The Wolf -Chapter X: So It Goes; Part 2

8.
The first rays of dawn struck her face, and Katy woke up.
Her body was cramped, and she stretched for a full minute before getting up. She wandered into the kitchen and found a coffee pot under the sink, put a filter, some coffee grinds and water in it, and turned it on. She leaned on the counter and waited as the room filled with the smell of coffee, and the sound of boiling water.
She searched in the cabinets for a mug, found one, and set it by the pot.
Katy wandered into the living room, looking around at this place that had been her infrequent hangout like something from another world. Not a whole lot had changed here since her stoner days, even the occupant and ex-lover.
She squirmed at the thought of how desperate she’d been back then.

Had it crossed her mind that she was breaking the law? That what she was doing was illegal enough to get her imprisoned for a very long time? The thought was distant; so many strange things had happened that the normal consequences did not feel applicable.
Of course it begged the question, what would happen if the police came right then? There was nothing keeping Mike from telling the cops except his copious amounts of hidden weed, and even that was a stretch of an excuse. It was a fifty-fifty chance that the cops would find it.
But still, what about the consequences? She’d been an accessory to murder and was now harboring a killer. It had been self defense, right? Except for the whole arm breaking and punching and skull crushing death thing, and not to mention the eventual burning desecration of their corpses…
Jesus Christ, how had he even done that?
Katy poured herself some coffee and decided to take it black. She took a sip, disgusted but comforted, and walked out into the living room.
From behind the curtains, she could see a silhouette standing on the porch.
Oh shit! she thought to herself as she grabbed the gun and made her way to the front door. She counted to three and opened it up, then jumped out and aimed for the head-
-and then she sighed and lowered the gun, grabbing her chest. She said, “What the fuck!”
He looked at her, eyebrows raised. Between his middle and index fingers he clutched a lit cigarette. “Good morning to you, too,” he said.
Katy laughed, putting the gun under her belt.
“I didn’t know you smoked, Adrian,” she said with a smile.
“Old habits die hard,” he said.
“So, okay, how the fuck are you-”
And then there came the sound of a police siren, and Katy pulled out her gun.
“Oh shit!” she yelled, “Mike must’ve ratted us out!”
“Katy, put the gun away,” Adrian said dismissively.
“What are you, kidding? They’re gonna come out guns blazing, Mike will have told them we’re armed!”
“Just, Katy-”
A police car appeared over the hill speeding towards them, and as Katy made to turn the gun in that direction, Adrian grabbed her hand and turned her towards him, then put his other arm around her shoulder and drew her into a deep kiss.
She struggled against it for a moment, and then the car passed them by.
Adrian let her go, and Katy just stared at him.
“What the fuck, what if they had been coming after us?”
Adrian smiled. “That’s not going to happen, trust me. Dade’s a very good friend for us to have right now. Hey, is that coffee?”
He walked back inside, and Katy was still left flabbergasted.
She followed him in, locking the door behind her.
“Okay so, I need you to do me a favor here,” she said. “I need you to explain to me exactly what’s going on right now, because I’ve been playing second man for the past day or so and it’s really starting to fuck with my brain. Yesterday you were bleeding on the floor, stabbed enough times to make a ‘Nam man wince, and now you’re smoking cigs on the porch and drinking coffee like you weren’t just halfway past dead a few hours ago. How the hell is that even possible?!”
Adrian shrugged. “Dade fixed me, I guess.”
“He-” Katy rubbed her head, “Okay, fine, I’ll take that. I don’t see how, but in the history of crazy fucked up nonsensical things to have happened to me in the last twenty-four hours, I’d say you getting healed with a rock and a magnet are pretty low on the list.”
“A rock?” Adrian asked, drinking his coffee. “Wow, that really doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it doesn’t!” Katy shook her head. “And yesterday, what you did to those two guys! What the hell was that all about?”
Adrian took a considerably longer sip of his coffee.
“I don’t know,” he said. “They were trying to hurt you so I made sure that wouldn’t happen. I don’t remember the specifics.”
Katy gave a dry laugh. “Well I sure as shit remember the specifics, Adrian! You crushed one guy’s arm into noodle, punched the other guy’s arm clean off, and then as a finisher you turned both their skulls into a fine red mush! And then you set the whole place on fire by snapping your fingers, just for shits and giggles.”
Adrian said, “Wow, really?” He took another sip. “Guess I’ve still got it.”
“Still got it? Still got what?!”
Adrian shrugged.
“AGGHHH!” Katy screamed, throwing her arms into the air. She turned on him again, pointing her finger. “That’s the kind of shit that has to stop. This wink-wink-nudge-nudge “I know what I’m talking about” crap that leaves me ENTIRELY clueless as to what the blazing blue fuck is going on in your brain!” She ran her hand through her hair and sighed, saying, “I’m still really pissed at you, by the way. Calling me in the middle of the night to break up with me is one thing, but you could have at least kept the gratuitous foreplay until after you hung up. I have done a lot of shit that I am not proud of, and I have done a lot of men that I am not proud of, but Jesus fucking Christ, that is by far the most whole-heartedly bullshit fucked up thing that any guy has ever done to me.”
Adrian was silent. Katy stared at him expectantly.
“Well?” she said, shaking her head. “You have anything to say?”
He took a breath and said, “It’s been a weird month.”
Katy sighed. “I’m glad you’re alive, Adrian. And despite everything, I still care about you. I’m not saying I forgive you, I’m saying I’m willing to if you give me a reason. And a damned good one at that.”
Adrian nodded. They stood in silence for a few moments.
Katy said, “Can you pass me one of those smokes?”
“I didn’t know you were in the habit,” Adrian said, passing the pack.
She shrugged. “Like you say, they die hard.”
They leaned against the kitchen counter, and Adrian lit her cigarette. She took a deep breath of it, exhaled, and said,
“You’re not Adrian, are you?”
He smiled. “What gave it away?”
“You have people skills. And you actually know what’s going on. By the way, that kissing me on the porch thing? Really hot.”
He laughed, but didn’t say anything.
Eventually he asked, “So when did you start smoking?”
“Fifth grade. My sister’s Lolita side got me into it, among other things.”
He scratched his ear and said, “Wait a second, I thought you said you lied about your sister’s MPD?”
Katy looked at him curiously, then looked out at the wall. “Did I?” She shook her head, and then snapped her fingers. “Oh! Fuck. Yeah, I guess I did.”
“Is…that something you do often?”
“What?”
“Lie, and forget?”
She shrugged. “I have issues with people knowing about my personal life.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“My personal life or my issues?”
“Whichever.”
She shrugged. “I’m too frazzled to get into either right now.” Katy took a long drag on her cigarette, then looked at it and said, “So when did you get into the habit?”
“1973. And I guess 1934, but that was different. Everyone smoked back then.”
Katy did not move for a moment, then turned and said, “You’re fucking with me, right? Because all of this,” she said, waving her hands in front of her, “is already more than enough to blow my mind into bug juice.”
“If only I was,” he said.
Katy shook her head, then walked away. “Holy fuck, Adrian!” Then she turned around and said, “Er, wait, that’s not your name, is it?”
“Akashi.”
Katy dropped her cigarette, then blinked. “Why does that sound familiar?”
He shrugged and watched as she picked it back up.
“Akashi,” she said. “So I take it you haven’t always been in Adrian’s head?”
He smiled. “I was alive in my own body for a very long series of lives before I wound up here.”
“In your own body as in, like, a normal human being?”
“Yup.”
She shook her head. “So how does the whole werewolf thing make sense?”
“That’s a hard one to explain.”
“But you do know the answer, right?”
“At least half of it, yes.”
“Care to fill me in?”
Akashi said, “So far as I understand, I’ve only had two really important lives. My first one, and this one.”
Katy waited for more, but nothing came. “So…?”
“I can only assume there’s a connection between the two. All the previous lives feel like…filler. The details come in brief spurts which have little substance, and they all seem rather pointless. But my first life…the one where I was Akashi, that one comes to me in very vivid detail. I don’t remember all of it, though.”
“Why wouldn’t you remember all of it?”
He shrugged, “I can only guess that’s the other half of the answer.”
Katy put out her cigarette. “I really hope this is a bad dream. I mean, shit like this doesn’t happen to people. It’s fiction. Movie stuff, you know? I mean if you were, like, Lon Chaney, Jr. over here, telling me about werewolves and past lives and whatever, I’d be at least a little more inclined to say, yeah, okay, I guess that makes sense. But you’re just some guy. And I mean, you look like Adrian. That’s just fucked up. He’s the guy I know, he’s the one I fell in love with. I thought when my sister died that I wouldn’t have to deal with crap like this anymore. I mean, fuck, she had a good six established personalities. You know how hard it is to tell them apart? Same voice, same face…” Katy looked at Akashi and said, “Different eyes, though. That was the main thing. Not different colors necessarily, just… a different look. Looking at you, I’d swear you have red eyes. But they’re brown, just like Adrian’s. And I can look at you and tell myself, yes, those are brown eyes. But I look away, and it just seems like… a glint. A red glint. And I have to do a double take and check and make sure.”
Akashi watched her for a few moments, wanting to reach out and touch her face. But he blinked, and he looked away.
He asked, “How did your sister die?”
Katy stammered. “Uh, well… I guess, the short story would be she killed herself.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It was like three years ago. Cut her wrists with a…thing, a piece of metal. Fuck, something she found on the street. When we were girls, she used to tell me that living in her world was like having six sets of eyes, each skewed from a different angle. She knew that it was her mind, that she was the dominant personality and that the others were fragments that, I guess, broke off from her. But then one of the other ones would take over, and it was like putting on a mask and looking through one of the other sets of eyes. She knew she was her… she knew everything that she did before. But it was like…bits and pieces were selectively blocked out. She could recollect them if she wanted to, but she never did. That was the whole point, see? Each personality only remembered what it needed to. Each one took her life and fabricated from it the reality that it wanted to believe in. And whenever one of the other ones was in control, I could see her. Trapped behind the mask. Stuck inside this carousel in her mind. She’d wake up screaming some nights because of nightmares she described like a…broken mirror coming back together. She could see all the fragments and then, slowly, they focused together, and when it was all done she saw who she really was. That terrified her, you know? She was so scared of her identity that she tore herself apart to hide from it. When we were girls it was almost funny, you know? We just played around and she called herself crazy and we would laugh about it. It was like a game. It was like being a part of something… It was a secret between us, right? But as we got older she got worse… the personalities started getting angry, and… once she had a seizure. At the hospital I asked her what happened, and she told me that a few of the personalities got into a fight. And that one of them was killed. Can you imagine that? I mean, fuck. This was all in her head. No doctor could find a difference in the physical makeup of her brain, no drug prescribed could truly get rid of the personalities. They got into a fight, and one of them died. A piece of her was destroyed because the other pieces got angry. I can’t imagine what that must have been like. And I guess that got the better of her. Too much fighting on both sides… I mean, we couldn’t keep her condition a secret forever, you know? Eventually it became a problem and our parents didn’t really understand it. They never really tried to. They just made the doctors throw drugs at her and lock her up and try…things. When your family throws you out, and your own brain is fighting itself for dominance, I mean… I understand why she did it, I guess. I probably would have too.”
She wiped a tear from her cheek and looked at the cold cup of coffee on the counter, then laughed. “I’m sorry, you didn’t ask me to babble on like this. There’s more important things to worry about than my stupid-”
Akashi reached out and held her chin, turning her face towards him. He set his forehead against hers and kissed her lips, and she closed her eyes and began to cry. When he pulled back, she buried her face into his shoulder, sobbing. He held her in his arms, and felt like crying himself.
He may have done just that.

