Bar the door against the moon.

Wolves.

When men strayed too close to that line which held them back from less civilized forms of conquest and conflict, they might evolve as those who came to the Respite.

It was an unassuming place, down-at-the-heels and smelling of varnished wood and ashes.

Evidence was burned, and washed out of the backs of trucks. The water ran red with the blood of prey.

She spent the same night, on different days, watching warily as they relived their lives, their roles, their actions. The outcome was pre-determined, but pursued with grim repetition. Knives were polished, and scarred surfaces, lusting for something easier to cut. Liquid was quaffed, lingering on tongues, all manner of scents crowding the air along with smoke and the ice of the night beyond.

Eyes followed her always: feral brown and frigid blue. Placid green and polished black.

And then: gray. Like winter skies and the dirty snow on the side of the highway. That road seemed so very far sometimes, a current of possibility, of absence from this nightside, this opposition of community.

She wanted what she glimpsed on television, and from her point of origin: the mundane and completely expected. But she was not a citizen of the veneer. She had been stolen.

This one did not seem to belong. He was too skinny by half, with flat black hair falling over his face and down his neck. He lacked a definite chin and looked as though he had not slept, nor bathed, in at least a week. His hand trembled when he raised his glass off the bar.

But he had the mark. Most drew it on the back of their left hand, with permanent marker, knowing it could withstand a modicum of washing and still identify them as not-prey.

Everything else was prey in their world. A world constricted by the need to remain off the grid and under the radar. A world of obscure places and unspoken ritual.

They were as wolves, gathering in groups – packs - constantly jockeying for position and recognition.

Feral.

Wolves.

He knew the eyes were upon him. He downed a shot of moonshine and gave the slightest of coughs. Then his pale skin flushed, the blood moving upwards, she watched his neck and face color. His eyes glowed like full moonlight in a pitch black night and he turned towards the room. He stared, he stared them all down and eventually the silence gave way to murmuring and the ambient noises of distraction.

He turned back and she noticed his mouth, a perfect cupid’s bow, too lush for male architecture. He could pass for a kid, just another kid, but his eyes bore into her and the intrusiveness was familiar. The kind which required the Alpha Male to turn his gun on the stragglers every dawn and lock all the doors behind them, then taking what he considered his due in exchange for her safety.

There was no way to make it out of the underworld alive.


His gaze had a palpable weight, almost as fingers moving across the surface of her skin, across her back where the brand was carved cunningly into her flesh, seeming to blossom from her spine: a vine of thorns and the sigil of the wolfsangel, the bar and the hooks. He had held her hands, even as he had tied her down, when she was branded; he had brown eyes and they never averted from her own as the iron scalded her flesh and she screamed.

He kissed her hands as she cried.

The brand kept her safe, unless the bloodlust and frenzy of the rut was upon them. In Spring they often rioted, leaving behind many broken things, and bodies upon the floor.

He was an excellent shot, and his knife never missed its’ mark.

When necessary, his teeth could also inflict mortal damage.

And now he was there, looking down at the one who could pass for any ordinary kid, except that he had the mark upon his left hand and a pair of startling strange eyes.

He growled.

The kid averted his eyes – hierarchical shorthand – and ran a finger around the rim of the glass. Her owner poured another measure and the kid drank it down as before, save that there was no reaction to the potency of the brew.

He spoke.

“Is she worth dying for?”

Her owner pulled flaxen hair off his shoulders and leaned forward, his voice a mere whisper.

“I’ll never know.”

Quicksilver eyes now, orbs of mercury, flickering between them.

“Not yours.” A declarative.

A large and sure hand closed around a slender throat.

“Mine because the whelp who stole her turned tail at the sight of my gun. Does he bring an army?”

“Not yet.” She noticed his stick fingers were raw and chapped, imagined him chewing his cuticles in worry. An emissary required fortitude when heralding unpopular news.

“He should.”

