Kick at the Darkness (17 page)

Adam seemed to deflate, the anger seeping away. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, steadily breathing in and out a few times. When he spoke, his voice was low, and he stared at the ground. “I was born this way. My family were all werewolves—my parents and my sisters. Our parents taught us how to hide it. How to control it. But they died before I could learn everything I needed to. Everything I wanted to. There’s so much I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m like this. I don’t how many of us there are. My parents didn’t have any other family. Hardly any friends. They drilled into us that we had to keep the secret at all costs.”

“You can’t expect me to believe this.” But how else could it be explained? Parker had seen it with his own eyes.

Adam raised his head. “All I can give you is the truth. This is the truth, Parker. This is who I am.”

“I feel like I’m dreaming. This can’t be real. First this virus turns people into monsters, and now you’re a werewolf? I mean, that’s crazy.” Like a movie in his head, Parker saw it all again—Adam transformed into a hairy creature, killing the infected with a strength that couldn’t possibly be normal. Or even human. The next thing Parker knew, he was on the ground, his legs folded under him.

Adam took a step toward him, his face pinched in concern.

“I’m fine.” Parker waved a hand. “I guess I needed to sit down. This is the kind of news where people say, ‘You should sit down.’ So I am. And now I’m babbling, aren’t I? Yeah. That’s what I do. I babble.”

Adam only watched him warily, hovering a few feet away with his arms stiffly at his sides.

It was as though someone had dumped a jigsaw puzzle into his head, and Parker was slowly piecing it together. After a minute, he tried the words out loud. “You’re a werewolf.” Somehow, it was seeming less crazy as he considered the strange little things about Adam that now made sense—the supersonic hearing and the sniffing for starters. “You’re a werewolf,” he repeated.

“Yeah.” Adam’s voice was low and hoarse.

“Have you ever? Back on the road, that was…”

Adam held up his bloody hands, staring at them as if he’d never seen them before. “I’ve never killed anything. I never had to.” He trembled all over. “It was like I was watching someone else do it. I let the instinct take over. I couldn’t…they were going to kill you. I couldn’t let them.”

Guilt flared in Parker’s gut. “I know I don’t seem it, but I am grateful. Thank you.”

“You don’t have to be. I know you can’t…I know I’m a freak.” He closed his eyes, curling his fingers into fists. “I understand. I hated myself for so long,” he whispered.

The urge to comfort drew Parker to his feet, and he stepped closer, a tentative hand reaching out but not touching. “I don’t hate you. You’re not a freak.” He wanted to smooth out the creases in Adam’s face where his eyes were squeezed shut and his mouth a taut line. “Adam, you’re not.” The wind whipped through the trees, rustling the leaves. “Let’s go inside and talk.”

“You can take the bike. You’ll need it if you’re on your own.”

Parker thought he might be sick. He was still holding out his hand, and he drew it back. “You want me to go?”

Adam opened his eyes and finally met his gaze again. “No. I’d never want that. But I understand if you do.”

Now that the shock had worn off—as much as it could considering he’d just discovered
werewolves were freaking real
—and Adam was himself again, the thought of leaving him was pretty much the worst thing Parker could think of. “I want to stay together.” He reached out again, and this time he snagged one of Adam’s hands, not caring about the blood. He squeezed tightly. “Can we go inside now?”

Adam looked at him with wide eyes. “Okay.”

Tugging Adam along, Parker approached the worn, unadorned cabin and tried the door, which creaked open. “Do you think I can use a flashlight?”

“Huh? Oh, uh…” After a moment, Adam continued. “Yeah. I can’t hear anything nearby. Just some animals in the forest.”

The slim flashlight’s beam found one room with two bunk beds in the left corner, one against each wall. No fridge, and there didn’t seem to be any electricity. A battered wooden table and four chairs sat in the middle of the room, a kerosene lantern resting on top. There was no bathroom, so there was likely an outhouse somewhere nearby.

