Something Wicked This Way Comes Ch6

So my wrist is feeling better (knock on wood!).  I'm not going to press my luck, so I'll be getting back to work very slowly.  I'm hoping to start working on NB in 5 minute increments again on Monday and then gradually expanding that amount of time.  Thank you all for being so patient! 

***

Jack was feeling a little conflicted to say the least. He wanted to run, but knew he shouldn’t. He was safe here, nothing could enter the druid circle that meant him harm – but there was an enormous wolf the size of a small horse standing just a few feet away from him. But that wolf was Koz, so it wouldn’t hurt him, would it? Who was he fucking kidding, of course it was going to hurt him, Koz or not, it was still a werewolf!

Some strange, hysterical, movie-loving side of his mind was shrieking through his skull: ‘HE WAS A WEREWOLF ALL ALONG WHAT A FUCKING TWIST!’ Jack had thought he’d somehow gotten trapped in some horror movie come to life, but now it was looking like he was in one of those sappy paranormal romance plots – did this make him the helpless human damsel?

Wolf-Koz stepped forward, yellow eyes boring into him. Jack realized he couldn’t have run even if he wanted to. He couldn’t stop looking into those supernaturally bright, yellow eyes. He was pinned by his own fear.

The massive black beast took another step forward, paws just at the edge of the druid circle. Then, with the slightest hesitation, he stepped forward again and entered.

Jack’s mind whirled. Maybe when he and Koz entered the circle together earlier, that made it possible for Were-Koz to enter now? Did that circumvent the no harm rule? What the hell was with the unexpected loopholes? And why weren’t they ever working in his favor? He trembled as the wolf slowly approached, staggering back a few wobbled steps before freezing.

Were-Koz came to a stop, standing unyielding before him, ears perked forward. Maybe the circle let him in because he wasn’t going to harm him? But those yellow eyes were still boring into him and he couldn’t look away. Wasn’t that a challenge in dog language? Should he look away? Jack had never had a dog – he didn’t speak dog language! But… he remembered, he did know how to say ‘hello’.

Praying hard and certain he was about to get mauled, Jack slowly offered the back of his fist for Koz to inspect.

For a moment it seemed to work. Koz looked down at his hand and sniffed at it gingerly, but then his eyes were right back up at Jack’s face and Jack didn’t know what to do. He felt as if one wrong move would get him killed.

There was only one other trick he knew.

With a shaking hand, Jack reached towards the side of Koz’s furry head. His fingers combed through the thick, soft fur on Koz’s neck and he gave a very tentative scratch.

The reaction was instantaneous. Suddenly, Jack found this enormous wolf leaning into his proportionately tiny hand; yellow eyes lidded and tail slowly wagging. He scratched again, moving his hand up behind Koz’s ears and the great beast stepped forward and buried his giant head in Jack’s stomach in what could only be called a nuzzling motion.

“Oof!” Jack staggered back. He could feel hot breath against his stomach where Koz was panting happily. He kept scratching behind the fluffy ears and smiled at his companion’s wagging tail. “Holy shit, you’re like a big, scary dog.” He huffed a laugh partly in amusement, partly in relief, bringing up his other hand to scratch both sides of Koz’s furry neck.

An interesting fact Jack discovered that night was that wolves do not smell very good. But they were relatively soft and quite warm. This was good because halfway through the night Jack used up all the firewood Koz had gathered and the fire went out. Jack huddled against his companion’s side and slept.

He was woken in the early hours of the morning when the body beside him gave a great jerk. He sat up in alarm to see the massive wolf fall onto his side as his body convulsed.

“Koz!” Jack stood by helplessly as the wolf went through a reverse of the change Koz had gone through the night before.

There was the dull ‘pop-pop’ like cracking knuckles as the wolf’s muzzle shortened and his tail withdrew back into his spine. Koz’s whole body shrank and twisted as bones shortened and others lengthened, some disappeared altogether and others grew from nothing. The fur receded and Koz began to look more and more human. All except for one foot – which stayed a paw until, with a flick of his ankle like shaking off water, the paw snapped back into a human foot and Koz collapsed to the ground.

There was a moment where Jack didn’t know what to say; the silence was filled by Koz’s labored breathing.

Finally, Jack knelt down. “Koz?” He placed a gentle hand on the man’s shoulder. Koz groaned and began to move, his every movement shaky and slow. He coughed and gingerly touched his mouth – still stained red from his fight the night before.

Jack scurried to grab his ruined hoodie. There was a patch or two still clear of blood – what was a little more at this point?

“Here,” he offered the hoodie to his companion.

Numbly, Koz wiped off his mouth, the dried blood flaking away easily. Koz looked around himself, eyes not quite focused. Jack bit his lip. He didn’t know what to do.