9.
“We know where they are,” Billy said into his phone.
“Don’t make contact,” Abraham said.
“But I can get him, Abe!”
“No, William, you can’t! He has shown us that he means business. We need to keep our distance. Watch him, keep tabs on everything they do. If the girl goes off on her own, by all means, pick her up and bring her here. But don’t put any more of our people in danger.”
“We don’t even know what he did to ‘em, Abe! Feckin’, the guy coulda had the jump on ‘em!”
“How many encounters had those men been in, William? How many people had they killed for us before? No one gets the jump on them. Whatever he did was through brute force and brute force alone. We have to assume that he is capable of a great deal.”
“Dammit, Abe, you’re jumpin’ at shadows here! This guy lost so much blood, he should be dead. Prolly is! He didn’ do nothin’ to those guys, it was that girl, and maybe somebody else.”
“You think she killed those men? You think a human took out two werewolves that were each twice her size? You’re angry and you’re not thinking straight-”
“You’re god-damned feckin’ right I’m angry! Those guys have been with me for years, and I had to find their feckin’ burned up bodies in the wreck a’ that shed! They was mangled before they was burned, Abe! She feckin’ tortured ‘em! Put their heads under a god damned car!”
“William, you have your orders! Do not take this into your hands. We need to control the situation, and I can’t do that if you go in there and cause a riot!”
“It ain’t gonna be no riot,” Billy said, sneering, “it’s gonna be fuckin’ murder!”
He threw the phone onto the ground and stomped it, then spat on its sizzling remains. He looked at his three friends and felt a pang of anger that two were missing from the lineup. More fuel for the fire.
“Alright!” he said, biting his lip. “I’m feckin’ pissed! Abe don’t got no feckin’ idea what he’s doin, and tha’s just fine! We’re gonna go in there and fucking kill those sonsabitches in there, for killin the boss’s sister, and for killin our friends! This shit ain’t gonna stand!”
The others yelled their agreement, and Billy pulled out his gun, leading the group away from the warehouse. Behind them, strapped to a chair, was Mike, his skin flayed off, his neck torn open.
Billy cracked his neck as he got into his car, and waited for the others to get in. The stoner’s house was fifteen minutes away.
Time to blow some heads off.

10.
There was a knock at the door, and Katy and Akashi exchanged a worried glance. She pulled out the gun, and he rolled his eyes.
He walked towards the door and checked the peephole, then smiled.
“It’s Dade.”
Akashi unlocked it and opened it up, and Dade almost screamed when he saw him standing there.
“Oh my gods!” he said, a smile dawning on his face. “It worked!”
“You’re damn right it did!” Akashi said, bringing Dade into a hug, patting his back. “You saved my ass. I knew you would.”
He pulled Dade into the house and closed the door, locking it up once more.
“So what’s going on?” he asked.
Dade shook his head. “A lot. Too much. You have stirred the bloody ant pile, my friend.”
Akashi shrugged, “I’m good at that. You seem together.”
“I am when I need to be,” Dade said. “I don’t think I’ve been this cognizant in months. It’s going to be a bitch when all this is over.”
He walked over to the couch, and Akashi cleared his throat.
“Do you think it ever will be over?”
Dade looked up at him, a confused look on his face. “Everything ends eventually.”
He then looked back down at the table, nodding. “I have a plan. Abraham’s resources are stretched really thin right now, and for the moment he’s too proud to call on the Circle’s help.”
Katy interrupted. “The Circle?”
Dade said, “Big scary social group, likes to kill people and experiment on them and do nasty things.”
“Ah.”
“Anyway, for the time being he’s not going in for help from them. Which is good. Now he has people watching all the main roads, making sure you don’t go anywhere he doesn’t know. When Billy found those guys you killed last night, oh man, he was pissed. But at least Abraham is keeping a cool head. He’s trying to make sure no one else gets hurt. Well, no one he likes.”
“So what needs to happen?” Akashi asked.
“Well, we need to get you two out of the city. As far away as possible. Whatever they want you for, it isn’t good.”
Akashi shook his head. “No.”
“No?”
“I can’t run away from this.”
Dade rubbed his forehead, “No, you don’t understand. They’ll kill Katy. They will hurt you. They will do whatever they have to do get what you know, or what you’re capable of, or… whatever it is that makes you so damned important. You have to get away from here.”
Akashi said, “I’m all for getting Katy out of here, somehow. But you don’t understand. This is the way things were always going to happen. I’m here, now, and I can’t just run away from this. It’s… destiny.”
“Destiny?” Dade said, throwing up his hands. “Destiny is a joke! You don’t even know what destiny is!”
“And you do?”
Dade almost said something, but went silent.
“It doesn’t matter,” Dade said. “You’re being an idiot. This isn’t about anything other than surviving.”
“And if I run, what then? I hide? This will catch up to me eventually, Dade.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
Akashi leaned forward, “Because I should be dead. I’m here, now, and there’s a reason. I’m not alive so I can hide, I wasn’t put in this body so I could cower. I am here to do something, Dade. Just like you said.”
Dade looked at him for a moment, then sat back. “Holy fuck. Oh my gods. You’re not Adrian, are you? You’re… Oh my gods!” He smiled widely and shook his head. “You took control of his body when Adrian…”
His smile dimmed, and he said, “How is he?”
Akashi shook his head. “Asleep. Or comatose. Not dead, but not much better than.”
Katy uncrossed her arms and said, “What? Adrian’s not… what?”
“He almost died. So close he may have been fooled into believing he is dead. And that along with the physical pain, I mean… have you ever had an acid burn?”
Katy shook her head.
“Well, it doesn’t feel nice. And silver to a werewolf is worse.”
Dade nodded in agreement.
“No one should be able to survive being stabbed that many times in general, let alone with your own personal kryptonite.”
“Listen,” Dade said. “We can discuss this at length some other time, but… what’s your name?”
“Akashi.”
Dade’s eyes narrowed. “Oh wow. That is a very heavy name. Yeah okay, I definitely see why they want you.”
“What is he talking about?” Katy asked.
“He can see the future,” Akashi said.
“No, I can’t,” said Dade.
“That’s what you told Adrian the other day.”
“No, I said, I can see the future in a nutshell. It’s more complicated than that. I can see… strands of it. Pieces of it. Based on the lines of people’s lives. And Katy, names carry weight. They don’t necessary change who you are going to be, but they affect it just the same. Akashi is the kind of name you only hear whispered in hushed tones. Did it sound familiar to you when you first heard it?”
“Yeah, but-”
“Adrian had the same reaction when I told him,” Akashi said.
“Right,” Dade said. “Holy shit, Akashi. Akashi.” He couldn’t help but smile. “People know your name, but they don’t realize it. You know what that means? You’re going to change the world. You’re going to change everything.”
“Well, I don’t think-” Akashi began.
The lights went out. They sat in silence for a moment, looking up at the ceiling.
“Why did we just lose power?” Katy asked.
Dade said, “Maybe it’s just a brown out or something, I don’t-”
Akashi stood up and walked towards the door.
“Both of you need to hide.”
“What?” Katy said. “But-”
“Now.”
The finality in his tone was palpable. They rushed out of the room and hid.

Akashi cracked his knuckles and waited.
There was a knock at the door, and Akashi did not move.
“Hello, Michael? Did you lose power too?”
An old woman’s voice.
“I think the whole block is down. Are you home?”
Akashi didn’t budge. Eventually whoever was at the door walked away.
And then he winced, and said, “Fuck.”
Billy came out of the hallway with a gun against Katy’s head. The other two were holding Dade. He threw Katy onto the floor and turned the gun on Dade.
“You feckin’ piece of shit! You traitorin’ little son of a-”
“Don’t play games with me, Billy,” Akashi said. “I know what you’re doing.”
“Yeah? Then why did you send yer friends into the room we broke into?”
“Ask them why they went that direction. I didn’t point them there.”
Billy spat. “You and this piece a shit were made for each other. Goin’ on about free choice and all that. Bullshit!”
“You’re not going to hurt her,” Akashi said.”
“Yeah?” Billy smiled, then kicked her in the side. “Look at that! I’m hurtin’ her, doc!”
Akashi’s hands balled up into fists.
He grabbed Katy by the shoulder and she yelped, and he said, “Ohh, wha’s this?” He threw her against the couch and pulled the shoulder off her shirt, finding the bandaged shot wound from the night before.
“Look at that!” He looked around at the others, “Looks like one of our fellas left her a scar!” He turned back to Katy, “Yeah, well, get feckin used to it ya whore, there’s plenty more where that came from.” Billy pushed his fingers into the wound, and she yelled through her teeth.
Akashi took a step towards them, and Billy put the gun against Katy’s leg and pulled the trigger. There was a deafening crash, and Katy screamed.
“Stop this right now, Billy!” Akashi screamed.
“You want it to stop? You want me to let her go? Shoulda fuckin thought a that before you two killed my guys! Shoulda fuckin thought a that before you let this bitch fuckin torture em and crus their heads in!” He screamed this last part, and a tear ran down his cheek. “Fuck you and your stupid life, ah! How about that?”
He turned towards Dade and kicked him in the crotch, and he heaved forward.
Akashi’s fists were trembling.
“I’m going to destroy you,” he said.
“Ohhhh!” Billy said, laughing. He jauntered up to Akashi and said, “Yeah, big man, ah? Fuckin badass, right? Well let me tell you somethin’, badass. While you was out in the wild givin’ Bambi a stainless steel enema, I was on the streets gettin’ shot at and fightin’ for my life. While you was out there pissin’ on trees and shit, I was takin’ down fellas twice your size, and I wasn’t even sixteen. You ain’t no fuckin badass, you’re just some asshole the boss got a hardon for cause his money tells him you important. Well let me tell you a few things, mick! You ain’t important. You ain’t important! You’re gonna be as dead as the crazy fuck that got you into this mess, and ain’t no one gonna remember your name. Adrian. What the fuck kinda name is that, anyway?”
“Not mine,” Akashi said.
Billy shook his head. “What? What the fuck does-”
And then the realization dawned on him, and as Akashi made to grab him, Billy kicked him in the stomach and sent him to the ground, then put his gun against Katy’s head. He nodded towards the other two, and they aimed for Dade’s head too.
“So you’re him, then. So you’re the fuckwit them Circle bastards want to talk to. Well they ain’t gonna talk to you. I don’t give a good god damn who you are, you killed two of my friends! You ain’t living through that, ya understand?”
Akashi pulled himself up, winded and feeling at least one of his wounds bleeding again.
“So here’s what I’m gonna do,” Billy said, waving his gun. “I’ma shoot this bitch, then I’ma go over and put a few bullets in that fuckhole, and you know what? I’m not gonna kill you. I’m gonna cut your damned legs and arms off, oh yeah, sure thing. But I’ma make damn sure you don’t die. I’ll let the boss talk to you, and get whatever the fuck he wants outta ya. All the better for me, right? Whatever hurts you most, you piece a shit, that’s what I want.”
“You know what I want?” Akashi said.
Billy rolled his eyes. “Okay, what’s this? Some kinda dramatic time waster or something? You ain’t got shit on me pal.”
Akashi smiled and nodded towards Katy.
Billy looked at her in time to see the gun she was cradling out of sight, and she pulled the trigger. The bullet went into his gut, and time seemed to go to a crawl.
The two men aimed their guns at Akashi and fired.
Billy pointed his gun at Katy’s head and fired.
And then there was silence.
Billy was on the floor, inching away from the couch, pointing his gun at Akashi.
“What the feck are you doing?!”
Akashi’s arms were thrown out. Hovering front of him were three spinning bullets. Not an inch from Katy’s head, there was another.
She had winced, and she opened her eyes and screamed, “Holy god!” and moved out of its trajectory. And then she stared at it.
“What the fuck?” she said absentmindedly.
Akashi closed his left hand, and the bullet aimed at Katy suddenly vanished, and there was a hole through the couch. He took a few steps to the right and closed his other hand, and the bullets finished their paths without harm.
Billy was wide eyed, pulling the trigger on his gun endlessly with no result. The others were looking at theirs, checking them for a jam or something else out of place, but finding nothing.
Akashi kneeled down next Billy, and he said, “Your eyes… your eyes are red! What the fuck?! What is-”
“Shut up.”
Billy closed his mouth.
Akashi leaned close to Billy’s head and whispered, “I have watched the lives of mortals rise and fall over hundreds of thousands of years. I have seen cosmic events so immense they could not be witnessed in a single lifetime. I have been into the hearts of gods and drank from the very waters of life. You are a mosquito. You are nothing. And you’ve threatened the only person alive I still care about.”
He grabbed Billy by the throat and lifted him up. His head touched the ceiling.
“What do they want from me?!” he screamed.
“I don’t know!”
“You know something,” Akashi said. “I can feel it.”
“I know what it is,” Dade said, quivering. “I found it.”
Akashi smiled and nodded. “Alright then. Dade, please do me a favor and take Katy out of the room. She’s already seen too much.”
Dade scrambled to his feet and grabbed Katy. Both of them looked at Akashi fearfully, and as Dade pulled her behind out of the room, she couldn’t look away from him.
Akashi dropped Billy. He hit the carpet and rolled onto his back, then shuffled over to where the other two men stood, slack jawed and very confused.
Akashi said, “I am going to-”
And then there was a shattering of glass, and Akashi looked away.
Sitting on the floor was a small black cylinder. He stared at it for a moment, confused.
And then it exploded, and he went blind. He thrashed backwards and felt himself being thrown to the ground. Someone was putting handcuffs on him, and then something was drawn over his head. He heard shouts, and then there was a blow to his head, and Akashi lost consciousness.

