Stephen Jones - Mongrels

Another way we always die? House fires. Come in from a night of blood and carnage, burn most of those calories shifting back to human, then dive headfirst into your pillow, go deeper down than dreams, down so far that, when the smoke starts building from the stove or the cigarette or the villagers’ torches, well, that’s that. Barbecued wolf, babydoll.

That was one of Darren’s words since we’d hit Texas: babydoll .

It made Libby’s top lip snarl up in a way Darren couldn’t get enough of.

He usually woke right around Wheel of Fortune, and, even though he’d yell the solutions to make them right, none of them ever were.

It didn’t help Libby sleep.

We weren’t going to be in Texas for much longer, I could tell. Texas was bad for werewolves. We’d been there not long ago already, coming back from Florida, so should have learned. But Texas was so big. That was the thing. If we wanted to get back into Louisiana and Alabama and all those places without ice and snow, we had to drive across Texas, hope none of the cowboys were watching.

Just, werewolf cars aren’t made to go that far in a single push. The LeSabre back by the propane tank was proof of that. There was grass growing up all around it already, and probably coming up through the holes in the floorboard, like Texas was doing everything it could to keep us here.

Not because it wanted us to find work, to make lives. It was because it wanted to eat us.

And it was working.

After Libby was gone, that little Datsun’s four-cylinder screaming in pain, Darren hung his tongue out again, panted in imitation of her in the most profane way, somehow getting his head involved.

“Maybe a deer,” I told him, because Libby wasn’t here to defend herself.

“Bambi’s mom again,” he said, looking out the window like considering this.

So far he’d brought back two skinny does, but they’d each been roadkill. I could tell, but didn’t say anything. If I did, then we’d both have to see him darting between headlights, just another dog, a big rangy one, trying to drag this bounty off the highway. Instead of running it down like we’re meant to.

Three paws aren’t fast enough, though. You can’t corner hard, just flop over onto your chin instead.

“Up for some good old USDA beef?” Darren said.

“Libby says no,” I told him.

“‘Libby says no,’” he repeated, mocking her thick tongue again.

If we even stole a calf away from the pastures all around us, not even a whole cow, still, ranchers would come asking, and we’d be the new tenants, the hungry tenants, the ones with big thick bones stashed in the crawlspace.

Not that a calf wouldn’t taste exactly like heaven.

Darren stood up, started peeling out of his clothes. It’s what you do when your sister can’t steal enough nickels and dimes for new pants. He kicked the back door open, arced a splattery line of pee out into the night.

“How old do you have to get for it to stop hurting?” I asked, pretending to watch the news on television. Pretending this was no big deal. Just casual conversation.

Darren rolled his head away from his right shoulder, something in there creaking and popping unnaturally loud.

Inside, he was already shifting.

“It’s worth it,” he said, then pulled the door shut so he could part the see-through curtain, make sure there was nobody hiding behind the LeSabre. Before he stepped out he looked back to me, said, “Lock that door?”

Because I didn’t have sharp teeth, or good ears. Because I couldn’t protect myself.

And then he was gone.

I rushed to the back window like every time, to try to see him halfway between man and wolf, but all I caught was a shadow slipping across the pitted dull silver of the propane tank.

Instead of ketchup, I bought a whole hot dog off the little Ferris wheel on the counter at the gas station. I pointed out which one I wanted. The old man working the register looked up to me, asked was I sure?

It’s what he did every night, like he was trying to direct me away from what was probably the oldest hot dog in the case.

I told him a different one, then a different one, and by the end of it I didn’t know if I had the oldest worst hot dog or the one that had just cycled in.

I wasn’t supposed to go out on my own, not without telling Darren or at least leaving a note—he could read that much—but there weren’t going to be any truant officers here. Libby was a werewolf, wasn’t she? Not a mother hen.

I’d thought of that one myself.

I sat on the far side of the ice machine and savored that hot dog. I’d put every condiment on it the gas station had, except mustard, and even doubled up on some, just because the old man couldn’t say anything about it. With Darren or Libby around, I’d pretend not to like this bland human food, would make a big production of wanting something with blood, something for wolves .

The hot dog was so good, though.

I scooped some relish off my pants, onto my finger, into my mouth again.

When I looked up, three kids from my grade were watching me.

“Animal boy,” the one in the red hat said, showing his own teeth.

“Don’t mess with him,” the girl of them said.

“Might catch something,” John Deere Hat agreed.

“He Mexican?” the third of them said, a boy with yellow hair. If I stood, we’d have been the exact same height.

“Still wet,” John Deere Hat said—“piso mojado, right?”—then pulled the girl along with him, heading into the gas station. Yellow Hair stood watching me.

“Piso mojado?” I said to him.

“What are you really?” he said back.

I held my hot dog out to him, not quite straightening my elbow out all the way. When he reached for it I growled like I’d heard Darren growl and lunged forward, snapping my teeth.

Yellow Hair fell back into the Nissan parked in the first slot and crabbed back onto the hood, denting it in perfectly, in a way he was definitely going to have to answer for.

I stood the rest of the way, tore another bite off my hot dog and threw the rest down, pushed past the torn-up pay phone, into the night.

Walking the fence back to our little white rent house, I kept looking behind me. Like I was hearing something. Like I was listening. Like my ears were already that good. Trick is, if somebody’s really sneaking up on you, then you’ve already made them, you know they’re there, but if you’re all alone, then spinning around every few steps, staring into the darkness, nobody’ll ever know.

Except Darren.

“Spook much, spooky?” he said from right beside me, naked as the day he was last naked. I wasn’t sure if that’s how all werewolves were, or if it was just Darren.

I didn’t even look over, just kept walking.

“I smell horseradish?” he said, crinkling his nose up.

I looked down at the commotion by his thigh. It was a big horned owl, probably three feet tall, with a wingspan twice that. A real grandfather of a bird, like from the dinosaur days of birds. It was flapping slow. Darren had bitten the feet off, it looked like, was just holding it by the bloody stumps.

Because I needed to learn, Darren let me crack the owl’s neck over when we got back to the house. It took three tries. Owls’ necks aren’t like other birds’. There’s more muscle, and they’re made to turn farther anyway. And they don’t blink the whole time you’re killing them. And the skull of a big one like that, it’s as big as your palm, like you’ve got a kid in your lap, clamped between your knees.

We sat back on the propane tank to pull the feathers out. They drifted around us, stuck in our hair, in the dead grass. It looked like a whole flock of birds had just exploded, flying over. Like they’d suicided into the propeller of a plane. Air chili.