Koz sat up more fully, his brow drawn as he frowned at his surroundings, eyes blearily following the movement of birds chirping and skipping from branch to branch overhead.

His side was covered in grass and dirt, but beneath that Jack could see a lattice-work of scars from various scratches and pricks, too subtle for him to have noticed last night when Koz had stripped down. Most notable was a jagged swath of pale scar-tissue above his collarbone where large, canine-like teeth had once bitten in and then a perfectly circular one on his shoulder that must have been a bullet-wound.

Jack’s eyes followed the pale lines and somehow found their way to the man’s lap. He quickly looked away again. Right. Clothes. That was a good first step.

Jack gathered up Koz’s clothes and set them next to him, wondering if he was going to have to dress him. Luckily, as soon as the clothes landed beside him, Koz blinked and snapped out of his stupor.

“Oh!” He started. “Ugh!” He began to rub at the dried blood around his mouth, even spitting, though by now he must’ve swallowed all the blood that’d gotten in his mouth. Jack winced. Actually, he’d probably be spitting too.

“Are you okay?” Jack asked when it seemed Koz had calmed down some.

Koz merely blanched in response and reached for his clothes. “I should be asking you that.”

Jack shrugged helplessly. “I’m fine! You however…” he sought for words. “Son,” he said. “You have a condition.”

Koz looked up at him, stunned for a moment, before he burst into laughter.

Damn, it should be illegal for someone that hot with that cute a laugh to be naked. The young man pushed such thoughts aside. “Seriously though,” he said. “You got shot and there was some uh… rough-housing. Are you okay?”

Koz snickered. “Other than my ‘condition’ I’m fine. Hungry.”

“I’ll get that. You put on clothes!” Jack hurried to open up the graham crackers and waited until Koz had finished dressing before offering him any, then he sat back and watched while Koz nearly inhaled four of the crackers before pausing.

“Put them away please,” he said as he re-wrapped the remaining crackers, handing them back over to Jack. “Or I’ll be tempted to eat them all.”

Jack took one out for himself and stashed away the rest. “So,” he said with a mouth full of crumbs. “Are you going to tell me about your ‘moon sickness’?”

Koz let out a bark of a laugh and ran a hand through his hair. “Please don’t call it that,” he finally said.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s…” he laughed. “It’s not funny. I don’t know why I’m laughing. I think it’s because you’re being so casual.”

“Well, your arm healed in one day, so I was starting to suspect something… not natural.” Jack smiled a little helplessly. “I can act more freaked out if you want?”

“Please,” Koz said, “at least enough to let me know you have some sense of self-preservation.”

This time, Jack laughed, although with less humor. “Says the guy who was trying to kill himself.” He sobered immediately at the look on Koz’s face. “Sorry,” he said, “My version of ‘freaking out’ is reacting to everything with inappropriate humor.”

Koz shook his head. “It’s fine.”

Something clicked in Jack’s mind. “Is that why you’re out here? I mean… are you trying to, you know… because you’re a werewolf?”

“Got it in one.” Koz began to gather their things, face drawn and pale. Jack watched him, frowning, what did you say to that? Somehow ‘That’s rough, buddy’ didn’t seem to cover it.

“I’m sorry,” he settled on. “Does anybody know?”

Koz threw the strap of his pack over his shoulder. “Can we talk about this while walking, perhaps?” He pushed the cooler into Jack’s hands. “Now you know about my ‘condition’, you should appreciate my haste given my moon-related deadline?”

“Oh, shit,” Jack said, holding the cooler close to his chest. “The full moon’s coming? When?”

Koz checked Jamie’s shotgun for ammunition and found it fully loaded. “Not for a few nights, but the fuller it is, the less in control I’ll be. I don’t mean to scare you but… you should be scared.” He started walking, carrying Jamie’s shotgun. Jack hurried to follow after. “It’s already pretty bad. Last night… I don’t remember any of it. Usually, if I can control myself, I’ll remember it.”

Koz stepped over a knot of tree roots, moving carefully now that he’d lost his shoes. Jack hopped after him. “You were fine last night,” he said.

Koz stopped and turned looked at him, eyes dark. “So long as I didn’t bite you…”

Jack shook his head, a little put off by the intensity in Koz’s eyes. “No, just shedded. You were very cuddly!”

The dark look vanished in an instant as Koz stared at him in disbelief. “You really have no sense of self-preservation, do you?”

“You walked into the druid circle, so I knew you wouldn’t hurt me.” Mostly.

Koz shook his head, incredulous. He adjusted his pack’s strap and started walking once more.

Jack kept quiet for a little ways, hoping Koz might offer some explanation. They passed through the trees and came to a clearing, scaring the hell out of a bunch of rabbits, before marching straight through and back into the brush.

