Kitty’s Greatest Hits (24 page)

Alex stopped him with a hand on his arm that sent a flush over him. Staticky, warm, asexual, comfortable. He could rub his face across the man’s coat. The feeling could get addictive.

“What’s wrong?” Alex asked.

“Gary’s leaving. He asked me to go with him.”

“You can’t do that, you know,” Alex said. “Your family is here. Stay, come work for me,” Alex said.

And how would he tell Mitch and Gary? “I like Gary,” T.J. said. “He’s been good to me. He’s a good rider.”

“I’m a good rider.”

T.J. certainly wasn’t going to argue with that. Shaking his head, he started to walk away.

“T.J.”

He struggled. He had two voices, and both wanted to speak. But his wolf side was slinking, hoping for Alex’s acceptance. “I don’t have to do what you say.”

“You sure about that?”

If he didn’t walk away now, he’d never be able to. It was like that last dinner at home—if he didn’t say it now, he never would, and then he’d curl up and disappear. So he turned and walked away, even though some sharp instinct wanted to drag him back. Claws scraped down the inside of his skin; he tried to ignore it.

Back with Mitch and Gary, rolling the bike to Gary’s trailer, he started to relax.

“Saw you talking to Price,” Mitch said. “I didn’t think he swung your direction.” He was teasing but amiable. T.J. gave him a searing look.

*   *   *

Gary and Mitch left, and T.J. stayed behind. The circuit was over, racing done for the season, and the track settled into a lethargic rhythm of local practice. Guys screwing around on backyard bikes. T.J. scrounged up mechanic jobs when he could and worked cheap. Alex rented him the guest room in the outbuilding behind his rural ranch house—the room where he’d woken into his new life. Just until he got back on his feet. Whenever that was. Months passed.

He drank at the Dustbowl with the rest of the pack, spent full moon nights with his new family, and that was the life that stretched before him now. But at least he was healthy.

No, truth spoke back at him—he’d traded one disease for another.

He’d taken a shower and was lying on the narrow bed, not thinking of anything in particular, when Alex knocked on the door. He could tell it was Alex by the knock, by the way he breathed.

“We’re leaving for the Dustbowl.”

Part of T.J. sprang up, like a retriever wagging its tail and grinning. Another part of him wanted to growl. He didn’t feel much like socializing. “I think I’m going to stay in tonight.”

“I think you ought to come along.”

Alex’s commands never sounded like commands. They were requests, suggestions. Strong recommendations. He spoke like a parent who always had your best interests at heart.

T.J. started to give in. It was his wolf side, he told himself. The wolf wanted to make Alex happy so the pack would stay whole, and safe.

But he wondered what would happen if he said no.

He sat up. “I don’t really feel like it.”

Sure enough, the door slammed open, rattling the whole frame of the shack. T.J. flinched, then scrambled back when Alex came at him. He tripped over the bed, ended up on his back, with the alpha werewolf lunging on top of him, pinning his shoulders, breathing on his neck.

T.J. lay as still as he could while gasping for breath. He kept his head back, throat exposed, hardly understanding what was happening—his body seemed to be reacting without him, showing the necessary submission so that Alex wouldn’t hurt him. He flushed with shame, because he thought he’d be able to fight back.

Alex got up without a word and stalked out of the room. T.J. moved more slowly, but followed just the same.

*   *   *

T.J. sat in the corner, away from the others, staring out, turning over thoughts that weren’t his. He could run or he could fight. And what happened to safety? To peace? All he had to do was sit back and take it. Not argue. Not rock the boat, not stick his neck out.

He couldn’t stop staring, which in the body language of these creatures meant a challenge. He dropped his gaze to the bottle of beer, which he hadn’t been drinking.

Jane pulled up a chair next to his and sat, then leaned on his shoulder, rubbing her head against his neck, stroking his arms. Trying to calm him, make him feel better.

“You know I’m gay, right?” he said.

Pouting, she looked at him. “We just want you to be happy. We want you to feel like you belong. You do, don’t you?”

He closed his eyes. “I don’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter as long as you’re safe. You know if anyone came through here and gave you trouble, Alex would go after them, right?”

He almost laughed. Like she knew anything about it. “That isn’t the point.”

