I TURN AND bury my face in the wide chest of Bob Dylan’s buckskin shirt, throw my arms around him and squeeze.
He wheezes and squeaks like a broken rubber duck, and buckles under my weight.
“Awww, hell,” he groans, and I catch him as he falls.
“Bob? Bob!” As I stretch him out on the floor for the shed, I see that he’s soaked through with blood in at least four places. One pant leg is black and completely saturated from a wide gash across his thigh.
The sound of Jules tearing into the carcass that used to be McQueen continues behind me. I turn and crouch, crab-walking around the opposite side of him, keeping as much distance between myself and the wolf as possible.
She looks up at me with her one gleaming eye, bares teeth covered in blood and flesh, and returns to her vengeance meal. The feet of a hundred birds batter and claw at the tin roof. The clamour is deafening.
I dig in McQueen’s pockets, come up with nothing but a lighter and a tiny, sticky bottle of lube. There’s something round, and hard, in his other pocket. I reach carefully underneath gnashing teeth and slip my fingers into his other pocket. I grip it tight in my hand, the cold white jade filling me with resolve. Calming my nerves. Reminding me of who I came here to be.
I pick up the knife and think about cutting McQueen’s pants away, cutting them into strips for bandages or tourniquets. One sniff and I know they’d be more likely to kill Bob than the blood loss.
I lift Bob enough to peel away the buckskin shirt and lift the necklaces and charms from his neck. Most of them are on leather straps. I strip the longest necklace of its beads, silently apologizing to whatever Gods or Spirits I might be offending, and quickly run it around Bob’s leg, above the gash, cinching it tight until the blood stops oozing from the wound.
I’m so lost in trying to remember my eighth-grade emergency survival class, I don’t realize that Jules has changed back until the batter of feet against the roof turns quiet and I hear her weeping behind me.
She’s on her knees, in front of what’s left of McQueen, her face in her hands, sobbing.
“What have I done? What have I done? What have I done?”
She’s rocking slowly as she says it, repeating her mantra of guilt over and over.
She trembles as I put my hand against her shoulder.
“It’s okay, Jules. You saved me. You saved us. He got what he deserves.”
She turns her face to me, a jagged scar where the open wound had been, but there’s still only a hollow pit where her eye should be. The shock of it must show on my face. She drops her gaze and turns away again.
“He deserves much worse. So do I.”
“Jules,” I say, wadding Bob’s shirt up to place under his head. “We’re in a load of deep shit here. Magus is going to kill us, he’s already . . .” I stop, knowing that me not saying the words won’t change it, knowing that she already hears it in my voice.
“I heard what he said. They’re all dead. Because of me. My parents. Your dad. Raigan. Now Jamie and Kev . . .” Her voice cracks on the last two names.
“Arthur.” I don’t know why I say it. She’s had enough. I can hear the defeat, the self-loathing, in her voice. I know the sound of it all too well, from years of my own misery. She doesn’t need any more tombstones piled on her back. I guess I say it to make it real.
I twist another leather strap under Bob’s left arm, where a ragged slice of flesh is missing, and a deep cut shows white beneath carved muscle. He groans and tries to lift his head.
“Shhhh. It’s okay, Bob. You’re going to be okay.” He swats at me with his other arm. He knows I’m lying. How much blood can a regular person have inside of them? Most of Bob’s is on the floor underneath him.
Blood’s on the inside, right? Isn’t that what he said? Not this time.
“Boys,” he croaks at me. “Ain’t dead.”
Jules throws me out of the way before the words are out of his mouth. She’s right on top of Bob. Her one eye trained on his lips. “What did you say? Where?” She shakes him. “Where the fuck are they?”
Bob coughs and sucks a shallow breath that whistles somewhere inside of him. I notice little pink bubbles of foam in the bloody spot around his ribs.
“Get off of him!” I grab her around the waist and lift her off of the floor, off of Bob, as she kicks and thrashes, clawing at my arms. I shove her toward the door.
She turns and growls at me, teeth bared, looking feral and dangerous, wild rage burning in that one green eye like a forest of flame.
