Running with the Pack

Page 4

He hoped she was right.
On his first full moon, on a windswept plain in the hills of central California, he screamed and couldn’t stop as his body broke and changed, shifting from skin and reason to fur and instinct. The scream turned into a howl, and the dozen others of the pack joined in, and the howls turned into a song. They taught him to run on four legs, to smell and listen and sense, to hunt, and that if he didn’t fight the change didn’t hurt as much. In the morning, the wolves slept and returned to their human forms, but they remained a pack, sleeping together, skin to skin, family and invincible. They taught him how to keep the animal locked inside until the next full moon, despite the song that called to him, the euphoria of four legs on a moonlit night. He’d never felt so powerful, not even when he left home.
He’d called Mitch and told him that he’d been sick with the flu and was staying with a friend. When he returned, the track had changed.
It had become brilliant, textured, nuanced. The dust in the air was chalk, sand, earth, and rubber. The exhaust was oil, plastic, smoke and fire. And the crowd—a hundred different people and all their moods, scents, and noises. A dozen bikes were on the track; each engine had a slightly different sound. He sneezed at first, his nose on fire, before he learned to filter, and his ears burned before he figured out how to block the chaos. He didn’t need to take it all in, he only had to focus on what was in front of him. But he could take it all in, whenever he wanted.
The world had changed. Terrifying and brilliant, all of it.
Alex had given T.J. a ride. Before T.J. left the truck, Alex touched his arm, calming him. The animal inside him that had been ready to tuck his tail and run settled.
“You going to be okay?” Alex said.
“Yeah,” T.J. said, breathing slowly as he’d been taught, settling the creature down.
“I’m here if you need anything. Don’t wait until you get into trouble. Come find me first,” he said.
If the pack was a new family, then Alex was its father, leader, master. That was another thing T.J. hadn’t expected. He’d never really had a father-figure to turn to.
Over the last week he’d learned what the price for invincibility was: learning to pass. Moving among people, thinking all the time how easy it would be to rip into them and feast, imagining their blood on his tongue but never being able to taste. Because if he tried it—if any of them ever actually lost control—the others would rip his heart out. That was how they’d stayed secret for centuries: never let the humans know they were there.
So he worked on Gary’s bikes and thought about the engine, belts, carburetor, and transmission, and remembered that the people around him were his friends and didn’t deserve to die by a wolf’s claws. He wanted to keep his old life. It was worth working to keep. That was the trick, Alex and Jane taught him. You can keep your old life. It won’t be the same, but it’ll still be there.
And he’d actually get to live to enjoy it, now. It was a relief. Made him want to howl.
Something fell on him, knocking the wrench out of his hand. He sprang to his feet, hands clenched, turning to snarl at whoever had done it, interrupted him—attacked. Then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
Mitch was waving him over. A dirty rag lay on the ground next to the wrench, that was all that had hit him.
“Gary’s last race is up, you coming to watch?” Mitch said.
His wolf settled. T.J. put away his tools and followed Mitch to the straw bales ringing the track.
“You okay? You seem a little jumpy lately,” Mitch asked.
He didn’t know the half of it. “I’m okay. I probably need more sleep.”
“Don’t we all,” Mitch said.
It gave him a sense of déjà vu, watching Gary and Alex ride in the same race. This time, though, the PA system was too loud, the crowd of spectators pressed too close, and he didn’t know who to watch, Gary or Alex. Gary was his friend, the guy who paid him under the table to keep his bikes running, who’d given him a break when T.J. needed one so desperately. But Alex was . . . something else entirely. Something bigger than T.J. had words for. Alex was the way he felt howling at the full moon.
The crowd buzzed, because this was Alex’s first race after the spectacular crash. It had only been a few weeks, but it seemed much longer, months or years ago. Gary won the race; Alex didn’t crash again. The incident faded from memory in that moment, but T.J. realized he saw the crash as a turning point—it had changed his life.
