Running with the Pack

WILD RIDE CARRIE VAUGHN

Just once, he wouldn’t use a condom. What could happen? But it hadn’t been just once. It could have been any one of the half-dozen men he’d drifted between over the last two years. His wild years, he thought of them now. He’d been so stupid. They all had said, just once, trust me. T.J., young and eager, had wanted so very much to please them.

“I’m sorry,” the guy at the clinic said, handing T.J. some photocopied pages. “You have options. It’s not a death sentence like in the old days. But you’ll have to watch yourself. Your health is more important than ever now. And you have to be careful—”

“Yeah, thanks,” T.J. said, standing before the counselor had finished his spiel.

“Remember, there’s always help—”

T.J. walked out, crumpling the pages in his hand.

Engines purred, sputtered, grumbled, clacked like insects, and growled like bears. Motorbikes raced up the course, catching air over hills, leaning into curves, biting into the earth with treaded tires, kicking up clods, giving the air a smell like chalk and gasoline. Hundreds more idled, revved, tested, waited. Thousands of people milled, riders in fitted jackets of every color, mechanics in coveralls, women bursting out of too-small tank tops, and most people in T-shirts and jeans. T.J. loved it here. Bikes made sense. Machines could be fixed, their problems could be solved, and they didn’t judge.

He supposed he ought to get in touch with his partners. Figure out which one had passed the disease onto him, and who he might have passed it on to. Easier said than done. They’d been flings; he didn’t have phone numbers.

“Look it, here he comes.” Mitch, Gary Maddox’s stout good-natured assistant, shook T.J.’s arm in excitement.

Gary’s heat was starting. T.J. looked for Gary’s colors, the red-and-blue jacket and dark blue helmet. He liked to think he could pick out his bike’s growl over all the others. T.J. had spent the morning fine-tuning the engine, which had never sounded better.

They’d come up to one of the hills overlooking the track to watch the race. T.J. wanted to lose himself in this world, just for another day. He wanted to put off thinking about anything else for as long as possible.

The starting gate slammed down, and the dozen bikes rocketed from the starting line, engines running high and smooth. Gary pulled out in front early, like he usually did. Get in front, stay in front, don’t let anyone else mess up his ride. Some guys liked messing with the rest of the field, playing mind games and causing trouble. Gary just wanted to win, and T.J. admired that.

Mitch jumped and whooped with the rest of the crowd, cheering the riders on. T.J. just watched. Another rider’s bike, toward the back, was spitting puffs of black smoke. Something wrong there. Everyone else seemed to be going steady. Gary might as well have been floating an inch above the dirt. That was exactly how it was supposed to be—making it look easy.

“Ho-leee!” Mitch let out a cry and the crowd let out a gasp as they all saw one of the riders go down.

T.J. could tell it was going to happen right before it did, the way the rider—in the middle of the pack to the outside—took the turn a little too sharply to make up time, gunned his motor a little too early, and stuck his leg out to brace—a dangerous move. His front tire caught, the bike flipped, and it might have ended there. A dozen guys dropped their bikes one way or another every day out here. But everything was set up just wrong for this guy. Momentum carried the bike into the straw bale barrier lining the track—then over, and down the steep slope on the other side. Bike and rider finally parted ways, the bike spinning in one direction, trailing parts. The rider flopped and tumbled in another direction, limp and lifeless, before coming to rest face up on a bank of dirt. The few observers who’d hiked up the steep vantage scattered in its path.

For a moment, everyone stood numb and breathless. Then the ambulance siren started up.

Yellow flags stopped the race. Mitch and T.J. stumbled down their side of the hill trying to get to the rider.

“You know who he is?”

“Alex Price,” Mitch said, huffing.

“New on the circuit?”

“No, local boy. Big fish little pond kind of guy.”

The rider hadn’t moved since he stopped tumbling. Legs shouldn’t bend the way his were bent. Blood and rips marred his clothing. T.J. and Mitch reached him first, but both held back, unwilling to touch him. T.J. studied the rider’s chest, searching for the rise and fall of breath, and saw nothing. The guy had to have been pulverized.

Then his hand twitched.

“Hey, buddy, don’t move!” Mitch said, stumbling forward to his knees to hold the rider back.

T.J. thought he heard bones creaking, rubbing against each other as the rider shuddered, pawing the ground to find bearings. Next to Mitch, he tried to keep the rider still with a hand on his shoulder. Price flinched, as if shrugging him away, and T.J. almost let go—the guy was strong, even now. Maybe it was adrenaline.

