Hitchhikers (13 page)

Kayla smiles at me encouragingly. How can she
be so calm?

“It’s impossible. People don’t turn into
wolves. That’s a story, a horror movie. Not real.”

“Think about it,” she says. “You don’t
remember seeing me at all since you picked up that stray dog you
called Lila?”

“Yeah, but those were just dreams – ”

She shakes her head. “Daniel,
I’m
Lila.”

I stare at her. Sure, her hair is the same
color as Lila’s fur, and she has the same warm brown eyes, but it’s
impossible. I bury my face in my hands. “I must be hallucinating
again. Maybe Candi drugged me with that soup…”

Kayla sighs.

And waits.

It all runs through my head. Those dreams of
Kayla where she’s naked, when I fell asleep holding Lila. Those
mixed up things from when I tried to kill myself. The footprints
and paw prints on the floor.

If Kayla can turn into a wolf, then all those
times I blacked out… I must have become a wolf then. I was a wolf
when I killed all those people… that little baby…

“You’re wrong,” I tell Kayla.

“You just have to accept it–” she starts.

“No. You’re wrong. My father did turn into a
monster. And I’m a monster too.” In a whisper I add, “I’m a
killer.”

She puts her hand around my shoulders and
pulls me to her. “The wolf is the monster, not you. You have to
learn how to control it, that’s all.”

I push her away and glare at her. “I just
have to learn how to control it? What do you think I’ve been trying
to do for the past three years? I killed a fucking little kid, for
Christ’s sake! I’m a goddamned monster!”

“Daniel, that… that was an accident. And it
wasn’t totally your fault.”

“How can you say that? I was hungry and I
smelled that little girl and then I ate her! Maybe ‘the wolf’ did
it, but that was me licking my lips after I chewed open her
head!”

dizziness

“Please, Daniel, hear me out.” Kayla’s voice
has risen in panic. It’s like she can feel the monster trying to
take over. “That kid was already half-dead by the time you found
her. There’s another… we’re being followed. They set a trap for
you. They are the monsters, the ones who spilled her blood, knowing
full well how hungry you were. You were starving and suffering from
hypothermia, and you smelled fresh blood.” The dizziness has
subsided, but it still doesn’t make sense to me. “I would have done
the same thing if – ”

“If what? If you were a monster?”

“That’s not what I was going to say.” She
takes a deep breath. “Daniel, you don’t understand the kind of
danger we’re in. These others… they’re hunting for you. They want
to kill you.”

“Let them. I don’t deserve to live.”

“Stop being so selfish!” Kayla screams at me.
“Do you have any idea what will happen to the rest of us if you get
killed? Do you?”

I shake my head. I don’t even know who she
means by “the rest of us.”

“It will be bad, Daniel. That’s why we need
you to come back. We need you to protect us.”

I laugh. “Protect you? I can’t even stop
myself from killing – ”

“If you mention that kid one more time, I
will smack you,” Kayla says. “This is serious. You’re the strongest
wolf any of us has ever seen. You took on three full-grown wolves
by yourself on the night of your initiation.” Her brown eyes gaze
into mine. “You could save us all.”

Our families form one of the oldest packs in
Montana, Kayla tells me. They emigrated from Europe in the early
1800s, coming to America to escape the eradication of wolves. Long
before the Westward Expansion, our families disappeared into the
forest and headed west.

“You’re saying we were the first families to
live in Montana?”

“No,” Kayla says. There were others who lived
in Montana. Mostly the Crow Indians and some other tribes, and some
missionaries. Our families formed a secluded settlement, first in
caves in the hills and later in houses. Eventually other settlers
came and our families became less antisocial, began to mingle with
both the natives and the other folk that arrived.

“Wait, so that’s how it happened, right? We
got some Indian blood wendigo thing–”

“Don’t be racist, Daniel. This has nothing to
do with Indians. Wendigos aren’t even close to what we are.”

“They aren’t werewolves?”

“No, that’s just popular culture. Wendigo are
cannibalistic spirits–”

“And that’s different from me how?”

