Kay disappeared at noon. It was a hot thursday, heavy and sticky - they’d driven through the night for the past two days, had only woken her at dawn to toss her the keys to a peeling, sun-bleached motel. When she’d stepped into the room’s muggy shade, a cockroach crunched beneath her shoe. The air conditioning wheezed like a 70 year old smoker with a tube in his lungs, a metronome of dripping water beating against the faded cracked ivory plastic of the grotty shower. “Nice place,” she’d muttered as they followed, cradling Freya still asleep in their arm. They hadn’t answered. They were far from the most talkative and open person she’d ever met, so she barely noticed their sudden coldness, their grouchiness, the shortening of their temper: though to them these things screamed from every part of their being. The few words they exchanged were sharp. When they thought she wasn’t looking, she caught them glancing anxiously out of the window coated in a shroud of splattered bugs. She excused it as exhaustion - the road hadn’t just worn down the tires. When they weren’t back by 3, she began to wonder. She tried to burst the bubble of anxiety that had formed, but it lodged itself at the base of her throat, made her mind race with a hundred impossible scenarios. It wasn’t fear for them, exactly, but the uncertainty uneased her. At 5, her concern began to chill; by 7 it had fully become distrust. At 9 she could no longer be subdued by the glow of the television, snatched up their keys with gritted teeth and stormed out to the truck. Flickering busted red and blue neon coloured the car park, everything else bled grey by buzzing orange street lamps. The air was thick, heavy with screeching insects and the distant croaking of sleepy gators. The truck was totally empty, its cracked leather seats bare aside from their jacket, slumped carelessly onto the passenger seat. She snorted; she’d half expected to find them asleep in there, would have found it as cathartic as easy to yell at them for being selfish and making her worry even for a second. She opened the door anyway, as if they might have been hiding beneath the crushed soda cans at the foot of the seats. The electric yellow of the reception beckoned her from the cracked wing mirror. She spun too quickly, glowered at it as if it was hiding the secrets of the universe from her. Lowering her hood and her temper, she stalked towards it. Behind the desk was a redheaded teenager with more acne than clear skin. She gave him a plastered smile. “Hey, so, my buddy went out a while ago and was supposed to come back with beers, did you see them at all?” His expression was as vacant as the sign advertised. She clicked her tongue, gestured awkwardly at her right elbow. “Only has one arm?” His eyes lit up. “Oh!” He yelled, a little too excitedly. “With the-” he his hand curled into a faint claw as he waved it across his face, but he seemed to suddenly remember better of himself, and stopped and blanched mid sentence. Nix nodded. “Said they were looking for a lake? To like, go fishing or something. So I, uh, gave them a leaflet about the swamp.” “The swamp.” She said flatly. The kid stood up from his chair and pointed past her, to a distant gathering of stretched trees, cast black and blue in the moonlight. “Yeah, people go there sometimes when they stay here. Tourists mostly.” “Why.” “I don’t know man. But if you wanna go look for your friend you should wait till morning. There’s gators out there. And stuff.” “Uh huh.” When she finally found them, she told herself as she snatched a heavy flashlight from the glove compartment, locked the door to the room and told Freya not to wait up, she was going to fucking kill them. The swamp was smaller than it felt, as she picked her way through the winding rotten wooden path. Even now the stagnant water made the air muggy and her skin crawl. She imagined herself zipped into someone’s unwashed week old gym bag. Too pissed to be afraid she crept around sleeping toads and lizards, through clouds of whining mosquitoes. In the last hours she’d accidentally convinced herself that Kay had set them up. She hadn’t intended to and she’d grasped onto her conviction that there was an honest reason for their abrupt disappearance. But it seemed that at the first sign of uncertainty the strangeness of the situation had overwhelmed her and that, despite their willingness to shoulder as much of the burden as they could, she couldn’t trust someone that she barely knew. She had nothing to confirm or deny this, really, other than the rising hostility that she could suddenly blatantly remember. ‘Treacherous brute,’ Xeu had called them, and though she felt no warmth towards him, in their absence she was beginning to believe it. She must have walked just over a mile when she saw it in the distance, an abandoned cabin sagging under the weight of rot. In the collapsed window flickering candlelight cast long dancing shadows across the still murky water. She could hear their gruff breathing from the doorway, deep and rattling - they were slumped over the arm of a gutted sofa, writhing very slowly. At their feet were the grease stained wrappers of enough cheeseburgers to feed a family of six, countless cans that they’d crushed into coins in their stress. There was something else too, not quite crying but a soft whimpering, a cutting animal noise. Not noticing her they twitched, curled into themself like they were trying to drag themself into sleep. The bittersweet relief of actually finding them propelled her forwards, unlatched the door to her