The Black Wolves of Boston (eARC) Read online

  That was entirely possible. Would it scare Joshua if Decker confirmed that? It was probably better to delay confessing to all the oddities that living with a vampire might include for as long as possible. Decker neared the top of the staircase and began to use the smallest bedroom to the left as a deposit for all the clutter. Hopefully Joshua would be the practical sort and want the larger bedroom on the right. It had its own bathroom, if Decker remembered correctly.

  Decker found the light switch and flipped on the overhead. Oh. Oh, dear. It was much worse than he remembered. Rally! Rally! The puppy is washing its hands. What a good little puppy!

  Decker shuffled clutter as quickly as he could, grabbing piles from the big bedroom and flinging them madly into the much smaller room directly across the hall. He managed to clear the first three feet into the room before the water shut off and the bathroom door opened.

  "Up here!" Decker called as casually as he could manage.

  Joshua came up the stairs cautiously. "What was all that noise?"

  "Just moving some stuff around. I was thinking you might like this room. We could clear it out tonight. It would only take a little while."

  Joshua peered into the room. "Cool! Is that round area part of the tower? The ceilings are so high! You could play basketball in here. This is like ten times bigger than my bedroom back home."

  Yes!

  Luckily Joshua was wading through the clutter and missed Decker's victory dance. The boy reached the bay windows and peered out them. "I---I haven't transformed into a wolf yet. It will be a full moon on Wednesday. I looked it up. Will I change then?"

  "No," Decker said with more authority than he really had. He scrambled to back up his claim. "Other creatures are affected by the moon, which is the basis of the legends, but werewolves aren't. Ferals run unchecked until they're killed. Pack wolves can choose when and where they transform. You don't want to piss a wolf off, but you can sit at a table and talk with them."

  "Do you think we should set up a cage, just in case?"

  Cage? He didn't think they made cages that could hold werewolves. Not a good answer. What could they use as a reasonable substitute? "There's a room in the basement. It was the coal cellar. The previous owner bricked up the chute and it has a good solid door." Dusty as hell; it made him glad for gas heat. "Don't worry too much about it. Even if you lose control, you won't be able to hurt me."

  At least, he didn't think so. The boy was scared and needed the reassurance, even if it wasn't totally true.

  * * *

  Shifting the clutter was like looking back in time---through a fogged-over window. Certain things like the hula-hoop he remembered distinctly. Uncoordinated creatures of the night with supernatural strength should not play with toys that could become projectile weapons. Luckily he'd learned that lesson before beheading anyone. Nor could he ever forget the box full of unfortunate experiments with tie-dye. He had rainbow color hands for a year. He finally soaked his hands in strong lye to remove the stains and let his unnatural healing deal with the damage. The stack of 45s, however, mystified him. When had he bought them? When did he get the lava lamps? Did he ever think the shag area rug actually looked good?

  Joshua unearthed the phonograph player. Surprisingly, he had no clue how it worked. Once Decker explained it, Joshua insisted on playing the 45s as they cleaned out the room. Most of the songs the boy had never heard and Decker didn't remember, so it was much as if they were both hearing them for the first time. "Wild Thing" by the Troggs went onto repeat play for half an hour, Joshua bouncing with the music as he carried things out.

  The campy "Monster Mash" by Bobby Pickett only got halfway through the song before Joshua took it off. It was too soon for him to make light of his new status.

  "Do you?" Joshua asked as he shuffled through the records, looking for something emotionally safer.

  "Do I what?" Decker eyed a curtain of beads. What had he been thinking?

  "Do you sleep in a coffin?" He'd stopped the song where Dracula was complaining from his coffin.

  How much creepy could Joshua take?

  "I---I---I've found that coffins are safe. There's nothing like waking up and discovering that rats have gotten into your bedroom." Too much info. "It's like sleeping with blankets over your head." If the blankets were pillowed and then stapled to wood. "I've got the king-sized version, not one of those little narrow things." This was probably not helping. The song had probably called up all the horror movie images of dark crypts full of dead. The boy might be desperate for a place to stay the night, but tomorrow he'd be alone all day, with plenty of time for second thoughts. Time to think where Decker might be sleeping. At any time, he could bolt and Decker would be helpless to stop him. "It's like a bed. The walls of my sleeping chamber are muted blue and the accents are suede, polished gold, and crystal."

