Blood Howl (10 page)

Redford

R
EDFORD
dreamed again.

He dreamed he was back in his not-room, the room that was his but wasn’t, and Jed was leading him out of it again.

The bell jingled. “Keep it on. I don’t want to lose you,” Jed said.

The dream world shifted, spun, tilted on its axis and reformed. They were in his basement. He wasn’t on two legs anymore, but four paws, the moon high and pale in the sky. Jed was backing away from him, fear in his eyes. The wolf growled. It wasn’t happy with this intruder.

“Red?”

The wolf leaped, powerful jaws clamping around Jed’s neck, shaking him like a rag doll. A sickening crack.

“Hey, Fido. Wake up.”

Blood, rushing and warm, pooled on the floor
—

“Redford!”

Redford’s eyes flew open. Jed was leaning close, one hand on his shoulder. Still half in the clutches of the dream, Redford could only dazedly note that Jed’s eyes were very green, clear, and bright.

“What were you dreaming about?” Jed’s voice was gentle, a stark contrast to the usual confidence. “Chasing rabbits?” He gave a little smirk, though there was an unsure tinge lingering around the corners of it, as if Jed wasn’t quite sure what to do next.

Redford blinked heavily, slowly becoming aware that he’d tangled the sheets around himself, clutching a pillow to his chest like it was an anchor. He must have been moving in his sleep. “No, I was….” He trailed off, rubbing a hand over his face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

The screen had been pulled aside, so when Redford looked around, he could see what Jed had been in the middle of doing. There were maps everywhere, the smell of cigarette smoke heavy in the air, guns taken apart and weighing a table down with the sheer number of them. Jed was obviously in the middle of cleaning them, but there was something almost reverent about the way he’d laid them out, displaying them like they were his favorite and most treasured possessions.

There was a touch to his cheek, and Redford turned his gaze back to Jed. The man was shirtless—for a reason that Redford couldn’t quite discern right then—and was stroking his thumb over Redford’s jaw, concern barely concealed in his eyes. “Nothing to disturb, I was just going over my maps.” Jed smiled at him, and the weight of the nightmare seemed to ease itself off of Redford’s shoulders. “You wanna go back to sleep? You still look tired.”

Redford shook his head, sitting up. “No, I’m awake now.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, rubbed at his eyes, trying to wake up properly.

As he climbed out of bed, Jed went back to his maps, settling himself in the chair at the table. Redford rubbed his eyes again, shuffling over to him to look at the chaos strewn about the room. He hadn’t realized there were yet
more
maps underneath the guns, and they seemed to be the ones that Jed was paying attention to. There were pen marks on them, circles surrounding street names that were vaguely familiar.

“I’m trying to figure out where Fil might be,” Jed explained, a pen clamped between his teeth. “David ID’d the guy I sketched. Name’s Edward Grasio. He’s good, if his reputation is anything to go by. Ain’t a rocket scientist, but he knows his ass from a grenade. High-end thug for hire.”

Redford looked closer at the maps, beginning to see a pattern. Jed had started where they were attacked and had outlined a radius around it, highlighting various buildings. “You’re trying to figure out where he lives?”

“Lives, works, shits, whatever.” Jed shrugged. “Anywhere he might be camping.” He picked a cigarette out of a pack laid out on top of some of the crumpled maps and seemed to be briefly torn about which he wanted between his lips—that or the pen. The pen lost, clattering to the table while Jed fished out a tarnished old silver lighter. Redford wrinkled his nose at the smell as Jed lit up the cigarette. The battered packet on the table said Marlboro Reds, not that Redford had any insight into particular brands. “Might help me figure out where our buddy Fil is.”

Redford wanted to ask what Jed would do if he did find Fil, but he realized that he didn’t really need to ask. The guns on the table were the only answer he needed. As hesitant as he was about murder, well, the man had tried to kill them. Redford didn’t know if that made it okay—his grandma had always said “two wrongs don’t make a right”—but he
was
angry at the attempt on their lives.

“Shouldn’t we just be calling the cops?” Redford looked at Jed again, absently following the blue curl of smoke wafting from the end of his cigarette.

