The Worst Werewolf Read online

  After a few minutes of wrangling the details, the three of them settled on a plan. Tovin might not be what Eresna wanted, but he’d be what she got.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: STUPID AND CHEAP

  Gentle shaking jarred Tovin back to consciousness. He blinked a few times until he could make out the jutting triangle of a face. The Asian woman from the bar stood on the other end of a pale arm that looked like blurred lines through bad binoculars. The floral print of her dress seemed to stretch outside the hard lines of her body. Little pink blurs everywhere.

  “Tovin,” she shook him again.

  “This is stupid.” He heard another woman say. “Really stupid. Like Garvey-thought-of-it levels of stupid.”

  Pink flowers ignored her. “Tovin, wake up.”

  He didn’t immediately respond. His body felt like he was stepping outside of a dream into a nightmare he had previously abandoned. He tried to roll back the other way to reboot himself into a better situation. It worked for the computer at the library, after all. Turn it off. Turn it on. Problem solved.

  “Sweet treat,” Garvey called out.

  That son of a bitch. Tovin’s eyes flew open along with his mouth. He was about ready to give the man a piece of his mind when he caught a glimpse of all three of them. His eyes focused. Six pointed incisors in total. Right. Werewolves. Or crazy people—he had to keep telling himself that. Not that it mattered either way.

  Then there was the pain. Tovin groaned. Memories came back in one solid heap. The date, the forest, the minivan. Panicked, he tried to look down at his leg. He remembered the white of protruding bone and his torn, bloodied pants. Pink Flowers pushed him against the cushions of a sofa. “There, there.” she comforted him awkwardly, rubbing her hand along his temple as if checking for fever.

  But he didn’t need to see the fracture to know it was there. It was the epicenter for the agony sending shock waves through his body.

  Standing beside Pink Flowers was the other woman from the bar, the redhead who was good at trivia. Her dress was gone and replaced with an odd assortment of styles—yellow glasses frames with no lenses, a printed tee, and leggings. Tovin especially loved the leather jacket that had a giant wolf face on the back of it. He saw it whenever she turned her back on him, which was often. Werewolf or not, he had to applaud the fashion statement she made.

  “You think this is going to work?” the redhead asked while she gave Tovin a doubtful look. “This kid is handsome but not exactly as…” she flipped her hand through the air. Whatever word she was searching for never came. “Look, all I’m saying is that you could have cut your tongue licking that other man’s nipples.”

  “Sweet treat is adorable. Look at him with his big green eyes and blondish-brown hair. Oats and honey. Human Build-A-Bear. Eresna can dress him up in all sorts of cute outfits.”

  Garvey crinkled his nose at Tovin.

  Redhead responded, “Oats and honey it might have been before you let it tenderize itself against every rock in the forest, but now it’s black beans and curdled milk. Two things I wouldn’t eat separately, let alone together.”

  “I’d eat it.” Garvey gave her a toothy smile.

  Both shewolves exchanged glances. Red shook her head again slightly and looked at Garvey the way a mother looks to an errant child whose disappointments were becoming too numerous to bear, a look that only made Garvey’s smile expand.

  “Right,” Pink Flowers eventually said. “Let’s get him cleaned up.”

  They all argued for a bit about what they were going to do with him. Red worried about bonding with him. Yuck was tossed out there as a descriptive word. She pointed at his leg, his other injuries. Garvey wanted to dress him up to impress someone. Pink Flowers stomped her foot, tiny heels clicked. Tovin couldn’t follow any of it. The most he got from the entire exchange was the redhead’s and Pink Flower’s names: Nadine and Yuri. He wanted to assure them all they were most certainly not going to bond, not in any sense of the word as he understood it.

  “All right, time for Garvey to fix this. Come here, you.” Garvey bent down and stretched his arms out toward Tovin.

  Pain shot up from his leg through his entire body, coiling tightly in his groin, as he swatted at the werewolf. Vomit surged from his mouth, hitting the floor with a splatter. He drooled the rest on his clothes. Too weak to turn over, he swallowed down the leftover acid, the bile. “Yuck,” Nadine said again. And again. And again. He got the idea.