  Joshua laughed. "Accents are suede, polished gold and crystal? Did you hire an interior designer?"

  "Actually I did. A very good one. Once I dissuaded him from using a monochrome color scheme and burnt orange shag rugs, things went smoothly."

  Joshua laughed and put on "Stay" by Maurice Williams. A simple song, but it struck Decker to the soul.

  "Oh won't you stay, just a little bit longer, please let me hear, that you will."

  What a stupid song to be crying over.

  * * *

  They'd cleared the room down to the wood floor. The curtains were in tatters from sun rot. The walls were dirty white. The overhead bulb seemed too harsh. Every little sound echoed loudly. At least the floor was in wonderful shape, due to the fact it had been protected by clutter for decades. They used the ugliest of the tie-dye experiments to dust mop the floor and walls. Decker tried not to panic over how horrible the room looked even empty of the clutter.

  "I just realized there's no bed." Joshua laughed and unrolled a shag carpet that once lived in the front pallor.

  "I'll buy you one." Decker felt sunrise racing toward them. He would have to shut himself away and pray that when he woke, the boy was still there. "We can go out for dinner and then pick a bed out."

  Anything to cement Joshua into his life. The last few hours had been filled with moments of joy, the first time in decades he'd felt the emotion.

  Joshua stretched out on the carpet, yawning deeply. "Dinner and bed?" Joshua yawned again. "M'kay." And then how that sounded sunk into the boy's awareness. "I told you no maid's dress."

  Decker grinned but refrained from the easy taunt. Once he'd fallen asleep, the day would pass in a blink of an eye, and the moment of truth would be quickly at hand. Would Joshua stay? Surely if the puppy stayed for a day, all would be good. So he promised solemnly, "No dress. Big steak dinner." Or what was that thing Elise always talked about? "Or a clambake. Lobster, mussels, crabs, steamers, quahog, sausages, potatoes, and corn on the cob." It always sounds like the entire kitchen dumped into a pot, but Elise loved it. "I liked a nice rack of lamb when I was young."

  He realized that Joshua's breathing had deepened and the boy was asleep on the carpet. He sat watching him sleep for as long as he could, wondering if he should wake him up and ask the boy not to go. In the end, he patted his puppy on the head and went to lock himself away from the unstoppable day.

  5: Joshua

  Joshua had been running in nightmare slow motion through the elementary school playground with the entire high school football team in pursuit. When they were in first grade, Frank Cahall couldn't run without falling down. The high school quarterback had no such limitations as they wove through the monkey bars and swings. Frank wore the torn, bloody jersey that he'd been killed in. In the shadows, Frank shifted into the wooden centaurlike huntsman.

  Then the dream changed in time and space.

  Joshua had gotten to the barn to find out that he was going to be the star pitcher in the Deep Game. The barren cornfield was standing in as a baseball diamond, complete with massive digital scoreboard. The PA system blasted his theme song: "Wild Thing." A werewolf cartoon flas
hed on the board, dressed in a baseball uniform. Joshua stood nervously on the threshold of the barn door, Clark Kent glasses on, wondering how everyone knew he was a werewolf. It was supposed to be a big secret, the whole reason he was wearing the glasses and looking even more nerdy than normal. He didn't want to go out onto the playing field, once he was out there, the killing would start.

  He couldn't see the stands or bleachers or the crowds that they held. He could, however, hear the audience. They shouted along with the song. "Wild thing! You make my heart sing!"

  He wavered on the threshold, not wanting to go out into the bleak cornfield and let the killing start.

  "There you are." Daphne appeared beside him, slinky black witch's costume on. He really didn't see why all the guys were acting like idiots over her. Yes, she was striking with long red hair and vivid green eyes. When she was posed for the audience, she was lovely, but all the other times she stomped about, all knees and elbows. She was so tall, thin and awkward that at times she seemed like a basketball player in drag. She obviously had never gotten into sports or dance or anything that made her comfortable with her own body. With another personality, the awkwardness would be endearing, but as she was, it puzzled the hell out of him why the entire male population had lost their mind over her.

