Chapter 10

Carl Wilson

I'm furious with Ivy about Ben. I'm furious with Ben just for existing. Anger is never good for my kind. The wolf feeds on anger. It's also a full moon tonight. The wolf always pushes hardest to come out when the moon is full.

The wolf would actually be very helpful tonight in tracking Ben's movements over the past few days. I have been close enough to him while partially transformed to truly have his scent now. The wolf could follow his trail, tell me when he's been with Ivy, when he's been hunting, when he's been with other zombies.

It's too dangerous to let the wolf our tonight, though. I'm running too hot to control it if I let it out. I know that if the wolf runs across Ben, there will be a fight. I worry even more that if I run into a pinkie while the wolf is out, that the hunger will be too much for me to contain.

There is so little space, even up here in the mountains around Stokers Mill, where I can let the wolf run free and not have to worry about running into anybody. The wolf does not have a compulsion for human prey, but it does find it the most interesting to pursue.

I lay down and try to force myself to sleep, but that doesn't work. It never works. There is simply no way to will yourself to be tired. I'm still way too agitated, and cutting myself off from any distraction only amplifies the voices of the things that are bothering me the most.

There is one thing I can do on nights like this. I do not like to do it, but I am prepared for it. I go down to my basement and strip my clothes off. I fold them neatly and put them in a pile on a stool next to the old canning cellar. It's a windowless burrow carved out of the bedrock of the hillside that always stays cool and slightly damp. Before the days of refrigeration, these cellars were used to store home-canned foods, fruits, vegetables, and potatoes. I step into the cellar, and pull the heavy wooden door shut. Inside the cellar is a cage, secured by a combination lock. I have no problem unlocking it in human form, but the wolf's paws are way too clumsy to manipulate the dial, and the wolf's mind is incapable of recalling the digits anyways. Once I'm securely locked in, and I cannot get out unless in human form, I let the wolf off of its leash.

I wake, curled up into a ball on the floor. The clammy conditions leave me shivering with sore muscles and joints. I remember enough of the night before to be thankful that when the transformation reshapes my body, it heals up most superficial injury. Without that added benefit, my arms and fists would be horrible bruised right now, possibly with some of the finger bones broken. This is actually cage number two for me. The first one had bars set far enough apart that I could bite them, and it took many months for the broken teeth to repair themselves, bit by bit, one transformation at a time.

I am filthy. The entire cellar and I reek of urine, sweat, and rage. I am so stiff getting up and my hands are shaking enough that it takes me much longer than it should to open the combination lock on my cell and get a hot shower started. It is only when I'm finally clean and walk upstairs into strong daylight that I look at a clock and realize it is almost noon. I go to my bedroom to get dressed, and see three tardy calls from the school. I haven't had anything to do with my foster parents for the past few years, pretty much since they realized the Truce was going to hold and there was no longer a pressing need to keep molding me into a zombie slayer. Now that I'm eighteen, the calls simply come to me, and if I can't bring in proof of a doctor's appointment, or a slip from urgent care, it's two days of after school detention for me. Well, Steve owes me a couple days coverage at work for his own detention last week. At least he had a lot more fun earning his than I did.

I call the school back, give them something about being too sick to come in, and not feeling up to sitting in urgent care for a couple of hours to get a note. Now that I've got the rest of the day free, and assuming Ben is in class, I can do some checking up.

Grandma had reluctantly shared the address where Ben lives with his 'parents', only under a very strict promise that I would not go there angry. I find the address and take a quick look as I drive past. It's a small home set far back from the highway, right up against the slope of a mountain with some good, large trees around it. Sensible place for a vampire to set up, since it gets shade for a good part of the daylight hours. The problem with places outside of town like this is that there's no place to inconspicuously park nearby if you want to check out the place on foot. It's legal to park anywhere along the particular road where Ben lives, but a lot of these homes are occupied by people that stay home all day and love to watch their neighbors and the happenings on the road. The nearest place I can find to pull in is more than two miles down the road, at a switchback that's got a wide shoulder and a little path down the hill made by generations of high school kids looking for a place to get drunk and get high with a great view. A car parked there in daylight would be a little odd, but nothing far out enough to raise the attention of the police. Like any teenage boy in Stokers Mill, I keep a camouflage jacket in my car all the time. It's always wise to carry extra warm clothes when you live in the mountains, and camo is the favored color of most of the young guys around here. That, a pair of dark jeans, and just a little bit of the wolf, is enough to let me move through the wooded lots to Ben's place pretty quickly and nearly invisibly.