The ambulance and EMTs arrived, and T.J. gratefully got out of the way. By then, the rider had taken off his own helmet and mask. He had brown hair a few inches long, a lean tanned face covered with sweat. He gasped for breath and winced with pain. When he moved, it was as if he’d slept wrong and cramped his muscles, not just tumbled over fifty yards at forty miles an hour.

At his side, an EMT pushed him back, slipped a breathing mask over his face, started putting a brace on his neck. The second EMT brought over a back board. Price pushed the mask away.

“I’m fine,” he muttered.

“Lie down, sir, we’re putting you on a board.”

Grinning, Price laid back.

T.J. felt like he was watching something amazing, miraculous. He’d seen the crash. He’d seen plenty of crashes, even plenty that looked awful but the riders walked away from. He’d also seen some that left riders broken for life, and he’d thought this was one of those. But there was Price, awake, relaxed, like he’d only stubbed a toe.

Price rolled his eyes, caught T.J.’s gaze, and chuckled at his gaping stare. “What, you’ve never seen someone who’s invincible?”

The EMT’s shifted him to the board, secured the straps over him, and carried him off.

“Looks like he’s gonna be okay,” Mitch said, shrugging off his bafflement.

Invincible, T.J. thought. There wasn’t any such thing.

At the track the following weekend, T.J. was tuning Gary’s second bike when Mitch came up the aisle and leaned on the handlebars. “He’s back. Did you hear?”

The handlebars rocked, twisting the front tire and knocking T.J.’s wrench out of his hand. He sighed. “What? Who?”

“Price, Alex Price. He’s totally okay.”

“How is that even possible?” T.J. said. “You saw that crash. He should have been smashed to pieces.”

“Who knows? Guys walk away from the craziest shit.” Mitch went to the cab and pulled a beer out of the cooler.

It was true, anything was possible, Price might have fallen just right, so he didn’t break and the bike didn’t crush him. Every crash looked horrible, like it should tear the riders to ribbons, and most of the time no one was hurt worse than cuts and bruises. In fact, how many people even looked forward to the crashes, the spike of adrenaline and sense of horror, watching tragedy unfold? But something here didn’t track.

T.J. tossed the wrench in the tool box, closed and locked and lid, and set out to find Price.

Today was just practice runs; the atmosphere at the track was laid back and workmanlike. Not like race days, which were like carnivals. He went up one aisle of trucks and trailers, down the next, not sure what he was looking for—if he was local, Price probably didn’t ride for a team, and wouldn’t have sponsors with logos all over a fancy trailer. He’d have a plain homespun rig. His jacket had been black and red; T.J. looked for that.

Turned out, all he had to do was find the mob of people. T.J. worked his way to the edge of the crowd that had gathered to hear Price tell the story. This couldn’t have been the first time he told it.

“I just tucked in and let it happen,” Price said, a smile drawing in his audience. He gave an “awe, shucks” shrug and accepted their adoration.

T.J. wanted to hate the guy. Not sure why. He wasn’t quite his type. Or maybe it was the matter of survival. Price had survived, and T.J. wanted to. Arms crossed, looking skeptical, he stood off to the side.

Price looked friendly enough, smiling with people and shaking all the hands offered to him, but he also seemed twitchy. He kept glancing over his shoulder, like he was looking for a way out. T.J. worked his way forward as the crowd dispersed, until they were nearly alone.

“Can I talk to you privately?” T.J. said.

“Hey, I remember you,” Price said. “You helped, right after the crash. Thanks, man.”

T.J. found himself wanting to glance away. “I just want to talk for a second.”

“Come on, I’ll get you a beer.”

Price led him to the front part of the trailer, which was set up as a break area—lawn chairs, a cooler, a portable grill. From the cooler he pulled out a couple of bottles of a microbrew—the good stuff—and popped off the caps by hand. Absently, T.J. wiped the damp bottle on the hem of his T-shirt.

“What’s the problem?” Price asked.

T.J. wondered if he really came across that nervous, that transparent. He was trying to be steady. “The crash last week. What really happened?”

Price shrugged. “You were there. You saw the whole thing.”

T.J. shook his head. “Yeah. I saw it. You shouldn’t be standing here—your legs were smashed, your whole body twisted up. Everyone else can write it off and say you were lucky, but I’m not buying it. What really happened?”

He expected Price to deny it, to wave him away and tell him he was crazy. But the guy just looked at him, a funny smile playing on his lips. “Why do you want to know? Why so worked up over it?”

So much for playing it cool. “I need help.”

“And why do you think I can help you? What makes you think I can just hand over my good luck?”

He was right. T.J.’s own panic had gotten the better of him, and he’d gone grasping at soap bubbles. Whatever he’d seen on the day of the crash had been his own wishful thinking. He’d wanted to see the impossible.

