Wolf.
Clean, unbreakable, perfect. I had been all that, and here we were.
I went into the bedroom to get the things I’d need to trigger the shift. Not just a shift, but a wild shift, a howling shift, a shift that would break me. Not all of my wolf experiments had led me to easy places. I didn’t want to go to an easy place now.
The small, logical part of me thought the meticulous process would help. Remind me of all the reasons to stay human. Give me a chance to calm down. Remind me of all of the other ways I had learned to take this feeling down inside me.
But it only seemed to feed it. Even though I was moving quite slowly and methodically, time pushed and brushed past me, both the past and the future. With no effort at all, I summoned the memories of doing this, or something like it, countless times before.
Wolf.
My mind skirted to Sam back in Minnesota, who so hated the wolf. I could hear his voice telling me how I was scrubbing out everything about me, doing this. I was wasting everything good about me. How hateful I was to throw it all away. Victor had died as a wolf, longing to be a human, and I was giving it away for nothing.
I told myself that, and I told myself that again.
But this was a prerecorded session. I already knew how it ended.
Even though I was alone in the bathroom, it felt like there was someone or something else in there with me. A dark presence hovering in the corner, floating up by the ceiling. Feeding the dark inside me, or feeding off the dark inside me. All of us users and used.
I turned on the shower, and then I sat on the edge of the toilet, syringe in one hand, phone in the other. I dialed Isabel’s number. I didn’t know what I was going to say if she picked up.
I knew she wasn’t picking up anyway.
Trust you?
It rang through to voicemail. For a few minutes, I watched the shower pour gallons of water down the drain. I thought about how outside it was a desert. Then I stabbed the needle into myself.
Pain reminded me it was working.
I leaned my forehead on the wall and waited for it to change me or kill me, and I didn’t really care which. I did care which. I hoped it did both.
The thing I’d put in my veins scrabbled through my bloodstream to my brain. When it got there, it clawed and beat and gnawed at my hypothalamus, screaming the same message over and over:
Wolf
Wolf
Wolf
Pain snatched my thoughts away. My mind was a chemical fire, burning itself out. I crashed to the tile, shaking and sweating and retching. My thoughts immolated.
And then
It was light. Shining overhead, reflected in the ever-shifting, never-growing puddle. It was sound. Hissing water splattering the ground, soft and continuous. Scent: acid and fruit, sweet and rotten.
Wolf.
Chapter Thirty-Five
· isabel · I drove.
Part of me wanted to keep driving for the rest of my life.
Part of me wanted to go to Cole.
I didn’t know which was worse.
In the end, I found myself way up the coast, past Malibu.
The road here was dark and snaky, on one side the rocky coastline and the wild sea and on the other the steep, scrubby mountain cliffs. The palm trees were gone, the people, the houses. As I drove up a random canyon road, I felt like I was driving straight up into the black night sky, or into the black night ocean. I had no idea what time it was. It was the end of the world.
I finally parked the SUV at one of the scenic pullovers.
Down below, the crash of the surf made an uneven white line parallel to the shore. Everything else was dark.
I got out. Outside, the air was freezing. My knees were shaking, and so were my hands. I stood there with my arms wrapped around myself for a long minute, feeling myself tremble and wondering if an emotional shock reaction was possible when you had no emotions.
Probably it was time to admit to myself that I had emotions, and they’d betrayed me.
Then I opened up the back of the SUV, got out the tire iron, and closed the hatch again. I thought of that sick feeling in my stomach when I’d first seen Cole at the party. It was exactly the same, in retrospect, as the feeling that had crept inside me when my father’s voice had gotten strange earlier. When I’d known he was about to tell me something I didn’t want to hear.
I looked at the moon-white surface of the SUV. I tightened my grip on the tire iron.
And then I beat the hell out of the SUV.
The first dent wasn’t the best. There wasn’t anything surprising about swinging a tire iron at a vehicle and leaving a dent.
That’s what happens when you hit something metal with something else metal.
But the second hit. That was the one that sent a rush of feeling through me. It surprised me. I hadn’t known there was going to be a second swing until it happened, or a third, or a fourth. Then I realized I was never going to stop hitting this car. I smashed the doors and the hood, and I cracked the big plastic safety bumpers.
There was nothing in my head except for the knowledge that I had to drive this thing tomorrow, so I didn’t smash out the windows or the headlights or anything that might keep it off the road. I didn’t want it broken.
I wanted it ugly.
The tire iron dug down through the white paint, straight to the bare metal. Its guts were dull and utilitarian under all the gloss.
Finally, when my palm was hot from the effort of clutching the tire iron, I realized how tired I was.
I felt empty. Like I didn’t give a damn.
Which meant I was ready to go back home.
Chapter Thirty-Six
· cole · “Mr. St. Clair?”
I didn’t open my eyes, but I knew where I was. Well, I knew the kind of place I was. I recognized the feel of tile on my skin and the smell of bleach millimeters from my nose. The grit between my hipbone and the floor. I was on a bathroom floor.
My ears hissed.
“Cole? Do you mind if I come in?”
It took me a moment longer to realize which bathroom in particular it was. I had to backtrack, narrowing my thoughts.
Earth. North America. U.S. California. Los Angeles. Venice.
Apartment. Hell.
“Cole?” The voice seemed to consider. “I’m coming in.”
Over the hiss of my ears, I heard a doorknob jiggle. I opened my eyes, barely. The action took a lot of thought and seemed unimportant. The door was still closed. I wondered if I’d imagined the voice. I wondered if I’d imagined my own body. As difficult as the concept of opening my eyes had been, the idea of moving any of the rest of me was impossible. My mouth was the driest part of me, like my face had climbed in and coated it.
