Chapter 19
A Feral High
Furious pounding shook the front door, tearing Roscoe and me from a stupid argument about which Star Trek was the best. At first, I thought Austin had locked himself out of the house again.
He’d already lost his house key four times, so he’d gotten a brilliant idea.
Instead of having the key on his person, he’d decided to hide it in a rock-shaped lockbox among hundreds of other rocks that he’d dumped around the front porch. That turned into a fun evening.
I reached for the knob as the pounding continued louder, but the moment tobacco wafted in through the poorly insulated door, I stopped.
“Shit,” I whispered, peeking through the front window curtains. Mosavi was in human form, but his teeth were bare and eyes glowing that angry silver. “Well, he looks like he’s in a fantastic mood.”
“He always looks like that,” Roscoe replied from behind, leaning over my shoulder to get a look.
“Answer the door, Dakota!” He snapped his attention to the window, his furious gaze settling on me before I jumped back.
“Well, we need to disappear.” I glanced back at the dining room table, which held the large cardboard box of booze and junk food. “That lighter was his connection to me.”
“He ain’t gonna get in unless he goes all wolfy and breaks down the door. He’s human for a reason, so he probably don’t want anyone seein’ what he really is.” Roscoe slid the box off the table and picked it up. “This is gonna be fun!”
The sound of a key slipping into the lock made me break into a cold sweat.
“He’s got keys?”
“Everyone’s probably got a key now thanks to Austin,” Roscoe muttered before flipping the hinge bar lock the absent-minded werewolf had installed after varnishing the door.
As soon as the knob turned, the door met resistance. Mosavi put all his weight onto it. He growled a few harsh words in Farsi before continuing his assault.
“You better hope those ferals have some answers,” I whispered, grabbing a light coat from the rack and the backpack of supplies I packed earlier.
Taking care to stay hidden this time, I peeked through the curtains again as the angry mayor pressed his cell phone against his ear.
He turned away from the house and spoke quietly.
This was our chance, and I followed Roscoe into the hallway toward the back door. “We are gonna be so fucked.”
“We ain’t fucked.” Roscoe opened the door, and we both slipped outside. “He’s bluffing. He probably don’t even know yer home. And if he’s in human form, he probably can’t smell you—” He gave himself a sniff. “He probably smells me, though.”
“We will be discussing your hygiene later. Again,” I whispered, gently shutting the door behind me. “I’m cutting you off unless you start taking more showers.”
Roscoe let out a quiet snigger, pushing away a few tree branches as we made our way into the woods. “I can be as gross as I want, and you’d still ride me like a horse.”
“Is that so?”
Roscoe shrugged. “Let’s test my theory.”
“That’s cute. Roscoe has a theory.”
“You wouldn’t last a day.”
“Well, Austin’s been kind of sweet on me lately. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
His grin faded quickly.
“Now yer bluffing.”
“Do you really wanna call it?”
“It’s Austin. The guy has the personality of a rotten pineapple, and I know you ain’t gonna let him do that. Yer too much of a prude.”
I bit my lower lip as we got deeper into the dense trees. The late afternoon was fading fast, and in about an hour, it would be too dark to see anything. We’d both have to rely solely on Roscoe’s night vision and heightened senses.
“There’s a lot more to Austin than you think. The poor guy’s been through some awful things.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You know some of it, but it gets so much worse.”
Roscoe turned to me, the bottles in the box rattling as we quickened our pace.
“There’s more than just the military fuckin’ with his head?”
I nodded. “Can’t talk about it, though. He confided in me.” Cracking a smug expression, I met Roscoe’s eyes. “He’s told me things he won’t even tell Adam, so that rotten pineapple’s actually pretty sweet inside. He also showers more now. Still gonna call my bluff?”
Roscoe said nothing.
“That’s what I thought,” I continued, knowing deep down I wasn’t going to do anything. No way would I break the promise I made to Adam, even if he stomped on my last nerve at times. “Do you even know where we’re going?”
“Nope. If they wanna be seen, they’ll find us. Ever open a piece of cheese around a dog?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s kinda what we’re gonna do, only the dogs are eight-foot-tall and really territorial.”
“Well, when you put it like that, I’d rather go back and take my chances with Mosavi.
” I tugged at Roscoe’s ratty, black, sleeveless shirt that didn’t go past his midriff.
This was the first time I’d ever seen him wear it, and it had the word cum written in the style of a popular video game title on the chest. “Where the hell did you find this?”
“Would you believe someone just threw it away?”
“Yes, I would.”