“You’re right. I’m sorry. Never mind.” Ducking to hide his blush, he turned away, looking for a place to set his untasted beer before he fled.

“Kid, wait a minute,” Price called him back, and T.J. stopped. “What’s your name?”

“T.J.”

“What would you say if I told you you’re right?”

“About what?”

“I’m invincible. I can’t be killed. Not by a little old crash, anyway. Now—what are you looking to get saved from? What are you so scared of?”

Now that he’d said it, T.J. didn’t believe him. Price was making fun of him. And how much worse would it be if T.J. actually told him? He turned to leave again.

“Hey. Seriously. What’s wrong? Why are you so scared of dying that you need me?”

T.J. took a long draw on the beer, then said, “I just tested positive for HIV.” It was the first time he’d said it out loud. It almost hurt.

“Rough,” Price said.

“Yeah.” T.J. kicked his toe in the dirt. And what did he expect Price say to him? What could anyone say? Nothing.

“Hey,” Price said, and once again T.J. had to turn back, obeying the command in his voice. “What are you willing to do to turn that around? You willing to become a monster?”

“You talk to some people, I already am,” T.J. said, putting on a lopsided smile.

“You know about the Dustbowl?”

“Yeah.”

“Stop by tonight, seven or seven-thirty. If you’re really sure.”

“Sure about what?” he asked.

“Just show up and I’ll explain it all.” He walked away, past the trailer to the cab of the truck. Meeting over.

It seemed like an obvious trap—he’d show up and walk into a beating. The Dustbowl was one of the bars up the road; some of the riders liked to hang out there. Not Gary—he was serious about riding and didn’t feel much of a need to show how tough he was off the track. T.J. had stayed away; the place had an uncomfortable vibe to it, a little too edgy, though it was hard to tell if the atmosphere was just for show. He preferred drinking at one of the larger bars, where he didn’t stand out so much.

He didn’t know whether to believe there really was something different about Price, something that had saved him from the awful wreck, or if Price was making fun of him. He could check it out. Just step in and step back out again if he didn’t like the look of the place. Make sure Mitch knew where he was going in case something happened and he vanished.

That would solve his problems real quick, wouldn’t it?

He hitched a ride with some friends of Mitch who were on their way into town. T.J. must have sounded convincing when he said he was meeting somebody and that everything was okay. The sun was close to setting, washing out the sky to a pale yellow, and summer heat radiated off the dusty earth. The air was hot, sticky, making his breath catch.

The Dustbowl was part of a row of simple wooden buildings set up to look like an old-west street, but without disguising the modern shingles, windows, and neon beer signs. At one end was a barbeque place that T.J. had heard was pretty mediocre but cheap. The place smelled like overcooked pork, which made his stomach turn.

Walking into the bar alone, he felt like an idiot. Not just a loser, but a loser looking for trouble. The bullies would be drawn to him. He had to shake off the feeling—if he looked scared, of course he’d get picked on. He straightened, rounded his shoulders, and took a deep breath to relax. He had to look at ease, like he belonged.

Feeling a little more settled in his skin—he tried to convince himself that everyone in the half-filled room wasn’t staring at him—he went to the bar, ordered a Coke, and asked if Alex Price was here.

“He might be in back,” the bartender said. “That guy’s nuts—did you see his crash last week?”

“Yeah,” T.J. said. “I had a front row seat. It was bad.”

“And he gets up and walks away. Crazy.” Shaking his head, the bartender turned away.

T.J. put his back to the bar and looked around. TV screens mounted in the corners showed baseball. Tables and chairs were scattered, without any particular order to them. A waitress in a short skirt delivered a tray of beers to a table of mechanics from the track. No sign of Price. He’d give it the time it took to finish the Coke, resisting the urge to upend it and down the whole thing in a go.

Halfway through, a woman came out a door in back and sauntered along the bar toward him. She was petite, cute, with softly curling brown hair bouncing around her shoulders and a size too small T-shirt showing off curves.

“Are you the guy looking for Alex?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Come on back, he’s waiting for you.” She gave him a wide smile and tipped her head to the back door.

And if that didn’t look like a bad situation. . . “There a reason he can’t talk to me out here?”

“Not scared, are you? Come on, you can trust me.” She sidled closer, gazing up at him with half-lidded eyes and brushing a finger up his arm.

He never knew in these situations if he should tell her she was wasting her efforts, or just let her have her fun. He let it go and went with her. He was good enough in a fight—he just wouldn’t let anyone get between him and the door. It would be okay.

