Cry Wolf (22 page)

“We’ll sit in the back, easy access to the exit, aisle seat. I’ll sit on your other side next to a human if I have to,” Kelly reassured him. She sat on her small couch and coaxed him down to join her.

Malcolm laughed. “It sounds like I have an inconvenient disease like a prostate or bladder problem the way we’re talking about it.”

She slung an arm around his shoulder. “I’m glad you can see the humour in it.”

“Can we run before the service?”

“I think it’s advisable,” Kelly said. “We’ll have to act like we’re taking a walk and store our clothes somewhere.”

These people talked a good game about werewolves and witches and vampires, but who knew whether any of them had ever actually met one of these creatures. Witches and vampires could be pagans, goths and sanguinarians, and Kelly had heard certain mental illnesses referred to as lycanthropy. Some self-righteous, ignorant fanatics could have interpreted all these things too literally or read too much Landover Baptist propaganda without realising that it was fake.

She just didn’t know what to expect from this evening. All she could hear from the minds of the small crowd outside were whispers, each voice indistinguishable and unintelligible.

* * * *

“I know we have a lax dress code on the sanctuary, but has anyone ever told you how weird it is that you dress so conservatively when you do wear clothes?” Malcolm asked after they left the trailer for their ‘walk’.

Kelly looked down at her filmy, long-sleeved ivory shirt and a grey tweed jumper dress tailored to just under her bust, with thick straps like suspenders over her shoulders. She wore charcoal tights underneath.

“I like it,” Kelly said. “Besides, people get weird about tattoos. When I go out in public, I usually try to cover all the bases. Given where we are and the kind of rhetoric they use, I figured more coverage was better.”

“I wasn’t complaining,” Malcolm said. “It’s just strange to see you covered
completely
from head to toe.”

“When I’m usually naked?”

“Yeah. I mean, this is the person who had no problem with a full frontal in front of a pizza delivery guy.”

Honestly, Kelly liked clothes. She didn’t have a lot of opportunity to wear them, especially since she also liked being naked and the weather wasn’t a deterrent for her in that respect. Because she didn’t need a lot of clothes, she had a modest wardrobe with some pieces from her old life and a few from her new, but they were all pieces she adored.

She was used to surprising people. This was just one more way.

After they had stripped their clothes and stored them in a bag, they ran. She smelt other werewolves, but the scent was faded and musty, which could mean several things. It could mean that this Salvation organisation really did deal with real magical creatures, which meant that the Father might actually be able to do what he claimed. Kelly thought that was highly unlikely.

Another possibility was that Salvation had driven the werewolves from the area by their reputation or by force, like St. Patrick driving the serpents from Ireland.

Kelly preferred to believe that a werewolf pack had just passed through. The other two possibilities disturbed her.

As the sun set, the sharp, savoury smell of barbecue reached their noses. Kelly led them back to the copse of trees where they had transformed, and they pulled on their clothes once again.

There were more humans in the area now, as well as some werewolves and a sharp stone smell that Kelly thought could possibly be vampire. The hollow place under Kelly’s chest chilled at the scent of true magical beings among the humans. It meant that Malcolm wasn’t the only person who had taken Salvation’s claims literally.

“What is
that
?” Malcolm asked, wrinkling his nose at the sharpness of the smell, the way a human might jerk back from strong alcohol.

“Pork, beef, human, werewolf, vampire,” Kelly said.

“Wow, that’s a vampire?” Malcolm said. “Well, Grant did say they existed.”

“You mean you thought they didn’t?”

“I didn’t know one way or another. I’ve never smelt anything like that, even in dog form.”

“Vampire smell is kind of like a dog whistle—it’s usually not strong enough for anything other than werewolves or other vampires,” Kelly said. “I’m guessing it’s some kind of magical pheromone, given it has an effect on creatures that can’t small it like us.”

“You’ve met a vampire before?” Malcolm asked.

Kelly shrugged. “A few. Most wolves try to avoid them.”

“Why?”

“Because vampires take advantage of us. I can fight against it as a witch, but most other werewolves aren’t as lucky.”

“Take advantage?”

“It’s a symbiotic thing. I didn’t stick around to ask,” Kelly said.

