Monsters in the Midwest (Book 2): Northwoods Wolfman (13 page)

Chapter 19

Waking
was a sudden thing. Dallas sat up, surprised to find himself in his bed and
even more surprised to discover he wasn’t the least bit hung over. He rummaged
his brain for some clue as to how he got home. When no easy answers presented
themselves, he shrugged and climbed out of bed. He had to pee something fierce,
so he jogged down the stairs, through the house, and out the sliding door to
his wooded back yard. Sniffing as he trotted back and forth, he settled on a
nice maple, opened his boxer fly, and let loose a long stream.

“Aaaaaaahhhhhhh,”
he sighed with relief, savoring the dual sensations of the crisp autumn air and
a rapidly emptying bladder. The sun was just starting to announce the impending
debut of a new day, and the stars were taking their bows in anticipation of
leaving the stage. All in all, it was a fine morning.

Finishing
his business, he trotted back into the house and rummaged through his fridge.

“No,
no, no,” he muttered, pushing aside cans of beer, half-empty jars of mustard
and mayo, and a squeeze bottle of ketchup. “Where’s the meat? C’mon, there’s
gotta be some decent chow in here.”

The
fridge was decidedly lacking in anything worthy of eating. Dallas had just
started to concoct a plan to head back outside and track down a rabbit or maybe
a deer when his brain came skidding to a halt.

“Wait
a sec, what the hell am I doing?” he asked out loud. The kitchen appliances
didn’t have a response and sat in quiet judgment.

Must still be a little drunk after
all,
he reasoned.
I can’t chase deer through the woods in my
undies.

Climbing
the stairs back to his bedroom, he pulled on a pair of socks, jeans, a tee
shirt, and heavy flannel. Strapping on a wide leather belt, he checked himself
in the mirrored closet door.

Looking good, Dal,
he thought.
Those deer will never know what hit ‘em.
Ready to hunt, a flushing
toilet caused him to spin toward the bathroom and crouch down in surprise.

The
door opened, and out stepped Aletia. For a moment, he forgot everything,
including his hunger, how to breathe, and how to make sure his heart continued
to beat. For a moment, he was simply overwhelmed by the vision standing
casually in the bathroom doorway.

“Buenos
días,” she said.

A
neuron fired somewhere in Dallas’s brain. It made its way along a neural
pathway, one that seemed like it could eventually lead to his mouth, but there
must’ve been a lot of traffic. After a few long moments, the neuron finally
arrived at its destination and bumped into a few other neurons that triggered a
response in the web of nerves intertwined with the muscles of his face. Dallas
felt his cheeks twitch, tongue shift, and throat work, resulting in a deep,
“Whoa.”

She
was gorgeous. Absolutely, undeniably, without a doubt, one hundred percent
gorgeous. And naked. Very, very naked.

“You
weren’t thinking of slipping out on me, were you?” she asked, a thin layer of
ice frosting her otherwise playful tone.

Deer,
he thought.
I was going to get a deer.
That didn’t make a lick of sense though,
so he decided to keep that tidbit to himself. Instead, he walked closer,
drinking in every inch of her skin.

“Guess
I was thinking of rustling up some grub, but suddenly I’ve got a different kind
of hunger.”

Unbuttoning
his recently buttoned shirt and pulling his tee shirt over his head, he wrapped
up Aletia in his arms. “You okay with brunch instead of breakfast?”

Aletia’s
hands started to work at his belt buckle.

“Absolutely.”

Chapter 20

It
had been a good day. After some morning recreational activities with Aletia,
Dallas made a Get’n’Gobble run and returned to his place for brunch and a
little after-brunch nooky. The sun was high in the sky when they finally
deciding to find their clothes and hit up Bay City Bowlers for a beer and a
couple of games. They rolled, drank, and made small talk about small things.
All the while, Dallas watched each moment he spent with Aletia top the previous
moment as the best moment of his entire life.