She led him through a hallway with a concrete floor and aged walls. A swinging door on the left opened to a kitchen; doors on the right were labeled as men’s and women’s restrooms. At the end of the hall was a storage closet. Through there, another door opened into a huge garage—four, maybe five cars could fit inside. Nobody out front would hear him if he yelled. He tried not to be nervous.

A tall, windowless overhead door was closed and locked. A few cardboard boxes and a steel tool closet were pushed up against the walls. Right in the middle sat a steel cage, big enough to hold a lion. A dozen or so people were gathered around the cage. Alex Price stood at the head of the group, drawn straight and tall, his arms crossed.

Oh, this did not look good. T.J. turned to go back the way he’d come, hoping to make it a confident walk instead of a panicked run.

The woman grabbed his arm. “No no, wait, we’re not going to hurt you.” Her flirting manner was gone.

T.J. brushed himself out of her grip and put his back to the wall. She gave him space, keeping her hands raised and visible. None of the others had moved. Their gazes were curious, amused, watchful, suspicious—but not hateful. Not bloodthirsty.

Price just kept smiling. “The cage isn’t for you, kid,” he said. “Remember when I asked you if you’re willing to become a monster?”

T.J. shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“I can cure you, but it won’t be easy.”

“It never is,” T.J. said. He met Price’s gaze and held it, refusing to be scared of this guy. “I still don’t understand.”

“We’re a pack,” he said, nodding at the people gathered around him. “We’ve talked it over, and we can help you. But you have to really want it.”

“Pack,” T.J. said. “Not a gang?”

“No.”

The people only looked like a group because they were standing together; they didn’t look anything alike—three were women, a couple of the men were young, maybe even younger than T.J. A couple wore jeans and T-shirts, a couple looked like bikers, like Price. One guy was in a business suit, the tie loosened, his jacket over his arm. One of the women wore a skirt and blouse. They were normal—shockingly normal, considering they were standing in an empty garage behind a bar, next to a large steel cage. T.J. felt a little dizzy.

“He’s not going to believe anything until we show him, Alex,” the woman with the curling brown hair said.

“Believe what?” T.J. said, off balance, nearing panic again. She had a sly, smiling look in her eyes.

“You want to do it?” Price said to her.

“Yeah. Sure.” She looked at T.J., then quickly grabbed his hand and squeezed it. Her skin was hot—T.J. hadn’t realized that his hands were cold. She whispered, “I want to help. I really do.” Then she went to the cage.

This was a cult, he thought. Some weird, freaky religious thing. They had some kind of faith healing going on. Did Price really think faith healing had saved him?

T.J. stayed because something had saved Price.

The woman took off her clothes, handing them to the woman in the skirt. One of the others opened the cage. Naked, she crawled in and sat on all fours, and seemed happy to do so, as the cage door was locked behind her.

“Ready, Jane?” Price said, reaching a hand into the cage. The woman licked it, quick and dog-like.

As if this couldn’t get any stranger. T.J. inched toward the doorway.

“Don’t go,” Price said. “Wait just another minute.”

The woman in the cage bowed her back and grunted. Then, she blurred. T.J. blinked and squinted, to better see what was happening. He moved closer.

Her skin had turned to fur. Her bones were melting, her face stretching. She opened her mouth and had thick, sharp teeth; that hadn’t been there before. This wasn’t real, this wasn’t possible, it was some kind of hoax.

T.J. stumbled back, launching himself toward the door. But Price was at his side, grabbing his arms, holding him. T.J. could have sworn he’d been on the other side of the room.

“Just wait,” Price said, calmly, soothing, as T.J. thrashed in his grip. “Calm down and watch.”

In another minute, a wolf stood in the cage, long-legged and rangy, with a gray back and pale belly. It shook out its fur, rubbed its face on its legs, and looked out at Price. T.J. couldn’t catch his breath, not even to speak.

“That’s right,” Price said, as if he knew the word T.J. was trying to spit out.

And that was the secret. That was how Price had survived. Because he was one of those, too. Every one of them was like her.

He tried to convince himself he wasn’t afraid of them. “It’s crazy. You’re all crazy.” He hated that his voice shook. He still pulled against Price’s grip—but Price had a monster’s strength.

“You’re not the only one who’s stood there and said so,” Price said.

“So what are you saying? That’s the cure? Become like that?”

“We’re all invulnerable. We don’t get sick. We don’t get hurt. Oh, we still age, we’ll all still die someday. And the silver bullet part is real. But when nobody else believes in this, what are the odds anyone’s going to shoot you with a silver bullet?”

“And the full moon thing is real, too?” T.J. said, chuckling, because what else could he do?