It became more and more apparent that Koz wasn’t going to elaborate. Finally, Jack had to ask. “So it’s cool if you don’t want to answer this but – how did you become a werewolf?”

“I’d rather not discuss it,” Koz said immediately.

“Oh. Okay. I get it,” Jack said with equal speed. “It’s fine if it’s too painful to talk about.”

“It’s not painful.” Koz growled, swatting away a mosquito. “It’s… embarrassing more than anything.”

How could Jack not question that? “Did he catch you with your pants down? Or! Was it a girl into kinky biting stuff?”

“No! It’s just… a stupid mistake.” Koz waved an arm, trying to shake off the persistent insect. “I was hunting a Black Dog with my partners and one of them – Bunny—”

“’Bunny’?!” Jack choked, moving to walk beside Koz and nearly walking into a low-hanging branch. He ducked at the last moment, but still ended up with leaves in his hair.

The mosquito landed on Koz’s arm and he slapped it, then looked over at Jack in annoyance. “Do you want to hear this story or not?”

Jack brushed the leaves from his hair. “Sorry.”

“Bunny was supposed to be point with me while North – my other partner – guarded our rear. We were in a forest.” Koz looked around, the shotgun barrel gleaming in the scattered sunlight as he walked. “This forest actually. We were following-up on a lead about a Black Dog. We’d tracked it pretty far in when the trail split. We didn’t know there was a wolf in the area, we just thought it was the Dog giving us the runaround, so we split up.

“Bunny hasn’t been hunting as long as North and I have and isn’t as experienced, so North went with him as back-up. I followed the other trail, found the Dog, and killed it.” He shrugged like this was too routine to bother with details, then readjusted the pack’s strap as it started to slip from his shoulder.

“I went back to find the others. They had lost the trail – North had moved up from guard-point and was helping Bunny search. I didn’t realize there was anything else out there, so I wasn’t cautious approaching them. I was cocky and unprepared and I stumbled onto the wolf as it was stalking them. We were all taken by surprise and in its panic the wolf went through the easiest path – me. I killed it but… not before it got in a good bite.” He grimaced. “Several, actually.”

Jack winced in sympathy and promptly stumbled over a tree root. He’d been watching Koz so closely, he’d forgotten to look ahead. “I’m sorry,” he said, hurrying to keep pace and walk beside his companion. “That sounds awful.”

“Not my first mauling,” Koz shrugged. “Just… the one I couldn’t recover from.”

They headed downhill, heading into a sloping valley between two hills. The ground grew wetter as they went further down. Jack followed in Koz’s footprints, leaving his own in his wake.

“But…” Jack licked his lips. “Is killing yourself really the answer? Couldn’t you lock yourself up or—”

“I’ve tried that.” Koz interrupted. “For months I tried just locking myself away, but it’s not that simple. I missed weeks of work when I was first bitten and I couldn’t go to the hospital or make any legitimate excuse. I lost my job and then in all my newfound free time, I suffered all sorts of side-effects: random spurts of speed or strength or sudden sensory spikes. I could hardly focus and I was always irritable or exhausted—”

Jack nearly slipped on the slick, sloping ground, but caught himself on a tree branch. He followed Koz’s lead and stepped carefully, focusing on walking along the drier tree roots. “But this is all past-tense?”

“Yes.” Koz cleared his throat in a way that could only be described as self-conscious. Jack realized suddenly that he might not have had anyone to talk to about this before. He may be Koz’s only confidant on this, a man he had interrupted only days before and prevented from committing suicide. He didn’t know how to deal with this at all. As proven by the fact that he was definitely blowing it right now.

They came to a creek at the bottom of the valley between the two hills. Koz walked over the larger stones carefully, while Jack tread through the shallow water and let the mud on his feet get washed away as he balanced carefully on the stony creek-bed.

“What did your friends do?” Jack asked.

“North blamed himself because he was the most experienced one in the group – thought he should have prevented it somehow. He was the one who volunteered to watch me when I changed. He had a sturdy cellar. But the neighbors could hear me turning. He got reported on suspicion of dog-fighting more than once.” Koz stepped off the last of the stones at the creek’s bank and started uphill once more. Jack hurried to follow after, his feet getting muddied once more as he started up the wet bank.

“Bunny tried to kill me just after I was bitten,” Koz continued. “North chased him off, but things were never the same after that. We saw each other a few times after that but less and less as time went on. I think North told him to stay away. Bunny wasn’t exactly the sweetest of characters originally, but after the bite he was downright vicious. I think North was worried about the outcome if we kept interacting. About what I might be pushed into doing.” Koz sneered ruefully at the thought and Jack frowned. He didn’t think he liked this Bunny guy, despite the cute nickname.

