down the stairs to us, singing a tune I didn’t recognize, but the words were clear. “Hush baby, my doll, I pray you don’t cry, and I’ll give you some bread and some milk by and by; or perhaps you like custard, or maybe a tart, then to either you’re welcome with all of my heart. Hush baby, my doll.”

I followed Rylee up the creaking stairs, placing my feet gingerly on each step, feeling as if they would break below me if I wasn’t careful.

At the top of the stair, light slanted through an open door, the sounds of Giselle’s singing fading into a low hum. Rylee didn’t seem worried and she didn’t smell fearful. (
You shouldn’t be smelling her feelings, man; that is too fucking weird)
I swallowed hard and stepped through the open door after Rylee.

A grey-haired women sat in a rocking chair in the far corner of the room where the shadows hid much of her face. Sadness rippled off her, sadness and a pain so deep I shuddered to think of what had caused it. Creeping forward, I slid my feet along the carpet until I could put my head into her lap. She smelled of incense and the deepest night air with a hint of old books, and my brain kicked into gear.

Reader. Whatever that was, Giselle was it.

“What is this?” She leaned over me, hugging my head to her chest. “Rylee, you have brought quite something home this time. Hardly a bird with a broken wing.”

I sat quietly, breathed in her scent and the age that she was, which was not as old as she looked. Lavender soap was what she used and it seemed to have permeated her skin.

“Alex.” Rylee called me, and then snapped her fingers.

I slid backward to sit beside her, turning my face to hers with a grin across my lips. “Alex likes Giselle.”

“And Giselle likes Alex, but perhaps there is time for a chat about Alex later. I suppose you have a case? A child is missing?” Giselle pulled herself to her feet using the rocking chair’s armrests.

“Yes,” Rylee said and she shifted her weight on her feet, uncertainty whispering off her. “I think she’s a runaway. At least from what I’m picking up on.”

“Then you can Track her?” Giselle paused in her steps toward the door.

“Yes.”

“Then why are you here?”

Rylee let out a big sigh. “You are on the way, I thought I’d check on you.”

“Needles and pins needles and pins when a man marries, his trouble begins,” Giselle sung and then giggled. “I always liked that one. Wolf, can you dance with me?”

It seemed a logical request to me in my scattered brain, so I bounded toward her, springing up and flipping my paws out in a rhythm Giselle clapped.

“Enough,” Rylee snapped, her voice stalling me mid-stride. I slunk to her side. “Giselle, you haven’t been doing any readings for anyone, have you?”

“Milly, my witch, came for a reading with her newest beau. Lovely, those two. Handsome couple. But bad things if they stay together. Worse things if they separate.”

Rylee reached out and took Giselle’s hands. “You have to promise me, you won’t do anymore readings unless a life is on the line. The madness is progressing too fast.”

Giselle snatched her hands away. “Get out, I don’t know who you are or what you want with me, but get out.” She pointed a thin arm at the door, and Rylee backed away. After a moment, I followed her out and down the stairs.

She wiped at her face with the back of one hand, and I had the distinct feeling that crying wasn’t something she did often.

“Get in the car, Alex.” She pointed and I ran to do as she asked. I was Alex, that was my job. To help Rylee. To protect her.

Someone had told me to do that.

I fought with the Jeep door, finally getting the thing open and sliding into my seat. Awkward, my limbs and body didn’t sit well. So I shifted and shimmied until I was comfortable.

Rylee slid in beside me. “Okay, let’s go.” She adjusted her mirror and her eyes narrowed. “Shit, O’Shea, your timing is freaking perfect as always. This is not good.” Her eyes flicked over me and back to the mirror. I twisted in my seat.

“Stay here. I have to deal with this. If he see’s you, we’re both fucking toast.”

My eyes widened. “Alex no likes burnt toast.”

A laugh escaped her as she shoved her door open and stepped out. I put both claws on the edge of the black leather seat and peered with one eye out to the car that had pulled up behind us. A black sedan that looked very official. Out of it stepped a man who was much larger than Rylee and moved like a predator, but she didn’t seem worried, so I just watched… and listened.

“How am I not surprised?” Rylee flicked her head so her hair slid over one shoulder. “You have something particular you want to talk about, O’Shea?”

“Where were you last night?” O’Shea opened a notepad and seemed to read off it. “Between midnight and six am.”

“I was with my lovers, all three of them,” she quipped and his mouth tightened, but he barely paused.

“I’ll need all their names, addresses, and contact information.”

“Oh, I don’t know their names. I just pick them up at the bar, you know, casual-like. Easier that way. Harder for dumbass FBI agents to track them down, you know?”

“Adamson, you will damn well give me what I want, or I will have you up on charges so fast you won’t know what hit you.”

“Screw you, O’Shea,” She planted her hands on her hips. “I haven’t done anything worth charges.”

He tossed his notebook onto the hood of his car, and I gripped the seat as he stepped closer to her, lowering his voice. “Then why do I have a blood trail that leads to a cab that was supposed to drop off his fare at your doorstep?”

I crunched down into my seat, knowing that this was somehow my fault and maybe Rylee wouldn’t keep me. (
Keep me? I wasn’t a pet.)

“People get dropped off at the wrong places all the time, idiot. Don’t you read your cop manuals? Or too busy reading the donut menu?” The crunch of her boots on the loose gravel drew close and I hunched down in my seat.

She slammed the door and buckled her seatbelt, but didn’t peel out with the Jeep as I thought she would. She used her blinker, pulled onto the road, and drove off rather politely for the anger I could smell rolling off her.

“That ass will use anything to jerk me up on charges.” She grumbled, her shoulders hunched a fraction of an inch. Just enough that I knew he bothered her, that it was more than a casual confrontation.