fury. “What the fuck is this?” Her shout flung them to their feet with a yell of surprise. They glared at her frantically, staggering until they found their balance. They stared at her like they’d never seen her before - she could almost hear their heartbeat fluttering in their throat - their limbs locking like a spring trap, ready to snap to action at the slightest feather touch. “What are you doing here?” they stammered. Their voice was low, shaken - their eyes, rubbed raw, flickered to the shattered windows, peered into the night’s fog, waiting, just waiting, for something vast and dark to leap out at them. “What am I doing here?” The tremor of rage that contorted her face for a second made them visibly flinch. Their hand shot to cradle their head, soothe their throbbing temples - the effort with which they clenched their teeth coloured their cheeks bright crimson. Sweat gleamed on their forehead - how much shit must they have shot into themself to get here. Their groan twisted from their core like they were being ripped in two. Just for a second, a deep cold fear tapped her on the shoulder, and she felt the colour drain from her face. “I’m s- I’m sorry-” Kay choked like they’d punctured a lung - their knuckles blanched at the collar of their shirt, hot tears left slick paths down their cheek. Their eye twitched, vision faltered for a second. “No,” they strained. Fought not to collapse as a bout of pain hit them like a stone mallet to the ribs. For the first time in hours, she actually felt a moment of doubt. Of overwhelming pity. Suddenly she couldn't shake the feeling that she’d backed them onto a cliff edge, that at any second they might throw themself off and pull her down with them. She took a step towards them, softened her voice; “Hey, you’re-” “No,” they roared - like someone had just torn out their heart. Their eyes were wild, though not with the hot rage that coloured hers - angry, yes, but wide, blanched with terror. As she watched, the copper in their russet skin drained to sickly tan. “You shouldn’t be here,” they murmured, their frightened whisper catching on the roughness of their throat. Even as they cowered away from her, they seemed bigger, their shape strangely distended. They swatted her away as she stepped toward them, whole body trembling violently. They looked as if they might throw up at any second. Dark crimson swelled at their nose, between the tight line of their lips - they dashed it away quickly with the back of their hand. It wasn’t until they sank to their knees, fighting an eye watering yell of agony as if they’d bound their own throat with coarse rope to suppress it that she stopped. The last of her broiling rage evaporated, left only the cold heavy dregs of fear deep in her gut. Ragged breaths like shredded leather shuddered from them as they curled forward, buried their face in their hand. In their locked grimace she could see the sharpening of their teeth, the swelling of their jaw, the awful crunching of their ribs. “Please,” they sobbed. Their hand pulsed, bones stretching sickeningly beneath their skin, their nails morphing into obsidian claws. Instinct told her to step away but some primal fear had rooted her in place. Her muscles seized as if encased in ice, her breaths shallow and silent in her lungs, as if any noise would summon the beast clawing its way out of them. A thunder-crack snap fired from their spine like a rifle and they threw their head back. Blood seeped from their snarl as it stretched. Bristling, tar black fur burst through their dark skin like needles into a pincushion. With every tiny, fine movement it seemed another three of their bones would crack like the lash of a long whip. She would have given anything, anything at all, to not have had to hear them scream again. And there was nothing she could do but watch. As they swelled into something that had haunted her nightmares since she was a child, all she could do was stand there and watch, unsure of when her heart had last beaten. Even if you pressed her she couldn’t tell you how long she had stared then, paralysed. How long it had been until the wretched snapping had stopped, or the wailing, how long until that unleashed body had risen to its full size, with its rippling ebony fur and steel muscles. How, even missing an arm it had consumed every millimetre of her vision as it stood in that corner, racked only by the volume of breath in its newly stretched lungs. The point of its ear twitched at the shortness of her breath- the other, scarred, half torn, flattened instantly. It turned its snout slightly; foaming drool oozed from between the locked knives of its teeth, black nose glistening. Its nostrils flared flesh pink at her scent and a low growl seeped from it at the periphery of her hearing. Claws like iron scraped against the dusty concrete, left trails of red between the fragments of their clothes, the last scrapped evidence of their humanity. Now, finally, as it turned to look at her she found the strength to back away, though fear had left her body numb and trembling. With each step she took a long breath, and though it rattled viciously and her eyes pricked somehow it stopped her from descending into panic. A breath in and out as her feet found their way towards the collapsed doorway. In and out as the beast that was once Kay stalked slowly towards her, their huge body arched, their teeth curved like scimitars. She thought of turning to run; even this gave the furnace of her imagination enough fuel that she could feel its teeth around her neck, feel its claws rip into