  “Lesson learned.” Gleeful as always, Garvey picked him up and carried him to a bathroom Tovin would have appreciated under other circumstances. Very modern. Glossy gray tiles covered the floor and the walls, highlighting the stark whiteness of all the fixtures. Everything gleamed and shone under a chandelier that floated like a jellyfish above them.

  The large shower room Garvey eventually plopped him in was equally amazing. Several spouts jutted from the marble walls, each at a different height. The largest showerhead hung from the top; it was a massive rectangular fixture directly above a small bench. When Tovin looked at it, he wanted to shut his eyes and let the water gently coax away the filth and grime from his body.

  It was the type of thing he wanted for himself in his normal life.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” Garvey said. “It’s all yours if you don’t get your neck snapped.”

  Tovin couldn’t help it. He whimpered.

  “Oops. Made it worse.” Garvey shook his head at himself. “Cheer up, though. We have a plan. Ever bring a stray home to your parents and promise them you’d pick up its poopies and take such good care of it?”

  Tovin hadn’t. But he got the general idea, so he nodded.

  “Good. You’re the stray. The werewolf who’s coming here soon is our parent. We, the kids, are going to look at her with big eyes and say, ‘Please.’ You need to continue looking pathetic. Yes. Like that. And maybe whimper again some. That even got me going a bit.”

  “This is so stupid,” Nadine said again. “And cheap.”

  “Well, we’re committed now,” Garvey responded with good cheer.

  Garvey was gentle enough undressing him. Even when Tovin made a few perfunctory gestures of defiance, mostly born from the notion that he should protect his nudity, the werewolf shushed him and then yanked off the remains of Tovin’s clothes.

  When the actual shower began, Tovin’s protests became less superficial, Garvey’s admonishments less congenial. The water was far too hot for human skin and left red splotch marks wherever it touched, searing rather than coaxing the grime and dirt from Tovin’s body. Garvey scoured his flesh as though Tovin was an especially troublesome skillet caked with egg. Contusions and scrapes were met with greater force as though the werewolf felt his level of vigor would correspond to greater results and the marred parts of Tovin’s body would yield accordingly.

  It hurt. Tovin kept twisting to get away, and Garvey kept dragging him back, his hands slipping on what parts of Tovin’s skin were slick with soap. Occasionally the werewolf tugged on his bad leg, and the pain made him moan and cry out, all to his shame. “I’m trying to help you. Hold still.” But Tovin couldn’t and continued to claw his way around the shower stall to find a spot where at least he would be protected from the sting of the water.

  “It’s too hot,” Tovin protested.

  Nadine chuckled. “I’m going to hug it and squeeze it and call it—”

  Yuri, pale with fury, stamped her foot again. The noise scattered like a shotgun blast around the room. “Enough. Move. You’re hurting him.”

  For the first time, Garvey looked angry. “For fuck’s sake, Yuri. I’m trying to—”

  Pink flowers showed her teeth and jerked her thumb behind her. “Move.”

  Garvey bared his teeth back at her.

  There was a lot of growling and posturing. Eventually, Garvey averted his gaze with a huff. He tossed the washcloth to the ground and got out of the way. Fiddling on his smartphone suddenly seemed like something he wanted to do all along. He said something to Nadine a
bout someone in his LARP group having a birthday. She told him it sounded like the perfect time to role-play a character who was cheap and forgetful. They both laughed.

  Pink Flowers, now known to him as Yuri, fixed the water first, continually looking at him to ask, “Comfortable?” as she adjusted the temperature. When he finally nodded, she knelt beside him, gathered him into her arms and washed him more gently than he would have ever thought her capable, all while mumbling platitudes—shushes, tuts, and there nows.

  Nadine looked concerned. “Jesus. You’re already fully bonded to him. What’s going on, Yuri? How did that happen?”

  Yuri didn’t have a response to that question. She rested her chin on Tovin’s head and said, “We’re going to be fine.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE: OVERTHINKING IT

  Through clacking teeth, Tovin asked, “What’s going to happen? What’s going to happen if Eresna doesn’t accept me?” He kept repeating. They kept ignoring him.

  At least they’d sort of healed his leg. It was still red and throbbing, but no longer broken.