Sure,
Aletia was beautiful. He also knew from recent experience that she was a pint
full of tough with a kick-ass chaser, but that was just the tip of the iceberg.
She knew the engine displacement of damn near every Chevy, Ford and Dodge truck
on the road, and gave him a very hands-on explanation of why she preferred a
shaft-driven motorcycle over a chain drive. The girl was sharp too, with a wit
that struck like the crack of a whip. Even more alluring was the fact that she
was worldly. Most of the girls Dallas had been with were anything but. The
edges of their maps barely extended past the best dive bars with mechanical
bulls and two-for-one Jell-O shots.

He’d
always known that Trappersville was small. Even so, he liked to think of
himself as a man of some experience. Someone who’d done things, like tried
Greek food or ate hotdogs with sweet peppers and mustard, but not ketchup.
Aletia, however, made him realize how small his world really was.

The
girl had been everywhere. She grew up in southern Mexico near the Guatemalan
border and had moved to Oregon when she was thirteen. In the ensuing years,
she’d been from San Fran to New York, from Duluth, Minnesota to Duluth,
Georgia, from the northern-most icy plains of Canada to the southern-most tip
of South America. Iceland to Australia, Spain to Japan… It was incredible.

 
“So Filipinos don’t speak Filipino?” he asked,
confused.

“Nope.
Tagalog,” she explained, pronouncing it
tah-GAH-log
.

“And
‘Filipino’ is spelled with an ‘F,’ but the Philippines is spelled with a ‘P
H?’”

“Yep.”

“Whoa,”
he sighed, leaning back in the molded plastic chair and looking down the alley.

“What’s
on your mind, cowboy?” she asked playfully.

Dallas
shrugged, succumbing to an unusual bout of shyness. “Just thinking that you’re
pretty great, is all.”

“Awww,
you’re cute when you blush, like un niño pequeño.”

“I
ain’t blushing. It’s just, it’s hot in here. Johnson’s got the thermostat up
too high,” he said, pulling at the neck of his shirt.

“Uh
huh. It is a little warm in here, but I don’t think it’s the furnace,” Aletia
said with a suggestive grin.

Dallas
grinned back. “Well, I guess I’d better get a fresh round to help us cool off a
bit. Same?”

Aletia
gave a thumbs up in answer, and Dallas rose to head to the bar. As he made his
way passed the lanes, he passed a number of regulars. Each nodded or waved a
greeting, even Fancy Dan.

“Hot
damn, Dallas. That girl’s a beaut! What’s she doing with you?” Dan called out.

Adorned
in his usual eye-searing conflagration of colors and patterns, Fancy Dan
practically glowed in the neon and black lights of the bowling alley. Squinting
his eyes, Dallas responded with a well-executed middle finger. The two men had
never exactly considered each other to be friends. Year after year, their teams
had squared off during league bowling. The end result of those regular
encounters was that Dallas thought Dan was a whiny little bitch, and Dan
thought Dallas was a testosterone-laden brute. When Dallas’s team won the
summer’s bowling tourney, it drove an even bigger wedge between the two men.
The fact that Dan was one of the few folks who genuinely believed Herb was a
vampire had helped thaw things between them a little, but not much.

Passing
the shoe rental counter, Dallas involuntarily looked up at the board displaying
the
Roll-Masters Hall of
Fame
. His name stared
back, prominently displayed at the top along with Herb’s and Stanley’s. Seeing
it hurt in ways that Dallas couldn’t explain. Dropping his eyes, he pushed
through the saloon-style doors into the bar.

Rhonda,
the ever-present bartender, was working her magic. Her iron grey mullet passed
by in a blur as she hurried from one end of the bar to the other, filling
pints, rinsing out rocks glasses, shaking the martini shaker, and yelling at
her son to stop fiddling with the karaoke machine and give her a hand.

Waiting
for Rhonda to take his order, Dallas’s mind wandered a short ways to Aletia.
She really was amazing. He hadn’t felt this way about a girl since…

“Lois!”

Herb’s
ex stood next to him at the bar. She must’ve walked in right behind him.
Strange that he hadn’t noticed her when walking from the alley though.