“Sometimes Bunny would come over the mornings after I’d turned,” Koz said, his dark humor evaporating into gloom as his eyes went distant at some memory, walking on autopilot. “I ‘d wake up in the cellar and hear them arguing through the floor. I didn’t know then…” He shook his head as if to clear his thoughts and hurried his pace, stepping over gnarled tree roots.

The shadows beneath the trees lengthened as a cloud passed over the sun. The gold and green of the forest quickly faded to pale green and grey. A soft wind rustled through the trees.

“I couldn’t leave Sera alone those nights I turned and I couldn’t leave her with just anyone - werewolves go after their family first,” Koz said. “But we didn’t want too many hunters to know about me because they would likely react like Bunny, so… well, North said he had it covered. Stress only weakens my resistance to the change so I trusted him and let him handle it.”

Koz grit his teeth in a deep scowl. “I had to do that a lot. So many of my responsibilities I had to let go and hand off to other people. I hated it. I felt like an invalid, unable to take care of anything on my own.”

He shook his head as if to clear the thoughts away. “One night I got loose and that’s how I found out Bunny had been watching Sera. Luckily too. I broke into my house and tried to attack her. Bunny shot me.” Jack saw him gingerly put a hand to his shoulder, where he’d seen the bullet wound before. Koz noticed his gaze and readjusted the pack’s shoulder strap to cover it.

“All around sounds like a good friend,” Jack said, then bit his lip in shame at his own interruption.

“He was a good friend,” Koz insisted. “You’ve got to understand, in his eyes, I was already dead. Protecting my daughter from a monster is what I would have wanted him to do and he knew it.”

“You’re not a monster,” Jack said. He spoke automatically, but when he saw Koz raring up to argue, he realized he meant it. And the more he thought, the more sure he was of it. “You’re not! And y’know what? I don’t think Jamie is one either. Maybe the girl is – she seemed a little bloodthirsty. But really you’re just… you’re sick! You have a magical condition.”

Koz stopped walking just ahead of him. Anger flared in his every movement as he turned to glare at Jack. “I could kill someone,” Koz said. “If we don’t get out of here before the moon is full, I could kill you.”

Jack stopped as well, glaring up at his companion. In the gloom, Koz’s face looked darker than just his mood and Jack could see a strange, supernatural glimmer of gold in his normally brown eyes.

Jack was frightened; Koz was one hundred percent right and he knew it - but Koz was also wrong. “You haven’t killed anyone. You don’t want to kill anyone. In fact, given that you’d rather die than face the possibility of killing someone unintentionally, I feel pretty confident you’re not going to hurt me! I’m not going to let you kill yourself because you think you’re a monster, because you aren’t.”

“I tried to kill my daughter.” Koz said through grit teeth. “You think getting chased by a werewolf makes you some expert? You don’t even know the first thing about monsters.”

Jack glared right back, anger burning through him. “I do too! I’ve lived with a monster my whole life. Monsters aren’t just supernatural creatures waiting in the dark – there are humans that are just as cruel and senselessly violent. Some are even worse!”

Koz opened his mouth to argue, but Jack cut him off. “Seraphina is lucky to have a father who’d rather die than hurt her. I can tell you, I’d be much, much happier with a loving father who turned into a monster once-a-fucking-month, than some fully human asshole who randomly gets pissed off and purposefully takes it out on me.”

Jack could tell by the sudden slump in Koz’s shoulders and the surprise in his eyes that he’d successfully knocked the wind from his sails, but he didn’t feel as triumphant as he thought he would. Shit, what had he said? Oh Hell. Oh, fucking Hell.

Koz was looking at Jack … the same way all the neighbors looked at him. A mixture of pity for him and shame at themselves.

Jack’s embarrassment at his own confession was eclipsed by a rising tide of shame. Damn, he wasn’t supposed to make Koz feel ashamed! He was feeling bad enough as it was. Jack was supposed to be convincing Koz not to kill himself and here Jack went made it all about himself and totally fucked everything up.

The wind picked up, whipping through the trees, threatening rain.

Jack rubbed a hand through his hair. “Forget it,” he said quickly. “Forget I said that. I just… I want you to know that you’re a good person and you don’t deserve to die. Regardless of whatever you’re thinking right now.” He took a deep breath. “That’s all I had to say and now I’ve said it so… please, just think about it.”

Jack started walking again, hurrying past Koz. He didn’t know the way, but if there was one thing he’d learned from Koz these past few days, it was which way was north.

Koz followed after, quietly. Jack wasn’t sure if anything he said would convince his companion not to carry through with his plan, but he found that more so than ever before, he didn’t want to return home.