They dropped the empty bag off at the truck then joined the rest of the people in the field. The dense crowd made both of them salivate, but the barbecue also contributed.

Standing on tiptoe in her Mary Janes, Kelly whispered in Malcolm’s ear, “Be sure to eat until you’re full.” She curled her arm around Malcolm’s.

He tried to appear nonchalant, but beads of sweat formed on his forehead, and his hand over hers was moist.

“Relax,” she said. “It’ll be easier if you relax.”

“I bet you say that to all the boys,” Malcolm replied.

Kelly laughed.

The two men at the grill smiled at their approach—too widely in her opinion, but she was also on edge, and she wasn’t inclined to be kind after they had checked her ring finger to see if the man she was obviously comfortable with had done right by her.

“Fresh meat?” asked the one on the right, a young man with frosted hair. It somehow worked for him.

“If you mean you’re offering us porcine products, absolutely,” Kelly said, smiling back with all the training her Southern upbringing had taught her. “If you mean to ask if we’re new, yes.”

“Then welcome. Welcome to Salvation,” Frosted Tips said. “I’m Brother Tim and this is Brother Peter. You can drop the Brother, of course, if you don’t feel comfortable with it. We don’t stand too much on ceremony.”

“If I knew how easy it was to get to Salvation and how good the food would smell, I’d have come sooner,” Malcolm said.

The lack of sarcasm in his statement immediately put the two men at ease. Malcolm shook hands with them and accepted a sturdy paper plate of bratwurst with a deceptively easy smile. Perhaps they wouldn’t notice how tight his teeth were as he did so.

Peter, a middle-aged man with a slightly receding hairline but a strong jaw, held out his hand for Kelly, who paused for a beat before taking it.

“I’m Kelly and this is Malcolm.”

“You find us on our website?” Peter asked.

“Through some family friends,” Malcolm replied, making a plate for Kelly too.

Peter continued to smile, but he didn’t blink as Kelly took a bite of bratwurst from her full plate. “We have some salad, too, over on that table there. You know how the ladies can be, am I right?” he said, nudging Malcolm with his elbow. “Always watching their figure.”

Kelly bit back the lascivious retort that she preferred other people to watch her figure. That would have been disproportionately defensive right there, not to mention inappropriate for the venue. But she had heard enough of Brother Peter’s thoughts to learn that her plateful of meat was more suspicious to him than Malcolm’s because she was a woman.

So Salvation did know about real werewolves and some of the ways to discern them. He at least suspected what she was.

Now Kelly was the uncomfortable one fighting not to tip off what she was. Malcolm, on the other hand, had slipped into the role of curious, friendly visitor as though he were made for it.

“She watched her figure earlier knowing what was in store, right, babe?” Malcolm asked, kissing her forehead.

“Right,” she said. “Iced tea sounds good, though.”

“Iced tea it is,” Malcolm declared. “What would a barbecue be without iced tea? Good to meet you, brothers, and thanks for the meal.”

“Feel free to come back for seconds,” Tim said, saluting Malcolm with his spatula.

As they headed towards the salad and drink table, Kelly said, “Wow. What were you, a retail monkey in another life? I’ve never seen you so animated.”

“There’s nothing a dog knows better than how to give an effusive greeting,” Malcolm replied. “You tensed up on me over there. What’s wrong?”

“They suspect,” Kelly said. “And they don’t like it.”

“Suspect what?”

“That I’m a werewolf,” Kelly said, “because I’m eating a lot of meat and no salad.”

“You’re joking,” Malcolm said incredulously.

“They wonder if I’m pulling my sheepskin wool over your eyes,” Kelly said. She added some salad to her plate to appease the two men at the grill and hoped that it would be enough.

“I thought they wanted werewolves and what-not here. Otherwise how would they cleanse them?” Malcolm asked.

“They wouldn’t cleanse them if they liked them,” Kelly replied. “You ever go to church as a kid?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “My parents were Presbyterian.”

“They talk a lot about druggies and prostitutes and homeless people and helping them. How often do you see any of those people darken the door of a beautiful sanctuary?”

“Point taken,” Malcolm said. “What should we do?”