Last race. Gary was moving to the pro circuit, to a track out east, and had asked T.J. to come with him. The three of them made a good team. It was a huge opportunity, to go from scraping by as a bush league mechanic to working for a team with a real shot. But a weight seemed to tie him down. Like a collar and leash.
He and Mitch raced to the finish line to meet up with Gary. This was another of T.J.’s favorite things about the track, racing, bikes, and the crowds gathering after the race, offering congratulations and condolences, dissecting what had happened, arguing, handing out cold beers and drinking as they wheeled bikes back to their trailers. This had been the last race of the day; the party spilled onto the track. Someone blasted AC/DC on a radio, and people started dancing.
Gary lounged back on the seat of his bike, enjoying the attention he was getting. T.J. found himself drifting toward Alex. To an observer, it would have looked like the natural movement of the crowd, people circling, clusters gathering and breaking apart. But T.J. had Alex’s black jacket in the corner of his eye, and even amid all the sweat, dirt, spilled gas and oil, he could smell the animal fire of another werewolf. A pack should stay together. Alex, helmet in the crook of his arm, caught his gaze and smiled.
“Good race,” T.J. said, as he might have said even if they hadn’t been werewolves, and Alex the alpha of his pack.
Feeling nervous and awkward—his wolf was prowling, and T.J. suddenly wanted to be out of there—he started to drift back to Gary and Mitch. He wanted to be near his human friends.
Alex stopped him with a hand on his arm that sent a flush over him. Staticky, warm, asexual, comfortable. He could rub his face across the man’s coat. The feeling could get addictive.
But he held himself apart and tried to slow his breathing.
“Gary’s leaving. He asked me to go with him.”
“You can’t do that, you know,” Alex said. “Your family is here. Stay, come work for me,” Alex said.
And how would he tell Mitch and Gary? “I like Gary,” T.J. said. “He’s been good to me. He’s a good rider.”
“I’m a good rider.”
T.J. certainly wasn’t going to argue with that. Shaking his head, he started to walk away.
“T.J.”
He struggled. He had two voices, and both wanted to speak. But his wolf side was slinking, hoping for Alex’s acceptance. “I don’t have to do what you say.”
“You sure about that?”
If he didn’t walk away now, he’d never be able to. It was like that last dinner at home—if he didn’t say it now, he never would, and then he’d curl up and disappear. So he turned and walked away, even though some sharp instinct wanted to drag him back. Claws scraped down the inside of his skin; he tried to ignore it.
Back with Mitch and Gary, rolling the bike to Gary’s trailer, he started to relax.
“Saw you talking to Price,” Mitch said. “I didn’t think he swung your direction.” He was teasing but amiable. T.J. gave him a searing look.
Gary and Mitch left, and T.J. stayed behind. The circuit was over, racing done for the season, and the track settled into a lethargic rhythm of local practice. Guys screwing around on backyard bikes. T.J. scrounged up mechanic jobs when he could, and worked cheap. Alex rented him the guest room in the outbuilding behind his rural ranch house—the room where he’d woken into his new life. Just until he got back on his feet. Whenever that was. Months passed.
He drank at the Dustbowl with the rest of the pack, spent full moon nights with his new family, and that was the life that stretched before him now. But at least he was healthy.
No, truth spoke back at him—he’d traded one disease for another.
He’d taken a shower and was lying on the narrow bed, not thinking of anything in particular, when Alex knocked on the door. He could tell it was Alex by the knock, by the way he breathed.
“We’re leaving for the Dustbowl.”
Part of T.J. sprang up, like a retriever wagging its tail and grinning. Another part of him wanted to growl. He didn’t feel much like socializing. “I think I’m going to stay in tonight.”
“I think you ought to come along.”
Alex’s commands never sounded like commands. They were requests, suggestions. Strong recommendations. He spoke like a parent who always had your best interests at heart.
T.J. started to give in. It was his wolf side, he told himself. The wolf wanted to make Alex happy so the pack would stay whole, and safe.
But he wondered what would happen if he said no.
He sat up. “I don’t really feel like it.”