The Wolf -Chapter X: So It Goes; Part 1

X: So It Goes

Abraham tapped his desk and sighed.
“I’m taking care of it,” he said into the phone cradled in his shoulder.
“No, you’re not,” a voice spoke on the other end. “You’re playing a game, which is what you’ve been doing from the beginning.”
“I-”
“Don’t act like we haven’t been watching you every second of every day for the past twelve years. You aren’t doing your job.”
“I’m trying a new approach, and until today it was going perfectly-”
“You tried a new approach without permission from me or anyone representing me. You went below the chain of command and did something that may very well have destroyed everything. I’m sending my men.”
Abraham sat up in his chair. “No, you don’t need to do that. I-”
The door to his office opened and Billy rushed in.
“Abe, we have a problem.”
“I’m busy right now, William, please-”
“Evita’s dead.”
Abraham’s tapping ceased. He starred at Billy for a long moment, and Billy continued.
“We foun’ her at Adrian’s place. Stabbed through the bottom o’ the chin. There’s a feckin metric shit ton of blood, and it ain’t all hers. I think she jumped him first, and he fought back.”
“Hello?” the voice spoke through the phone, “Are you still there, Abraham?”
He leaned back in his chair and turned towards the wall. “Yes, I’m still here.”
“Has your sister turned up?”
Abraham’s eyes narrowed. He spoke with grave seriousness. “You know the answer to that question.”
A laugh.
Abraham looked back at Billy. “What about Adrian?”
“Blood trail looks like he dragged hisself outta the house and into his car, after that I ain’t got a feckin clue.”
The voice said, “But you do, don’t you Abraham? Give me the word, and my men will be after him in a heartbeat.”
“Boss, what do you want me to do?” Billy asked.
Abraham held a finger up to his doorman, then said into the phone, “I have this. On my own. I don’t need your help and I never will.”
“Whatever you say.”
The line went dead.
Abraham hung up the phone, and ran his hands through his hair. Finally he screamed, and slammed his fists onto his desk. He breathed for a few moments, then sighed. He stood calmly, and walked over to Billy.
He put a hand on his shoulder and said confidingly, “Get a few guys over to the girl’s house. Maybe he’s there, maybe he isn’t. Either way, I want her under my thumb, now. She’s the only link we have to him.”
Billy nodded. “And after that?”
“Where is my sister’s… where is the body?”
“Right where we found it, sir.”
Abraham twitched. “Gather everyone up, arrange for nonessentials to be sent home. Set up a perimeter around the Midnight. Grab five of your best men, go and get my sister. Bring her back here.”
Billy said nothing.
“Snap to it,” Abraham said, staring the man in the eyes.
He nodded, and left the office.

2.
Punch. Punch.
The seventy pound bag swung backwards, and Katy arched her arm and sent it into a well worn dent in the wall. It’s surface was flecked with fist-shaped blood splatters, and she realized she hadn’t wrapped her hands.
Good.
Upstairs, the doorbell rang. Katy ignored it.
On her computer, Metallica was singing about the thing that should not be. Katy was stewing in her anger, and felt entirely justified in doing so.
She punched the bag three more times, each time imagining Adrian’s face becoming more and more bruised. It made her smile despite herself.
The doorbell rang again, and she punched the bag dismissively. “Fine, I’m coming!” she yelled. She shook her hand and muttered a curse.
She grumbled as she mounted the stairs and stepped onto the first floor of her house. She paced to the door, realizing that she was covered in sweat and probably smelled like shit.
Katy brushed her hair back and peeked through the visor. Whoever it was was too close to see.
She opened the door.
Adrian was leaning against the frame of her doorway, looking haggard and beset. Katy had to fight the urge to punch him straight away.
“You!” she exclaimed. “What in the blueberry ball-licking motherfuck do you think you’re…”
Her voice trailed off as her eyes more scrupulously took in the man before her, and she realized that he was bleeding rather profusely.
“Oh my god…” she said, “what happened?”
Adrian looked up at her, like someone barely awake, and said, “Uhhh…” before falling face first into her house. She caught him, but was nearly knocked over herself by the dead weight of him. Suddenly all she cared about was what the hell had happened to her man, and who she had to curbstomp for it.
She felt a twinge of shame at the immediacy of the thought. But pride as well.
Katy pulled him inside and closed the door and locked it by the bolt. Adrian was muttering incoherently, and his arms and legs were shivering. She dragged him into the living room and laid him on the couch. He looked up at her again as if out of a dream, and reached out a hand to her.
In it was clenched a small cell phone.
“Call Dade,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper.
“What happened to you?” she asked, not knowing what else to say.
“Call…Dade…” he said as his arm fell limp and the phone dropped to the floor. Katy’s heart nearly stopped because he looked so dead. She checked his wrist, however, and found that his heart was still beating.
Barely.
Katy picked up the phone and rolled it between her hands. She looked at Adrian, confused and scared and angry. Maybe Dade would have some answers?
She found his listing in the phone, and dialed the number.

3.
“Adrian?” a voice answered.
“Dade?” Katy asked in return.
There was silence for a moment, and then a whisper, “Where is he?”
“Here. What the hell is going on?”
“What’s his condition?”
Katy blinked. “Fucking stabbed? Bleeding out his everywhere? I’m not a fucking doctor!”
“Okay, alright, calm down. Is he breathing?”
She bit on her tongue to keep from screaming at him. “Yes.”
“Okay. Make sure he…keeps doing that.”
“Right. Okay. Any more advice? Or maybe you could tell me what the fuck is going on right now? Because my mind is pretty thoroughly blown at the moment, considering-”
“I can’t- I can’t get into that right now. There’s… hold on.”
The other end went silent, and Katy heard some mumblings.
And then, “Listen, you need to get Adrian and get out of your house, now.”
“What?”
“People are literally on their way to your house at this very second. I don’t know how long they’ve been on the road, but you need to hurry.”
Katy glanced around the room and went for her purse and her keys.
“Should I take him to a hospital, or-”
“No, that’s the first place they’ll look. Go somewhere that you know is safe and stay low. Keep in touch with me, I’ll be there as soon as I can break away from-”
Dade went silent again, then said, “I have to go,” and hung up.
Katy resisted the urge to throw the phone at the wall.
She walked over to Adrian and put her arm around his shoulder and lifted him up, and he let out a moan of pain.
“Alright, sleeping beauty,” she said, “time to get the hell out of Dodge.”
And just as Katy got Adrian up onto his feet, his weight significantly stable over hers, she glanced out the front window.
Two very large, very strong looking men were inspecting her car. One of them pulled out a switchblade and proceeded to cut her tires.
The other pulled out a frighteningly large pistol.
And the two of them made their way up her sidewalk and towards her front door.
The line of thought that ran through Katy’s mind and she moved to go out the back way as fast as she could was essentially a single, unending line of oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.
The doorbell rang just as she turned the corner into the kitchen. Katy yanked the screen door open, kicked the back door out, then closed it behind her when they got into the yard.
Not a second later, she heard the front door of her house being kicked in.
There was an exterior garage with a door facing the back of the house, and she moved towards it as fast as she could.
She fumbled her keys as the men searched her house, and she tried very hard not to look over her shoulder to see if they were coming or not.
Katy got the door open and pushed herself in, and got the door closed just as one of the men looked into the backyard through the blinds.

