Page 13 of Wolf Bane
As if by magic, my phone buzzed with an incoming call.I fumbled it, hitting the accept call button as I answered.“Seriously?What the fuck, sending me straight to voicemail?”
“Uh.Hi?”
Disappointment bloomed beneath my breastbone.“Tyler.It’s almost midnight.Who’s dead?”
“No one yet,” he muttered.In the background, I could hear someone—Justin, it had to be Justin—hacking up a lung.“I know you don’t do house calls, but I can’t get Justin to go to the clinic.He’s been sick since… fuck, what day is this?Wednesday?”
“Thursday, for another twenty minutes.”I sat up, swinging my legs off the bed.“What are his symptoms?How long’s he been sick?”
“Sunday night.”He groaned.“Jesus, he’s been like this since Sunday night.And he’s coughing like he’s trying to bring up his guts, running a spiky fever, and keeps falling asleep randomly.Like fuckingdeepsleep, scared the shit out of me yesterday because he didn’t move for like ten hours.”
“Why’d you wait so long?”I demanded, finding the jeans I’d had on earlier and struggling into them, hopping from one foot to the other and cursing whoever invented slim fit.
Tyler’s tone was grim.“Until this evening, he was strong enough to ask me not to.He fought me on it until today and,” he heaved a small, humorless laugh, “I wanted to think it wasn’t as bad as all that.That it was a cold or something, allergies, I don’t know!”
Fuck, fuck, fuck!My shoes were near the door, and I was able to shove them on while I grabbed my zip up hoodie.“Keep it together, Tyler.Is he eating?Drinking?Peeing?”
“Uh… yeah?Kinda?And I guess.He disappears into the bathroom sometimes, but we’re not that close.”
Justin’s racking, gasping cough rattled down the line, loud and shocking.Tyler swore, and there was a plasticky tumble as he dropped the phone to help Justin sit up, from the sound of things.It was a tense, terrible few minutes as Justin’s cough settled and his loud, raspy breathing filled the silence.
Tyler came back, his own heavy sigh shaking in my ear.“Lan…”
“I’ll be there in half an hour.”
* * *
Tyler livedin his and Ethan’s childhood home, an unremarkable brick and siding situation set back off the road, down a long and rutted drive that had once been gravel but was now mostly sand and dirt with a few impressive chuckholes scattered around to ensure visitors kept alert.When Ethan had taken the place over after their dad died, he’d spruced up the flower beds out front and gotten rid of the rusty swing set and questionable piles of lumber covered in tattered tarps that had dotted their backyard.The only thing he hadn’t touched was their mom’s gnarled, sprawling swamp azalea that had grown to truly impressive heights over the decades since her death.Right now, it shadowed the front window, allowing only little peeks of the living room light through when I pulled to a stop on the wide, sandy area that served as a parking spot.The smell ofwolfandotherwas strong, hitting me square in the chest when I opened my car door.The house had been the de facto meeting spot for the clan for longer than the Stone brothers and I had been alive, weres living in the space since their parents were barely out of their teens.Now, even with just Tyler there full time and the clan meetings taking place at the unofficial were community center of Jem Blighy’s barn outside of town, the place reeked ofwere.
It made that wolf part of me stretch and yawn.Yeah, I know that sounds so romance novel cover from the mid-eighties, but that’s what it felt like.Something inside me that usually slept stretching away, looking around because it felt safe, felthome.
It also made me itch, change prickling just beneath my skin.The months of practice, of trying to change at will, to have acompleteshift, making it a little too easy for that wolf to make itself known sometimes.
Tyler threw open the door as I headed up the two shallow steps to the porch.Fear and anxiety wafted from him in sour waves, his hair lank and unwashed, the shadow of his beard well past five and inching towards midnight.“He finally stopped coughing but he’s feverish again.”
I followed Tyler into the living room where Justin was set up on the old sofa that had been there since we were kids.“Hey, man.What’s going on?”
“I’m dying,” Justin muttered miserably.“I’m sure of it.”
“Well, you’re still alive for now.Let me see your throat.”
Justin obediently opened his mouth, though he did shoot a glare at Tyler in the process.
“No pustules.What else is going on?”
Justin gingerly pushed himself into a sitting position, a sudden burst of coughing rushing through him.“I feel itchy inside,” he said, voice a bare rasp.“Like I want to tear my skin off.”
Tyler rocked back on his heels, muttering under his breath.I waved him off.“Go shower.You stink,” I ordered.
“You stink,” he shot back.“Shut up.”
“I can hear his heart thumping sometimes,” Justin said, settling back against the arm of the couch.“But not all the time.Just when I get too hot and everything feels like it’s going to split open.”
The flash drive was heavy in my pocket as I regarded Justin.“Do you remember when this started?Tyler said you got sick on Sunday, but did you feel weird before then?Were you around anyone…”
He shook his head, then frowned.“Maybe?I…” He glanced at Tyler.“Um.I went out for a little bit.Vanessa O’Brien.Someone I used to know, they emailed me?”
“Is that a question?”