“Yes,” Price said.

“No, no,” T.J. said, giving himself over to the hysteria.

Price spoke softly, steadily, like he’d given this speech before. “All you have to do is stick your hand in the cage. But you have to ask yourself: if you’re not brave enough to deal with your life now, then why would you be brave enough to stick your hand in the cage? You have to be brave enough to be a monster. You think you’re that brave? I’m not sure you are.”

Of course he’d say it like a dare.

T.J. had spent the last few weeks in a constant state of subdued panic. Trying to adjust his identity from healthy to sick, when he didn’t feel sick and didn’t know what being sick even meant. And here he was being asked to do it again, change his identity, his whole being. He’d spent his whole life changing his identity, announcing it, feeling good about it, then feeling it slip out from under him again. He thought he’d done the right thing when he told his parents he was gay. They’d kicked him out, just like he’d known they would. He’d been ready for it—happy to leave, even. But from one day to the next he’d gone from closeted son to outed and independent—free, he’d thought of it then.

He went to the clinic and got tested because he’d had a raw, nagging feeling that he’d done it all wrong and was paying a price for all that freedom. From one day to the next he’d gone from healthy to not. And now, Price was offering him a chance to do it again, to change himself in the space of a minute. To an animal, a creature that shouldn’t exist, with sharp teeth behind curling lips.

The wolf’s eyes, golden-brown, stared at him, gleaming, eager. The woman—still flirting with him.

He could face one horror, or the other. Those were his choices. That was what he had brought on himself.

But wouldn’t it be nice to be invincible, for once?

“It can’t be that easy,” T.J. whispered.

“No, it’s not. But that’s why we’re here,” Price said. “We’ll help you.”

If he asked for time to think about it, he would never come back. He stepped toward the cage.

It was going to hurt. He repeated to himself, invincible, and he glanced at the people gathered around him—werewolves, all of them. But none of them looked on him with anger or hate. Caution, maybe. Doubt, maybe. But he would be all right. It would be a like a shot, a needle in the arm, a vaccination against worse terrors.

Price stood behind him—to keep him from fleeing? The others gathered around, like they wanted to watch. All he had to do was reach. The wolf inside the cage whined and turned a fidgeting circle.

“You can still back out. No shame in walking out of here,” Price said, whispering behind him.

It didn’t look so monstrous. More like a big dog. All he had to do was reach in and scratch its ear. T.J. rested his hand on the top of the cage. The bars were smooth, cool, as if the steel had absorbed the chill from the concrete underneath.

Kneeling, T.J. slipped his hand down to the side, then pushed his arm inside. The wolf carefully put her jaws around his forearm. He clenched his hand into a fist, and by instinct he lunged away. The wolf closed her mouth on him, and her fangs broke skin.

He thrashed, pulling back, fighting against her. Bracing his feet against the bars, he pushed away. That only made his skin tear through her teeth, and she bit harder, digging in, putting her paws on him to hold him still so that her claws cut him as well as his teeth. Behind him Price grabbed hold, securing him in a bear hug, whispering.

The pain was total. He couldn’t feel his hand, his arm, the wolf’s gnawing, but he could feel his flesh ripping and the blood pouring off him, matting in the fur of her snout. All that infected, tainted blood.

He looked away and clamped his jaws shut, trapping air and screams behind tightly closed lips.

By the time Price pulled T.J. away from the cage, he’d passed out.

When he woke up, he was in a twin bed in what looked like a sunny guest room. The decorations—paisley bedspread, out-of-date furniture set—lacked personality. The woman who had been a wolf sat on a chair next to the bed, smiling.

He felt calm, and that seemed strange. He felt like he ought to be panicking. But he remembered days of being sick, sweating, swearing, fighting against blankets he’d been wrapped in, and cool hands holding him back, telling him he was going to be fine, everything was going to be fine. All the panic had burned out of him.

He pulled his hands out from under the sheets and looked at them. His right arm was whole, uninjured. Not even a scar. But he remembered the claws tearing, the skin parting.

He took a deep breath, pressing his head to the pillow, assaulted by smells. The sheets smelled of cotton, stabbed through with the acerbic tang of detergent—it made his eyes water. A hint of vegetation played in the air, as if a window was open and he could smell trees—not just trees, but the leaves, fruit ripening on boughs, the smell of summer. Something was cooking in another part of the house. He’d never smelled so much.

The woman, Jane, moved toward him and her scent covered him, smothered him. Her skin, the warmth of her hair, the ripeness of her clothes, a hint of sweat, a hint of breath—and more than that, something wild that he couldn’t identify. This—fur, was it fur?—both made him want to run and calmed him. Inside him, a feeling he couldn’t describe—an instinct, maybe—called to him. It’s her, she did this.