I hold her gaze with my own, not flinching. I stare her down. No more games.
“Enough.”
Her shoulders hunch around her neck, and she crouches, ever-so-slightly, ready to pounce. Her muscles tighten, and her fists ball at her chest. I remember her doing the same thing in the back room of the Victory. There she looked like an angry mythical goddess. Now she looks like a mad witch, naked, dirty, caked with blood.
“Jules.” I try to make the words calm, but strong. If I back down from her, she’ll attack. I need her on my side. I can’t face Magus alone. I know that. All three. That’s what Raigan said.
“Bob says that Kev and Jamie are alive. We need to help Bob so he can tell us where they are.”
She tenses again, lips curling up over her teeth. I know the face.
Her chest is heaving with anger. I know the feeling.
“I’m not telling you. I’m asking you. Please, Jules. Help me.”
Her breathing softens, hardly enough to notice, but I feel her temperature drop. I see the flush fade from her face, and her fists release enough that her fingers take colour again.
BOB IS STILL struggling for breath, a spatter of pink foam forming around the wound in his side. I check the other gashes and cuts, none of them pouring blood the way they had been. I just hope it’s from my nursing skills, and not that he’s almost out of time.
Jules kneels next to me, fingering the tiny hole where the pink foam is bubbling.
“We need something to seal this. There’s some plastic sheet over there.” She points to the other side of the shed. “Go cut me a piece big enough to cover this hole. A little bit bigger.”
I do as I’m told, and when I return, Jules has a small pail of water and is washing the foam away, pouring water over the wound, and then we watch as the rivulets of water change from clear to red. It shows her where the damage is, and she smooths the plastic over it, pressing my hand against it to hold it in place.
“Keep the pressure on. And give him some water, if you can wake him up.”
She moves to the other side of Bob, checking my handiwork, tightening the tourniquet on his leg, then dousing it with water from the bucket.
“This one’s the worst, this and the hole in his chest. He might be okay if we can get him down the mountain.”
“Thank you.” I put my hand on top of hers.
“I’m sorry,” she offers, but she pulls her hand away. “All of this. This is my fault. I believed him. I let him use me against you all. I let them destroy my family. Our family.”
I pull her close to me, feeling the heat of her skin against mine, and I brush the thick mess of blood-stained hair away from her face. “I thought it was Magus, and McQueen, that tricked me into coming here. It wasn’t. I made that decision. It took a long time to realize it, but you’re born what you’re meant to be. I spent so long pretending to be something I’m not, blaming everyone else, being angry at myself, at them, at the world. I thought I was going crazy.”
I pick up the little jade statue from the floor.
“I thought I was a monster.”
She takes the bauble from my hand, holds it up to her face. Examines it. “What is it?”
“It means hero. Somebody gave me that for saving someone he loved. I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing at the time. I’ve been a goddamn werewolf for about a week now, and I find out it’s my birthright, that I’m destined to be with the little pig-tailed girl I only remember from dreams of my distant childhood. I have a town full of cousins, an uncle with a mansion on top of a mountain, and a crazy hobbit-witch aunt who lives in the woods. Most of those people are dead, days after I’ve just met them. There’s a two-hundred-year-old wizard in my ancestral home, threatening my unborn children and the woman who may be my soul-mate, and the only thing close to a father that I’ve ever known is dying in front of me.”
I close her hand around the statue, hold it tight in my own.
“I’ve spent the better part of thirty years being the monster, and a week being a hero.”
I lift her up off of the floor with me, still holding her hands in mine around the little statue.
“I’m not giving up now that I know who I am. Neither should you. You’re not Simon Magus’ bitch. You’re a Strong Wolf.”
THE BIRDS CRY out from the trees outside, the thunderous clatter beginning on the roof again. Jules makes the door in two steps. She falls to her knees, laughing. A sweet, infectious laughter. Something I wouldn’t have imagined. She’s rolling on the ground, half out the door, two little wolves nuzzling at her neck. The jade statue still held tight in one hand.