  Daphne had been in the barn with the jocks, forcing them through more and more embarrassing feats. Why was she even paying attention to him? He had his disguise on. No one should even be paying attention to him.

  "Have you been dodging me, dogface?" She scowled at him, not bothering to make herself pretty.

  He felt to see if he was still wearing his disguise. Was his nose bigger? Were his ears showing? What about his tail? "No, of course not."

  He had been dodging her ever-growing entourage. She'd started with the football team, all of whom had hated him since first grade. He wasn't sure what he'd done in kindergarten to inspire such collective hate; one would think he'd remember.

  "Bark like a dog," Daphne commanded.

  He didn't understand how she was getting away with it, but he'd seen her pull this stunt again and again all week. Anyone that hesitated got more of her attention and like a flock of angry birds, her entourage followed her focus. He could take them one by one, but not all nine at the same time. He barked and kept barking, which was what the people she ignored normally did. It was what Superman would do.

  "Hell," Daphne breathed. "Bases are loaded. You need to strike out the next batter, Dogface, or everyone loses."

  At least, that was what she'd said in the dream. Part of his mind detached from the action and remembered that they had this conversation in the barn, not out in the privacy of the cornfield. She had said something else, something he hadn't completely caught because the football team been laughing too loudly at Joshua barking like a dog. He lost it now under the howl of the unseen audience, up in the bleachers, viewing the Deep Game from safety.

  "Wild thing!" The fans cheered for him.

  He'd walked out to the pitcher's mound. A clown car started to circle the playing field as the crowd continued to sing. "You make everything groovy, Wild Thing!"

  Daphne was on her phone, swearing softly. "Are you sure he's the one? You've always told me that younglings are resistant. Every time I've pushed him, he rolls." She gave a little growl of annoyance. "Yes, everything is ready. Is Garland going to come back me up for this? What was that?"

  Joshua didn't want to walk onto the playing field, but staying close to Daphne had its own dangers. No one else seemed to notice the toy vehicle wheeling closer. If he stayed at the barn door, he'd be trapped with all the others. He walked purposely out toward the pitcher's mound. As he walked, the night darkened, the stadium lights dimming and the stars brightening. The ground roughened to the recently shorn cornfield. The night grew still and biting cold. A hint of snow scented the air.

  "Wild Thing!" the crowd shouted somewhere in the darkness, the "wild" nearly a wordless roar.

  The clown car looped closer.

  "What do I do?" Daphne fearfully asked the person on her phone. She hadn't noticed that he'd walked away. "Should I bring him there? Hey, Dogface, we're.... Two?"

  "We're two?" Joshua's attention was wholly on the car. The monster was in the car.

  "Oh, no! What do I do?" Daphne cried from far away.

  "Run?" Joshua whispered, fearful to draw attention to himself. Running usually worked well for him. They were a mile from anything, though, and the sun had already set.

  The clown car stopped. A huge beast unfolding himself out of the driver's seat. The creature wore a human mask; Joshua thought it might be Samuel Jackson.

  Joshua stood frozen on the pitcher's mound, downwind of the beast. The barn door was a golden square in the distance.

  "Dogface!" Daphne shouted. "You're up!"

  Samuel Jackson started to growl. He took off his mask, revealing the beast. He dropped down onto all fours and stalked toward the barn.

  Joshua stood transfixed. He had seen the impossible. He wanted to bolt, run from the Deep Game, but it was his time to take stage center. From the darkness, the now invisible crowd roared for him to show his true self.

  "Wild Thing! Wild Thing! Wild Thing!"

  "No," Joshua whispered. "I don't want to play."

  But the screaming had started in the barn. The game had begun...