Clean, unbreakable, perfect. I had been all that, and here we were.
I went into the bedroom to get the things I’d need to trigger the shift. Not just a shift, but a wild shift, a howling shift, a shift that would break me. Not all of my wolf experiments had led me to easy places. I didn’t want to go to an easy place now.
The small, logical part of me thought the meticulous process would help. Remind me of all the reasons to stay human. Give me a chance to calm down. Remind me of all of the other ways I had learned to take this feeling down inside me.
But it only seemed to feed it. Even though I was moving quite slowly and methodically, time pushed and brushed past me, both the past and the future. With no effort at all, I summoned the memories of doing this, or something like it, countless times before.
Wolf.
My mind skirted to Sam back in Minnesota, who so hated the wolf. I could hear his voice telling me how I was scrubbing out everything about me, doing this. I was wasting everything good about me. How hateful I was to throw it all away. Victor had died as a wolf, longing to be a human, and I was giving it away for nothing.
I told myself that, and I told myself that again.
But this was a prerecorded session. I already knew how it ended.
Even though I was alone in the bathroom, it felt like there was someone or something else in there with me. A dark presence hovering in the corner, floating up by the ceiling. Feeding the dark inside me, or feeding off the dark inside me. All of us users and used.
I turned on the shower, and then I sat on the edge of the toilet, syringe in one hand, phone in the other. I dialed Isabel’s number. I didn’t know what I was going to say if she picked up.
I knew she wasn’t picking up anyway.
Trust you?
It rang through to voicemail. For a few minutes, I watched the shower pour gallons of water down the drain. I thought about how outside it was a desert. Then I stabbed the needle into myself.
Pain reminded me it was working.
I leaned my forehead on the wall and waited for it to change me or kill me, and I didn’t really care which. I did care which. I hoped it did both.
The thing I’d put in my veins scrabbled through my bloodstream to my brain. When it got there, it clawed and beat and gnawed at my hypothalamus, screaming the same message over and over:
Wolf
Wolf
Wolf
Pain snatched my thoughts away. My mind was a chemical fire, burning itself out. I crashed to the tile, shaking and sweating and retching. My thoughts immolated.
And then
It was light. Shining overhead, reflected in the ever-shifting, never-growing puddle. It was sound. Hissing water splattering the ground, soft and continuous. Scent: acid and fruit, sweet and rotten.
Wolf.
Chapter Thirty-Five
· isabel · I drove.
Part of me wanted to keep driving for the rest of my life.
Part of me wanted to go to Cole.
I didn’t know which was worse.
In the end, I found myself way up the coast, past Malibu.
The road here was dark and snaky, on one side the rocky coastline and the wild sea and on the other the steep, scrubby mountain cliffs. The palm trees were gone, the people, the houses. As I drove up a random canyon road, I felt like I was driving straight up into the black night sky, or into the black night ocean. I had no idea what time it was. It was the end of the world.
I finally parked the SUV at one of the scenic pullovers.
Down below, the crash of the surf made an uneven white line parallel to the shore. Everything else was dark.
I got out. Outside, the air was freezing. My knees were shaking, and so were my hands. I stood there with my arms wrapped around myself for a long minute, feeling myself tremble and wondering if an emotional shock reaction was possible when you had no emotions.
Probably it was time to admit to myself that I had emotions, and they’d betrayed me.
Then I opened up the back of the SUV, got out the tire iron, and closed the hatch again. I thought of that sick feeling in my stomach when I’d first seen Cole at the party. It was exactly the same, in retrospect, as the feeling that had crept inside me when my father’s voice had gotten strange earlier. When I’d known he was about to tell me something I didn’t want to hear.
I looked at the moon-white surface of the SUV. I tightened my grip on the tire iron.
And then I beat the hell out of the SUV.
The first dent wasn’t the best. There wasn’t anything surprising about swinging a tire iron at a vehicle and leaving a dent.
That’s what happens when you hit something metal with something else metal.
But the second hit. That was the one that sent a rush of feeling through me. It surprised me. I hadn’t known there was going to be a second swing until it happened, or a third, or a fourth. Then I realized I was never going to stop hitting this car. I smashed the doors and the hood, and I cracked the big plastic safety bumpers.
There was nothing in my head except for the knowledge that I had to drive this thing tomorrow, so I didn’t smash out the windows or the headlights or anything that might keep it off the road. I didn’t want it broken.
I wanted it ugly.
The tire iron dug down through the white paint, straight to the bare metal. Its guts were dull and utilitarian under all the gloss.
Finally, when my palm was hot from the effort of clutching the tire iron, I realized how tired I was.
I felt empty. Like I didn’t give a damn.
Which meant I was ready to go back home.
Chapter Thirty-Six
· cole · “Mr. St. Clair?”
I didn’t open my eyes, but I knew where I was. Well, I knew the kind of place I was. I recognized the feel of tile on my skin and the smell of bleach millimeters from my nose. The grit between my hipbone and the floor. I was on a bathroom floor.
My ears hissed.
“Cole? Do you mind if I come in?”
It took me a moment longer to realize which bathroom in particular it was. I had to backtrack, narrowing my thoughts.
Earth. North America. U.S. California. Los Angeles. Venice.
Apartment. Hell.
“Cole?” The voice seemed to consider. “I’m coming in.”
Over the hiss of my ears, I heard a doorknob jiggle. I opened my eyes, barely. The action took a lot of thought and seemed unimportant. The door was still closed. I wondered if I’d imagined the voice. I wondered if I’d imagined my own body. As difficult as the concept of opening my eyes had been, the idea of moving any of the rest of me was impossible. My mouth was the driest part of me, like my face had climbed in and coated it.