He’d raised his voice without realizing it, glaring at her so that she leaned away, a spark of animal flashing in her eyes. Heavy boots stepping across the floor inevitably followed, along with a wave of musk and anger, as Alex came to stand beside Jane. It was the two of them, bad cop and good cop, keeping the pack in line. Like they were one big happy family.

T.J. should have gone with Gary.

He stood, putting himself at eye level with Alex—also a sign of challenge. “I’m leaving,” he said. Alex frowned. His mouth had been open to speak, but T.J. had done it first. The rest of the pack was here—they’d fallen silent and gathered around, the happy family. T.J. recognized a gang when he saw one.

Alex laughed—condescending, mocking. As if T.J. were a child. As far as their wolf sides were concerned, he supposed he was. He thought back to Alex throwing him to the floor, felt that anger again, and tamped it down tight. The alpha was trying to get a rise out of him, goad him into some stupid attack so he could smack him right back down. T.J. wouldn’t let him. All he had to do was stare.

“You’ll be on your own,” Alex said. “You won’t like that. You’ll never make it.”

T.J.’s mouth widened in a grin that showed teeth. He shouldn’t taunt Alex. He ought to just roll over to show his belly like the others. But he shook his head.

“I’ve done it before,” he said. “I can do it again.”

The wolf rose up, standing in place of the scared kid he used to be.

They could all jump him. He looked at the door and tried not to think of it, pushing all his other senses—ears, nose, even the soles of his feet—out, trying to guess when the rest of them would attack. He’d run. That was his plan.

“You don’t really want to leave,” Alex said, still with the laugh hiding in his voice.

T.J. looked around at all of them, meeting each person’s gaze. The others looked away. They’d all come here by accident, through werewolf attacks, or by design—recruited and brought to the cage. T.J., on the other hand, had come to them alone, and he could leave that way. Maybe they didn’t mind it here, but one of these days, T.J. would fight back. Maybe he’d win against Alex and become the alpha of this pack. Maybe he’d lose, and Alex would kill him. But they could all see that fight coming.

Which was maybe why they let him walk out the door without another argument. Rather than feeling afraid, T.J. felt like he’d won a battle.

He hadn’t been brave enough to live out his old life. But he’d been brave enough to stick his hand in that cage. Maybe, eventually, he’d be okay.

W
INNOWING THE
H
ERD

Nobody was wearing perfume or fancy aftershave. It wasn’t that kind of crowd. But I did smell patchouli, three different kinds of bathing products from the Body Shop, a recently changed baby, more patchouli covering up the smell of pot, and a shedding German shepherd.

The German shepherd belonged to Frank from marketing. He’d left the dog at home, cleaned up, didn’t have a German shepherd hair on him, and probably didn’t even realize he smelled like dog.

“… so I told him, no. Absolutely not. I mean, we’re an NPR affiliate, why would we want to advertise a gun show? We’d be a laughingstock…”

I nodded politely and made appropriate noises of sympathy. I’d met the German shepherd once. His name was Spirit, or Shadow, or something. He hadn’t liked me much. That was because I could rip out his throat in a white-hot second, and he knew it.

“… you guys in programming have no clue what we go through.”

I shrugged with mock apology. “I guess not. Hey, is that a meat tray?”

Ozzie’s wife, Cherie, was bringing out another platter to the lobby from the break room. Ozzie was the KNOB station manager. The staff appreciation party was Cherie’s idea. Ozzie didn’t appreciate his staff.

At second sniff, it wasn’t a meat tray. No, it was more hummus. All the party platters were vegetarian—crackers with hummus, pita bread with hummus, ten kinds of vegetables with three kinds of dips, something made of tofu. Not just vegetarian, but vegan. Not even a chunk of Brie in sight. None of it smelled like food to me.

The beer was free so no one complained.

I hoped my sigh wasn’t too audible. For lack of anything that might have bled before being cooked, the only things that smelled edible were my coworkers.

This was one of those optional-but-not-really parties. Time to play nice, even though Ozzie was under pressure to make budget cuts and everyone was on the verge of stabbing each other in the back to make sure they weren’t the ones who were cut. Frank had been making lots of noise about how much work he did and how little anyone realized it. Ann the programming director appealed to noble sensibilities: We were a public service, not a business, and programming should be the last thing to go. Who needed advertising? And every two-bit night-shift DJ was desperate to show how indispensable they were.