  Naked except for his underwear, Tovin was surrounded by personal details that didn’t belong to him. He was not a cellist, did not wear finely tailored suits, was not a briefs sort of guy, and had never worn a bow tie or read much classical literature. In his head, Tovin heard the fine, expensive objects in the room titter in Miller’s voice that something so fine would never belong to a fag like him. Thinking it stung. The more he tried to unthink it for his own sake, the more the word repeated. He’d been called that so many times before.

  Pawing through it all and oblivious to any and all resentments was Garvey looking for pajamas. Each item he found had its own brief narrative—the gist of which was simply, These are not pajamas—and then was discarded summarily onto a growing pile of nonpajamas on the floor.

  All of them avoided eye contact with Tovin. Occasional spin-the-bottle glances where eyes never quite chose to look at him darted his way.

  “We need something adorable,” Garvey told the two shewolves. “What’s more adorable than pajamas?”

  Yuri, staring off into space, didn’t turn to him to respond. “I hope she beats you until you’re full on your own blood and can’t feel your fangs, Garvey.”

  “Drama, drama,” he snapped back.

  The hostilities between the two hadn’t waned. They went on like that for a bit. Garvey wisecracking, Yuri retorting, Nadine mediating. Tovin drifted in and out of it until the doors opened. In wisped with airy grace what had to be one of the most beautiful women Tovin had ever seen. A slender, smooth-muscled statue who had dark, flawless skin, all soft lines and shine, and a trove of curly hair that geysered from her scalp and shook with each little movement. Lacking immortality, she would have had a timeless face—the old woman with smooth skin, impossibly white teeth. The three of them snapped to attention, and said as one. “Alpha Guardian Eresna.”

  “Who is this?” The woman’s voice was soft, her expression curious when she looked at Tovin. “Where is my companion?”

  “Garvey messed things up, Alpha Guardian Eresna.” Nadine pointed at the cowering wolfman, who lingered behind Tovin’s shoulder.

  “Explain,” the newcomer demanded with the haughty air of authority.

  Though the request was directed at Garvey, Yuri answered. “Garvey thought it would be fun to have sex with Lavario’s bloodservant. When that failed, he decided it would be equally fun to transform and then hunt down the boy. During the chase, the human injured himself to the point where Mazgan was unwilling to accept him, stating that the boy’s injuries would result in death during feeding. Lavario got to choose another to take this one’s place. He chose your companion. There was nothing to be done since the fault was ours.”

  “I see. Why is he here?” Eresna gestured to Tovin.

  “He’s a gift.” Nadine rushed in to explain, cutting Yuri off with a sideways glance in the other shewolf’s direction. “From Lavario.”

  She looked at Tovin down the line of her nose. “How very considerate of him. Why did you three bring him to me, and why is he awake?”

  Nadine rushed in again. “We thought you might actually like him. Great body. Unusual eyes, stunning really. I know you can’t see it now because of all—” She circled her hand in the air again. “Well, he’s kind of dinged up. Healed, he’s quite good looking. He was Lavario’s after all.”

  If she was meant to be impressed by the last bit, she wasn’t. Distant, suspicious, she held herself back from the group. Although he wouldn’t bet his life on it, Tovin thought he saw some humor here and there—quick flashes of light in her deep-brown eyes. It kept him from hating her completely. “Gay—or at least bisexual—for Lavario’s pleasure, I assume?”

  “Well. Yes. Gay.”

  “Not much fun for me.” Eresna raised her lip in a slight, chiding smile.

  “No, but. Uh. Uh. Erm.” Nadine paused, searching, searching, searching. “I bet you’ll enjoy his company. He’s real good at trivia.”

  This was the point at which Tovin decided he’d like a more articulate advocate than Nadine. Yuri, the one who was so gentle with him, was the only other one keen to speak. Each time she tried, Nadine cut her off in hurried spurts of garbled arguments amounting to nothing more than the elongated please Garvey mockingly suggested earlier.

  Eresna was having nothing of any of it. She made some guttural noise, cutting the babbling redhead off. “Garvey?” Eresna turned his direction. “Did you do all this because he was to be Lavario’s?”