When I get to his yard, I puzzle out the interior layout by the size and arrangement of windows. It looks like there is one bedroom on the west side of the second floor. There's no way I'm going to climb the wall to look in, so I climb the hillside behind the house to see if I can see in. Of course, being a zombie, he has blackout curtains on his room, and they're drawn.

I set myself to tracking around the house, as close as I dare in full daylight and knowing that the two pinkies living with Ben don't seem to have jobs. I don't know if they're skilled pinkies there for his protection, or just a couple of dupes that will claim to be his parents in exchange for something from him. Probably free room and board if their cover story is weak enough that Grandma could see through it with just the barest amount of work. Professionals in the employ of a vampire always have good answers for those kinds of questions.

Even with a bit of the wolf out, I can't smell any hint of Ben in the backyard. Not surprising, since he does not need to make a transformation to truly use his strengths, so does not need to have hidden approaches or entrances. He is able to just walk out his front door and drive away.

I know that a smart vampire is always careful to never feed hear his home. Still, I do sniff around the mountainside behind his house for a long time, seeking out the scent of something large and dead, or just his zombie stench. I find none, but I also know he is smart. He won't make it easy for somebody to find him.

I take a slightly different route back to my car, to cover more of the ground near Ben's house. As I come up to the miniature dump of empty beer bottles and cans, I pull the wolf back, and wait a moment to adapt to my changed senses before taking the trail up to my car.

Just as I get to it, I smell something I do not like at all. It is very clearly vampire, but I'm not sure if it's Ben or not. I'm already fully transformed back, so I'm not good at distinguishing individuals by scent anymore, and I'm also working from a brief memory of being up in his face several days ago. The scent is very close to Ben's, but I can neither confirm nor deny that it is actually him.

The way the zombie reek lingers in the air around my car says that the vampire was there for at least a couple of minutes, and not too long ago. It's possible that it saw me at some point and ran off.

I examine my car very carefully. It hasn't been obviously broken into, but there are ways to get into a car that don't leave much of a trace. No damage to it. Looking at the gravel shoulder around it, whoever it was had a very light step. I know that Ben fits that description.

I check the time. I can drive to school and get there before the final bell. I cannot think of any reason to believe that Ben would be near enough to his house just now to have discovered I was in the area, find my car parked here, and then get back to school to act as if he'd been there all day. Ivy certainly would think it's odd for him to just show up in the last ten minutes of class, and would not act normally toward him.

So off to school it is. Where Ben's motorcycle is nowhere to be found in the parking lot, and Ivy walks out of school with just Kate and Nathan. Which makes Ben my best suspect for the zombie that was sniffing around my car.

I still can't figure out how Ben knew that I was checking up on him and where I'd parked. While I'm wondering about this, Kate sees my car and quietly signals for me to wait up. She bids farewell to Ivy and Nathan and heads over to hop into my passenger seat. "Hey Graylock." I can tell she's upset about something, and using that nickname out of force of habit, not to tweak at me.

"What gives?" I ask.

"Ivy is beside herself with joy right now."

"How is this bad?"

"Ben asked her to prom."

"I assume she accepted?"

"Of course," Kate says. "Ever since they first kissed she's been completely smitten kitten with him."

I try to bite my tongue, but the question jumps out before I can stop it. "Just a kiss?"

Kate looks at me, trying to figure out how to answer that. I'm pretty sure she thinks it's just male jealousy talking. There's much more to it than that, though. More things I know about zombies. I really want to tell her it's not what she thinks it is, but there's no way I'd be able to back that up. I can't even think of a convincing lie for why I'd want to know.