“Try to blend. I’ll eat seconds off your plate, since they won’t think twice about you, a big, tall man, going up and asking for more. In the meantime, I guess I’ll eat the salad and hope they don’t jump me until after the service.”

“But you can take them, right?” Malcolm asked, worry lines forming on his forehead at her genuine anxiety.

“Yes,” Kelly replied, as much to reassure herself as Malcolm. “If I have to. But I’d rather not have to transform in front of everyone, and I don’t do
that
kind of magic much.”

“What kind of magic?” Malcolm asked.

“Most kinds of magic.”

“Why not?”

“It’s just a bad idea,” Kelly said, and she headed towards the tent.

“I am going to ask about that again,” Malcolm whispered when he caught up to her, “so don’t think this is over.”

But there were too many people around them, and he decided to focus on filling his mouth with food to resist the temptation like she’d advised him. Kelly forced herself to swallow down the Caesar salad. There were some vegetables she tolerated, usually root vegetables in a stew or soup or roast, infused with a meat’s broth. But lettuce tasted like paper to her. She had to eat it with the sausage just to choke it down.

A few werewolves and vampires occasionally passed by them as she and Malcolm wandered the grounds. Each time, they would reluctantly meet Malcolm’s eyes in a moment of commiseration—each with the same guilty expressions to admit that they were alike.

Many of the magical creatures they encountered seemed young. None of them looked older than thirty-five. Of course, how everyone looked was pretty much a useless metric for determining age among werewolves and vampires, but Kelly had the feeling that she wasn’t too far off the mark. She guessed that many of the magical beings were there for the same reasons as Malcolm—because the change was new and they yearned for the simplicity or safety of what they had been before.

Kelly gritted her teeth against a swell of anger, as ferocious and white hot as silver in a forge, because all the people around her either stank of unearned superiority or shame for all the wrong reasons.

The scents of this place were stronger now with her wolf senses, but most of them were also very familiar, and old anger mingled with the new. She hadn’t realised how much she had tried to forget places like this. But she had promised Malcolm. It was only one service, one night. Then he would see how much of a mistake this was.

When Malcolm went back for seconds, Kelly crossed her legs and lowered herself to the ground in front of the tent so that she could see everyone on the lawn and only the canvas was at her back.

A man exited the tent and turned, almost stumbling over her. Kelly moved out of the way just seconds before with the same absentmindedness with which she responded to all these kinds of seconds-before prescient moments.

“Oh, hello. I didn’t see you.” The man in front of her was broad-shouldered and in short sleeves despite the chilly weather, which would have clued her in that he was a werewolf even if his scent hadn’t passed across her face.

“Hey.” The man looked her over. “Nervous?”

“What?”

“You look a little peaked,” the man said. He crouched down with a werewolf’s grace and balance, which was odd but beautiful on his somewhat thick form. He looked like a bodyguard to Kelly, and suddenly she knew for certain that that’s what he was and that his name was Ahmir. Kelly cocked her head. A werewolf bodyguard for a man who called werewolves abominations?

“Good Lord, girl, you’ve practically gone white.”

His voice seemed to come from far away. Kelly closed her eyes, finally understanding that what she was feeling wasn’t ordinary nervousness. It was outright fear.

Because there really
were
magical creatures here looking to get their curses removed. Because a man who called himself the Father had a werewolf bodyguard. And because she now understood through Ahmir’s mind why the Father called himself that. He called himself the Father because that’s what his name meant. ‘Abraham’ was the father of many.

This was her prophecy. Naturally, it had waited until now to reveal itself, because now it was too late for them to leave. Malcolm was just too invested. She didn’t even know
why
they had to leave in the first place, and she wouldn’t know until it was too late, because the magic was sometimes sadistic and made her a Cassandra even to herself. Any way she turned it, this whole thing had officially turned into a Supremely Bad Idea.

“Are you okay?” Ahmir asked, his thick, dark eyebrows drawing together.

He lifted her chin up to see if she were all right, but as he did so, Kelly got an eyeful like a vertigo double image of what Ahmir looked like in wolf form… And he was enormous. Kelly jerked back, falling against the tent canvas. The flames on the tiki torches around the lawn abruptly shot up with simultaneous roars.