His question was apparently odd, one that Jed had clearly not thought of. He looked startled, a slow smile easing across his lips. “They’d never find him, sweetheart. People like Fil, like Grasio, they don’t get found by the authorities if they don’t want to.”

That wasn’t very reassuring, but Redford nodded anyway. “But you don’t need to worry yourself over that.” Jed waved a hand, motioning toward the kitchen. “Got some food if you’re hungry.” At Redford’s distressed expression, Jed just laughed, bending over his maps again. “The cheese is gone, Fido. I meant
new
food, got some while you were napping. Paid the kid down the hall fifty bucks to bring me whatever it is people have in their cupboards. Knock yourself out.”

Breathing a silent sigh of relief—he really hadn’t wanted to encounter the cheese that was scarily green and fuzzy again—Redford made his way into the kitchen, looking through the pantry and fridge. True to his word, Jed really had refilled with the basics. It was for his benefit, Redford assumed. Considering what he’d found in the kitchen when he’d first gotten here, Jed really did not cook. At all.

Luckily for both of them, Redford could.

Bustling around the kitchen, gathering ingredients, Redford tried to recall the specifics of a chicken-and-bacon casserole, debating with himself about the exact amount of stock used in the recipe. His grandmother might have been of the school of thought that children were better neither seen nor heard, but she had taught him to cook. Opining that if he was going to take care of himself some day, he’d need to have at least one useful skill, every night she’d taken him into the kitchen, making sure he used exactly two tablespoons of olive oil or only one clove of garlic.

She hadn’t done it because she’d wanted him to be a good husband to someone some day. She’d done it because she knew he
wouldn’t
. He’d listened well when she’d explained that, as a werewolf, he’d be alone for the rest of his life. Needless to say, his grandmother hadn’t been a big fan of his kind.

Casting those thoughts aside, Redford tried to focus on the cooking instead. The simple motions of chopping vegetables and meat were soothing, directing his mind to contemplating the odd ease with which he’d settled into Jed’s place. It should have been strange, hiding to stay alive, going to live with someone he’d barely known at the start. Redford still wasn’t entirely sure that he really knew Jed. But it wasn’t strange. He felt more at home here than he ever had back at his actual house.

The realization startled Redford, and he winced when he narrowly avoided accidentally slicing off the tip of a finger in his distraction. Unsurprisingly, Jed kept his knives razor sharp, and while that was something that Redford appreciated while cutting vegetables, it was a bit hazardous to handle them while not fully attentive.

To save himself from chopping things off, Redford refocused on cooking. The recipe was fairly simple, and he found himself smiling a little as he worked, hearing the faint sounds of Jed rustling his maps in the background. Honestly, maps and guns and radii were all a bit beyond Redford, so he was glad to help somehow. Between this and getting partway into cleaning the bathroom, Redford hoped that he might, in some way, be able to pay Jed back, to properly thank him for saving his life and taking him in when he needed protection.

When everything was done and cooking, Redford wandered back out to join Jed. There were even more colored marks on the maps now.

“I liked that cheese,” Jed said, making Redford wonder if he’d spent the last half hour sulking in defense of his cheese.

“I could smell it from all the way down the street,” Redford protested.

“It could have been its own civilization. It was close to forming its own government.”

“It was disgusting.”

“Democracy is never disgusting.” Jed scowled, and Redford sighed quietly. It was easy to tell that Jed wasn’t truly upset about the loss of the near-sentient cheese. The frown never touched his eyes. A lot of who Jed was seemed to be held in them, totally apart from the leers and cocky grins. If Redford paid attention, he thought he might just get to know what Jed was really thinking instead of the front he put up so often. Right then, Jed just looked a little confused, glancing occasionally back toward the kitchen.

Suddenly, Redford worried. “Am I… I’m sorry, I didn’t ask if I could cook. Or if you liked chicken and bacon. Or if you’re allergic to anything, or—”

“Redford.” Jed was smiling at him again, something strangely vulnerable in the corners of his eyes. “It’s fine. Just never had anybody cook for me before.” He leaned back over the table, now cleaning one of the guns, rubbing an oiled cloth over the barrel. “It smells good.”

“Oh.” The sudden turnaround of worry into pleased relief was a little too quick for Redford’s nerves to handle right then. “Thank you.”

