SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

There were scars on his chest.

She smiled. A sign of his being disciplined, surely, back at the school. "Something to remember your teachers by," she said softly. He tried to winnow his hand to the inside of her arm and push her away, but her grip was like a snake’s lips on a leopard frog.

He spat at her. "None from that place."

She lingered a moment on the thin, white marks that shone in the moonlight on his chest. They were far too regular, even for a beating given in the same place many times.

Don’t think about it, said the voice. Drink .

Courchene struggled to meet her eyes from the awkward tilted-back position of his head. "I did the Sundance."

The marks seemed to quiver and push her back.

Ignore it, said the voice. Drink .

She winced. It was some savage ritual, she realized.

"My father was dead," said the mountie. "But there were still some elders who knew the ways. After I graduated from the academy and joined the Mounties, I followed in the steps of my ancestors." He grimaced. "You’re the first white person to know."

Now her strength deserted her, though her terrible thirst remained.

Attack him , said the Voice, before it is too late!

But she couldn’t. His faith in whatever the scars meant to him was so powerful it melted her grip on him. She let go. The sight of his chest burned a hole through her mind and she tripped as she backed away from him.

Run , said the Voice. The train station!

Courchene stooped to retrieve his weapon. "H-halt!" He shouted.

Margaret picked herself up and fled. The sight of his patterned scars flared before her eyes. I have to get free.

The few trees that lined the dirt roads in MacDonald gave her little cover. After she had run for little over half a minute, shots rang through the chill autumn morning. Dogs in the few surrounding few houses began to bark. She reached the small wooden CN station and found the schedule for the coming day. Half-past eleven, for the passenger train they had likely meant to use to take her to the court in Regina. But at midnight there was a freight train from Vancouver, passing through on its way to Winnipeg. She knew no one in that city, and nobody knew her.

She checked the door. Locked. She doubted she had the strength for another change—and even if she did, what if she were unable to take on solid form again?

God, show me what I must do , she prayed silently.

There was no answer.

Then, You know what to do , said the Voice. It has always been you. We are one.

She shook. All those things she had done, to the children in the school, to those she took her Communion from—which she thirsted for even now—no one’s prodding but her own? Unthinkable.

Yet she had gotten herself free.

Yes , said the Voice.

She stepped down from the platform. Gasping, she crawled on the dirt beneath it, found a way under the station to where the beams blocked all light, where she could wait out the day. They might find her, before night came. But if they did, she would fight them with all her holy strength before being dragged into the light.

Originally published in Guns and Romances (Crossroad Press)

People say most Canadians don’t like guns, but in Horst Schellenberg’s case, he just hated being shot. And thanks to a .22, his first date with Rene didn’t go exactly as planned.

It started with him running naked across a snowy field in January. His clothes were packed in a duffel bag banging against his legs. That was fine. It was minus thirty, and his ears were still ringing from pounding through his favorite Maiden songs on his drums that afternoon. The newspaper said they’d be bringing Somewhere on Tour to Winnipeg during March. So he was stoked, not just from the thought of seeing Bruce Dickinson leave the mic to battle a huge version of cyborg-Eddie onstage—and, fuck, would that be mint —but about getting to hear Nicko McBrain hammer away on drums all night. He wasn’t Horst’s favorite drummer in the world—rest in peace, Bonzo—but man, he was good . Top five, for sure.

But it looked like that concert would the only bright light of the winter. Horst was flunking Grade 12 and it looked like the ass-end of 1987 was going to see him repeating it just so he could fucking graduate. Sure he could drop out, but then what? His folks were already breathing down his neck, and on top of that, his pack leader Mitch was all, “Don’t drop out, you don’t want to be stuck in a dead-end city job your whole life.” Christ.

But tonight he wasn’t going to worry about bio, trig, or Tess of the Douchebags . He was going to see Rene. In the duffel was a new black T-shirt, unripped jeans and leather jacket—you wanted to look good when you went to see a guy.

But his car, an old Chevy that had seen better days, had conked out on the highway. Looked like the fucking alternator had finally bit it. He should have checked it earlier and replaced it, probably—he was acing auto shop, for fuck’s sake—but parts weren’t cheap and it was either that or a new snare drum for his set.

Fortunately, Horst had options, so he changed form. A Canadian winter was nothing new to a dire wolf.

The territory was familiar; he’d been hunting along the outskirts of Winnipeg all winter. That was actually how he’d met Rene. Horst had been shifting after he’d fed (it was a cow he’d brought down; mule deer were just too fast for a wolf evolved to hunt mammoths), and when he’d come back to get his clothes from where he’d cached them in the bush, there was Rene, watching him from the back door. There had been a moment, in the bright light of the moon, when he had expected Rene to run, pull out a rifle or call the cops. But he just stood on the concrete back step of his family’s house, his brown eyes half-laughing at him as he looked him up and down. He had light brown skin and his straight, black hair was bound in a long braid that snaked over his shoulder. He looked nineteen, so just a year older than Horst.

“Hey, you still got blood on your face,” he’d said.

Horst was too busy covering his crotch with his hands to say more than, “Uh, thanks,” and hustle back into the bushes.

But the bigger deal, he realized later, was not only was Rene not scared of him, he’d clearly seen something like Horst before—and he wasn’t one of Horst’s pack or any other he knew about. Plus, Horst already had at least one ex thanks to his, ah, condition . Not that he ever told Jamie Hawryshko about what he could do; but when you’re already hiding from the world you’re into guys, and the one person you don’t hide that from you still keep your other big secret from—well, it didn’t last. And Mitch was very big on secrecy. As in you told anyone, you were roadkill. But Rene—he knew already.

So, of course Horst went back to see him a few times. The third time—and Rene could always somehow tell exactly where he was lurking in the trees, too afraid to lope right up to his back door—he’d said, “Hey, why don’t you come back next Friday and we’ll go out for a walk?” Horst had changed back to human form (hands over crotch) and said, “Sure. My name’s Horst.”

“I’m Rene.” Then he smiled. “See you around, Mahiinkan.”

Mitch had sometimes used the word; there were elders in the pack who were Ojibwe. Wolf .

Now the snow was thick and hard packed, but even so he broke though a few times and had to swim through the powdery crap to get back on top. Maybe it was being pissed off about that, or the fact his hearing wasn’t back to normal after practicing, but he didn’t even hear the guy with the gun. He was downwind of Horst, so he didn’t smell the oil and gas from his snowmobile either. But he sure as hell felt it when he shot him.