She could see, beyond their immediate location, the others who had been pushing at one another, in feints seductive and seething, now stood still and observant. Although any of them could turn on him in an instant, when the Alpha Male was threatened by an outsider they closed ranks and waited for blood. Many of them still clung together, ready to impress each other with an entirely different skill. Their lives revolved in the ouroboros embrace of the unspoken society and so the other was a welcome diversion.

The grip tightened, the eyes flared as light on water.

“No threat, just a promise.” Strangled rasp.

Let go, and left to rub at his neck, his face, the kid hid behind his midnight hair and coiled in on himself, waiting for trouble.

“Leave now, and I promise we won’t piss in your face.”

She grimaced, under the hand on her shoulder. Despite the reassurance at her back, all the reminders of disgrace were at hand in this moment.


In the garden of feminine weakness.
don’t go out alone you’ll be robbed and raped, violated and victimized
Hearing the rumors of the monstrous populace.
don’t leave your neighborhood there’s no telling what could happen
She chose to live rather than fear.
And then she walked under a bridge and the ogres demanded their toll.


He took his time in leaving, slow exaggerated gestures of reclaiming his composure and appearance. His last gaze was for her, memorizing every detail for the telling.

Arms enfolded her from above and behind, lips moving across her hair, then her cheek. A snarl, teeth exposed, and the Alpha Male was answered with the same from the Messenger, then the door banged loudly and all returned to some semblance of normalcy. He paused a moment, eying everyone in the room, but none would meet his gaze and she could not, being held fast in an embrace like iron.

“How did you know?” Her voice seemed to originate from some location other than her throat.

“He smelled. . .strange.”


Every kind of monster eventually appeared at the Respite, merely tolerated until boundaries were muddled, lines were smudged, blood was shed.

The ogres had brought her thus, their plan uncertain, but their agenda was to drink and let the rest sort itself out later. They assumed her unconscious, but she managed to shred the duct tape binding her ankles and crawled from a car, across wet pitted asphalt to a nearby dumpster. The Alpha Male appeared after a time and hauled her bloody bruised body up by the hair, studying the damage for a moment, eyes narrowed.

“How did you get here?”

She pointed towards the car, parked at an ridiculous angle towards the edge of the lot. His chin raised, and he made a sound of disgust, air dispelled from his nostrils.

“You won’t get away.” In his eyes a surety of opinion, that his ownership would be far preferred to that of the monsters. No other imposed framework of behavior existed in this realm.

She closed her eyes in submission.


She had attempted, more than once, to tell him her name.

None of them had names, it seemed. They recognized themselves by different methodology. They were marginalia, the dark matter between the spheres, the detritus of democratic consumption.

They were there, but ever unseen.


He put a knife into her hand.

“Given the choice, you’ll want to kill.”

He closed her fingers around the hilt, and she knew he wasn’t referring to the enemy.

Looking at the weapon, that was the color: those eerie eyes were as bright as a blade.


One of them had come, that night, into the restroom where he cleaned her wounds. Came fast and full of pique, angry the prey had managed to limp away.

The next thing he knew he was on the floor, and the Alpha Male stared down the sight of a .357 he pulled from the space between his spine and his clothing.

“At this range, I can make your head explode.”

Scurrying away, crab-like, barely dodging a kick from heavy boots. The savior turned back and licked at a cut on her arm.

“They would have eaten you, you know.”


All tales are true, when told in the proper context.


Some glacial morning she could slip out of the swelter of the den and find the world again, just where she had left it, go and put her trust in other men. The city loomed behind them ever clawing at the sky with fingers of steel and exhaled breath which burned brown against blue. Emerge from the overgrown wood of abandoned outskirts and be found, be celebrated for survival.

But was one prison any better than another? A choice of cages, a choice of masters, and who could protect without hesitation, without fail?

She had witnessed his defense, his absolute mastery, the affirmation of his position in the pack.

When monsters roamed the earth, there was no true choice, save an uneasy alliance with the wolves.


And wolves mated for life.