“Just shut up, okay? The wolf is in our
blood. Our blood, not Indian blood. Got it?”

Some of the other families interbred with the
natives and with the pioneers. The bloodline spread. The werewolf
gene got weaker, but it spread, so now there are three packs in
Montana. Us, and two others.

“The others aren’t as strong as us. We keep
to our own. Our blood is pure.”

“But?”

“They have numbers on their side. It’s down
to you and me.”

There were two families left in our pack: the
Connors and the Roulfs. My father, my mother, myself, and Uncle Red
were the Connors; Uncle Buck, Kayla, and her mother were the
Roulfs, her mother being my mother’s sister. A third family, the
Loupes, had died off decades ago, after the patriarch went crazy
and killed his mate and most of his offspring. Those who survived
disappeared into the forest and never came back, except for one: my
grandmother.

“How many surviving offspring are we
talking?”

“Back then it was normal to have ten or more
children. Most people had that many because of high infant
mortality, but not us. Our babies were very resilient. There were
at least four survivors, if you include your gramma.”

“So three kids disappeared? What happened?
Did they join one of the other packs?”

“No one knows. Mom told me they tried for
weeks to track them down, but eventually the pack decided to give
up. It wasn’t completely unexpected. Incest leads to a lot of birth
defects… including insanity.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Don’t even say it, Daniel. You’re not crazy.
Trust me.”

The Connors and the Roulfs had done their
best to avoid the fate of the Loupe family. The pack decreed that
no one closer than a second cousin would marry. That was okay for
one generation, since my grandmother was around. After that, it was
harder. My father and Uncle Buck had gone out and sniffed out women
with the wolf blood. My mother and her sister went to a high school
in a neighboring town. They were descended from one of the original
five families, the Randells, but the process is different for a
woman than for a man.

“For males, they change on their thirteenth
birthday. Girls only change when they get their first blood.”

“Wait, so that’s what they were doing when
they dragged me up to that mountain? They knew I was going to
change? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“It’s complicated.”

Sometimes, for reasons unknown, the change
doesn’t happen. The pack decided a long time ago to not tell the
children until they came of age. That kept the children safe in the
case of outsiders asking questions, and if the change never
happened, the children grew up not knowing. It was better this
way.

“How is that better? Don’t you think it would
have helped me out a little to know what I was in for?”

“Would you have believed it?”

It is tradition for the male to change in the
company of the other males in the pack, a sort of initiation
ceremony. The other males are there to subdue the new wolf and
teach it the ways of the pack.

“It wasn’t quite like that.”

“No?”

“I thought they were going to attack me.”

Part of the initiation ceremony is also a
dominance test: if the new wolf can overtake the pack leader, he
becomes the Alpha.

“Okay, that sounds more like it.”

Again, for girls, it’s different. The female
may get her first blood during the day, but she won’t change until
that night. The other females of the pack are usually able to tell
when a girl is about to change for the first time by her scent.
Their initiation ceremony is a bit different. The girl is dressed
in a loose gown and led into the forest. The other females talk her
through the change, telling her the lore of the pack and explaining
everything that is happening to her. Sometimes they are able to
share these experiences through a kind of telepathy.

“Is that how you got into my dreams? Can all
wolves do that?”

“Yes… although you won’t be able to do it
until you’re in control of your wolf.”

The females remain in human form except for
the new wolf’s mother, who also changes. They bathe the new wolf in
a kind of baptism, while the mother licks her cub clean.

“It was like being born into a new person. A
stronger person.”

“Wish my experience had been like that.”

For years the males and females had been at
odds about different traditions of the pack. The men were becoming
more violent. The females usually found it easier to ignore the
violence, especially after Fallon Loupe killed his wife.

“How do you know all this, if our mothers
didn’t grow up with the pack?”

“Your grandmother passed it down to our
mothers on her deathbed. She told them…”

“What? What did she tell them?”

“She said you were special. You were the one
who could save us all.”

My grandmother died when I was three.