So, if the station was under budget pressures, why were we spending all this money on a party that didn’t even have any meat? I moved through the evening smiling vaguely at little ironies.

Perry. That was who I’d go after first. If I were going to go after anyone, which I wasn’t, because I had better control than that. Perry was the receptionist/secretary/bookkeeper. Small, delicate, big eyed, slouching warily in her baggy sweater. She wrote romance novels at her desk on the sly. She’d totally freeze in the face of an attack. Easy prey.

“Kitty? What do you think?”

“Hm?” I turned to find Ike and Sean staring at me.

“Weren’t you listening?” Ike said.

“Sorry. What?”

“Who would you rather meet: Iggy Pop or Bowie?”

I narrowed my eyes. “That’s a trick question, isn’t it?”

KNOB ran a “diverse music” format when it wasn’t running NPR, which meant the average DJ was as likely to follow up Ella Fitzgerald with the Chieftains as with the Clash. More than one programming meeting had degenerated into too-serious arguments about the merits of Velvet Underground versus They Might Be Giants.

I had to get out of here. I should have skipped the party, mandatory or no.

“Hey, Kitty, can I get you a beer?”

“No thanks,” I said and sipped my cup of water. I knew better than to get even a little tipsy the night before a full moon.

“So, any big plans this weekend?” Sean was talking to me. Ike had disappeared.

I had originally been scheduled to work tomorrow, Saturday night. I’d had to make a big stink about getting the night off. Called in way too many favors. But since I actually liked the night shift and had traded with people countless other times, I’d had a lot of favors to call in. In the end everyone knew I’d wanted Saturday off and everyone wanted to know why.

They all figured I had a hot date. I was the station’s resident single twenty-something, always a topic of speculation.

“I’m going camping.”

Sean stared blankly. “In March? Isn’t it a little cold?”

“Yeah, but it’s a full moon,” I said with a straight face. He had no response to that.

I grabbed a handful of crackers to nibble, to give me something to do. Just another half an hour, then I’d leave. Frank and Bill the tech guy stood by the food table, chatting.

“I think the food’s great. Takes courage, standing up for a vegetarian lifestyle like this,” Frank was saying. “I didn’t know Ozzie was a vegetarian.”

“He isn’t,” Bill said. “Neither is Cherie for that matter.”

Frank looked taken aback. “Really? Huh.”

“Maybe she thought, it’s public radio, everyone here must be vegetarian.”

“So, is anyone here actually a vegetarian?” I said.

Frank shrugged. Bill said, “Ike is.”

“He looks it.” Ike was thin, gangly, pale. Vegetarianism only worked if you knew how to do it. Otherwise, it made you look sick. He probably tasted like tofu. Ike was the last person in the room I’d go after. If I ever went after people. Which I didn’t. I said, “You know, cows were bred to be eaten. Same with chickens, pigs—all the major meat animals. To not eat them is to deny them their purpose in life. Don’t you think?”

Frank paused, scoop of hummus dip halfway to his lips. “I guess I never thought of it that way.”

Bill said the only thing he could in the face of such a declaration. “Can I get you a beer or something?”

“No thanks, I’m fine.”

He drifted off to the cooler anyway, and Frank turned back to the bowl of hummus, away from me.

Sheep. They were all a bunch of sheep.

I didn’t usually feel this way. Usually, I could get through an entire day of work without making little baaing noises in my head in reference to my colleagues. I didn’t always walk into a room and automatically winnow the herd in my mind.

Human: The other white meat.

The later the party went, the more everyone smelled like beer, the more people laughed, and the more I paced like a caged predator. I made myself sit in a chair and watch. Perry had left. So, I’d go after Ann next, because Ann needed getting. She was telling Beth from programming a complicated story about her partner’s, i.e., longtime live-in boyfriend’s, reprehensible behavior at her cousin’s wedding, which was really a disguised rant about his not proposing to her years ago and thus depriving her of her own wedding. Being a freethinking liberal feminist, Ann was not supposed to complain about such things.

“He’s an animal!” Beth said commiseratively.