Clearer in the Night (30 page)

The back blurb talked about World War II, and Nazis, and code breaking. Science fiction wasn’t normally my thing, but hey, I guess that’s what you get from a math geek. And there had been occasional exceptions to my usual disdain for the genre. It’d be nice to tell him that I finally read the tome. And maybe it’d even net me another kiss.

I was going to have to kick myself in the head. He’d practically shuddered when he heard the tales of my sordid past. He had two-kids-and-a-white-picket-fence written all over him, and I wanted that—God, did I want that—but eventually. I wasn’t there yet. I wasn’t ready. And I was broken. And that was okay. It was okay to be broken, and to need to heal. But if he didn’t want to participate in that, or be part of that—then I needed to not think about him like this. At all. Because girls like me did not get guys like him.

This tiny little voice, this voice I barely knew at all, spoke up in my head, with quiet and calm self-confidence. It was a rusty voice, one that hadn’t had much to say the past few years, but it spoke now. Saying that maybe, whether or not he wanted me was something he should decide for himself.

I squashed that little flowering of hope as quickly as I could, and flipped open the cover of the book. I was not thinking about him again for at least a hundred pages. I turned past the reviews, and the copyright material, and read through the first few pages of the book, which seemed to be about a guy in a war who was writing a haiku. I was sure I was missing something, and reread the paragraphs a few times each, trying to understand why he’d given me this huge book. It couldn’t just be that it was his favorite, or something, could it? Everything he did seemed to have layers of meaning.

And then I turned another page. On the right hand side, in paper that was an exact match for the book’s, right down to the rough cut edge, was perfect, handwritten copperplate that spelled out
A Guide to the Discovery and Destruction of the ‘Werewolf.’
Written below, in more modern block printing, was “Read it, then call me. —E”, and a phone number.

“That son of a bitch,” I muttered, and I started reading for real.

The book was exactly what it sounded like. Information that someone had collected on ways to identify werewolves—the book tended to call them the Afflicted—and how to exploit their weaknesses. There were lots of theories, lots of possibilities, but the book was completely sure on very little. According to the text, the only way to be completely sure that someone was actually one of the Afflicted—since their hairy palms, bodily odor, and aggressiveness were just suggestive, not definitive—was to get them outdoors under the light of a full moon. And watch to see if they changed into a monster.

Not the Hollywood wolf-man style, we were very clear on that. The transformed Afflicted would look like a timber wolf, but bigger. Some specimens were estimated to be as big as ponies. No one had gotten too close with a yard-stick, after all.

Once you were sure you were actually dealing with one of the Afflicted, it was obviously your holy duty to dispose of them. Silver-lined weapons were popular, as well as bullets loaded with silver shrapnel. Shotguns, used at close range, were of particular interest. The author dismissed actual silver bullets as pure movie invention. There was an observation, however, that the teeth and claws of another Afflicted seemed to damage your specimen as a normal person—or wolf—would be injured, and had to heal normally. This was tricky, though, because apparently this was how the curse was transmitted. Wounds created during the initial infection could usually heal at a rate that even Hollywood would scoff at, with victims surviving attacks that should have left their intestines looped over tree branches, and their blood turning the soil into stew.

Wounds not caused by silver, or another Afflicted’s attack, could be healed. Disease, poison, age itself. Everything. The Afflicted died violent deaths or didn’t die at all.

I ran my hand over those faint, thin, lines on my stomach. As if I’d needed any more proof of what I was becoming.

On the subject of any Afflicted who were not ravening monsters three days out of the month (the change was only inevitable on the actual day of the full moon, apparently, but quite difficult to resist the day before and after), the book was completely silent. On Afflicted who weren’t insufferable jerks, even in their human form, the book was similarly mute. On the shocking concept of trying to cure them, instead of just killing them? Totally uncommunicative. The fifty-page treatise on genocide finished off by offering God’s blessing to all of those who soldiered in the fight against the darkness. And then the book was science fiction about Nazis again, starting up mid-sentence.

Why had he given this to me? What was he trying to do, really? What was he trying to say? That he was going to kill me? That he knew who—what I was becoming? My shoulders felt tight and sharp as I picked up my phone; it took me three tries to dial his number. Stupid touchscreen phones.

He picked up after one ring. “Hello?” He sounded—hopeful? Excited? I was kidding myself, surely.

“You are not a high school math teacher,” I said.

“I am, actually.”

I huffed for a second. “Not just a math teacher.”

“That is definitely true. And you aren’t just a pretty face.”

Seriously? Was he eighty years old? “I think you’re trying to threaten me.”

“No, that definitely was not my goal.”

There was going to be a lot more huffing here in a few minutes, if he didn’t start using sentences that had all the necessary parts of syntax. Damn math teachers. “Could you please explain your goal, using small words, and clear and declarative sentences?”
 

“Sure,” Eli said. “Clara.”

It took a minute for me to realize he meant Mrs. Dennis. “Mrs. Dennis was your goal.”

“No, but she’s why I’m here.”

Okay, this was progress of a sort. “Is she really your grandmother?”