“Hunters, probably,” Parker noted. “Doesn’t look as if there’s been anyone here in quite a while.” A layer of dust coated everything in the Spartan space.

Adam gripped Parker’s hand, his gaze a little dazed. Parker led him to one of the chairs and gently pushed on his shoulder. “Sit down.”

“I’m fine,” Adam murmured, but it was clearly an automatic response.

“I know. Just sit.” Parker hurried to tightly close the musty curtains on the one window. Using the flashlight, he uncovered boxes of supplies stashed under the beds. “Jackpot,” he muttered.

Once he’d filled the lantern and lit it, he unscrewed a jug of water. He held it up to Adam, who obediently drank. Then Parker took a few gulps himself, marveling at how damn good tepid water could taste. Next, he filled a plastic wash basin and unwrapped a bar of soap.

Adam didn’t argue as Parker eased him out of his boots, jacket, Henley, and jeans. In his briefs, he sat on the chair and let Parker scrub his hands clean. There was blood on his face and neck, and splattered in his hair, and Parker tried not to think about what he’d looked like with fangs.
Fangs.

It’s okay. He’s a werewolf. And that’s okay. He’s not a creeper. He’s not going to eat my face. He’s still Adam
.

Parker rinsed off the blood, gently working his soapy fingers into Adam’s hair, Adam pliant beneath him, his eyes open but unfocused. Parker wanted to ask a million questions, but he kept silent.

When Adam was clean, Parker peeled off his own shirt and kneeled on the floor, scrubbing his face and hands in the low glow of the lantern. He sat back on his heels. “I guess we should get some rest?” There was so much more to say, but he wasn’t sure Adam was in the right frame of mind. He likely wasn’t either.

Adam nodded, and Parker took off his sneakers and jeans before shaking out the blankets folded at the end of one of the bottom bunks. He settled in, squeezing over on the mattress in his boxers and T-shirt.

But when Adam doused the lantern and walked over to the bunks, the floor creaking with his steps, he went to the other bed. Parker swallowed the surge of hurt that threatened to bring tears to his eyes, and curled up under the scratchy blanket. Even though Adam was only a few feet away, Parker felt utterly alone.

The darkness was absolute.

It had been at least an hour, and although Parker had screwed his eyes shut and willed himself to sleep, his brain had refused to shut off. He couldn’t make out his hand in front of his face, and he wondered if it was worth the risk of keeping the lantern on low. He thought about the creepers, and their horribly wrong eyes and industrious teeth, and sighed. Not worth it. He pulled the scratchy, musty wool blanket up to his chin.

“You okay?”

Adam spoke quietly from the other bottom bunk a few feet away, but it seemed loud. Parker cleared his throat. “Yeah. It’s just dark. But it’s okay. You’ll hear anything coming, right?”

“Yes.” After a few beats of silence, he added, “I should have known those creepers were there on the road. I’m sorry.”

“I’m the one who distracted you.” Touching Adam had felt so natural, and now here they were in separate beds. Did Adam not want him now? Parker didn’t know what to think, or how to feel. But in the dark, it somehow felt easier to talk, and Adam sounded more like himself again after kind of zoning out there for a bit. “So you can hear things from pretty far away, huh?”

His question hung in the dank air so long that he thought Adam had fallen asleep or spaced again.

“I spent years trying to suppress it—my hearing and sense of smell. The vision I couldn’t change, but I tried my best not to pay attention to my other senses. Tried to make them as…normal as possible.”

“With your eyesight, is it like, you know, night vision goggles? I mean, what you see, is it like that?” He tried to keep his tone neutral.
This is totally normal. Just talking about special werewolf abilities. NBD. Ain’t no thang
.

“Something like that. I see movement much more sharply.”

“But you’ve tried not to use your senses? Didn’t they come in handy even before all this?”

After another prolonged silence, Adam answered. “I didn’t want to be different. I had to hide who I really am. I couldn’t take any chances.”

“You never told
anyone
? What about Tina?”

