Running with the Pack

Drs. Willis and Rothgate charged back into the basement. Dr. Willis’ face was covered with blood-flecked saliva and Dr. Rothgate’s hair had turned ghostly white, but both were in better moods than when they’d left.

“We, silly little girl who doesn’t know what she wants, have brought you your permission slip,” Dr. Willis said, grabbing a lab coat off a wall hook and using it to wipe the bubbly blood from his cheeks and chin.

“But we don’t want you to be a baby about this. You draw a fancy-schmancy, stylized G or V and you’re gone within twenty-four hours. Vampires are snappy dressers and good with money. Goblins make great demo tapes for reality TV shows and leave riotous messages on your voicemail but have a tendency to become pear-shaped at middle age,” Dr. Rothgate said.

“Is it really that tough a choice? You’ve gone over and over it. Once you accept the change, you’ll love it like a new fetish, like psychic incisions have implanted an iguana under your skin. Sure, it’ll make you do things you don’t want, like controlling your eye and muscle movements even when you think you’re too tired to drink blood or slurp souls and would rather put your feet up, read from your antiquarian library, maybe puff a cigar—but, eventually, you’ll learn to pretend it’s a form of symbiosis, even though you’ll know deep down inside that it’s really a parasite.” By now, Dr. Willis had managed to get the blood off his face, except for a small spot on his neck.

Yvette fought the nylon straps. Why were these two going on and on about this? She didn’t want anything that either of their species were offering.

Dr. Rothgate tried a different angle, pulling up a chair and speaking slowly, “We’ve made our decisions. And, yep, we both eat people, even nice ones like that Timothy you used to dream about, but the rest of the world has crept right over the shadowy brink . . . ”

“ . . . everyone knows who you are now, Yvette. And they know that you’ve been here forever. You’re famous, on the news twice a day, revered just like their precious, dead Larissa . . . ” Dr. Willis said, joining in.

Yvette interrupted them with a quick but loud shriek.

“Have we all inhaled a truckload of ether? Is that it? Let’s stop monkeying around. You both idolize her. You have her paintings on your office walls and carry around indestructible cassette recorders because she was braver than you’ll ever be. I’ve figured out my middle path, something that keeps me alive and keeps me from turning out like you—but let’s not fool ourselves, okay? A truly brave person is willing to die for what they believe in, even if nobody’s looking. So here’s the gig: I read your musty edition of Malleus Maleficarum and it has a ton about werewolves. So that’s what I’m going with. I’m going to be a helpful werewolf, even if it kills me.”

Both doctors began to beat her, pelting her with various objects from the room. Eventually they used the orgone box, but the sensory deprivation tank proved too heavy, even with grunting.

Yvette lost consciousness or fell through another layer cake of dreams and alternate realities, one or the other. She wasn’t sleeping or dreaming or awake and her body hurt like she’d been beaten with a roomful of heavy objects. It took her twenty minutes to figure out who she was and where she was.

Much to her surprise, Yvette was on the floor of her room and still alive. The vase by the bed overflowed with pink carnations. They smelled like a ballerina’s smile.

Yvette grimaced and decided that she didn’t believe a word the doctors had said. The lights flickered and she screamed with all the pain her battered body was able to muster. The doctors were the ones who were full of malarkey, inmates in their own asylum, pervy lunatic fringers who demanded certainty because they vanished if they stopped claiming that they had everything sorted out and clearly defined . . . paranoia proven true, every stitch of inner peace unraveled . . .

Lumpy, swollen bruises coated her flesh. It was extraordinary that she could even rise from the bed, a painful challenge to crane her neck far enough backward to see the furry tuft in the rinky-dink institutional mirror. The tail she’d dreamed of was starting to form beneath the clustered bruises at the base of her spine.

Yvette thought she was mutating into what she wanted to be and it was enough to help her forget ninety percent of the heartache she’d been through. She wondered how hard it would be to get stainless steel whiskers implanted.

Lost and startled, the wolf coming to life under her skin, Yvette stumbled through the gothic hallways, finally finding metal double doors and exiting through them. She didn’t recognize the foggy and rain-slicked street. She had never been to this place before.

For the first time in a long time, she wanted a cigarette or two.