4.
Katy set Adrian, still muttering in a dream state, against a work bench, then proceeded to rip the tarp off a motorcycle. She flipped through her keys and realized that the bike’s was not on her ring. It was in the garage somewhere, and she rifled through buckets and toolboxes until she found it hanging on a nail in the wall.
As she felt the urge to face-palm, the handle turned, and the door pushed inwards, and she felt like an idiot for not locking it.
Without a second’s hesitation, Katy threw herself against the door, catching one of the thug’s fingers in the doorway. He shouted in surprise and then pain, and as Katy tried to lock the door, there was a deafening explosion and a new source of light, and she realized that a hole had been blown through the door about the size of a silver dollar, and she thought, Holy fuck, that could have been my head!
And then Katy was thrown away from the door, and she landed on the floor and hit her chin on the concrete. The force of the impact reverberated through her skull, and for a few seconds she was struck with vertigo.
And then her hair was grabbed by the fistful, and she was yanked up off the floor, and before anything else she threw a punch at the man who had her, who took it in his cheek and stumbled backwards, letting her go. She made to punch again, but suddenly there was a gun barrel in her face.
Katy’s hand grabbed a crowbar laying on a shelf and swung it at the hand that held the gun. The force of it knocked the gun out of his hands, but not before his finger pulled the trigger and put a bullet through her shoulder. Katy yelled., and raised the crowbar up above her head, then went to Adrian.
“Alright, everybody just fucking stop!” she screamed.
The two men, significantly dazed by the pain inflicted by a woman so much smaller than them, stopped. But they wouldn’t stay so for long.
“I’ll kill him. He’s who you want, right? I’ll fucking kill him, and then where will you be?”
The gunman held out his injured hand and raised an eyebrow. “Now sugar, you best calm down.”
The man with the knife was smiling from ear to ear.
“You best tell your friend with the shank here to wipe that fucking grin off his face before I turn his balls into a goddamn shish kebob.”
The gunman took a step towards her, and Katy knew he was testing the waters. She’d hoped there would be more time between then and this, but as it was she couldn’t do anything to hurt Adrian, and it would be a matter of seconds before they knew this as well as she did.
And then the man with the knife grabbed an old empty coke bottle and threw it at her, and it shattered on her temple. She stumbled backwards, blinded and dazed, and then felt the crowbar wrent from her hands, and then her body forced onto the floor.
The man with the knife had his hand on her solar plexus, and was waving his weapon in front of her face. The other man had his gun back, and holstered it back under his shirt.
“Finish her off and help me with the asshole over here,” he said in a businesslike tone.
“Sure thing, boss,” the knife man said. He leaned forward, putting his lips next to her ear, and whispered, “I hope you’ve learned your lesson about sleeping with wolves.”
And then he smiled and lifted up his arm, and Katy saw the arc of his swing through his body language, and knew it would not be a killing stroke, and that it would hurt probably more than anything she had ever felt in her life.
And she flinched as she expected the pound of the fist on her chest, and the penetration of the skin and organs, followed by the spill of warmth onto her skin and shirt.
But it didn’t happen.
Katy opened her eyes and realized the other good had his gun out, but it wasn’t pointed at her.
It was pointed at Adrian.
And his hand had caught this one’s arm in mid swing.
Adrian was kneeled next to her, and he stood up, pulling her would-be assassin up with him.
“Let him go!” the gunman screamed. “Or I’ll shoot her!”
Adrian turned his head towards the gunman, and perhaps it was a trick of the light, but Katy would have sworn that his eyes looked blood red.
And then several impossible things happened in the span of a few seconds.
Without letting go of the one man’s arm, Adrian sent out his hand and punched the gunman in the shoulder, directing his force outwards towards the arm. And there was a terrible crunching splatter noise as the gunman’s arm separated from his torso, and was sent flying towards the wall, where it left a gushing splatter and landed on the floor.
This one immediately fell to the floor, screaming like an animal.
Then the man with the knife, eyes wide with disbelief, shouted something unintelligible that may have been meant as a threat, or a cry for mercy, or nothing at all. But it quickly devolved into a howling shriek as Adrian increased his grip on the man’s arm, and the bone snapped and turned to dust, and the muscle crushed, and the sinews stretched and separated, and the arm that had been thick from years of manual labor was reduced to the width of a PVC pipe, and the lower portion of his arm dangled uselessly from the crumpled bits above.
And then Adrian grabbed this man by the neck, before he had the chance to fall over, and lifted him up into the air -without so much as a grunt of effort, though he was probably three times Adrian’s weight- and walked him over to the struggling, maimed body of his compatriot. He set this one on top of the other like a sandwich, set the one head above the other, put his hand on the man’s temple-
-and they both tried to scream, or to beg, or to make peace with whichever god gave them the most comfort-
-and Adrian pressed down, and the two heads flattened, the skulls cracked like eggs, their brains spilled out onto the floor, their eyes bulged and were sent rolling, and Adrian’s hand stopped a centimeter above the floor.
As Katy saw this, her horror vanished in a wave of disbelief, and she became utterly convinced that this was one very terrible, very vivid nightmare.
And then Adrian turned to look at her, and she saw his glowing eyes, and she saw the blood dripping from his hands, and she remembered seeing those eyes before.
She backed up into the corner, cradling her wounded shoulder, looking at Adrian as though he were a monster. He took a few shambling steps towards her, and suddenly she remembered her panic-
-and then Adrian collapsed at her feet, his head coming to a rest on her knee.
And Katy reached out to touch him, to see if he was alive, and she saw that her hands were shaking. And then she started to cry.

5.
The phone rang once more, and Katy screamed in surprise. She cursed herself, and answered it.
“Where are you?” Dade asked.
“In my fucking shed, trying to deal with this -this situation.”
“You’re still at your house?” he asked, panicked.
“Okay, Dade? It’s been like ten minutes, and Adrian just punched another guy’s arm off. I’m kind of fucking freaked out right now.”
“What? No, nevermind, how soon can you leave?”
Katy stood and grabbed the key off the wall, and said, “Honey, I’m fucking gone.”
She winced, and Dade asked her what was wrong. “I got shot. It’s a shoulder wound, I’ll live. I don’t even know how Adrian is alive, though.”
“Call me back when you find a good place, okay? I can help, just keep yourself up.”
Katy was already working on a makeshift tourniquet. “Yeah, I’ve delt with this kind of shit before.” She hung up.
Katy grabbed Adrian and set him on seat of the bike, then sat in front of him, pulling his arms around her waist.
She eyed the gun on the floor, and decided to pick it up.
One never knows.
As she pulled out of the driveway, Adrian muttered, “Do you care about anything in there?”
Katy gave a laugh. “Not anymore.”
Adrian snapped his fingers, and the building burst into flames.
“Jesus Christ!” she yelled as they drove away. “What the fuck are you smoking back there?”
Adrian laughed at this, but then fell silent. Katy felt his head slump onto her back, and a line of tension ran through her heart. She thought to herself, If you die now, I swear to god I’m going to kick your ass. Just hold on, Adrian.
Hold on.

6.
“Hey, Michael!” Katy shouted. “Open the fucking door!”
There was a brief pause, and then a series of clicks as the slides and bolts were undone. The door opened, and very thin, tired looking young man with mousy hair peeked his head out. He gave a lax smile and said, “Hey baby. Wha’s up?”
Katy rubbed her head. “Yeah so, remember that favor you owe me? I’m cashing in.”
He looked confused. “What?”
Katy peeked inside the house and saw a smoking blunt sitting on the table in an ashtray.
She sighed.
“I need your house. Get the hell out.”
He stared at her, his expression blank. “You’re fucking joking, right? I don’t owe you shit.”
Katy ran a hand through her hair and said, “Look, Mike, I need you to leave and not come back for, like, a week.”
“What, you get busted or some shit? Don’t drag me into your shit.”
He tried to close the door, and Katy pulled out the pistol and put into the stoner’s face.
“Alright Mikey, I tried to be nice, but I think you missed the part where I said you didn’t have a choice in the matter. Your choice is whether you’re in a hotel with a hooker, or hog tied in the fucking basement.”
Mike said, “I ain’t got that kind of money, man.”
Katy snorted, “Christ Mike, I’ve got a gun pointed at your face, just get the hell out of here!”
Mike turned towards an umbrella holder and grabbed at a baseball bat to hit her with. Katy fire the gun, and the handle of the bat splintered off. Mike freaked out and stumbled backwards.
“Holy fuck! Holy fuck, you actually loaded that piece?! What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
“What’s wrong with me is I have to deal with your stoned ass even after I kicked it out on the pavement. Now grab your fucking blunt and your porno mags or whatever the hell else it is you use to keep entertained, and get the shit out of here!”
“Fine! Fine, Jesus, fucking bitch!” He grabbed his scattered things, and Katy kicked him as he went out the door, and she called after him, “And if you tell anyone that I’m here, I swear to god I’m going after your cat first!”
“Pubsy?! But she’s my only friend!”
Katy slammed the door and leaned against it. What an amazing life she had come to lead, threatening old friends and stealing their houses, all for a guy who turn relatively solid skulls into a thick, red-grey jelly.
She shivered at the thought of it.
Katy locked the door in every way available (and there were quite a few), then ran to the back door. Laying on the porch was Adrian, right where she had left him. Katy grabbed him up and dragged him into the house, which smelled like weed and cheetoes, and set him on the couch in the living room. She immediately proceeded to draw the curtains and turn off as many lights as she could. She checked the house for possible entrances and made sure they were as locked as they could be, then went rummaging through Mike’s medicine cabinet.
It was a regular smorgasbord, but nothing of the sort that she needed. But under the sink, just where she had left it, was a first aid kit. Next she found a bowl and filled it with hot water, then put a clean washcloth in it.
She took it and the first aid kit out into the living room and immediately tried to tend to Adrian’s wounds.
His entire abdomen area was yellow, the inches surrounding the various stab wounds was a sickly green, and the immediate vicinity of each entry wound was purple. The blood had crusted into a black slime crusted with fibers from his shirt, and Katy wrung the cloth over the wounds. Adrian let out a moan of pain, and she rubbed his wrist, trying to be comforting. Inside the first aid kit were several pain killers, three quarters of which she gave to Adrian.
The rest she downed herself, because her shoulder was really starting to sting.
When the blood was cleared away and the wounds as cleanly exposed as they could be, Katy applied antiseptic and wrapped him in bandages as best she could.
Again she marveled at the fact that he was breathing at all. By all rights he should be dead -there was no way on earth all his organs were in working order enough to keep his body trucking.
But still he was here, holding on very probably by fewer threads than she cared to know. And not only that, he had saved her life. Done so in an extremely gruesome and scarring way, but the intent was well received at least. The man hadn’t exactly had a lot of options.
She shook her head. No point in trying to make sense of any of this now. It would be a solid week before she could even comprehend it, let alone understand it. And she had a sickening feeling that this was just the beginning.
The sun was setting, and Katy repeated the sterilization process on herself. She felt a great deal of relief (such as it was) that the bullet had passed through her, because she wasn’t anywhere near equipped to pull anything out oh her shoulder. She couldn’t quite get her back wound clean, but still managed to get it bandaged.
Then she sat and stared at the bowl of bloody water, the pieces of gauze and the empty tubes on the floor.
She pulled out the phone and called Dade.