He breathed through his mouth to cut out the smells, to try to relax.

“Good morning,” she said, wearing a thin and sympathetic smile.

He tried to speak, but his dry tongue stuck. She reached to a bedside table to a glass of water, which she gave him. It helped.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” she said. “But that’s why we do it like this, so the choice has to be yours. Do you understand?”

He nodded because he did. He’d had the chance to walk away. He almost had. He wondered if he was going to regret not walking away.

“How do you feel?” she said.

“This is strange.”

She laughed. “If that’s all you have to say about it, you’re doing very well.”

Her laughter was comforting. With each breath he took, he felt himself grow stronger. It was like that moment just past being sick, when you still remembered the illness but had moved past it.

“I’m starving,” he said—the hunger felt amazing. He wanted to eat, to keep eating, rip into his food, tear with his claws—

And that was odd.

He winced.

“Oh, Alex was right bringing you in,” Jane said. “You’re going to do just fine.”

He hoped she was right.

On his first full moon, on a windswept plain in the hills of central California, he screamed and couldn’t stop as his body broke and changed, shifting from skin and reason to fur and instinct. The scream turned into a howl, and the dozen others of the pack joined in, and the howls turned into a song. They taught him to run on four legs, to smell and listen and sense, to hunt, and that if he didn’t fight the change didn’t hurt as much. In the morning, the wolves slept and returned to their human forms, but they remained a pack, sleeping together, skin to skin, family and invincible. They taught him how to keep the animal locked inside until the next full moon, despite the song that called to him, the euphoria of four legs on a moonlit night. He’d never felt so powerful, not even when he left home.

He’d called Mitch and told him that he’d been sick with the flu and was staying with a friend. When he returned, the track had changed.

It had become brilliant, textured, nuanced. The dust in the air was chalk, sand, earth, and rubber. The exhaust was oil, plastic, smoke and fire. And the crowd—a hundred different people and all their moods, scents, and noises. A dozen bikes were on the track; each engine had a slightly different sound. He sneezed at first, his nose on fire, before he learned to filter, and his ears burned before he figured out how to block the chaos. He didn’t need to take it all in, he only had to focus on what was in front of him. But he could take it all in, whenever he wanted.

The world had changed. Terrifying and brilliant, all of it.

Alex had given T.J. a ride. Before T.J. left the truck, Alex touched his arm, calming him. The animal inside him that had been ready to tuck his tail and run settled.

“You going to be okay?” Alex said.

“Yeah,” T.J. said, breathing slowly as he’d been taught, settling the creature down.

“I’m here if you need anything. Don’t wait until you get into trouble. Come find me first,” he said.

If the pack was a new family, then Alex was its father, leader, master. That was another thing T.J. hadn’t expected. He’d never really had a father-figure to turn to.

Over the last week he’d learned what the price for invincibility was: learning to pass. Moving among people, thinking all the time how easy it would be to rip into them and feast, imagining their blood on his tongue but never being able to taste. Because if he tried it—if any of them ever actually lost control—the others would rip his heart out. That was how they’d stayed secret for centuries: never let the humans know they were there.

So he worked on Gary’s bikes and thought about the engine, belts, carburetor, and transmission, and remembered that the people around him were his friends and didn’t deserve to die by a wolf’s claws. He wanted to keep his old life. It was worth working to keep. That was the trick, Alex and Jane taught him. You can keep your old life. It won’t be the same, but it’ll still be there.

And he’d actually get to live to enjoy it, now. It was a relief. Made him want to howl.

Something fell on him, knocking the wrench out of his hand. He sprang to his feet, hands clenched, turning to snarl at whoever had done it, interrupted him—attacked. Then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

Mitch was waving him over. A dirty rag lay on the ground next to the wrench, that was all that had hit him.

“Gary’s last race is up, you coming to watch?” Mitch said.

His wolf settled. T.J. put away his tools and followed Mitch to the straw bales ringing the track.

“You okay? You seem a little jumpy lately,” Mitch asked.

He didn’t know the half of it. “I’m okay. I probably need more sleep.”

“Don’t we all,” Mitch said.

It gave him a sense of déjà vu, watching Gary and Alex ride in the same race. This time, though, the PA system was too loud, the crowd of spectators pressed too close, and he didn’t know who to watch, Gary or Alex. Gary was his friend, the guy who paid him under the table to keep his bikes running, who’d given him a break when T.J. needed one so desperately. But Alex was . . . something else entirely. Something bigger than T.J. had words for. Alex was the way he felt howling at the full moon.