“I know this is a lot to take in, Daniel. You
should have been told this all a long time ago.”

“I still don’t understand what I can do about
anything. All of this sounds like our pack was in trouble even
before I killed our fathers and Uncle Red. If there’s really only
you and me left, what can I really do against an enemy pack?”

Kayla rests her head on my shoulder. “We’ll
figure it out.”

I lie awake while Kayla sleeps, her scent
of

forest fur winter

filling my nostrils. I shouldn’t like this. I
shouldn’t have my lips pressed against her bare shoulder where my
t-shirt has slipped off her small frame. I shouldn’t want this.

But I do.

Sometime in the dim hour before sunrise she
awakens and slides out of bed. “I need to go get more supplies,”
she tells me, shrugging on my jacket.

“I could go.”

“No. It’s not safe for you yet.”

My arms curl around the cold space beside me
after she’s gone.

Candi returns a short time later. “Still in
bed? Must be nice.” She plops down on the mattress, kicking her
shoes off and ripping off her top at the same time. Her sudden
flesh wakes a feeling deep inside. I reach for her.

She swats my hand away with a slap.

“Unless you magically found some money since
last night, this is off-limits.” She indicates her pale torso.

With some struggling, she pulls off her
pleather pants and settles into Kayla’s spot on the bed wearing
only her underwear. I would have expected a prostitute to be
wearing a thong or a g-string, but instead it’s grayish cotton
underpants, stained, the elastic loose.

“Mm, nice and warm.” She wiggles back until
her body fits into the spoon of mine and pulls the hand she slapped
around her waist. “No funny business now.”

In a matter of seconds her breathing slows
and I know she’s asleep. She smells like cheap cologne and night
air and sex.

I’m afraid to move lest I disturb her. How
can she feel safe lying in a bed with some stranger? The longer my
hand rests against the flat plain of her stomach, the more I think
about what lies to the north and south of that plain. My palm
sweats, itching to travel. The longer I force my hand to stay
there, the harder I get. In the darkness I can’t tell if my vision
is blacking out, but there’s a familiar feeling in the pit of my
stomach

Nausea?

I rip myself away from her. I curl up on the
edge of the mattress, hugging myself violently. My ragged
fingernails dig into my arms. It’s a good long while before the hot
trembling turns to cold shivering.

When the cold gets to me, I yank the blanket
away from Candi and wrap myself up.

“Hey!” she squawks. “Hello? I’m practically
naked here?”

I don’t respond to her. The blanket is
between my teeth.

“Dan.” She pulls at the blanket. “Dan. Come
on. It’s colder than a witch’s tit in here.”

The comparison doesn’t exactly help. I start
trembling again.

This time when she speaks her voice is soft.
“Dan.” Her hand slides under the blanket and she inserts herself.
Her naked form against my back. I can feel the soft lumps of her
breasts through the material of my sweatshirt.

It’s when she reaches around me that I tense
up.

“What?” she demands. “Oh, I get it. You’re a
virgin.”

I say nothing.

“Whoa-ho!” she crows. “I haven’t met a virgin
since I was a virgin!”

My fingers grip the blanket, more determined
than ever not to let her have an inch.

“Oh, come on. Don’t be so sensitive.” She
tries to snuggle back under the blanket but we end up wrestling for
it. She yanks at it until I’m no longer facing the wall but the
ceiling and her topless glory. I look away. “What is your problem?”
she says.

“Nothing.”

“Yeah, right.” She glares at me, but when she
figures out I’m not giving up, she changes tack. “Come on, Danny.
I’ll freeze if I don’t have a teeny tiny bit of that blanket. You
don’t want me to freeze, do you?” She puffs out her lower lip.

I parcel out half of the blanket and she
climbs under. “You’re so sweet,” she coos, pinching my cheek. I
flick her hand away. “So kind of you to share MY blanket.”

“Sorry,” I grumble.

Only a few moments later, I feel Candi’s
hands slide around my waist. I try to ignore it, but she keeps
going. I push her hand away and try to move so she’s not touching
me.