We walked in silence for only a moment before Roscoe’s tone slipped into something more concerning. “I haven’t been able to find my orange hoodie. You wouldn’t happen to know where it is, would you?”
I was hoping I could get that thing clean before he noticed it was gone.
“I put it in with the load of laundry earlier. You’re lucky I didn’t throw it away.”
His ears pressed angrily against his head. “You washed it after I told you not to?”
“It was filthy, and I got tired of smelling it.”
“You know how long it took me to get it smellin’ like that?”
“Dude. Nothing should smell like that.”
Roscoe huffed, looking away. “You don’t understand. Smells mean everything to a werewolf. That hoodie was comfortable and familiar, and someone special gave it to me.”
“It’s just in the washing machine. It’s not like I threw it in the fire pit.”
“You may as well have. It’s gonna take months to get it smellin’ the way it did.”
“I swear to God—”
“Don’t go changin’ everything,” he snapped, which startled me. “It’s bad enough yer makin’ me take showers all the time. It’s hard on my skin, you know? We ain’t like humans. Gotta have them natural oils or we start to itch all the damn time.”
“Then why don’t you and Austin just shift into your half-turn form when you shower? My skin doesn’t itch.”
Roscoe gritted his teeth, glaring straight ahead.
“Don’t wash my hoodie no more.”
“Whoa, you’re really upset.”
“Just a little.” He forced a smile. “Yer gonna learn to love that smell one day. Nothin’ really stinks to a werewolf. Certain smells just makes us think about things.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, see that pile of deer shit over there?” He turned to the right and nudged me. Sure enough, there were deer droppings not far from where we were walking. “I can tell you almost anything about that deer just from smellin’ it’s shit.”
“Ew. Are you fucking with me right now?”
“Ain’t gonna lie about that, otherwise you’d probably think I was into it.”
I squinted at him. “You better not be. The pee was gross enough.”
“I’m just sayin’ that smells ain’t good or bad to us. They just tell us what we need to know, and sometimes they make us feel comfortable.” He glared at me again. “Like my hoodie.”
“I’m sorry, okay? I won’t wash it again.” I shoved my hands into my pockets. “What was so comforting about it? You just like your BO or something?”
“Our BO,” he corrected.
“Excuse me?”
“I just like the way we smell… together. That hoodie had a lot of us in it, and I liked that.”
As frustrating as it was arguing with him, that was unexpectedly sweet—in a strange, gross way. “Now I feel like shit.”
“Good. Maybe you won’t be such a hard ass about me takin’ showers now.”
“Oh no, I’m not changing my mind on that. The deal is I won’t wash your hoodie, but I’ll make damn sure you shower.”
He huffed but didn’t say anything more. We continued along an invisible path that only Roscoe could see, and as the last of the sunlight faded, I grew more concerned.
“How long are we going to stay out here?”
“You got yer supplies, right?”
I shuffled under the light weight of my backpack. “We’re not spending the night in the woods. I didn’t pack enough stuff for that.”
“Yer a goddamn half-turned werewolf. This is where we should be, anyway.” He inhaled deeply through his nose. “Smell that clean air. Mmm, all them pines and maples.”
“You’re smelling deer shit right now, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, that’s in there, too.”
Once again, we laughed it off, but this time, I could admit being at fault and overstepping.
It wasn’t like Roscoe to get angry, and he had a point.
Everything was changing enough as it was, but I was forcing him into this mold he didn’t fit.
Roscoe was older and set in his ways, and he wasn’t going to change his gross habits overnight—even if one of those habits turned out to be something really thoughtful.
“You know a lot about the ferals, and Mosavi thinks you used to be one. Did you?”
One of Roscoe’s ears fell as he shrugged. “I get bits and pieces of when I was younger, and I can remember runnin’ through the woods a lot.”
I elbowed his arm. “Run? I don’t believe it.”
“I run when I have to. Just ain’t had to do it in a while.” He shoved me back playfully. “Maybe I was a hyper little scamp, but I really don’t remember my time with the ferals if I was there.”
“You really don’t know? We could be walking into death right now because you have a hunch.”
“Well, there’s a tiny chance it could’ve just been a really good LSD trip, but this is a different feeling. I know I was out there, but I just don’t know—you know?”
“Have you been sneaking sips of beer?”
“Maaaybe.”
Roscoe stepped on a loud branch, which startled me enough that I almost ran into him.
“I can’t see anything. You’d… protect me if anything tried to eat me, right?” I asked.
“Uh… sure.”
“That didn’t exactly instill confidence, Roscoe.”