He had forty-five minutes to wait until the casserole was cooked, so he spent his time with Jed, trying to listen to and learn what Jed told him about the maps and what he was doing. Jed occasionally took a few minutes to call people—contacts, he said. He even called David back, though the man sounded even more annoyed than he had last time. Jed just grinned and said something about being a horny son of a bitch, getting the information he needed.

Eventually, they—Jed, mostly—had managed to narrow down Grasio’s location to three possible buildings. All of them were cheap apartment complexes, close enough to where they were attacked that Grasio would be able to make the bodies disappear relatively quickly, as Jed had witnessed.

Forty-seven minutes later, because Jed’s oven was a little different than his own, Redford pulled the casserole out. Jed hovered behind him, seemingly anxious and oddly excited. “You never checked it before now. How do you know it’s ready?” Cooking, apparently, really was something Jed only experienced through the magic of television. The practical application seemed to bewilder him.

“I have a very good sense of smell.” Redford wasn’t sure where they were with Jed believing if he was a werewolf or not, so he kept his answer vague. The truth was, he didn’t need to check the food because his nose had told him exactly what stage the meat was at, at any given time while cooking. It was a useful side effect of a condition that otherwise kept him quiet, isolated, and paranoid.

Jed looked as though Redford had created some kind of miraculous event in the oven when he dealt the food out onto the plates and immediately dug in before he’d even gotten back to the table. “Oh my God.” Worried, Redford turned to him, eyeing Jed as he spoke again. “Oh my God, Fido. This food.”

“Is it bad?” It hadn’t smelled bad, but now Redford was worried again.

“Are you shitting me? This might be the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.” Jed paused after his words, and a quick smirk flitted across his features. “Second best. When it comes to things technically classified as food though, definitely the best.” He eagerly took his plate back to the table, leaving Redford staring at his back, wondering what he’d meant. Jed only got that look when he was talking about sex, but try as he might, Redford still couldn’t figure that comment out.

Jed, Redford noticed when he arrived at the table, was wearing a look of complete ecstasy as he ate. Redford decided that he obviously needed to cook more often, if this was the reaction he got. Clearly there was a need for more homemade meals in this house. If he stayed, Redford decided, that would be one of the ways he could pay Jed back.

They ate in silence, punctuated by the occasional enthusiastic groan from Jed, leaving Redford’s thoughts to wander. Dusk was beginning to settle in, the moon rising pale and nearly full in the sky. Tomorrow it would be full, but the itch was already beginning. It had never been much of a problem when Redford had lived alone—he’d read, distracted himself in whatever way he could—but now he was here, with Jed. Tomorrow, he’d have to go back home to his cage.

“I, um,” Redford started, staring down at the scraps of food on his plate, pushing them around with his fork. How did he even approach this topic? “I’m going to be busy tomorrow night.”

“We’re both going to be busy,” Jed agreed, distracted. He’d shoved his plate over to make notes on the map in a messy scrawl. It was pretty obvious he wasn’t used to people being around during meals. After the first awkward moments of silence, he’d hunched his shoulders and shoveled his food in appreciatively, but he was definitely focused more on the maps than Redford. “If I’m right, we’ll be making Fil’s weekend start out with a bang.”

Needless to say, that wasn’t exactly what Redford meant. “No, I mean….” Redford nervously twisted his hands together. “The moon’s full tomorrow night. I need to go back to my place.”

Blinking a few times, Jed pulled his attention from scribbling what looked to be a little stick man running out of the house, who he’d helpfully labeled “The Bastard.” “You what?” Frowning, Jed looked back down, silent, jaw working. To fill the quiet, he added flames to the stick figure. “Okay, look, I… I don’t know what your angle is with all the werewolf stuff. But you’re not leaving my sight, not until this is done. If you’re that desperate to get rid of me, I guess I could sleep out on the doorstep. That’s as far as I go.”

There was his answer. Jed didn’t believe in werewolves, and Redford would have to get as far away as possible. He’d have to get back to his cage. He tried not to feel a little hurt that Jed didn’t believe him, so Redford collected their plates, taking them back to the kitchen to start fussing with the remains of the casserole. He’d deliberately made a lot so that Jed could have leftovers. Now he just had to find some containers to store it in.