Rob Thurman - Roadkill

But there were no more. Niko, Robin, the cousins, and Delilah had taken the rest of them. Black bodies littered the grass and dotted the water of the creek below, but it wasn’t right; it wasn’t enough. Then I saw her, frozen on the other side of the creek-a doe, wide black eyes surrounded by a ring of white. Mule deer, white-tail; I didn’t know which was in Utah. Nik would know. Nik always…

That thought disappeared as the muscles under the tan hide bunched, and the deer swiveled to bound away. She shouldn’t have done that. No. She shouldn’t have tried to run. They should never run.

You chase what runs.

It was the rule, the law, the way life was.

You chase what runs. You catch what runs. You kill what runs.

Always.

It wasn’t too clear after that. There were flashes of light, tears in reality, and there was food. Warm food that slid down my throat to heat my stomach. There was company: a red male wolf on one side of me, teeth ripping at a white and tan neck; a white female wolf on the other side, muzzle deep in a tan belly. She lifted her head and grinned at me, her white fur stained red up to her amber eyes. Good. All good. Friends and food, and maybe later those friends could become food. Why should there be a difference between the two?

Fun. It was all fun. Anything I wanted to do, everything I wanted to do, and no one could stop this feeling.

No one could stop me.

“ Cal.”

I turned to look over my shoulder at the more-than-familiar voice and reality smacked me in the face-that and a hard fist. It took it all away: the dark joy, the kick-ass fun, the utter invincibility…

Consciousness.

There was movement, a subtle rocking. Cool air. The smell of old plastic, old carpet, old foam. There were also wolves, a human, something green and fresh like a forest… a puck. All familiar; it was comforting, like all my naps, and I wallowed in it, which was also something I did with most of my naps.

“Hades damn us all. There’s a five-car pileup ahead. It’ll be hours before we make it past that. Suyolak’s version of an orgy. Death and destruction. He’s no doubt postcoital as we speak.”

Goodfellow. No way that was anyone but Goodfellow… wishing he were postcoital, I was sure, in a hazy way, only in the more traditional sense. No death and destruction for him there. Not like Suyolak. It was the last that had me clenching my fingers into fists, shaking my head, and trying to open my eyes.

“He’s waking up.” And Rafferty. That was Rafferty. He didn’t sound too happy.

“It’s about time. It’s been nearly an hour. I didn’t hit him hard enough for that. You could’ve woken him.” Nik… he sounded even less happy.

“I could’ve, but I damn well can guarantee you wouldn’t have liked it. Cal trying to gut us like he did that deer. Trust me, the quiet time did him some good. Now he is Cal again… mostly. A half hour ago he’d have been an Auphe trying to chew through your face.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Every word was a separate dagger of ice. If Nik cut the air with those words, it wouldn’t have surprised me.

It was hard, waking up. Harder than waking up from most naps, but what I was hearing kept me trying. Pushing. Not for me; for Nik. To be there for my brother. What Rafferty said about me didn’t mean anything. I didn’t feel it, but I felt my brother’s anger, and if Niko was angry and allowing it to show, then the situation was bad-definitely bad enough to cut through the fuzziness that surrounded me.

I managed to crack my eyelids and saw a slice of dark blond hair. Niko. That was normal, seeing him when I opened my eyes. He was the one who usually kicked my butt out of bed when I was slacking, which was almost always. Most mornings he was the first thing I saw, or I would feel him firmly rapping the top of my head with my ringing alarm clock.

Then I noticed the hand on my shoulder and the one on my leg, just above my knee. The pressure on my shoulder I recognized-I’d felt it all my life. The weight on my leg I didn’t. Or maybe I did-a distant memory of that same hand burning against a bleeding gash in my abdomen. Years ago. The hand wasn’t burning now, but I could still feel the power in it. Rafferty.

“ Cal, are you awake?”

I managed to open my eyes nearly all the way. “Nik?”

I saw his face then, not just a slash of hair. I saw the somber scrutiny, the tense line of his jaw. “It’s me. You’re safe, Cal. I swear it.” I hadn’t thought I wasn’t, but if I had, I would’ve believed him. Nik never lied to me. But he didn’t look himself: calm… in control. The anger I’d heard was gone, but the longer he met my eyes, the more bleak his own looked. He looked grim and a little lost, and that wasn’t him. It simply wasn’t and why would he…

What had Rafferty said again? About my waking up… Auphe?

Then I remembered-all of it. Remembered it and felt it. The truck, the traveling, the Ördögs, the poor goddamn deer. I’d killed it or helped kill it and I’d eaten part of it. I could still feel the heaviness of it in my stomach. I should’ve been nauseated, but I wasn’t. I should’ve gagged and been sick, but my body wanted it-the raw meat-and it wasn’t going to let it go. I swallowed hard. No wonder Niko looked like he did. No wonder he reassured me I was safe.

But was he? Was anyone around me?

“I fucked up,” I said hoarsely.

“You fucked up,” my brother confirmed, his own voice impassive-not accusing, but not letting me off the hook either. Trusting in my word earlier hadn’t worked out for either of us, but his hand on my shoulder gripped harder. Whatever I’d done, we were family, and for Niko, that would never change.

I was leaning against his chest, my legs bent at the knees with my lower legs behind the driver’s seat and in the floorboards. And the hand on my leg was Rafferty’s. It wasn’t moral support either. If I tried to leave-to travel-Rafferty would stop me, temporarily or permanently. I wouldn’t want to guess which call he’d make, although, if he were smart, he’d pick the second choice, which I suppose told me the answer after all.

Because Rafferty was smart.

I tried to sit up. I could see now that I was in the backseat of the car with Niko and Rafferty. Goodfellow was still driving or, more accurately, sitting behind the wheel of a parked car. He’d been trying to catch up to the truck, but thanks to the wreck and Suyolak who had caused it, that wasn’t going to happen. Catcher was curled up asleep in the passenger seat. He was knocked out, the same as I’d been knocked out, but a little more gently, by a healer, not a fist-or then again, maybe not. He might only be sleeping off a full belly. It didn’t have to be one of his episodes. He could’ve smelled the blood when I hit the deer and joined in. The hunt and the kill was a natural thing to Wolves, the most natural of things.

Knocked-out or sleeping, he looked better than I felt. I rubbed my jaw. It didn’t feel broken, but it definitely was bruised. “I’m sorry,” Niko said. “Rafferty was occupied.” Joining the deer buffet or putting out Catcher, one of the two. I didn’t ask. “And I didn’t have time to spare with your ability to disappear whenever you wish.”

It was stated plainly; again, not an accusation, but I winced anyway. Salome, who hadn’t shown up in the fight… coughing up a resin ball instead most likely… was on the dash, soaking up the sun. She lifted her head, stared at me, and hissed. A mummy cat that killed anything that moved didn’t like the looks of me. That couldn’t be the best of things.

I narrowed my eyes at her and she flashed under the passenger seat, fast as a water moccasin in muddy water. Then I caught sight of myself in the rearview mirror. No wonder Niko was so somber when looking into what should’ve been a reflection of his own eyes but wasn’t. Instead, I saw red in the mirror-in the irises of my eyes, minute flecks of molten lava in the gray. Auphe eyes were that color red-had been that color.