7.
Several hours later, he arrived. He was frazzled and looked exhausted.
“Where is he?” he asked.
Katy pointed to him, and Dade said, “He’s so pale…”
“Yeah.” Katy watched as he went over to Adrian and checked his pulse, and peeked under the now bloodied bandages at the wounds.
“So what’s going on right now?” Katy asked. “How did this happen.”
Dade reached into his pocket and pulled out a quartz crystal the size of his thumb. “Evita went after him with a silver knife. My guess is she asked him to sleep with her and he said no.”
Katy just stared at him, then gave a laugh and said, “Fucking idiot. He should have just slept with her.”
She turned and paced around the living room as Dade ran the stone over Adrian’s gut.
“What are you doing?” Katy asked.
“Absolutely nothing,” he said. “Quartz is a crystal no more special than any rock found on the earth, and it has no healing properties whatsoever.”
Katy shook her head. “So why are you doing that, then?”
“Because,” Dade said, “it’s symbolic.”
Katy decided it would be best to just nod and smile.
Dade then tossed the quartz aside and dug back into his pocket for something else. The quartz was no pitch black. Katy gawked.
Then he took off Adrian’s bandages and pulled out what looked like a magnet wrapped in copper wire, which he pressed against the wounds. Katy started to protest, but Dade said, “There’s flecks of silver in the wounds. He can’t heal with them there. I can’t get them all, but it should be enough.”
Katy said, “Uh, Dade? Silver isn’t ferrous. It isn’t attracted to magnets.”
Dade shrugged and said, “Well, I guess Adrian’s going to die then,” and continued doing what he was doing.
Katy threw up her hands and walked away.
“So what’s going on with the… wolves? I assume there’s more of you?”
“A lot more. And all of them are very pissed at our friend here. They’re dropping the pretenses and going for the throat.”
He turned his head and looked at Katy. “That means you. You’re the only thing they have that can keep him in one place.”
Dade turned back to his work.
“Fantastic,” Katy sighed.
“They’re setting up a perimeter and getting ready for some very serious fighting.”
“And how did you get away from that unaccompanied. Last time I saw you, you were babbling and barely coherent.”
Dade said, “I’m very good at fooling people. And the last time you saw me was very peculiar in timing. Those moments still come, but I am very pleased to say they are fewer and very far between.”
“Moments?”
“A couple of doctors in a mental institution in the mountains have toyed around with my brain. One does not walk away from something like that without a few quirks.”
Dade looked at the wound and said, “Okay, that should be good. Can you bandage him up again? I’d do it but I have to get back. They won’t believe I’m not gone for much longer.”
“But you didn’t do anything except turn a rock into a rock!”
Dade smiled. “Just wait. You’ll see.”
He patted her on the shoulder and left the house.
Katy stared at the door for a while before locking it and turning to Adrian and saying, “I’m going to pass out and have very fantastical dreams about a far off land where people work in cubicles and crazy shit never happens.”
Katy found a blanket and spread it over Adrian’s body.
She kissed Adrian on the cheek, then curled up under an afghan in a recliner, and passed out almost immediately.

The Wolf -Chapter IX: A Quiet Conversation; Part 2

17.
Adrian opened his eyes.
The floor was very well swept.
He stood up and looked around -no one. He had no idea how much time had passed since he had fallen over, but he didn’t want to risk it. First thing was first, however.
He needed to call Katy.
Adrian took out the cell phone from the package and dialed her number.
“Hi, it’s Katy, leave a message after the beep.”
Adrian cursed himself, and then said, “Hey, Katy. Listen, I’m sorry about last night. I have had a…ridiculous couple of days. I need to talk to you. Please.”
He hung up the phone and sighed.
“Adrian?”
He turned around to find Abraham standing next to the bar, looking freshly out of the shower.
“You’re up early,” he said.
Adrian rubbed his head, “Yeah, I uh… I wanted to get out for a while. You know, get some fresh air.”
Abraham nodded. “I can certainly understand that. It gets stuffy down here sometimes. Would you mind if I came along?”
“Actually, I think I want to be alone for a while. You know, just… to get my head together, a bit?”
Abraham’s eyes narrowed. “I…see. Well I do have something that I wanted to tell you, Adrian. I’ve spoken to a few of my colleagues, and none of us see any reason why you shouldn’t be able to take up the rite of reunification today.”
“Oh, wow, really?” Adrian said. “That’s great.”
“Yes, it’s amazing how these things work out, isn’t it?”
“Well, actually, Abraham… I was thinking maybe I’d wait for a few more days on that.”
Abraham rubbed his chin and took a few steps forward. “Why is that?”
“Well, I… I don’t really feel comfortable with it yet. I want to…prepare. You know?”
“But Adrian, my friend, the sooner it happens, the sooner you’ll be relieved of-”
“Of my wolf’s burden, yeah, I know, I really… I’m looking forward to that, but I want to do a few things first. Much as I hate the bastard, I’d be dead if it wasn’t for him.”
Too much?
“What is that supposed to mean?” Abraham asked.
“I just mean that, a couple of times he gave me advice. You know, to help me out of tight spots. He always had a good intuition.”
“The wolf always does. Adrian, are you feeling alright?”
“Actually I’m feeling pretty okay. I’m going to go ahead and go, I’ll be back, uh…sometime tonight. Okay?”
Adrian walked towards the exit, and then Abraham said, “Adrian. I should warn you that making no decision is just the same as making the wrong decision. We’ve welcomed you into our home without any questions or requirements. It would not be well for you to betray that trust.”
Adrian felt a chill run down his spine, but said nothing.

18.
Outside, Dade was on his way into the building. He saw Adrian, however, and turned around.
Adrian went out of the diner and followed him, calling his name.
“We need to talk!”
“I don’t want to talk to you!” Dade shouted over his shoulder.
Adrian jogged up to him across the asphalt and said, “I’ve been an idiot,” putting a hand on his shoulder.
Dade spun around, throwing off Adrian’s hand. “No!” he screamed, near tears, “I won’t help you! I won’t help you kill them!”
He turned around and put his face into his hands, and Adrian just stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know!” he said, sobbing. “But it’s what you’re thinking! I know what he’s done to me and I know even though he doesn’t want me to and doesn’t think that I do, but he’s still my friend and I won’t help you kill him!”
“Dade, please-”
“If you weren’t here then none of this would be happening! If-”
Adrian grabbed Dade by the shoulders and shook him.
“I have had enough of the craziness around here, you hear me? I’m not planning on doing anything to anyone until I understand what the fuck is going on. I haven’t even been here a week and I feel like I’ve been here for years. I look back at the things that have happened to me and I don’t even know if it was me! You are the only person in this madhouse who acts like something isn’t right, and that makes me think I can trust you.”
Dade whimpered, “It doesn’t matter if you can trust me. That question has no depth whatsoever. I don’t know if I can trust you, Adrian.”
“Why wouldn’t you be able to?”
“Because you ate several full helpings of Abe’s shit without a blink,” Dade said with a childish smile. “Did you know that glass is made of sand?”
Adrian continued to stare.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked.
Dade shrugged. “I dunno. I like your shirt. It’d do better without the pin, but tha’s just me. What were we talking about a-”
And the Dade’s face contorted into pain, his eyes wrenched shut, and he fell to his knees, holding his skull between his arms and baring his teeth. He made no sound for a moment, then slowly gave out an almost imperceptible whimper as he slumped onto his side in the street. Adrian grabbed him and said, “Dade? Dade, what’s wrong?!”
Then Dade’s body loosened up, and he opened his eyes. He looked out across the street and pushed himself up with shaky arms, stood on quivering legs, leaned on Adrian’s shoulder and said slowly, “We don’t have much time.” His voice was deeper, raspy, and sounded exhausted. “We need to get away from the Midnight before anyone sees us. Your car is out of sight, so there.”
“How do you know-”
“Adrian, by now I thought you’d have learned to just take this stuff as it comes.”
Adrian shrugged.
And so he shouldered Dade to his car, checking back behind them for any potential witnesses. There were none.
Dade leaned on the car’s trunk and exhaled. “Adrian,” he said, “I’m glad you finally talked to him, but Jesus H, you’ve been an idiot.”
“Yeah, I figured that much out. What the hell was that back there?” He motioned towards the street.
Dade didn’t speak for a moment. “It’s complicated. I’m straight for now, which is why we need to get this conversation over and done with as quick as possible. I don’t know how long it’ll take.”
“How long-”
“Adrian, I need you to do me a favor and please not ask questions about me right now. We don’t have enough time for that. Bad things are coming down the line, and I don’t know what’s going to happen. I hope you realize what kind of a wrench you’ve thrown into the Machine to turn the entire future into a blur. Not just a few shades of difference, an entire bloody spectrum of outcomes.”
“So you can see the future?”
“In a nutshell.”
“Okay, well, now that that’s settled. Why does Abraham want to keep me so close?”
“Because everything has been going too well for him. He doesn’t want you to change your mind at the last second which, thank god, you have.”
“I mean, why does he want me in the first place?”
Dade said, “He doesn’t want you.”
Adrian stared at Dade for a moment, then said, “Oh. Shit.”
“And that’s just the beginning. The Circle has had Abe on you for years, and before the goons at South Peak grabbed me I was helping them figure out how things were going to play out. Of course it was futile, you can’t plan on anything happening a certain way more than a few weeks out, unless you’ve really rigged the situation.”
“What is this ‘Circle of Friends’ anyway?”
“I don’t know for sure. The few bits of knowledge I do have I only have because I was around a member at South Peak, and what gets me is this guy was pretty high up in the chain of command from what I can tell, and even he didn’t really know what was going on with the group. He had a theory that the whole thing was organized around a supercomputer, but he was an idiot. What I can say is that before you came along, they never took werewolves seriously. They called us the periphery, and only paid us attention because we’re an undeniable supernatural aspect of society. Whatever it is your wolf knows, I can guarantee that if you don’t follow through on the acting-on-free-will approach, they will definitely move to more aggressive tactics.”
“Like what?”
“Torture? Or even, hell, they can force the rite on you if they think your wolf is too hard to break. Then they can just break you, and that’d be much easier.”
“So what do I do?” Adrian asked.
Dade stared at the ground for a few moments, blinked, then said, “What you do.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“What is what supposed to mean?” Dade asked, looking at Adrian. He could swear his eyes were brighter. “I have a headache.”
“Oh. Well.”
Adrian rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m going to go home, I think.”
Dade nodded. “Good idea. Can I have a hug?”
Adrian blinked. “Uh… sure?”
Dade wrapped his arms around Adrian’s midsection. Adrian patted him on the back.
“I know he’s mean, but he’s just doing what he does best. Please don’t hurt him. He’s my only friend.”
For a moment, Adrian felt like crying.