  Garvey’s smile bubbled to the surface like it wanted to come out but knew better. “We have our history.”

  Questions stopped. The woman began to strip. Nudity didn’t bother Tovin, but the controlled way she stepped out of her elegant gown made him want to look away. It was lethal, driven by an intent the more primitive parts of Tovin’s brain immediately understood. Outside of her gown at last, she folded it, still calm, and handed it over to Yuri for safekeeping.

  Regally, showing the same care she’d shown for the gown, she transformed. Reactively, Garvey followed and hunkered down into a defensive posture. Side by side, Garvey’s form appeared mangy and domesticated, close to ridiculous. Eresna’s form was more what Tovin expected in a werewolf: massive, lacking identifiable sexual organs, and terrifying yet beautiful in its own way.

  No suspense. She beat the shit out of him.

  Garvey, for his part, endured. He made no attempt to fight back, no movement to protect himself. Each bite pierced skin, each blow landed. The longer she wailed on him, the more doglike he became, physically shrinking until he was the size of any standard wolf. Only when the shewolf’s maw descended on his throat did he make any sort of proactive, voluntary maneuver—rolling onto his back to whimper. Eresna hovered above his throat, growling softly.

  Tovin wasn’t going to lie. It felt so good at first—like the first few bites of ice cream on a hundred-degree day. Before too long, Tovin couldn’t help but feel bad for Garvey. Not that it mattered. He was nonexistent, tucked away in the corner of the room to observe and wait until they were ready to tell him his fate. Neck snapped or forever food.

  Worst participant in a chase scene, terrified captive, then possible slave to a werewolf queen. Tovin cared little for his story arc so far. “Stop,” Tovin did his best to stand when he said it, but he couldn’t manage much with this leg. It throbbed. The pain bit at his resolve.

  All heads turned his direction. Eresna looked at him briefly before returning to her task.

  “Stop,” Tovin repeated.

  This time Eresna acknowledged him. Bits of flesh dripped from her paws, blood pulled away from her canines like liquid on the side of a plastic cup. Slits of amber narrowed on his face. Was she angry? He couldn’t tell. Maybe. Probably. Heavy breathing, the scuttle of her claws against the wooden floor, and the frantic beat of his own heart kept him company as he closed his eyes and prepared himself to die for the second time today.

  A gentle touch where he w
as expecting a strike startled him. Yuri touched his shoulder. Her face had an expression that reflected his thoughts, Really? For that asshole? As much as it could emote, Garvey’s battered-dog face echoed the sentiment. Eresna hadn’t moved at all. “She would never kill Garvey,” Yuri said to him before turning to Eresna. “You see how kind he is, Guardian?”

  “Or dumb,” Nadine said.

  Yuri gave her a sharp look.

  Apologetic, Nadine amended her previous statement. “He’s very kind. Just the sweetest.”

  Wolf changed back to woman and she glanced at Tovin with sad eyes before fixing her gaze back on her petite companion. “Yuri, the boy is not suited for me.”

  Yuri looked to her feet. Nadine shook her head. Garvey hopped out of his wolf form. Bent to the side, his nose pouring blood. The rest of his face was red, beginning to blacken. There were welts on this body, long claw marks turning purple at the edges. Despite the injuries, Garvey tried to advocate for Tovin. “But he’s so adorable.”

  Everyone ignored him.

  “He is not suited.” Eresna stressed it again, draping a long, silken robe over her nakedness. “My people will be disappointed. You know my bloodservant is a gift from them, Yuri.”

  Yuri gave Nadine a brief glance, as though asking for permission. The other shewolf grimaced and then nodded. “We’ve already bonded with him, Guardian. It happened on accident after he fell out of the car. Please spare us by accepting him.”

  Eresna turned to Nadine with a raised eyebrow, disbelief etched into her features.

  “Yes, I’m bonded to him. I love him. I’d be devastated if anything were to happen to him,” Nadine assured her. None of it was intended to be sarcastic—at least Tovin didn’t get that sense—but the shewolf was a terrible actress. Lines were blurted and clunky, eyes wide and straightforward as she recited them. It didn’t make him hopeful that whatever it is they were doing was working.