her back, see its awful snout drip hungrily with her blood. It was close enough that she could feel its breath, hot as an oven, metallic and bitter. The same scars patterned its muzzle that cascaded over their face, raw hairless strips of leathery skin that buckled, swollen and ridged through its fur. One orange eye blazed, the hollow blackness of its huge pupil seeming to suck the light from the weathered room. The other, glazed and milky, stared at her dispassionately. Cold. Distant. If it killed her now, she wondered for a second, would Kay remember? Any hope of reason vanished in the haze of their lifeless right eye. Would they remember how she tasted? Her fingers found the cold weight of a key in her pocket. Folding it between her knuckles, she thought about the taste of her own blood. Her back met the faded brick wall with a soft thud. To her left, the chill of night air caressed her cheek, the ghost of a lover’s touch. Her arm tensed. Her fist balled around that key as if, in all conceivable senses of the phrase, her life depended on it. For the first time in many, many years, she found herself praying. Begging God not to let her miss. Fortunately, He obliged. The force of her punch drove the key sharply into their eye. Perhaps if they’d had both of their arms it might have ended differently, but they reeled far enough away from her that she could tear away, that even when they recovered she was far out of their reach. The night burned like hot coals in her lungs as she sprinted back through the knotted trees. She could hear nothing but the sound of her ragged breathing, feel nothing but the thick embrace of the night and the raw burning in her thighs. Nevertheless she ran, through stinging tears and twisting nausea, though dust-dry retching in her throat until there were no more trees, until she was past the first dimly lit byroads and into the neon safety of the motel. Only there in the car park did she sink to her knees and allow herself to sob, settle the contents of her stomach onto the cool tarmac, to shake violently until the terror had passed. The concierge’s shadow stretched curiously from the reception. Scooping herself from the ground she hurried to the plywood door, shut it definitely behind her. The rickety bed engulfed her kindly, like a warm but reassuring embrace from a stranger and, finally safe, she cried like a child until sleep took her. It was even good enough to spare her the nightmares. When she woke in the morning she still felt drained, like the mattress had pulled all of the energy from her. Behind the curtains and to her surprise, the bloody yolk of the sun was only beginning to peek above the horizon. Her eyes felt as if they’d been buried in sand and slotted back into her skull; her well worn clothes clung to her limply, like a bandaid come unstuck in a pool. Yellow light crept below the bathroom door - Freya still slept, curled up in the centre of her bed. Icy anxiety knotted her stomach again as she put her palm to the flimsy door. She half expected to find a corpse. Kay sat naked in the basin of the shower, though they were greased with enough dirt, sweat and blood that they couldn’t possibly have felt it. A cigarette barely hung from their split dry lips, its smoke listing lazily around their head. Their right eye was bluebottle-purple, two scarlet crescents looped beneath their eyes, so violently vibrant they might as well have been raw gashes. They didn’t seem to have been able to reach the shower - their tangled hair was slick with sweat. She had no way of knowing how long they’d sat there but it seemed as if they’d become a permanent fixture. Even their breath barely seemed to move them. The soles of their feet were caked with dark earth. A sliver of amber moved beneath their swollen eyelid. One slow blink and their jaw clenched weakly, their head drooped and they swallowed something sour back down that had risen in their throat. Nix felt the silence ache to be broken, not out of embarrassment but something else - simultaneously, she absolutely couldn’t look at them, but couldn’t look away. It was impossible not to think of the Wolf, but it was as absent as it was so clearly conspicuous. Looking at them now, so thoroughly shattered, she would have wondered if it ever existed. Her voice was rough as she found her words, sounded as if it might break at any second though she had wrung every tear from her eyes. “Kay, I-” she began, but they tightened their lips, shook their head faintly. “I am so, so sorry,” they said. A soft, involuntary gasp escaped her; she had forgotten that they had a voice, and, in its calm, broken tenderness, realised she had also forgotten their humanity. “I should have told you. I thought you knew. I could have killed you, I-” Their skin paled suddenly, their hand rising to their mouth as if they might throw up. Deftly it drifted to their bloodshot eyes, snatched away the spilling acid tears with a sharp frown. Pinkish liquid trickled from their stained nose. Nix pinched the bridge of her nose. “I shouldn’t have followed you, I’m sorry,” she groaned. Looking at them, she couldn’t help but feel responsible, felt that she had somehow weighed in on their pain. “No,” they croaked. They could do nothing now to stop the leaking from their eyes, to repress their torn weeping. “No, this is not your fault.” They shook their head, breathed through gritted teeth. “I can’t- I’m so sorry. So fucking sorry. Please, I-” She pressed the door closed behind her, took their hand as she crouched in front of them. She could feel her own heart