“We
need to talk, Dallas,” she said in a serious voice while looking up at him, her
face unreadable in the neon and track light glow.

Lois? When did she get here?
he wondered. He glanced over to see
if Rhonda was ever going to stop by… And there was a napkin on the bar. A square
napkin. White, square. Definitely a napkin. It had been folded. Looking at it,
he realized it had been folded twice. A twice-folded napkin. If he were to
unfold it, it would be four squares. As it was though, it was just one square.
One white, square napkin, folded. Check.

“Don’t
be a jerk, Dallas. We need to talk.”

Someone
was talking but not about napkins. That was weird. There was a stack of napkins
right there. His eyes moved down the folds, trying to count them. Twenty?
Thirty? Yes, thirty white, folded napkins. Check.

“Dammit,
Dallas. What’s your problem?”

The
frustrated voice didn’t make a lot of sense. Why get mad at Dallas? Houston,
sure. Lots of problems with Houston. The Oilers hadn’t been around since Bud
Adams moved them to Tennessee and renamed them the Titans. Dallas though.
Dallas still had the Cowboys. The cheerleaders wore white cowboy hats. Like
napkins, he realized. They wore white napkin cowboy hats. Check.

“Oh
crap, the spell. Hang on a sec,” he heard a voice say. Nodding vaguely, he fixed
his eyes on the white square on the bar. Napkin.

“
Septul dhanna rigosstro vale. I am here and
you will see. Distracted, you’ll no longer be.”

A
thunderclap sounded between Dallas’s ears, and suddenly, Lois was standing
right in front of him. Startled, he jumped back with a, “Holy shit!”

Pressing
a hand to his chest, he continued in a calmer tone. “Jesus, Mary and a
paternity test, Lois! Why you sneaking up on me like that? You damn near gave
me a heart attack.”

“Everything
okay here?” Rhonda asked, finally making her way over.

“Hi
Rhonda, we’re fine,” Lois responded, still peering up at Dallas with an
inscrutable look on her face.

“Lois?
Well, I’ll be,” Rhonda said. “I didn’t even recognize you without your, um. Is that
dress new? It’s very. Black.” Rhonda laughed nervously. “And that’s gotta be a
new shade of eyeliner…” Rhonda leaned across the bar, flooding Dallas’s nose
with a mixed bag of smells. Nicotine, a cherry throat lozenge, sweat, and a
heavy perfume that wanted to be daffodils but smelled more like dill pickle.
“Oh you poor dear, that’s not eyeliner. You look exhausted!”

Lois’s
eyes finally broke from Dallas’s. “Hi, Rhonda. I’m alright. I just, I’ve been…”
she trailed off, returning her sunken eyes to Dallas. “We just really need to
talk, and this probably isn’t the best place. Can we go back to my place?”

“And
why would he do that?” Aletia asked, her accented words clipped off to sharp
edges. “Friend of yours, Dallas? Maybe someone I should be properly introduced
to?”

Dallas’s
head whipped around and saw Aletia standing just inside the bar’s entrance.
Every inch of her radiated anger.

Oh crap,
he thought.

“Aletia!
Hey babe, this is Lois. She is, um, was, ah. Well, she works at the diner at
Ronnie’s Truck Stop, and she was, um. Well, remember that vamp I staked? Before
he was a demon thing, he was my buddy, you know? Herb. My buddy Herb. He and
Lois. Um.”

“Herb
and I were on a date when Dallas killed him.” Lois stated in a flat voice. For
a moment, it seemed like the lights in the dim bar dimmed even further, and
shadows seemed to pile up around her. “Who’s the new tramp, Dallas? Doesn’t
look like your usual floozy. She seems even more,” Lois tapped her chin,
looking for the right word. “Trashy.”

“Said
the goth wanna-be in Bumblefuck, Wisconsin,” Aletia shot back. “Where did you
get those clothes, puta? Rags ‘R’ Us or the Sack Barn?”

Rhonda
barked at the two women. “No funny stuff in my bar, dammit! You two either
simmer down or get the hell out. The last time a fight broke out in my bar, I
had to replace the burned carpet.”