“Yes. She’s the only one I told who’s still in my life.” There was a brief silence. “Who was in my life.”

Parker wanted to soothe him and say that he’d see Tina again, but couldn’t push the pretty lie past his tongue. He cleared his throat. “Who else did you tell?”

There was another silence. And then he said, “My foster parents. After the accident, I bounced around a few homes. I was nine, and it’s not easy to place older kids. Then I got lucky. The Taylors were really great. They already had four kids under the age of twelve. All fosters they’d adopted, or were adopting. They took me in, and it was good. For a while, at least. Before I messed it up.”

“What happened?” Parker asked softly. In the darkness, a confessional mood had settled over them, and Parker was almost afraid to speak in case he broke it. He had a feeling Adam hadn’t told anyone this. Adam was silent again, and Parker added, “I’ve messed up plenty of things, trust me. It’s not just you.”

“I told them the truth.”

“Oh.”

Adam exhaled a long breath. “At first, they thought I was acting out, or that I was coming unglued or something. PTSD. They said they’d take me to a therapist and we’d get to the bottom of it. That everything would be okay. They didn’t believe me, which I understood. So I had to show them. I’d worked so hard since the accident to suppress it. The wolf.”

Parker swallowed hard. “Is it like…a beast you can’t control? Are you going to howl at the full moon and go feral?”
Holy shit, when was the next full moon?

There was a hint of amusement in Adam’s voice. “Don’t worry—it’s only like that in movies. The moon doesn’t affect me any more than it affects you. It’s a myth.”

“Oh. Really? Well, that’s good to know. Okay, so going back to your foster parents. You had to show them. Did you like, get all fangy and stuff?”

“A little. The fangs and the claws and the hair were already a lot for anyone to deal with, but when I transformed again after the first time in so long, I roared so loudly it shattered all the windows in the house. And a few next door. The Taylors were terrified. I tried to explain, but I could see that they were afraid I’d hurt them, or the other kids. They didn’t know what to do. They told me to never do anything like that again, and that everything would be fine. For a couple days, we pretended like it was, and that some freak storm had blown out the windows.

“But I knew I’d ruined it. They couldn’t even look at me, and their hearts would pound when I came in the room. I could hear them. They’d seen the real me, they were scared. So I ran. I never saw them again. I ended up on the other side of the state in a group home.”

“God. I’m sorry.” Again, he wanted to reach out, but Adam had chosen to take the other bed. Parker was usually too pushy, and he didn’t want to mess up. “What happened after that?”

“I bounced around group homes. Started getting into fights. Shoplifted and vandalized. I was angry and scared.”

“And hurt.”

Adam’s voice was small. “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry if I made you feel bad tonight.” The guilt was acid in Parker’s stomach. “I didn’t mean to. I really didn’t.”

“It’s not your fault. I’m a freak, Parker. I can’t expect anyone to accept me once they know the truth.”

“But I want to. I…it was scary. I’m not gonna lie. Seeing you sprout claws and fangs and a whole bunch of hair was really unexpected. I thought you were infected. In a split second, I thought that was it. That I was going to be on my own. I was going to lose you and probably die too. But I’m really glad I didn’t lose you or die, and I’m just trying to process all this.” He was silent for a moment as his brain whirred. “How many werewolves are there out there in the world? Are there vampires? Sasquatches? Loch Ness Monsters?”

“Not that I know of.”

Parker wished he could see Adam in the darkness to see if he was smiling. He thought from his tone he might have been.

“As for werewolves, I’m not sure. Growing up, it was just my parents and sisters. They taught us to hide our true natures so we could go to school and be normal. I was too young to really wonder why we didn’t know any other werewolves. They said there used to be packs of us, but that in-fighting decimated the population. Scattered us all around. They wanted to keep us separate. Safe. They told us if we ever thought there was another wolf there, we should leave and tell them right away. That it was vital for us to live normal lives and keep our secret.”

“So you don’t know, like, where you come from? How you exist?”