The crowd buzzed, because this was Alex’s first race after the spectacular crash. It had only been a few weeks, but it seemed much longer, months or years ago. Gary won the race; Alex didn’t crash again. The incident faded from memory in that moment, but T.J. realized he saw the crash as a turning point—it had changed his life.

Last race. Gary was moving to the pro circuit, to a track out east, and had asked T.J. to come with him. The three of them made a good team. It was a huge opportunity, to go from scraping by as a bush league mechanic to working for a team with a real shot. But a weight seemed to tie him down. Like a collar and leash.

He and Mitch raced to the finish line to meet up with Gary. This was another of T.J.’s favorite things about the track, racing, bikes, and the crowds gathering after the race, offering congratulations and condolences, dissecting what had happened, arguing, handing out cold beers and drinking as they wheeled bikes back to their trailers. This had been the last race of the day; the party spilled onto the track. Someone blasted AC/DC on a radio, and people started dancing.

Gary lounged back on the seat of his bike, enjoying the attention he was getting. T.J. found himself drifting toward Alex. To an observer, it would have looked like the natural movement of the crowd, people circling, clusters gathering and breaking apart. But T.J. had Alex’s black jacket in the corner of his eye, and even amid all the sweat, dirt, spilled gas and oil, he could smell the animal fire of another werewolf. A pack should stay together. Alex, helmet in the crook of his arm, caught his gaze and smiled.

“Good race,” T.J. said, as he might have said even if they hadn’t been werewolves, and Alex the alpha of his pack.

Feeling nervous and awkward—his wolf was prowling, and T.J. suddenly wanted to be out of there—he started to drift back to Gary and Mitch. He wanted to be near his human friends.

Alex stopped him with a hand on his arm that sent a flush over him. Staticky, warm, asexual, comfortable. He could rub his face across the man’s coat. The feeling could get addictive.

But he held himself apart and tried to slow his breathing.

“Gary’s leaving. He asked me to go with him.”

“You can’t do that, you know,” Alex said. “Your family is here. Stay, come work for me,” Alex said.

And how would he tell Mitch and Gary? “I like Gary,” T.J. said. “He’s been good to me. He’s a good rider.”

“I’m a good rider.”

T.J. certainly wasn’t going to argue with that. Shaking his head, he started to walk away.

“T.J.”

He struggled. He had two voices, and both wanted to speak. But his wolf side was slinking, hoping for Alex’s acceptance. “I don’t have to do what you say.”

“You sure about that?”

If he didn’t walk away now, he’d never be able to. It was like that last dinner at home—if he didn’t say it now, he never would, and then he’d curl up and disappear. So he turned and walked away, even though some sharp instinct wanted to drag him back. Claws scraped down the inside of his skin; he tried to ignore it.

Back with Mitch and Gary, rolling the bike to Gary’s trailer, he started to relax.

“Saw you talking to Price,” Mitch said. “I didn’t think he swung your direction.” He was teasing but amiable. T.J. gave him a searing look.

Gary and Mitch left, and T.J. stayed behind. The circuit was over, racing done for the season, and the track settled into a lethargic rhythm of local practice. Guys screwing around on backyard bikes. T.J. scrounged up mechanic jobs when he could, and worked cheap. Alex rented him the guest room in the outbuilding behind his rural ranch house—the room where he’d woken into his new life. Just until he got back on his feet. Whenever that was. Months passed.

He drank at the Dustbowl with the rest of the pack, spent full moon nights with his new family, and that was the life that stretched before him now. But at least he was healthy.

No, truth spoke back at him—he’d traded one disease for another.

He’d taken a shower and was lying on the narrow bed, not thinking of anything in particular, when Alex knocked on the door. He could tell it was Alex by the knock, by the way he breathed.

“We’re leaving for the Dustbowl.”

Part of T.J. sprang up, like a retriever wagging its tail and grinning. Another part of him wanted to growl. He didn’t feel much like socializing. “I think I’m going to stay in tonight.”

“I think you ought to come along.”

Alex’s commands never sounded like commands. They were requests, suggestions. Strong recommendations. He spoke like a parent who always had your best interests at heart.

T.J. started to give in. It was his wolf side, he told himself. The wolf wanted to make Alex happy so the pack would stay whole, and safe.

But he wondered what would happen if he said no.

He sat up. “I don’t really feel like it.”

Sure enough, the door slammed open, rattling the whole frame of the shack. T.J. flinched, then scrambled back when Alex came at him. He tripped over the bed, ended up on his back, with the alpha werewolf lunging on top of him, pinning his shoulders, breathing on his neck.