With grit and maybe blood in her mouth, she discovered a backpack on her shoulders and opened it. Several pairs of recently-sharpened pruning shears tumbled to the cobblestones. Eventually, she might take a moment to pack the bundle of supplies that she’d planned on preparing. At least she was a werewolf and not a vampire or a goblin.

Crawling deeper into the night, Yvette wanted to growl and make further use of her new teeth. She sniffed delicacies in the air and hoped she would never have to sleep again.

When she wasn’t gnawing people, prying their skulls open and drowning in the sustenance of their frail, futile and thwarted memories, she might attempt to help the endangered. Maybe, someday, she could spare someone as innocent as Timothy.

But for now, Yvette was too famished. If she had understood how hungry the transformation would make her, her choice wouldn’t have ever mattered. She was too ravenous to waste time wishing there had ever been another way.

THE PACK AND THE PICK-UP ARTIST

MIKE BROTHERTON

Prime had barely taken two steps into the dark club before one of his students accosted him.

“Sage just struck out twice,” the excited guy said. “He said he’s going back in.”

“Cool.” Sage was Prime’s co-instructor at the weekend boot camp. Guys would fly into San Francisco and plunk down three thousand dollars for pick-up instruction and supervised nighttime field work. Out sarging in the evenings, the students were supposed to be the ones approaching the sets while the instructors gave advice and debriefed. Still, it was normal for the guys to want to see their instructors demonstrate their prowess, which normally wasn’t a problem.

Apparently tonight it was, for Sage.

Prime looked beyond the student to a hot babe, a seven, no, seven-and-a-half, standing with a couple of guys further into the Den. He smiled and waved in the direction of HB7.5 and pushed past his student.

She smiled and half raised her hand, a little uncertain. It was a standard trick to force a show of interest. She thought she knew him, or that he at least knew her, and didn’t want to look like she didn’t remember.

Still smiling, Prime eased through the clumps of people, lightly touched her shoulder, and settled in next to her. “Hey, how’s it going?”

The guys she was with turned toward him, expressions blank.

The girl still had a half smile on her face and gave an unsurprising response. “It’s going okay. What about you?”

The guys turned away to talk to each other, assuming that she knew him, just like they were supposed to.

He wasn’t particularly interested in HB7.5, but it was better to be in set than not, and it would build his social proof while he checked out how Sage was doing.

Prime’s partner got laid like a rock star, but beyond that similarity, he was not at all like Prime. Sage peacocked, wearing outrageous fancy clothes and even make-up (always accompanied by the perfect cologne), while Prime threw on the same jeans, leather jacket, and cowboy boots night after night. Sage worked and taught pick-up using a very mechanical system and was a great believer in the concept of “fake it till you make it” while Prime often improvised his pick-ups, and believed that if you made yourself into a quality guy the women would follow naturally. To top it off, Sage was a sushi-eating vegaquarian to Prime’s carnivorous ways.

HB7.5 was prattling on in response to a question he’d asked her about whether it was infidelity for a girlfriend to make out with a girl, and normally he would have cut her off, but he had just spotted Sage.

His partner, sporting a white suit and hat tonight, was approaching a large group, a mixed seven set, lounging around a fireplace at back. From a technical point of view, Sage looked good at first. He went right in and engaged the whole group, drawing everyone’s attention. Nice body language, good kino, touching three of the group within the first fifteen seconds. Still it was all for naught. Prime saw that the attempt was doomed, as the group’s body language shifted to lock him out.

Engaging a group of seven people all at once in a noisy club was not an easy thing to do, but a task well within Sage’s capabilities. Sometimes failure wasn’t your fault—you engaged particular individuals or sets who were not open to being approached by strangers—but this was rare. Almost everyone liked to talk with the coolest guy in the place, the life of the party. Almost everyone.

The girl he had just met continued to jabber on like they were old friends, allowing Prime to take a closer look at the set. Three men, four women, all attractive, both older and younger than him. He paired off the couples based on their seating arrangement and body language. The single girl in the group, well, she was breathtaking when he focused on her. Perfect cheekbones, beautiful smile, and huge eyes. Superhot babe, an eleven on the ten-point scale. SHB11 possessed a raw sexuality dancing in her model-quality features.