Aletia’s
long legs moved her to Dallas’s side, and a possessive arm slid around his
waist. She glared at Lois with all the animosity of a cobra eyeballing a
mongoose for a long moment, but then her expression changed. She looked
confused, then surprised, then angry again, the reactions passing across her
face in a flash. With a forceful shove, she pushed Dallas behind her and
dropped into a crouch.

“Get
back, Dallas!” Aletia commanded. Her hands made a series of quick gestures,
finishing with her arms extended and fingers intertwined.

Lois
stepped back hard, as if she’d been slapped in the face, and her already
serious expression turned mean.

“I
said you stop it right now! Knock it off, or I’m calling the cops!” Rhonda
huffed, shaking a thick finger.

“Cops
won’t help,” Aletia growled. “Fortunately, there just happens to be a bruja
hunter in the room, and she has one of these!”

Aletia’s
hands broke from their strange intertwining, and one grabbed for a long
necklace beneath her shirt. Pulling it out, she brandished a darkly shining
pendant. Lois took another step back and then regained her footing.

“You’re
going to make cracks about my clothes when you’re wearing jewelry from a
gumball machine? Some nerve.
Holen dah,
mik’spentu ran!
Warding broken, worthless token!”

The
pendant that was dangling from the silver chain split with an audible
crack
and opened like a pistachio. Dark
pieces of faceted gemstone fell away, leaving a bright red gumball firmly
affixed to the chain.

While
Aletia gaped at the gumball, Lois took a deep breath and let it out very
slowly.

“When
you’re done with your flavor of the week, come to my place. We need to talk,”
she said to a stunned Dallas. “It’s about Herb.” With a parting glare at
Aletia, Lois turned and shoved her way out of the saloon-style doors.

Dallas
watched her storm off, noticing for the first time the black shift and matching
loafers she was wearing. It was such a break from her usual brightly colored
halter tops, slim-fit jeans, and trendy high heels that he wondered if it
really was Lois walking from the bar. His brain chugged in place, trying to put
the pieces from the last few moments together.

“You’re
dead vampire friend’s ex-girlfriend is a bruja, a witch?” Aletia asked,
astonished. “You really know how to pick ‘em. We have to tell Colton. Vampires,
boo hags, and now a bruja? This place is a total hell spawn hot zone.”

Dallas
shook his head emphatically. “No, not Lois. She’s no witch. Look, I don’t know what
all that was just now, but that’s Lois. She’s not. I mean, she can’t be. No
way.”

In
response, Aletia held up her silver chain with the red gumball.

“That
was a two hundred year old talisman, fashioned at the request of William
Stoughton himself after he presided over the Salem Witch Trials. That puta
cracked it like a Cadbury Egg and turned it into a gumball. A
gumball!
” Aletia shook it for emphasis.
“And you are seriously telling me she’s not a witch?”

Grabbing
Dallas’s arm, she dragged him toward the exit.

“Come
on,” Aletia ordered. “We’re going back to camp.”

“But
she said it was about Herb,” he finally protested. “She wants to talk about
Herb. Lois hasn’t talked to me in weeks. Not a word, except for the, ‘get the
hell away from me,’ kinda words. If she wants to talk, I have to go see her. I
mean, maybe she’s forgiven me. Maybe she finally understands what I had to do
when I,” he coughed, throat gone momentarily dry. “When I killed… it. Him. When
I killed Herb.”

Unbidden
and wholly unexpected tears welled up and streamed down Dallas’s face.

“I
killed him, Aletia. I know I had to, and I know I saved Lois and a lot of
folks, but Lois doesn’t understand. Look, you have to let me talk to her. I
don’t know if she’s a witch or whatever, but if she is, it’s a phase or
something. It has to be.” The idea made sense and dug stubborn roots as he
talked it through.

“She
was real broken up when Herb died. She probably just, you know, got kinda
confused, and maybe
Charmed
was on. I
don’t know, but if she thinks she’s a witch, she’s not a bad witch. Not Lois.”