Still, she answers, "Yes. It's just that so far. She's a careful girl, and it sounds like he's at least treating her well and not pushing her or anything."

"Thank you for telling me. About both things." I am able to relax a bit, knowing he hasn't claimed her yet. That means he probably isn't feeding on her either.

Kate is still clearly trying to figure out why she's telling me things and how I'm reacting to the knowledge. Sure, I'm relieved to hear Ivy hasn't been claimed, but I think that shows in a different way than she'd expect me to feel hearing that some other guy isn't sleeping with the girl I want.

"Carl. I know things have gone sour with you and Ivy. And I really respect that you've backed off since she's asked you to."

"She actually friend-dumped me," I say.

"I know. I'm trying to be, I don't know, polite or something. Just, hear me out, Ok?"

"Ok."

"The thing is, I feel really, really guilty for asking you this, but maybe now that she's pushed you out of her life, you have less to lose than Nathan or I do."

It's my turn to study her face. It takes me just a moment to figure out what she's got in mind. "You want me to scare Ben off, since I can't make things any worse for myself."

Kate winces at being busted, and nods. "Yes. I mean, last week, you really got to him. He doesn't respect anybody around here, unless Ivy can see him acting at it. But I think he's afraid of you."

"He is," I say. But not for the reasons she assumes. And I'm as afraid of a confrontation with him as he is of getting into it seriously with me. Too much risk of damaging the Truce if we come to violence with each other.

Kate is putting me in a rough position by playing on my concerns for Ivy, though. Even now, I will do anything – anything at all – to keep her safe, and Ben is bad, bad news. He has the stink of Negre clan about him, by far the worst of the clans, and the ones that resisted the Truce the longest, and the only ones that have violated it.

"Where is he now?" I ask.

"Somebody backed into his bike. Principal called him just as final period was starting, and he had to go out to meet the wrecker."

There are only two places around he could take the thing. Either home, if he wants to try and repair the damage himself, or out to Bram's Imports, about forty miles down the highway toward Boulder. They're the only place within a hundred miles of here that will touch a foreign bike.

"This is a hard choice for me to make," I tell Kate. "Ivy specifically asked me to stay out of things with her and Ben, and we've got a lot of really close friendship behind us. Plus, there's Grandma. I get into something with Ben, it may ruin everything between Ivy and me, forever, and I'll lose Grandma with it."

"She's told us her grandmother isn't a big fan of Ben at all. Do you think she'd back you up if you ran Ben off?"

That one I can answer immediately and truthfully. "No, she wouldn't. She and I have talked about this before."

"Well, thanks for not jumping me for asking," Kate says.

"I know you're coming from the right place, and you're not asking me to do anything I haven't already thought of," I tell her. "I just made the decision already that I have to let her live her own life, and let her make her own mistakes."

"Ok," she says. I know she wants to try once more to sway me, but doesn't. She just sits beside me in the car, both of us silent, for a little while. I see her nod her head at some internal decision and look at me. She takes my hand in hers. "I'm sorry this whole thing with Ben has cost you your friendship with Ivy. You're a good man, Carl, and I don't want you to think you can't still hang around with me, alright?"

"Alright," I say.

She nods again as part of some internal conversation she's having. "See you tomorrow." She lets go of my hand and leaves the car, minorly flustered. Her scent changed over the course of that conversation. Not that she was physically aroused or anything, but a note of a different kind of attraction made itself known. Her body language – wolves can read body language very well – also changed. They say little boys always pick on the girls they like the most. It appears the same might be true the other way around.

I hate to admit it, but that little exchange pushed me. Pack is king among the blooded. Kate is part of my pack, and she's become a closer member just in the last few minutes. She has asked me to defend another member of the pack that is very important to me. It is a powerful call that Kate did not know she just made, but she made it. I feel compelled to answer it.