“She raised me when my family didn’t. So, in all the ways that matter? Yes.”

“I thought she didn’t like me.”

“She doesn’t want me to get entangled with you. Not with what you have in front of you. She wouldn’t have asked me to protect you, if she didn’t like you.”

“Protect me?”

“Well.” A long pause, and I could hear him choosing his words with care. “She asked me to give you every chance that I could.”

“Before what?”

Silence.

“So we’re back to the threatening.”

“Do you want to hurt people? People that you love?”

“No, but—”

“You will. If you turn, then you’ll be a killing machine with a desire to destroy all the humans that you can. All you will know is rage and blood and destruction. You’ll wake up, after every full moon, with your belly aching, and your hands covered in blood. You won’t know whose, and you’ll watch the papers, wondering whose life you destroyed, until you go crazy with it. And can you imagine what crazy looks like on a beast that’s already ravening?”

“Stop it. Please.”

“You have to understand, Cait. You have to understand what’s happening.”

The wolf was quiet inside of me. I would have expected her to be fighting this news, or be excited to hear of her impending freedom. “So you’ll kill me,” I said. “That’s all the chance I get. Why even bother?”

His voice sounded as if all the emotion had been sieved out of it. “I have a duty. A sworn duty.” I could tell even through the phone that he wanted to explain, to pile words on in justification, but he bit them back.

“I don’t want to die.” I sounded like a little kid. I couldn’t help it. I’d been trying to kill myself for so long, and now, faced with it, I discovered that I didn’t want what I’d been seeking. Better here than in the air, heading towards the ground, but still. Still. “I don’t want to be a monster, and I don’t want to die. There has to be a way.”

“There isn’t. No one has done it.”

“Those are two different statements.”

“It isn’t possible for you to keep your human mind in that form. And even if there were? Do you really think you’d be able to fight off that sort of ancient beast? It knows everything there is to know about being a wolf, and you’ve barely touched on what it means to be human in your short years. You couldn’t face it down. It’s not possible.”

Wes had said something very different, of course. Who was right? Who did I trust? “Then we have to stop the change from happening,” I said. My voice was pitching higher and higher, on the verge of squeaking. “I don’t—I can’t—” I struggled to breathe, my hands pressed into my diaphragm, my heart racing. I closed my eyes and forced air all the way down into my lungs. I pushed them in and out until I could think a little. “Your damn book is very clear on how to kill me, but has zero instruction on how to save me. Why did you even give it to me?”

“There’s only so much I can do.”

“What have you done at all, Eli? Besides kiss me and confuse me, what have you done?”

He was quiet for a long time, and I sat in my bedroom, my little girl bedroom, and wished I could hear him. Maybe it was because I didn’t know him as well as Mom and Shan, maybe it was because my hands were shaking, and my mind was chasing its own tail, but I couldn’t hear him. “You need to be careful who you trust right now,” he said again. “I’ve been researching. I’ve been looking through every reference we have, trying to find an answer. With every curse, there’s a way to break it. But I’ve found nothing.” He heaved a sigh that seemed older and heavier than something a guy in his twenties should be carrying inside him. “It’s getting worse, isn’t it? You didn’t really answer me before.”

Would I have spent those crazy days with Wes if not for the wolf? “Much. I don’t…you were right. I’m losing it.”

His voice got stronger, firmer. “Meet me at church tomorrow.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Ten a.m. We’ll start training.”

“Training?”

“Get there, we’ll start. If you’re interested. If you want to do this by yourself, or with your boyfriend,” he spat the word out like it tasted sharp and soapy, “as your guide, then you feel free. But if you want real help, meet me. And we’ll see what we can come up with.”

“You said it was impossible.”

“So is the square root of negative one. So is proving that two plus two equals four. So is God. Some things are worth taking on faith.”

“You said it was your job to kill me.”

He gave a little laugh that was cold, and sexy as fire. “What can I say, Cait? I have a thing for redheads.” His voice lingered over the words, and they danced up and down my spine, quaking through my body, sending cold flames out my fingertips, pooling them in darker places. I closed my eyes, and his hands were on my cheeks again, tilting my face up for his calming, thrilling kiss.

And then the connection dropped away, from my phone and from my skin.

I sat still for a while after Eli hung up, trying to digest all the emotions that the conversation had raised. I’d said out loud that I didn’t want to die. And that was true, in the simplest sense, but it was also painfully more complex than that. I didn’t want to die, but this wasn’t how I wanted to live, either. In an emotional mausoleum, venerating a crazy man and his even crazier actions. No, that was definitely not, at all, what I wanted. But to get to anywhere else from here would be so far beyond exhausting. I didn’t know if I could do it. So this whole “Save Cait’s Soul” plan—it sounded great on paper, but I was worried that the execution might leave something to be desired.

When my phone vibrated in my hand, I swiped my thumb across its surface without thinking, assuming somehow that Eli was calling back. Because our conversation wasn’t really over, was it? There was so much more we’d need to discuss. To plan. To explain. But instead of a phone call, there was a text message from Mom. ‘Bringing your sister home as soon as someone signs discharge papers. Please get the sheets in her room washed.’