Silence reigned in the Jeep and I fought to keep my mind together, but it was like grasping at spider webs. I knew the pieces were there, could feel them even, but I couldn’t see them.

Deidre. I clung to her name, even if what she looked like was gone. After an hour of driving, taking turn after turn, Rylee pulled over. We were in a very rundown part of town. Though the name of the place escaped me, I recognized it. I’d walked here, walked these streets looking for something. Something important that had gone missing. Damn my brain and the holes spreading in it. The buildings looked as if they’d been through a rough period, holes in the windows, doors hanging on hinges, concrete cracked and chunks missing. There were very few people on the street, and those that walked past us didn’t even look up.

Rylee tapped the steering wheel, her eyes going distant and the three colors spinning faster, blurring together. “You stay in the Jeep.” Her hands drifted over her body, touching the handles of her swords, blades, tightening straps and adjusting everything.

I watched her, eyes and heart drooping, then gave a soft woof. “Alex comes. Helps Deidre too.” I had to go with her. Deidre was the only one I remembered. Maybe she could help me hang onto what was left of me. A faint hope it might be, but it was all I had.

“I can’t hide you, Alex. And you will freak the humans out.”

My lower lip trembled. “Please.”

She rolled her eyes and tipped her head back against her seat. “Shit.”

I put my front paws together, as if I were praying. “Please. Alex goes too.”

She scrubbed a hand over her face. “Just wait here a second.” Reaching into the dashboard she pulled out a geriatric looking cell phone, and then stepped out of the cab. Even with the door shut, I could hear her clearly. Maybe there were a few perks to this werewolf business.

Her hand gripped the cellphone so hard her knuckles turned white, but it seemed to work for her. “Milly, I know you’re shacking up around here. Can you do me a favor?”

I couldn’t hear the response, but Rylee nodded. “Yeah, I need something to hide a werewolf.” She glanced over her shoulder at me, her eyes taking me in. “Maybe a collar?”

My tail thumped against the seat. She was going to take me with her.

Hanging up the cellphone, she opened up the door and chucked the phone back into the dash. “Ten minutes. You better hope it doesn’t cost this kid her life.”

I swallowed hard. I hadn’t thought of that, of Deidre being in real trouble, of her being more than just a runaway.

A whine worked its way up my throat and I struggled to not let it turn into a full fledged howl of fear.

Rylee seemed to sense my issue. “Be quiet, or it won’t matter if Milly can turn you into a fucking mouse, I won’t take you with me.” She turned sideways so that her legs were out the door, but she still sat in the driver’s seat.

The whine died in my throat and I leaned forward to put my head on Rylee’s shoulder and whispered. “Alex quiet.”

She reached up and scratched behind one of my ears. Damn that felt good, I leaned into her fingers, rubbed my chin along the bones of her shoulder. Fifteen minutes passed before a woman I assumed was Milly strolled into view. She wore a flowing green dress that hung to her knees and clung to her curves, and matched her green eyes.

“Got lonely out at that rickety old farmhouse?” Milly smiled when she said that, but I could smell her and she smelled… funny. But I didn’t know what it was, just something that tickled my nose and made me… I sneezed hard, bashing my head into the roof of the Jeep. Like sulfur and a night with no moon, her smell bothered me.

Rylee laughed and shook her head. “I’m getting this salvage done and then I’ll find him a home. He won’t be staying with me.”

Milly just smiled. “Okay, well, this collar is temporary, maybe it will last for a few hours, if you’re lucky.”

The collar was a thin braid of leather done in three colors, black, white, and red. Rylee took it and put it around my neck, tying the ends together. A tingle ran through me, a shiver of energy that centered around my neck. It didn’t hurt, but I knew it was there. Knew something was happening. I blinked up at her and she nodded. “Looks good. Now you can come, but you stay right next to me and no talking. Not a word.”

I crossed my heart with a claw. Anything to find Deidre. Whoever she was, I thought she was important to me for some reason. “Gots it.”

Milly didn’t come with us. She waved and walked back down the street. She lived here? She didn’t seem to fit with her fancy dress and beauty and then the rundown state of the area. But my mind didn’t linger long on the stinking witch or her motives for living in a bad part of town.

I shook my head and pressed up against Rylee’s leg, tension rippling through me. The little my brain wanted to remind me about was telling me that this was a really, really bad idea. That this place was ugly on a lot of levels. Gangs, shootings, murder, and suicide were rampant here. Not a place I wanted to be, but if Deidre was here, then we had to get her out.

Rylee reached down and touched the top of my head, and I relaxed a little. This time I wasn’t here alone.

Rylee headed toward a building on the far side of the block, the red brick crumbling, and a sign that said “Harry’s Hardware and Hunting Supplies” hanging so that it partially covered the busted down door.

She paused at the bottom of the steps that led up and into the building. “Alex, you smell anything?”

I lifted my nose and sucked in a lungful of air, blinking several times as my brain identified scents I didn’t even know existed. Dark and murky like a muddy swamp, the smell converged in my brain and created a picture of a creature, tagging it with a name.

“Goblin.” I took another deep breath, the second scent one of darkness, but musky, like sex and violence mixed together. “Incubus.”

Rylee started and stared down at me. “You’re sure?”

“Yuppy doody.”

And I was sure, even if I wasn’t sure why Deidre was important, I knew those scents and they imprinted on me. (
Goblins don’t exist and what the hell is an incubus?
) What was left of my own brain stumbled over this twist to the story. Rylee, though, took my pronouncement in stride. She loosened both her blades and pulled them free from their sheaths before slipping through the broken door. I followed, slinking along, breathing in the scent of blood and rotting food that hung in the air. Rats skittered along the edge of the wall, their claws clicking in a weird echo of my own steps.