19.
Dade walked into the Midnight, and Adrian got into his car and drove away.
The further he got, the more confused he became. So much had happened in so short a time, it was all blurring together.
He thought about his mother, and her warning, and how it could not have come at worse time.
He thought about the box, which Dade may or may not have sent him, and how it could not have been sent at a worse time.
He thought about Katy, who had presented him with the perfect life not a day before another life had come knocking at the door. If it hadn’t been for her acceptance, Adrian would never have given a second thought to sleeping with Evita, to taking up the rite and joining Abraham’s clan. If it even was his.
He thought about the many colliding circles of circumstance, the ripples sent out by decisions, the echoes of time against the walls of eternity. He thought about the differences between genesis and apocalypse, and the many ways he had betrayed himself.
The phone that Dade gave him rang, but Adrian did not answer.
And then he pulled up to his house, and looked at it for the first time as a true home -as a place to return to after a hard day’s work.
Or being worked.
Adrian stepped inside and smiled, closed his eyes and said to himself, “Welcome home.”
“Welcome home,” a voice echoed back to him.
Adrian opened his eyes.
Evita lay on the couch in the living room, and she jumped up and ran to Adrian, throwing her arms around him and laying a blanket of kisses on his face.
He could not help but to kiss her back for a moment, but he pushed her away soon enough, and she turned her head. “What’s wrong, my love?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. He rubbed his forehead and walked into the kitchen. Evita trailed behind him. “I’ve got a lot on my mind and I still really want to be alone.”
“I don’t want to be alone,” she said quietly. “I’ve been alone all my life. I don’t want to be alone.”
Adrian looked at her and said, “I’m sorry. I really am.”
“Do you care about me?”
Adrian could not muster the heart to tell the truth. “I do, I really do, but so many things have happened to me over the past few days, I just need some time to work it out.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Yeah. So could you give me some space? Go back to the Midnight or wherever it is you live, hang out with your brother for a while, have some family time. You know?”
“I don’t want to spend time with my brother. Or Dade. Or anyone but you. I-”
“Evita, I can only apologize so many times! Please, I need to be alone right now.”
She stepped in front of him and put her arms around him, and he sighed. He put his arms on her head and said, “We can spend time together later, I promise.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
Evita smiled and kissed him on the cheek, and walked towards the door. Adrian sighed silently, and thought about packing his bags and leaving.
Then Evita turned around and said, “Adrian?”
“Yes?”
“Do you love me?”
He stared at her for a few moments and bit his lower lip. Then he turned away. “I don’t know.”
“Will you not love me?” she asked, a little more desperate.
“I can’t right now,” he said. “I don’t even know-”
And as Adrian turned around, he felt a shrill surprise to find that Evita was only a few inches away from him, and for some reason her face was contorted with rage.
And then he felt a searing explosion of pain in his gut, and he let out a scream as Evita twisted the silver knife she held between her clenched fists.
She yanked it out and held it trembling in front of her eyes, and she screamed, “What have I done so wrong to you?! Have I not shown you love?!”
She stabbed him again.
“Have I not made you feel?! I am the one you’re supposed to be with,” she stabbed him in beat with her words, “NOT HER!”
Adrian stumbled backwards into a side table, pushing its contents onto the floor. There was a shattering of glass, and his vision dimmed.
“Not that horrible-” stab “-wretch-” stab “-of a woman!”
She pushed him onto the floor and then straddled his mid section. She set the knife by his head, and put her hands around his neck.
Evita leaned in close to his face, her mouth in a snarl, and said, “That’s what Dade told us, that’s what he said he saw! I won’t let it happen any other way!” She began to squeeze, though Adrian was already choking on his own blood.
“If I can’t love you then it won’t be anyone else,” she said, crying. “You’re too wonderful to be with anyone but me.”
Her grip softened, and she kissed Adrian on the lips.
His blood stained her mouth.
And then Adrian’s body went entirely limp. Evita set her head on his chest and sobbed, running her hands along his arms. Her throat hurt from the strength of the cries she gave out, and she could already feel the warmth leaving his body. She kissed him again, wishing he would come back to life, apologizing for what she had to do.
But she knew he was dead. His muscles were unmoving, his blood had ceased pumping (and had mostly drained from his body to the floor and to her shirt and pants by now), and his eyes-
Moved?

20.
And then with a speed she couldn’t comprehend, Adrian’s hand grabbed the knife and stabbed it into the soft place beneath Evita’s chin, and while she tried to scream, her mouth was nailed shut -and then he gave it another push, and there was a sudden gush of red onto his hand, and there was a horrendous crack, and Evita fell over on the floor.

The Wolf -Chapter IX: A Quiet Conversation; Part 1

IX: A Quiet Conversation

1.
Two days after Adrian told off Dade, he found himself alone with Evita once more.
She had flirted with him constantly over the week, and though he found many things about her personality that revolted him, there were many other aspects which he liked quite dearly.
On the matter of his relationship with Katy, Adrian was in doubt. As he was in so many things these past few days.
It had all happened so fast, and he found himself looking around the caves and the town and finding himself too much at home there. He had not gone back to his house once since he had first come there, and his mind felt weighted towards the idea of never leaving. More and more he was convinced that staying with Katy would be idiotic; that the two of them would one day very soon get into a fight, break up, and never see one another again. That was, after all, how all of Adrian’s previous human relationships had gone. Why shouldn’t this last one go the same way?
But Evita, strange, unnerving, and forward as she was, was still more relatable to Adrian than Katy could ever be. She was a werewolf, and she knew exactly what it was like to be one every day. Surely this was more merit for a longterm relationship than some mild acceptance from a human girl ever was?
Whatever he tried to tell himself, despite the strength and tact of his words, there still lingered a fear that he was making one big mistake. Some part of him knew that there was more to this than he understood, and that his unquestioning acceptance of their world was exactly what they wanted. But this part he repressed in every way he could imagine, just as he repressed the wolf.
This place, this speakeasy of werewolves, presented Adrian with a life wherein he was an important member of a society of confidants; an outcast among fellows who were all mutually aware of their individual plights. He wanted more than anything to believe in this reality, in this place where the wolf would never whisper to him again; where he would never have to face rejection or disappointment; where he would be a part of something bigger and more grand than himself.
But the doubt lingered.
And the dreams grew stronger.
And the wolf waited.
So it was that Adrian was once more alone with Evita, and she spoke to him thusly.

2.
“My love,” she said in her cooing, breathy voice, “you need to make a choice.”
“What do you mean?” Adrian said.
“My brother and I have been speaking, you see. He said that you were particularly enthusiastic about taking up your rite, but that over the past few days you’ve been showing some unconscious reticence. I agreed with him on this, as you might expect.” She circled around him and drew closer, drawing a finger along his chest. “You cannot dance between one life or the other. You have to make a choice. It’s either her…”
Evita put her lips to his and drew her hand up the inside of his leg.
“…or me.”
She bit his lip and ran her tongue against his teeth. Adrian’s pulse quickened, and he leaned forward, putting one hand around her back and another upon her breast.
But then she stopped, and pulled herself away from him.
She wore a vicious, lustful smile, her eyes dancing in the dim light.
And Adrian said, “Okay. I’ll do it.”
Evita pointed at the phone.

3.
As Adrian dialed the number, Evita walked up from behind him and wrapped her arms around him, kissing his neck. He gave a tickled laugh.
The line clicked, and a sleepy voice picked up. “Hello?”
“Katy?”
A pause. “Adrian? Oh my god, where have you been? Are you okay?”
She sounded so worried…
“I, um… I’m fine.”
Evita rolled her eyes, and bit the lobe of his ear. Adrian smiled.
Katy spoke cautiously, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Adrian said, kissing Evita’s cheek. “Listen, I don’t think we, uh, should be seeing each other anymore.”
“…what?”
“I just mean that…” Evita grabbed the crotch of his pants, and he gasped delightedly. He laughed as he said, “I mean I’ve found someone better.”
“Better? Like it’s a fucking contest? What the shit is that supposed to mean?”
Adrian stated simply, “It means we’re done.”
“So…what, all of the shit we went through, the whole locked-in-a-room-with-a-werewolf thing, all of a sudden that doesn’t make a difference?”
“Nope,” Adrian said as Evita sucked on his neck.
Katy was silent, and then began to speak in a rising tone, but Adrian immediately interrupted.
“Look, I’ve got shit I need to do, so uh…have a nice life.”
He heard Katy say something, but hung up the phone before he could tell what it was. Evita broke out into a fit of laughter, and Adrian joined her. It seemed incredibly funny, how quick and painless it had been, to just call her and tell her to fuck herself. How quickly the realms of intersecting lives could be ended, with such words and such unfeeling sentiment.
And then Evita threw him onto the mattress, jumped on top of him, and kissed him wildly.
As she worked to undress both herself and Adrian, she said through panted, passionate breaths, “I love you so much.”
Adrian said, “I…” and she kissed him, and when she pulled away, he found himself incapable of finishing the sentence.
And he thought about Katy’s smile, and the warmth of her arms as she hugged him the night after the full moon.
And he though of Evita’s forcefulness and one-track mind, and opened his eyes to see her smiling with glee as she pulled down his pants.
Adrian wanted to scream, wanted to kick her in the face, wanted to leave this place and never come back.
But then she began to play with him, and he closed his eyes again, and didn’t move. He hated himself, but he didn’t care. It felt too good to be turned down, too right. The rising fear and doubt was overcome by the physical imperative to be inside her, to make her his in every way.
And Adrian’s thoughts wandered, and for just a moment he fell asleep.

3.
It was a smell he knew from long ago, that of burning pine and hot chocolate.
Above the fireplace were portraits of people with blurry faces, items of memorabilia which had no discernable features except that they existed, in some form or fashion. There were paintings on the wall of glens and prairies, and on a dining table there was a faded red tablecloth with hanging strands. Empty plates around a burning candelabra, whose smoke had over the years collected a spot on the ceiling.
There was a creaking sound, like and old rocking chair, and it took him only moment to understand that he was in it. Curled up in the lap of someone…someone…
Adrian looked up into his mother’s eyes for the first time in what felt like a hundred years, and wrapped his arms around her as tight as he could.
“Oh, mom!” Adrian yelled through his tears, “I have no idea what I’m doing! Help me! Help me, please, I feel so lost and alone!”
And a voice answered that broke his heart, for he did not know how much he had missed it until that moment.
“Give him strength, Luna,” she said. “Give us all strength.”
And then she was holding him by the neck, holding him above the fire, and her eyes were black as coal, and her lips curled into a snarl as she said, “Don’t let them find you. Do you understand me?” She screamed, “DON’T LET THEM FIND YOU!”
And then she dropped him into the fire, and the house was burning down, and he saw scratched into the wall behind her,
THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GENESIS AND APOCALYPSE.
And then Adrian woke up.

4.
“Oh god!” he screamed as he rolled out of bed.
Evita looked confused. “My love? What’s wrong?”
“I… I…” Adrian looked around at the room, feeling the walls close in around him. He remembered his mother talking to him that day, remembered every word of her warning. Why hadn’t she just let him remember, why had it been revealed so late? How had she made it happen in the first place?
He looked at Evita and felt scared.
“I had a dream,” he said.
“You were asleep?” she asked, eyes narrowed.
“I must’ve…passed out for a second while you were…” he nodded towards his groin. He rubbed his head and gathered his clothes. “I can’t do this right now, I need… I need some time to think. I need to go for a walk.”
“Can I come?” Evita asked, grabbing his hand.
He looked at her and pushed it away, saying, “I really need to be alone right now.”
“Oh,” Evita said, disappointed. “Well, I’ll just…be here, then. Should you need me.”
Adrian buttoned his pants and pulled on his shirt, and nodded as he left the room.