Less than forty minutes later, I pull into Bram's Imports. I see the zombie sitting around the lobby, watching out the window. He spots me immediately, and I see anger flash across his face.

Ben comes outside to meet me as I get out of my car.

"Why are you stalking me?" he asks.

He doesn't know just how much I'm stalking him now. I decide to keep that to myself for now. As well as the fact that there's apparently another Negre in the area now who seems to know where his house might be.

"I just found out you think you're taking Ivy to prom."

"I asked, she accepted, most of the arrangements have been made."

"Including the private dance afterwards?" I ask.

"None of your business, Carl."

"Ivy is family. It is my business." The wolf wants to join the dance, but I pull his leash up real short. I need to keep my control here.

"She's an adult, and last I heard, has turned her back on you. Unless you're actually playing the part of the long-jilted and jealous suitor, we need never speak to each other again."

"If Ivy survives you, she and I will be kin again." It pains me a little bit, still, to admit that we will never love each other in a non-familial way. But Ivy is worth it to me. Thinking of her as a pack sister now is starting to wear the sharp edges off of that pain.

"Carl," Ben says. "I truly intend her no harm. My interest in her is indeed what it says on the label. I have simply fallen for a lovely woman and would like to have a happy future with her."

"I don't want that future for Ivy," I say, "Or the other one. You know which two I mean." Their only options are for him to turn her, or for her to grow old and die while watching him remain forever youthful.

"You forgot the third option," Ben says. "The one where I run off on her as soon as I can no longer hide the fact that she is aging and I am not."

"How can you claim to love her, knowing that there is simply no happy future for her with you? Nothing good can come of this."

Ben is silent. I realize he has been very civil, very non-threatening to me this entire conversation. It's helped me keep the wolf under control. Maybe that's why he is doing it. Finally, he says, "I haven't worked out everything yet. I don't have much beyond prom mapped out for us. I just know that we are meant to be together. I'm not going to back down on this Carl. Please understand that."

"Claim her now, figure it out later is not how you respect someone you love. Regardless of that stupid fairy tale winds of fate and true love garbage that you seem to believe in. Please, show me more respect than that. I'm holding my temper with you, and I'm not threatening you. Show me the same consideration."

"I am," Ben says. "I know you have studied us in depth. So you know that we can sense short distances into the immediate future sometimes. Enough to communicate sometimes courses of action that we should and should not take. Yes?"

I nod. He's telling the truth on that count.

"I need to claim Ivy for her own protection."

"I don't believe you," I say.

"I wish you would," Ben says. He looks straight into my eyes, keeps his face toward me the entire time. He's making it easy for me to read his body language. He seems to believe what he is saying.

I still don't have to like it. "We can protect her just fine without you. She's got family, friends, and an entire school that thinks she is the one of the best among us. We look out for our own here," I say. "So, leave. If its vampires threatening her, you brought them here. Go somewhere else and have them all follow you."

"It's not that simple," Ben says. "She's special."

"That's what I just told you. And she's ours. Now get your little ten-speed fixed up and pack it on out of Stokers Mill. Before prom night. Break her heart a little bit now instead of destroying it later."

"Carl," Ben says. He's actually pleading with me.

"No. Get out of town!"

"Whatever it is about her that drew me here will draw others."

"Then deal with them on your way out of town and out of Ivy's life."

"Actually Carl, you're the one who's most immediately a threat to her."

"What?" I ask.

"You know the signs of the Negre?"

"Of course I do," I say.

"My latest sense, and I will swear on anything you ask me to, this is not a lie." He points at me, then crosses the first two fingers of his right hand and lays them across his heart. "You can't protect her. You'll lead them to her."

He's either telling me the honest truth, or he's done an amazing job of believing one of his own lies. I don't know which yet, but seeing that sign, an indication that I'll be killed to find something more important, really cuts deep into my pride. It's getting harder to keep the wolf down – it is an extraordinarily proud beast.

I turn away from Ben, get into my car, and take a long drive down to Boulder. I need to spend a lot of miles thinking.