rending itself in two as their eyes met hers, had to do something to calm the wrenching pain in her chest. “Kay, you didn’t - didn’t do anything wrong,” clasping their hand between hers, she silenced them before they could even begin to protest. “Following you put us both in danger. I should have trusted you. You’re not a bad person.” Her words were a twist to the knife already in them, brought them forward only into more distress. Their head nudged against her shoulder and she brought them into a careful embrace as she reassured them again, cradling their body against hers and pressing her cheek softly to the top of their head. Crying in her arms, they whispered a thousand apologies until their throat seized. Seeing them now she couldn’t believe she’d ever been afraid. Though when she closed her eyes she saw the wolf, its hulking form and cruel features, she felt their hand on her back, as gentle as the tremors which now faded from them. She helped them carefully to their feet, propped their leaden deadweight against the cracked tiled wall. When they pulled their hand from their face it was again covered in ruby blood. They sneered their distaste, asked her quietly for a towel. “Let me help you,” she said softly, fingertips brushing the swelling that coloured the right side of their face with a wince and a twist of guilt. “I’ll be alright,” they answered. They didn’t even have the energy to make it believable. “Shut up,” she smiled wryly. The shower’s heat had returned a little colour to their skin. They no longer stank of rust, sweat and rancid earth, and though still swollen, hoarse and sore, there was barely a sign that they were or had ever been anything other than entirely human. Clutching a faded sandstone towel around their waist they sat and pointed to the open cuts and scrapes that they’d accumulated through the night as Nix quickly sealed them with surgical tape. None were too deep - they showed her the raised puffy lines of those gouges they’d had to hastily sew shut themself, traced the lines of long scratches, puncture wounds made by teeth like kitchen knives. “We’re not exactly nice to each other,” they joked lightly, but it made them blush a little. As she held a chunk of the ice she’d wrapped in one of their t-shirts to their swollen eye they yelped, cursed and settled into a low groan. “Can you see okay?” she asked, wincing with them. She didn’t think she’d ever hurt anyone this badly before. It played again and again in her mind - the hardness of their skull as she’d driven the metal into it. The heat of their jet fur, the blood throbbing just beneath its surface. She didn’t want to ask if they remembered but was certain they could sense her guilt; every now and then they’d smile warmly, reassuringly, though it was strange to look at, their sad eyes glinting in the net of scars, beneath the bruise that had puffed up like a baseball mitt, the broken slant of their crooked smile. “No, but it’ll be fine. It doesn’t hurt so badly any more. It’s already starting to go down, see?” Carefully they laid her cool fingertips against the shining skin, closing their eyes as they leaned into her touch. Her breath caught as their fingers trailed down smoothly over the back of her hand and fell back into their lap. When they opened their eyes again she couldn’t meet them; their softness made something shiver in her core, inched up her spine like a silvery spider along a frozen pipe. Curiously their thumb found her cheek, traced a thread of red that she didn’t even know was sore. “Did I do this?” they murmured. She almost wanted to laugh at the hurt in their voice which was so blatantly misplaced - like they couldn’t have ripped her throat out in one movement. As if she hadn’t rammed a key into their eye. Slowly, delicately, they leaned forward and pressed their lips to her cheek - though dry and cracked they were soft and so, so gentle; so careful in their movement that she could feel their pulse, the raised white scar that split them unevenly. It froze and melted her in a second and by the time her shattered thoughts had pieced themselves back together she had taken their head in her hands and kissed them deeply. Their startled gasp tasted as warm, sweet and spiced as a winter wood fire, their lips tender and giving beneath hers. She could feel the sharp points of their teeth pry at her lower lip, the very tip of their tongue briefly flicker against hers. Their hand slipped into her short hair. She shivered as their fingers traced the lines of her skull. When they broke away, each gasping for breath, they were drawn back together immediately by some powerful invisible magnetism. Each gentle demand she made from them they reciprocated instantly, eagerly, only shaken by the faintest nervous tremor. Her lips left theirs, but now they had started something together it couldn’t easily be stopped. The tension that had been brewing between them had suddenly been smashed, like someone had taken a crowbar to a pane of glass the size of a skyscraper - now the shards were embedded so sweetly in her skin the bleeding wouldn’t stop until Kay had removed every single one of them with their bared teeth. Their hungry kisses followed her jaw, the hot line of her jugular, over the stained copper ink of her tattoo, down to the smooth ridge of her collarbone. She breathed their name as they tasted her, ran their teeth over her throat. This couldn’t conceivably end well and she knew it; but in that moment Kay would have done anything for her - and, for better or worse, she was absolutely going to let them.