5.
The speakeasy barroom was empty, only a few lights left on, and he walked as fast as he could towards the other side of the room. But each step seemed to build an emotion up into his chest, and as he let out a sob he fell onto his knees. He cradled his head in his arms and bawled.
And then there was something of a click, and his vision went dark.
“I was wondering when the message would come through.”
Adrian opened his eyes and turned towards the source of the voice. He sat on a red and brown plaid couch, frayed at the edges. The wolf’s hair was tied back, and he looked at Adrian over the rim of glasses he hadn’t been wearing the last time.
“You,” Adrian said. He stood up and looked around at the blackness.
The wolf put his feet on a table that hadn’t been there a second ago.
“Where am I?” Adrian asked.
“I dunno,” the wolf said. “Somewhere in your brain, I guess. Wherever it is us wolves get to live whenever it’s not the full moon.”
“You don’t look like a wolf,” Adrian said.
“Well shit, sorry I don’t measure up.”
Adrian again looked around, then rubbed his eyes. “Am I dreaming again?”
“Jesus, I wish. Right now you’re drooling on the floor of a repurposed cave. So to speak.”
“What?”
“Nevermind. So what brings you to my corner of the metaphorical woods?”
Adrian said, “I…didn’t come here on purpose?”
“Sure you did,” the wolf said. “You don’t just end up somewhere in your brain accidentally. You’ve got to make it happen. It is your brain after all.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“A pissier, more emotional wolf might put on a humanitarian air and go on about how we share a space, how it’s our brain, but for one that ain’t my style and for two, you wouldn’t give a shit anyway.”
“How do you know?”
“You’re one of the most selfish people I have ever met, and furthermore the person you have, historically speaking, cared about the least in your life, is me. Well, next to maybe your girlfriends.”
“I care about Katy!”
“So much that you called her to tell her you should “see other people,” all the while practically fucking that horndog bimbo Evita? That’s one hell of a show of emotion there, friend.”
“It’s none of your damned business!” Adrian said.
The wolf stood up and pointed a finger at Adrian. “I think you need to change your fucking attitude here, bub. All our life I’ve been pushed back and repressed, and I’m pretty well sick of it. You ain’t the only one in here,” he said, tapping his skull, “and you should stop acting that way before it bites you in the ass. Now sit down,” he said, doing so himself. “We need to have a chat.”
Adrian turned around to find a similar couch behind him.
“What’s with the furniture?” Adrian asked. “Why does it smell like cigarette smoke?”
“That’s just the way I remember it.”
“…but I’ve never seen these things before in my life.”
The wolf gave a sarcastic chuckle as he sipped milk from a glass that hadn’t been sitting on the table. “There you go again, thinking it’s all about you. I never said they’re anything you would remember.”
He motioned towards a jug of milk on the table, and a tall glass next to it. “Thirsty?”
“Umm,” Adrian said. “How are you-”
“Okay, if we’re going to have anything close to a productive conversation, we’re going to have to set a few ground rules. The first of which being that shit appears out of nowhere.”
“But how?”
“Being a nonphysical space, abstract thoughts often very quickly lead to manifestation. It’s like what the real world would be if people were more intelligent. The second rule is that when one or the other of us is talking, the other shouldn’t interrupt until a statement is finished or a point has been made. Questions should be held until after a general statement, as they might be answered outright at some point afterwards.”
The wolf smiled and said, “I really don’t miss teaching high school.”
Adrian said, “What?”
“Rule number two,” the wolf reminded. “Hold your horses.”
Adrian shook his head. “Okay so, what are we doing then?”
“Like I said, we’re having a chat. Think of it as an intervention. I thought you were going to talk to me when Katy said so, but you got the jitters and backed out at the last second. I thought maybe Dade had talked some sense into you, but you were too busy dry humping crazy-face Evita. Too much longer and you’re going to end up fucking things up too much even for me to fix. So we’re setting the record straight, right here, right now.”
The wolf crossed his arms, and stared at Adrian expectantly.
Adrian sat down, and the wolf nodded his head. He then poured a glass of milk, held it in front of his face, and then took a sip.
The wolf smiled and said, “There we go. Feeling better?”
“…a little.” Adrian set the glass back down, then put his arms on his lap. “So what do you want to talk about, then?”
“I hate to sound self-obsessed, but unfortunately it’s the course of action at this point. Me. We’re going to talk about me. It’s a subject that you have been particularly ignorant of the past ten years or so. More than that, really.”
Adrian squinted his eyes. “I don’t remember you before ten years ago.”
“Some part of you does,” the wolf said. “I was there though. In something of a larval state, I suppose, until you turned sixteen and shifted control over to me for the first time. But those first sixteen years, they were something else. I was very confused.”
“What?”
“Rule number two,” the wolf said again.
Adrian rolled his eyes and drew his fingers across his lips in a mime of zipping them shut.
The wolf smiled and continued.

6.
In the moments after they are born, Adrian opens his eyes to see light.
The wolf sees only black.
There are echoes of words and thoughts and memories, but the hold no meaning, and fade away quickly. As Adrian’s mother holds him in her arms, the wolf too feels her warmth, and is comforted.
At this point, the difference between Adrian and the wolf is practically nonexistent. But as the body ages, the minds grow separate and unique; the wolf remains in his black space, with a sly window into the eyes of Adrian; Adrian remains more or less oblivious of the wolf.
Because the wolf does not know. The wolf does not feel. The wolf does not understand. He simply waits.
He watches Adrian’s life pass by like sand in an hourglass, feeling a slow sensation building inside him. What is it? Excitement? Purpose?
Whatever it is, it’s all the wolf can comprehend. And it takes the form of a glowing white sphere, and for no reason that he knows, he calls it Luna. It is not his mother; mother is, though she has never mothered him directly. Luna is the only other thing in the universe that knows he exists, and it makes him less empty.
The wolf waits in silent watchfulness and anticipation, as each day passes into the next, and the sensation grows and compounds and intensifies.

7.
Now it is the eve of their sixteenth birthday, and the wolf is all but ecstatic. He is starting to feel, he is starting to think, he is starting to know; his consciousness is quickly becoming something that is deserving of the word.
Adrian steps outside and grabs a bundle of wood.
The wolf’s arms begin to tingle.
Adrian looks up at the moon, and the wolf lets out a cry to his the sphere outside his own body; and he realizes that for the first time in his life, he has spoken.
He said, “Luna!”
Adrian drops the wood as the wolf stands and reaches for the moon. He has never believed that she could exist outside his own realm; but there she is, glowing more brilliant and more real than anything he could have ever imagined.
And as Adrian’s eyes widen, his pupils dilating, the wolf finds himself compelled to step forward.
As he did this, Adrian convulsed and fell to the ground.
The wolf felt fear surge through him that the moon should be out of his sight for even a second. What if she should disappear? What if Adrian were to look back and the sky be empty?
So he runs forward, as fast as he can, and as he does so, he feels an odd tingling in his arms that slowly spreads downwards.
For the space of around five seconds, Adrian’s body is now their body. They share a space, albeit one consciousness is moving forward and the other backwards. And the wolf’s mind alights with information.
He does not notice that Adrian, unconscious, is now inhabiting the dark space.
The echoes of thoughts and memories return to him, regain their meaning, and he realizes that he is alive. The wolf pushes through the patina of consciousness and finds that their arms are now his arms, that their legs are now his legs. This body, which has been nothing but a pipedream in the past, is now fully in his control.
The wolf looks up and finds that the moon has not moved an inch, and he smiles as he sees her. He does this because she is looking back at him. Luna is holding out her arms and she is saying, “You’ve done it! Welcome home!”
The wolf almost wants to cry.
And then he hears the cracking of a twig in the distance.
His heart races, his thoughts simplify, and he realizes now that he is here to hunt.
And he does exactly that.

8.
“That moment right before I looked at the moon, that was when I was born. I existed before that, but it was an entirely circumstantial existence. The flood of understanding that came to me, that was…” The wolf exhaled and shook his head. “It was amazing. And it’s like that every time I take control.”
“But…that whole hunting bit… You’ve taken control without hunting before, haven’t you?”
“Well, recently, sure. I’ve gotten older. More capable of controlling my...” He smiled and made a growly face, bringing his hands up into claws, “animal instincts. Considering how much I’ve grown over the last ten years, especially compared to how much you haven’t, I’d say I’ve done fairly well for myself.”
“So…memories? How could you remember if-”
“I’ll get to that, don’t worry. You remember when you got shot?”
“Uhm…yeah, why?”
The wolf continued.

9.
The wolf watches with amusement as Adrian tries to hunt. He’s gotten better at it; living alone in such conditions pretty much forces one to. But there are still several very important factors of the hunt of which Adrian is entirely oblivious.
One of these being listening to more than just the sound of your prey.
The wolf knows that there’s someone following them, but as of this moment he doesn’t consider it a threat. Though smarter than Adrian in many ways, he is still young, and still assumes that there isn’t much that could pose a threat to their body.
And then there is a loud crack, and Adrian’s leg explodes into pain in mid-leap, and he crumples to the ground.
The wolf feels no pain, and is immediately attuned to the sound of the approaching hunter.
He tries to speak, but the words fall flat even to his own ear.
He concentrates, and then says in a calm, deliberate tone, “You don’t have time to run. You need to go up.”
Amazingly, Adrian hears his advice through the chaos of his mind, and he takes it unquestioningly. Adrian looks around himself and climbs up the nearest tree, and they watch as a man in an orange vest searches for the deer he has been hunting.
And then the man walks away. And when he is a safe distance gone, the adrenaline leaves Adrian’s system, and he collapses off the tree.
He hits the ground with an unastounding thump, and the wolf blinks.
And he hears an odd sound, like a click, and he turns to see Adrian laying on the floor of the dark space.
“What?” he says to himself. He walks over to the unconscious body and kicks him in the side.
No reaction.
He goes down onto his knees and pokes Adrian on the face. Nothing.

10.
“Is that what happens every time?” Adrian asks.
The wolf nods his head.
“Why have I never woken up here, then?”
“Hell if I know. The brain’s an amazing machine. Anyway…”

11.
The wolf looks out through the eyes of their body and feels the ghost of a pain in his leg as he pushes himself forward. He knows this is foolish; the wolf is an idea in this state, a metaphysical gathering of thoughts and memories that he still does not entirely understand. The pain is a window to the truth of their symbiotic relationship that the wolf refuses to acknowledge. But he knows more than anything that Adrian is out cold. He has bled out almost fully, and the wolf can feel the constructs of their mind falling apart.
The main support, the thing which represents Adrian’s consciousness, has retreated to some inner portion of their mind, leaving a cavity in its place that is very quickly collapsing. If there is not a quick intervention that place will fall, and they will both be trapped in this body until death.
With a momentary hesitation the wolf steps forward. He pushes through the patina like bubble of air surfacing out of the water, and suddenly-

-suddenly he remembers everything.
It is jumbled, fractured, and many pieces are missing. What little he has before him is difficult to decode, its frame of reference almost impossible to identify, but at the same time the wolf knows that these bits and pieces of thoughts and images are the memories of the lives he had before. These are the remnants of himself in previous incarnations;
He remembers sitting at a desk and grading papers, watching the grades deteriorate with each passing year; giving speeches about mathematics, trying his best and failing to relate the subject to his students in a way that will make sense; watching his wife grow older and more pale and more angry; watching himself grow more and more cynical; The year is 1964 when his heart seizes mid-speech, and he falls to the floor in a crumpled mess, and his students watch him die in paralyzed fascination.
He remembers riding the back of a horse through grassy fields across the land; the feeling of a broadsword firmly beneath his hands and the weight of his armor testing his strength every moment of every day; the freedom to kill or maim anyone he wanted, and the satisfaction that came with never doing either; the humility he felt before God as he knelt and prayed every night, for health and for strength, and for the endurance of mother Spain; he accosts an unruly drunkard for humiliating a young woman and watches the man draw a blade, and as he reaches for his own he somehow loses his footing and finds his neck punctured and his spine severed at the end of it.
He remembers being a monk hid away in the mountains and writing haiku of his observations; he remembers conditioning his body every moment of every day through breathing and physical trials; he remembers the patient motions of catching fish, gutting them, cooking them, and dividing them amongst his Brothers; he remembers a day where the sky is so blue and the clouds so perfect that he falls to his knees and cries, and thanks the Spirit for the world that He made; he remembers falling asleep one night, and never waking up again.
And then he remembers something else. Another life, another set of memories, and in this way it’s simple.
But in so many other ways, it’s different.
Even without context, even in this phase of memory and overwhelming sensation, he understands that this life is thelife. All the others afterward were merely a side effect. This one is the reason that he still exists, the reason he has been allowed to be birthed again and again.
He thinks to himself, with the sense only of stating the obvious, that this life may very well be the most important life of them all.
He remembers a grassy, hilly place below the mountains, nestled within a clearing in the forest. He remembers being a werewolf there, as well, though it is only he; his body is his own. He lives among a clan of wolves, in a world very different from this one. The entirety of the life is not recollected, not yet, but he remembers being raised by a young woman, because his parents had been killed. And he remembers that he was in an arranged marriage at ten with a girl from another clan, and this was to be an example to the other clans to come together in the wake of…
Of what?
Every moment that the wolf is at the wheel of the body, so to speak, more and more of his memories come to light; hundreds of lives, all of them as unique and varied as one could ever consider. He cannot purposefully recollect any aspect of a life. It has to come to him.
And this life, which he now understands was his first life, is no exception.
And amid the chaos of this recollection, he is bleeding to death. It takes him a moment to pull himself together and put all the various pieces in their places. The life that he is living now, that is the one he needs to pay attention to; the others can wait.
He only hopes that his memories will not fade when he and Adrian trades places once more.
But there is one thing he refuses to forget, something that feels novel and odd and personal. Something that gives him definition, and reminds him of who he is.
His name.

