“HELLO?” I MURMUR, stepping into the dark.
Strong hands grab me and spin me around the door and pin me against it, slamming it hard enough to shake the hinges. She’s pressed against me, naked and soft, the heat of her flesh going right through my clothes and into my own skin. Her mouth is on mine, hard, rough kisses. More passion than I’ve ever felt in my life, her pulling at my hair, nipping at my neck, forcing her tongue into my mouth. Her hand is in my pants, and I’m hard as rock, my cock trembling against her fingers, pulsing with life, ready to explode. I want to let her take me, in absolutely any way she wants.
“Oh god, Finn,” she moans. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Whoa!” I say, pulling back as far as the door will allow, putting my hands on her shoulders and forcing a space between us. Part of me screaming out in agony. However much I want to taste her, feel her, bury myself in her. I have questions. Questions I’ve waited my whole life to answer.
“Hang on,” I manage, as she continues to force her way back into my mouth, hands pulling and tearing at my clothes. “Hang on!”
She stops, steps back, her naked body barely framed by the edges of a silk kimono. Her eyes are ablaze, and her lips are hungry. I have never been with a woman like this. My experience is all drunken fumbling and shy girls in dark rooms, buried under comforters and duvets. This was like some kind of Penthouse letter. So I met my cousin for the first time . . . Cousin.
“Wait,” I say, hands out. “You are Jules, right? My cousin?”
“We share a grandfather, if that’s what you mean . . .”
Her voice is deep and seductive, “Don’t you want me, Finn?”
God, yes. Can I just say yes? Deal with . . . whatever, later?
But there’s this monkey on my back, this wolf. Lurking there in my shadow.
I take a ragged breath and keep my hands in front of me.
Damn she smells good. Familiar. Welcoming. Wet.
“I uh, well I mean. I just got here. We’re cousins? Isn’t that kind of . . .”
“Maybe out there in the city.” She purrs. “Around here, with our family, it’s survival.”
I side-step her and open up some space between us.
“Don’t get me wrong, Jules. I really am happy to meet you,” I stammer, “and you are . . . very very attractive.”
She’s circling me, ready to pounce.
“Don’t you know how this works, Finn? We’re mated.”
Mated? “I don’t know what that means.”
She slides up closer, sniffs at me. Closer. Runs her nose up the length of me, breathing deep. She pauses. Steps back. She gives me a sideways look of concern.
“You don’t smell right.”
“What do you mean, I don’t smell right?”
She sniffs at me again. Backs up again.
“He said you’d be ready. That you’d know.”
She’s circling me again, and it’s ceased to be sexy. There’s a panic in her voice, in her steps. She pulls the kimono around her and clings to it. She doesn’t smell right either. Bye-bye fantasy, hello fury. She smells dangerous. Hairs all over me prickle against the skin and stand at attention, ready to run.
“Do you even know what you are? You’re not him, are you? You’re not him!”
“I’m sorry, I don’t . . .” She keeps circling me. Watching. Curling herself up, more and more, coiled like a snake.
“That lying sack of shit!”
She turns on me, muscles tightening up, her fists balled at her chest.
“Just get the fuck out!” she growls at me, green eyes gleaming with fury.
“Can we . . .”
“Get the fuck out!” she screams. Her teeth are huge and jagged like knives behind her red lips.
She’s still screaming as I hightail it out the door. Something heavy crashes into the wall behind me, and it sounds as if she’s tearing the place apart. Better the room than me. The big bartender stops me on the way out.
“You didn’t pay for the beer.”
I know I’d left a ten on the bar when he brought it to me, but I just want a quick exit. I drop another one in front of him with an awkward grin, “Keep the change.”
“You’d better fuck off before she finds her way out here, pal.” He gives me the lopsided grin.
I glance at the door, fighting a strong urge to go back and give her what she wanted. I feel her hot skin against me, her hands groping, and her mouth pressed against mine. The wall shudders again as something else smashes against it. I remember the fury in her eyes, the white teeth behind blood red lips.
BOB DYLAN IS waiting for me at the garage.
“Have a good time?”
“Not really,” I grumble.
“That’s weird. She was real excited to meet you.”
“Yeah. She was. I don’t what the hell is going on around here, but the sooner I figure it out the better.”
Bob chuckles and slaps me on the back. He leads me out to the parking lot and into the yellow tow truck. It looks and smells as old as the rest of the place. I immediately grab for the hand-crank to roll down the window. It doesn’t work. No matter how much I twist and rattle and shove it.
“Sorry,” Bob says. “I know you guys like the fresh air. Been meaning to fix that.” He leans over me and twists it around with seemingly no effort at all, and the window comes creaking down.
“Thank you.”
“No problem, kid,” he says.
I stick my head out into the rain-fresh air and close my eyes. When I open them, we’re already climbing through the trees, and the black clouds above have cracked, shards of sunlight breaking through. I feel in my pocket for the statue, trying to remember that I’m here to solve my own mystery. Finn’s mystery. Jimmy is dead and gone, and I need to leave him in the city, dead and buried.
This is the new me. Finn the hero. Finn the Wolf-man. Clinical Lycanthrope. Láng rén. Hero.
Dressed of fur and fierce of tooth.
Whatever that means.