  * * *

  Joshua jerked awake. Outside seagulls screamed in thin shrieks. He stared at the ceiling wondering where he was. It was a high white ceiling with crown molding and an old bare light fixture. The walls were dirty white. The room was oddly shaped, like someone collided a circle onto a long rectangle. Sunlight streamed in from a half circle of windows, cooking him slowly with UV.

  Where was he? Not his bedroom. Not the hospital.

  Then he remembered. Decker's incredibly messy house.

  I'm living with a hipster vampire who has a serious hoarding problem.

  The seagull screams grew closer as the birds flew past the house. Echoes of the dream washed over him.

  I'm a werewolf.

  He'd woken up in the hospital like this. Disoriented. Echoes of screams. The smell of blood. The feel of fur. The sense of something else inside of him. Not him. Not human. The police arrived before any of his memories returned. His parents hadn't had the courage to tell him what had happened. The police had photos that explained it all too clearly.

  "I don't even remember getting to the barn," Joshua told the police. "D.J.---Dennis Kean---was supposed to pick me up for school. I had a bunch of stuff for the haunted house that I couldn't take on the bus. I remember sitting on my front porch waiting." The smell of fresh carved jack-o-lantern beside him, leering as if it knew what was in store. Despite the sunshine, the day had been chilly enough make his ears cold. Of course, he hadn't been able to find any of the winter hats except for one of his dad's. It was a dorky thing like what Sherlock Holmes wore. He kept taking it off and turning it in his hands. Should he leave it behind and freeze his ears off or just buckle down and wear the stupid thing, knowing that the universe liked to make him the butt of all jokes?

  Normally he wouldn't worry. After years of fighting, he'd gotten to the point where he could kick the butt of any kid in school and everyone knew that. At football games and such, the bullies of the school were normally in school uniform and had a host of similarly dressed idiots to beat the snot out of, so he was safe there. Tonight, there would be no other team to distract them.

  Wear the hat or leave it? Which did he decide? He couldn't remember. "Was I wearing a hat?"

  "Is that important?" the policeman asked.

  When he was sitting on the porch, waiting, the hat had been important. It certainly wasn't now but it seemed as if the presence or absence of the hat might start him down the right path to remembering what happened. "D.J. was supposed to pick me up." Joshua was the only senior without a driver's license. "He was late. I remember waiting for him. I don't remember anything else."

  He re
alized then that D.J. was the very dead body he'd seen in the photos. For the first time, the wolf filled him and overflowed. It started with soft whimpers of distress. At first he wasn't even aware that he was making them. He glanced around the room, looking for the hurt puppy, before he realized the noise was coming from him. Awareness only made it worse as he tried to control the whimpers and couldn't. He hunched over, not wanting these strangers to see him losing it like a little kid. He pulled the sheets over his head as the whimpers became high-pitched keening.

  If was only after the police left and his mother coaxed him out from under the sheets with jelly donuts, that he remembered being at the barn. It was like a gif image, a handful of seconds of standing in the cornfield, his breath misting in the bitter cold, as he stood listening to distant screams.

  It was another four hours before he remembered the werewolf. By then he'd left a trail of broken hospital equipment behind him and had a vision of a wolf telling him to go to the Prince of Boston.

  In thirty-six hours, his life disintegrated into nothing.

  No parents. No money. No future. No idea what in hell he was doing.

  He wasn't even sure if his vision had been "real." Certainly there'd been no wolf at the hospital talking to him---he was positive of that. He had a dozen witnesses that verified that he'd been alone when he thought he saw the talking wolf. Unless the wolf could also teleport.

  The huntsman had definitely been very real.

  Decker was most likely asleep until sunset if he was anything like the vampires in the movies. Elise was going to go looking for the Wickers and didn't want Joshua underfoot. He didn't want to piss her off---not after she threatened to stab Decker with the same arrows she'd just jerked out of the vampire. He didn't want to wander around lost looking for a person that might be a figment of his imagination.

  "Hi, I'm looking for a prince. He may or may not be a werewolf. Yes, a talking, teleporting wolf told me to find him. Would you know where to find the Prince of Boston?"

  "No, not doing that," he muttered, and sighed. "What the hell am I supposed to do now?"