12.
“Wait, you have a name?” Adrian said.
“Is that really such a surprise? You have one.”
“Yeah, but…I was given mine!”
“…and?”
“And I never named you!”
“Well shit, I guess because you never named Shakespeare that he didn’t write some of the best stuff ever written.”
Adrian sighed. “It’s not that, I just-”
“You just prefer the idea that I am a hallucination and that you are the only active body. Once again, that is the illusion I am attempting to break.”
Adrian rubbed his arms and looked at the ground. “So uh…what is your name, then?”
The wolf crossed his arms and said, “I don’t think I want to tell you.”
“Oh come on!” Adrian said. “I’m being as cooperative as I can, here!”
The wolf smiled and said, “Now you are, sure. But it only takes a sideways glance from the life you wish you had to get you forgetting who your real friends are.”
“I’m sorry, okay? I’m an idiot.”
“You are.”
The wolf stared at Adrian for a time, and then said, “But, I guess everyone is, to a point. My name is Akashi.”
Adrian’s eyes narrowed, and he said, “Why does that sound familiar?”
“Fuck if I know,” he said. “That’s the kind of response I get from a lot of people.”
“What? You’ve talked to other people?”
“Rule two, Adrian.”
“Aggh, fuck, get on with the story then!”

13.
Akashi stands up. The body feels weak, the leg hurts, but somehow he is distanced from it. Somehow the wolf can push the body to limits Adrian could never reach. He takes a few steps to get the hang of it, as he has never done this without the aid of the moon.
His urge to hunt snaps to attention when he hears from very far away the sound of the injured deer falling over onto its side.
He sympathizes, and makes to track it and eat it.
But then takes a breath and remembers who he is, and stops. How many lives has he led? In only one of them was he a wolf. It’s silly for him to have such memories, and in spite of them be brought down to such simplistic urges.
The thought halts again as he finds the scent of the blood, and can practically see its trail on the air. He saunters down onto his hands and knees and makes to run after it.
And then he falls over.
He looks at his hands in confusion to find that they are human. Not wolven.
And Akashi shakes his head and stands once more.
Surviving is far more important than hunting.
And then there is a thunderclap, and he takes a deep breath, and he begins to run. The pain is far more obvious now, but that does not matter.
The storm behind him is giving him a terrible feeling, and he doesn’t want to be anywhere near it.
But distantly, he knows that one can never outrun a storm.

14.
He collapses into the hollowed base of a tree as rain punches through the canopy and hammers the ground. Thunder is echoing constantly through the air, and though he knows that in a tree is hardly the safest place to be in a storm, it is better than being anywhere else. This storm wants him, he can feel it in the wind. It screams through the leaves and whips at his face, and he curls up into a ball and cries.
Akashi is tired from the exertion, even through his impassive control of the body. He can feel its dying gasps, and this terrifies him. He is overwhelmed with the sense that his being alive is more important than anything else; if he dies, so much will be lost.
But perhaps, he thinks, this is only an illusion. Perhaps he is only afraid of death. But why should he be, if he has died so many times in the past?
Another flash of light, and a bowling roar of thunder, and Akashi winces and holds himself. His body is cold, its blood almost run out. That it should have made it this far is a miracle. But without activity the last few chemicals keeping it afloat will be worked out of the system; with too much more activity those same chemicals will overload the system and cause it to shut down. Akashi cannot win; to run is to die. To stop is to die.
He is shaking so hard that he can barely move his mouth, but he manages to speak nevertheless. It’s something that he picked up from a memory, one of the old ones from his first life. He does not know if it will make any difference, but it’s the only thing he has going for him.
So Akashi whispers, “Echolalia, goddess of storms, hear me, I beg you; through time and worlds, hear me, help me, please.”
And there is nothing.
Akashi simply mutters the name over and over hopelessly, knowing that it will do nothing.
And then, the sound stops. He doesn’t register it at first, but when he finds himself more able to hear his mutterings, he looks up. The rain is frozen in mid air. In the sky, a lightning bolt pulses in the midst of its phased stepladder passage to the ground. He watches this with fascination, and then his eye is drawn to a feminine figure walking forward through the motionless rain.
As she moves, the rain hits her body and drips away. She has blue skin flecked with gold, and half of her face is the white of rainless clouds.
One eye is blue, the other, whose place is in the white half of her face, is gone. The hole where it once rolled is now painted gold.
He realizes that the chattering of his teeth has stopped, and that he can no longer feel the pain and numbness and death that had been seeping into his body.
She reaches the hole and kneels before Akashi, reaches an arm out to his cheek.
“I have not heard that name in a hundred thousand generations,” she says. “I had almost come to think it had never been at all.”
“It was, my lady,” Akashi whispers, “in a world that has long since passed.”
She smiles and sits next to him. “Your name is Akashi, isn’t it?”
He nods.
“It’s a name that’s been whispered a lot lately,” she says. “As it was…” she looks out as if remembering something distant, and smiles, “As it was in the old world. In the world of the five divisions.”
“Aye,” he says. “My people worshipped you, among others. Luna was our favorite, however. For obvious reasons. Of course, in the last few years, we lost much of that tradition.”
She nods. “They were tumultuous, weren’t they? Even we were at the mercy of… But how is it that you remember? You are mortal, yes?”
“My body is,” he says. “But my mind, my…soul, whatever you’d call it. I’m not so sure.”
“That isn’t solely your body, is it?”
“No. I’m a werewolf again.”
She puts her head on his shoulder. “I think you should take that as a sign of the times, Akashi of the old world. Recurring symbolism rarely happens without reason.”
Akashi closes his eyes and his mouth, as he feels a sudden rush of emotion. He recollects the very last moments of his first life, the efforts that he made to be shed of his responsibilities.
“Why is it always me?” he asks, fighting off tears. “Why can’t it be someone else?”
Echolalia whispers to him, “That is a question I cannot answer, Akashi of the old world. But I can hazard a guess.”
He looks up at her hopefully.
“Because you are the best at what you do.”
She stands up and walks away, and the rain slowly begins to fall again.
“And what is that I do?” Akashi yells back after her.
And she says, “Fix things.”
And then the thunder finishes its arc, and there is a deafening explosion

15.
And Akashi wakes up.
He looks around at the forest and sees that the earth is damp, that the leaves are windblown, but that the sky is blue and the sun is shining.
And he doesn’t feel entirely like shit.
Akashi pulls himself out of the knoll and stands, as best he can. His leg throbs, but it isn’t rotten. The wound is infected, but that’s alright for now. He can get as far as he needs to go on it.
Because all this time he’s felt a destination somewhere in the distance, and it’s close now. Even through the storm he was following his internal compass.
So Akashi limps through the forest, using a fallen limb as a crutch.
As he does so, he ponders the visitation of the goddess in his dream, and his general feeling of betterness. He knows that this world is not the same as that of his first life, but how is it that a goddess of the old world can be present in the new world?
But the question gives little up in the way of an answer, so he circumvents that question entirely with another.
How is it that one world follows another?
He had one life in the old world; he knows that much.
He has had hundreds of lives in this world; he knows that as well.
Were there lives before his first, lived out by other souls? Surely yes, he remembers just such things. Stories, and the like. So that world had dimension, had history.
But he had only one life there.
And more than that, that life was important. That life was the culmination of a thousand years of war and oppression and rewritten history.
All his other lives are virtually meaningless; some stand out as noteworthy, but none of them compare to his first.
So his first life was important, and it ended; the death he cannot remember, though much of the life is coming back to him. And then what?
What changed between that life and the next that caused his soul to travel from one world to another?
He recollects the law of conservation of energy from a life as a physicist; energy can neither be created nor destroyed -it merely changes form. If this is a universal truth, then his soul could not have travelled from one world to another.
Which means that one world must have become the other.
At some point between his first life and his second, the old world transformed into the new world. Rules were changed, creatures were reshaped, bits and pieces were repurposed and transferred altogether.
But somehow, there were remnants. The transformation was either incomplete or wasn’t thought through, if that’s even possible, because seemingly outdated aspects of that world still remain in this one.
Werewolfism, for example.

As Akashi ponders this, he hears a sound from behind, and turns as fast as he can.
But he forgets about his limp, and his crutch, and trips over them both.
He lands on his back, and moans in pain.
“You aren’t doing very well, are you?” a voice asks.
Akashi tries to roll onto his feet, but simply falls forward.
“I’d say that leg will be the end of you, if it goes much longer without intervention.”
“I’m fine,” he says.
“No, Adrian,” the voice says, “I don’t believe that you are.”
He looks at the man who just said his name and squints his eyes. “Who are you?”
“An interested party. Someone who won’t be out of your life for quite some time, even if you hate me with all of your guts. Give me your hand.”
“No.”
“Come now, Adrian, let’s not be difficult.”
The man reaches down, and Akashi barks, “NO!”
The man scowls, and kicks Akashi in the side, “I’m trying to help you!”
“I don’t need your help,” he says. “Besides, you’re breaking the rules.”
The man steps back. “What?”
“I can tell what you are just from the look of you. You’re one of the wolves positioned to watch me, aren’t you?”
The man kneels and grabs Akashi’s skull, looks into his eyes. “You’re not Adrian, are you? You’re the other one.”
Akashi brings a fist to the side of the man’s head, and he falls into the mud. He moans, and Akashi grabs his crutch and brings himself up.
“I don’t need your help.” Akashi spits in the man’s face. “And if I ever see you again, I’ll kill you.”
As Akashi limps away, the man laughs and calls back, “We’ll see about that, won’t we! But even if you do, I’m hardly the worst of your problems!”
He continues to laugh, and Akashi bites his tongue and fights the urge to kill him where he lay.
But he keeps moving forward, and soon enough the laughing has stopped, and the man is gone. Reporting the news that Adrian isn’t in sole control of his own body anymore.
And that’s just fine with him.