Life Eternal - Ghost

Caelan  watched Marcy's expression carefully after she'd spoken. He had a thousand questions he wanted to ask, likely very limited time to fit any of them in. Her unwavering gaze was focused on his, and in it he could see she had as many stories as he had queries. Her lips had been drawn into a tight, stern line, one that didn't jive with the idea that she was happy he met with someone who wanted her dead.

"You're a survivor," he said as the moon tiptoed skyward beyond the treeline. He touched his hand to the place she'd stuck and twisted the silvered knife.  A werewolf's body rarely remembered any wounds, but their minds did. "Wouldn't think you'd be happy about anyone coming down to kill you."

Watching him, Marcy touched her hand to her stomach in turn. "No," she began. "But I stand more of a chance with someone who wants to kill me than someone who wants to use me."

"Use you for what?"

"You know as well as I do I'll cough up a lung if I even think about answering that," she said. "This is tantamount to a recorded conversation. What you need to know, however, is that almost anything I ask of you you need to do the opposite." She hunched over in the chair, shivered, and the eyes she next turned onto him were teary.

He stayed beside the tool bench now, not so much because he didn't want to touch her, but because he could feel the coiled haunches of a wolf ready to spring from soul into reality. If that cat was anywhere on his grounds tonight, he would find a way to destroy its shitty little disappearing grin and-

He couldn't do anything to help Marcy, not a single damn thing in the world he could think of tonight to free her from the wendigo's curse, and yet she was all he could think of, and all he wanted to do was comfort her when comfort wasn't the right choice.

"There's a reason you aren't dead," Marcy was saying. Her bony hands gripped the edges of the lawn chair tightly. "It's only partly because you're. . . special, to me. Zakar fucked up."

She took a good hit for that, so much so she got up from the chair, lurched into the grass outside and threw up. Caelan followed her with a rag, laid a hand on her back as she sunk onto the ground, still coughing and dripping black saliva, still finding the strength to smile in the moonlight. In the distance, the shapes of the jaguars had become all but unreadable. When Marcy was able to stop convulsing, he helped her to her feet and nodded off toward the dark horizon.

"Fellow out there have a name?"

"You're hurting me," Marcy said quietly, giving a gentle pull at her hand. Caelan apologized and dropped her palm quickly, rubbed his own hands together.

"Those cats are Pax and Chel. 'He' takes after Zakar in that we'd have had an easier time trying to figure out Rumpelstiltskin's grandmother's name. I've heard him referred to as the Night Son. I met him once, as a human. He introduced himself as Toby. He and Zakar aren't brothers, much as I can figure. They're something more primordial."

"Toby," Caelan said. "Interesting choice."

"Blends in," Marcy replied, twisting the dark ends of her hair. "I'm instructed to tell you that you and Zakar have a common goal for as long as Toby is in the picture. You want me alive. Zakar can keep me alive."

"At what cost?"

The woman nodded. "Exactly. I'm going to tell you something, and I have permission to do it because it's late in the game and we're down two scores. Zakar has a superpower of a kind. He is an influencer, a truth teller- in that things he whispers are easily believed to be the truth. He can make people believe in something hard enough that it happens, that they become a self-fulfilling prophecy- or that they see ghosts or that joining up with him is a prime idea. Turns out, however, that he can fall under his own spell. I'm not anyone special beyond being a member of a family he's been tracking through the centuries in search of that someone special. You weren't anything special, except to me, no matter what happens tonight I hope you know you'll always mean everything to me, but Zakar thought  we might be and he treated us like we were and set us down the road and now we are."

"Just what road are we walking?" He did not like the sound of 'what happens tonight.' His toes were already cramping. His skin was alive with the sensation of prickling fur.

"The road underneath this life," she said. "For Zakar, the path home."

"He's got a home?"

"He wants to go home," she said. "He doesn't have one this side of the soil. He can see glimpse it through the cracks, like gaps in a fence, that's how he can pull tricks like the dead out of this stupid fedora he often wears on business. He's hoping that you, as a man in. . . with strong feelings for me, knows how strong an urge it is to have a home."

"The place doesn't matter to me. I can start over anywhere, same as you, Miss Davins. What matters is my pack." Caelan looked from the darkening treeline to the shadows underneath his back deck. He could not have been more frustrated in that moment. "You have a preference, which murderous gentleman, other than of course myself, you want to spend your time with?"

Marcy smiled. "Other than yourself?" she repeated.

"Ain't no fun having to choose between a rock and a rock, but I'm running low on ideas at this point. Gotta entertain one or the other at least for now."

She gave him a long, appraising look. "You know I can't answer that. It's not a choice so much as it is a decision on when I want to get my heart ripped out and-" She sputtered, spat and wiped her mouth. "I mean, I love my husband and can't wait to rule beside him in our true home with you at my feet. What a great gift my husband gives me, happiness being a warm puppy and all."

Caelan smiled at the addition of an eye roll. She might've been a breath away from a corpse and exhausted but even just a couple minutes together and they were more alive talking to each other than with anyone else.

"That's exactly where I'd be," he said, catching onto her fire despite himself. "At your feet."

Like a grey little moth, Marcy flitted beneath the light of the garage, eyes on the door leading into the mudroom. She walked up the two steps to the door, pressed one hand against the burnished handle. "You finally unpack your house?"

