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.