T.J. lay as still as he could while gasping for breath. He kept his head back, throat exposed, hardly understanding what was happening—his body seemed to be reacting without him, showing the necessary submission so that Alex wouldn’t hurt him. He flushed with shame, because he thought he’d have been able to fight back.

Alex got up without a word and stalked out of the room. T.J. moved more slowly, but followed just the same.

T.J. sat in the corner, away from the others, staring out, turning over thoughts that weren’t his. He could run or he could fight. And what happened to safety? To peace? All he had to do was sit back and take it. Not argue. Not rock the boat, not stick his neck out.

He couldn’t stop staring, which in the body language of these creatures meant a challenge. He dropped his gaze to the bottle of beer he hadn’t been drinking.

Jane pulled a chair next to his and sat, then leaned on his shoulder, rubbing her head against his neck, stroking his arms. Trying to calm him, make him feel better.

“You know I’m gay, right?” he said.

Pouting, she looked at him. “We just want you to be happy. We want you to feel like you belong. You do, don’t you?”

He closed his eyes. “I don’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter as long as you’re safe, right? You know if anyone came through here and gave you trouble, Alex would go after them, right?”

He almost laughed. Like she knew anything about it. “That isn’t the point.”

He’d raised his voice without realizing it, glaring at her so that she leaned away, a spark of animal flashing in her eyes. Heavy boots stepping across the floor inevitably followed, along with a wave of musk and anger, as Alex came to stand beside Jane. It was the two of them, bad cop and good cop, keeping the pack in line. Like they were one big happy family.

T.J. should have gone with Gary.

He stood, putting himself at eye level with Alex—also a sign of challenge. “I’m leaving,” he said. Alex frowned. His mouth had been open to speak, but T.J. had done it first. The rest of the pack was here—they’d fallen silent and gathered around, the happy family. T.J. recognized a gang when he saw one.

Alex laughed—condescending, mocking. As if T.J. were a child. As far as their wolf sides were concerned, he supposed he was. He thought back to Alex throwing him to the floor, felt that anger again, and tamped it down tight. The alpha was trying to get a rise out of him, goad him into some stupid attack so he could smack him right back down. T.J. wouldn’t let him. All he had to do was stare.

“You’ll be on your own,” Alex said. “You won’t like that. You’ll never make it.”

T.J.’s mouth widened in a grin that showed teeth. He shouldn’t taunt Alex. He ought to just roll over on his belly like the others. But he shook his head.

“I’ve done it before,” he said. “I can do it again.”

And the wolf rose up, standing in place of the scared kid he used to be.

They could all jump him. He looked at the door and tried not to think of it, pushing all his other senses—ears, nose, even the soles of his feet—out, trying to guess when the rest of them would attack. He’d run. That was his plan.

“You don’t really want to leave,” Alex said, still with the laugh hiding in his voice.

T.J. looked around at all of them, meeting each person’s gaze. The others looked away. They’d all come here by accident, through werewolf attacks, or by design—recruited and brought to the cage. T.J., on the other hand, had come to them alone, and he could leave that way. Maybe they didn’t mind it here, but one of these days, T.J. would fight back. Maybe he’d win against Alex and become the alpha of this pack. Maybe he’d lose, and Alex would kill him. But they could all see that fight coming.

Which was maybe why they let him walk out the door without another argument. And rather than feeling afraid, T.J. felt like he’d won a battle.

He hadn’t been brave enough to live out his old life. But he’d been brave enough to stick his hand in that cage.

Before he left the area, he had one more thing to do. Just to be sure.

A different guy was working at the clinic, which was just as well. “Have you ever had an HIV test before?” the staffer said.

“Yeah. Here, in fact. About eight months ago.”

“Oh? What was the result? Is there a reason you’re back? Let me look it up.”

T.J. gave the guy his name, and he looked it up. Found the two positives, and T.J. wanted to snarl at him for the look of pity he showed.

“Sir,” he said kindly—condescendingly. “With a result like this you should have come back sooner for counseling. There’s a lot of help available—”

“The results were wrong,” T.J. said. “I want another test. Please.”

He relented and took T.J. into the exam room, went through the ritual, drew the blood, and asked T.J. to wait. The previous times, it had taken a half an hour or so. The guy came back on schedule, wearing a baffled expression.

“It’s negative,” the staffer said.

T.J. exalted, a howl growing in his chest.

The staffer shook his head. “I don’t understand. I’ve seen false positives—but two false positives in a row? That’s so unlikely.”

“I knew it,” T.J. said. “I knew it was wrong.”

He gave the guy a smile that showed teeth and walked out.