"Mostly," Caelan said, strolling after her with a keen eye on his surroundings. This felt like a trap. Marcy was off and on and relaxing and tense and somewhere tonight a bomb would explode.

"Do you think I could come inside? It's been a long time since I was human. I've spent so long as a monster I've sort of forgotten when it's like to see my face in a mirror." She made sure he saw her face then, and in those wide eyes there was no doubt she was telling the truth.

"I'd much prefer you not turn in my kitchen, seeing as I have indeed mostly unpacked." He paused. "Much as I hate to say it, I'd also prefer not endangering the ratty hairball of a cat that's just now probably sitting in the bathroom sink chewing my toothbrush."

Her shoulders dropped. "You know, for someone who isn't a cat person," she began.

"Not a pet person," he corrected.

"You've sure got a strong feline presence in your life right now."

Caelan's hand fell to the soft knit wool of her sleeve. If there were games to be played tonight, he would make sure they were his own. "Can I trust you to wait here?"

"'Course," she said, nodding. She moved from the door and off to the side to let him walk inside. He locked the door after one more assurance that he'd be right back, and returned sure enough a few minutes later. Igor was back in her pet carrier, absolutely under no circumstances about to be allowed the slight chance to slip out through the door. Her bulbous yellow eyes were seething as she hissed and pawed at the hard plastic keeping her trapped on the kitchen table.

With Igor safe as safe could be (barring something else in his house letting her out; he had his ideas on who); he unplugged the smaller of his two record players, grabbed a few albums and carried out to the garage. Marcy watched, head tilted, a waif of something that belonged in the shadows and not in the glaring white light of the garage bay. Caelan took a couple minutes fiddling around with a speaker, then he was pulling a record carefully from its sleeve.

"Never heard music 'til I was out," he was saying, turning his back on the girl who could at any moment change gears and try and kill him. "It's always meant a form of freedom for me. " The music cracked to life. He lifted a couple records, let Marcy thumb through them. When she'd selected one, he exchanged records and held out his hand. "Would you like to dance? Nothing bad for either of us this time, I'm hoping."

She backed away, hugging her arms tight. "I can't."

With an understanding note to his voice, he rested a hand on her shoulder, pointed out toward the edge of the garage. "Would you like to just listen?"

"That'd be nice."

A few moments later, Marcy sat on the edge of the cement, drawing her knees to her chest as if keeping her feet from spilling into the dark of night. Caelan came to sit beside her, felt her flinch, felt a stab in his gut at the reaction worse than when she'd actually stabbed him, and moved away a couple inches. It was only after a minute that he was conscious of her leaning, just enough to let her head fall softly against his shoulder.

"Caelan," she sighed.

He sighed, too. "Marcy."

So they sat and listened, let the music play and the jaguars prowl and the monster in the woman's head was forced to wait. Her cold hand found the warmth of his. After a time, she squeezed softly; he looked at her knit eyebrows and unsteady frown and said, "Let's get this over with, shall we?" He kicked out his legs, no boots, no socks, just the beginning tugs of muscle leading to wolf feet.

"You don't have the knife, do you?" she asked, pulling her head from his shoulder. Her eyes were bright- a polished silver that darkened her skin and face into something utterly supernatural. "Tasha never made it, did she?"

"What's it for?" Caelan was racking his brain, hadn't the thing mentioned someone with teeth?  

"Me," Marcy said.

"She made it out," he decided without explaining far beyond. "I'll say I do not have it, but there's a very good chance she does."

"Do you know where she is?"

"I could find her."

Marcy was quiet for several moments. Outside, the leaves, most of which were half-transitioned from summer's emeralds to bleeding out red, rustled in a cool wind. 

"You should change now, Caelan," she said. "I can feel him crawling up my spine. I need you to get me out there."She pointed. "He's pursuing us, making Zakar panic. Get me to him."

"He wants to kill you."

"Everyone does," Marcy said flatly. "But he might listen first."

 "You gonna fight me?" he responded in turn. 

She looked about to kiss him, covered her mouth with her hand and started out. She pulled her hair tie out, dropped it neatly on the ground and shook out her locks.  Caelan felt his chest tighten, his breath shorten-  a result of his impending transformation and the sudden disappointment at the thought of a kiss that could've been. Sure, she was a monster, but as he settled into the shift so was he. 

The wendigo did not shed skin or clothing. It simply switched from one form to the next like the flip of a switch- too quick for any science to have thus far been able to capture, and too rarely for much research to have been done that didn't result in shaky cam camping horror videos.

Werewolves were a kind of magic- but there was no challenge to the speed of the necromancer's curse. Where Caelan had dropped to his rapidly rearranging kneecaps, Marcy had taken off running around the side of the house. She was singing, giggling, a gleeful voice that deepened as her fleet feet rounded the corner and out of sight. The wendigo finished its singing, then Caelan heard only the sound of his padded fingers scraping against the gravel as the skin of his shoulders opened into the powerful muscle of the wolf.

Mary had a little lamb
Little lamb, little lamb
Mary had a little lamb
Its fleece was white as snow

And everywhere that Mary went
Mary went, Mary went
Everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go!

If you haven't noticed, Thorn is my NaNaWriMo book to celebrate my plan to debut in the publishing world with Dark Side. I am seeking amazing beta readers for the Dark Side edited draft. If interested, please send me a message through Wattpad and I'll send you a link to my signup sheet. :)