Chapter 7 - Dumped! The Search is On?
Liz was startled awake, her fingers instinctively pulling the sun mask close. The motel room was dark and felt strangely empty, even though she knew it wasn't. The first thing her eyes noted was Patti's lupine shape, standing on all fours on the other mattress, unnervingly still, her nose pointed towards Liz's feet. The second thing, following Patti's visual warning, was the cloaked figure at the end of her own bed.
Liz shot upright and slammed her shoulder against the headboard before letting out a nervous laugh. "Jeez, Kid, you scared the—" she flicked the bedside lamp on.
The figure was not Kid. It was Galf Lunard.
Patti sprang on him, knocking him to the floor in a flurry of gray fur and violet fabric. He was up and running out the door before Patti had rolled to her feet, and Liz abandoned the bed to follow him, grateful that she'd slept in her clothes. The man tried to slam the door behind him but she kicked it out of the way, her curse-strength ripping a hinge away from the frame. She hurriedly tied the mask's ribbon around her neck.
He was outside, waiting for them, which only unnerved her more. They'd been trapped by him before, yet here he was, sitting on top of a street lamp in a motel parking lot. Patti treed him, circling the post and leaping up to snap at his dangling cloak.
"The time has come, my daughters." He looked down at them in the darkness, his hood obscuring his face. "You must come with me to perform the awakening ritual and become your true selves. I'm sure you want your sister back. Come with me to regain your human forms and become the new priests our Order has always deserved, and after your lives on earth have ended, you will reign eternal in the sky, served faithfully by a new generation of servants."
"We're not joining your stupid cult. Change us back before we come up there and hurt you!" Liz shouted.
He tilted his head in a condescending manner. "You threaten me with bodily harm, yet nothing pains me as deeply as the idea of you stuck on earth with no memory of your identities...and the time limit draws near. Regard me now as you will, masters, but you will be eternally grateful when I—"
"Put a sock in it, you cheap magician. Nothing's gonna make what you did to us OK. As soon as Kid gets back, your ass is going down."
For a moment, he fell silent, as if contemplating. "The boy?" he murmured. "He couldn't get you want you need. I can. He was nothing more than a distraction, a menace to the plan."
"Excuse me?" Liz took a step toward the pole. "He has way more power than you."
"If that was true, I wouldn't have been able to end him so easily," he hissed.
She smirked. "Please. You couldn't take him down. No one can."
There was a moment of silence, then Lunard pulled something out from under his cape. She thought it might be the moon mask until he threw it at her and she caught a folded lump of unearthly black fabric.
Kid's cloak.
Her blood ran cold.
"I've taken care of him. He can't confuse you any longer, and our time grows short," Lunard evoked, his hand reaching out toward both her and Patti. "Surely you've felt it. The wolf inside you rages against the power of the mask. Even now, at night, if you were to remove it for even a second, it would take you."
The cloak still smelled like him. Liz pulled the garment to her face until her hand came away wet and red. The infinite black was hiding a bloody stain. Patti turned away from the pole at Liz's sudden, smothered shriek of distress.
"It will all be over soon." Lunard stood, balancing on top of the lamppost, still with his hand held down in their direction. "Come with me."
Patti showed him her teeth by way of response.
Liz unfolded the cloak until the hem dusted the ground, draping it over one arm. With her other hand, she loosed the ribbon at the nape of her neck. "You know, you old men always act the same. You'll never understand. When a woman says no, she means no."
"You don't have another option. You have to come with me now." He sounded less certain, watching her suspiciously.
She belted Kid's cloak with a tight knot around one shoulder, and tucked the sun mask into a fold, keeping one hand on the edge. Her fingers shook. "I've had no other option my whole life. Whenever I don't have a way to go, I make one. We're going to find him. Me and my sister will be back to deal with you later. And we're not gonna be alone this time."
She let go of the mask. It remained tucked safely the fold of Kid's cloak, even as she dropped to the ground and her human form faded away.
"No!" Galf Lunard shrieked, but Liz was beyond human words.
She ran unquestioning at Sis's side as they followed his scent, the scent of blood. She didn't know why they hunted this prey, only that it was important. Something black had latched around Sis, and despite her most valiant struggles, she could not free herself of it. But when she tried to bite it off, that was when she realized it smelled like him and therefore it was good.
Their paws pounded the ground, side by side. The scent took them back to paths along the high places, where there were more chances of being discovered by enemies, but tonight they had each other and that was all they needed to be free. She could only tell it was Sis by her scent. She knew in her heart she'd never been able to run with another wolf like this. But she also knew that somehow, before tonight, they'd shared a different bond.
The earth was grim stone, with gasoline as its only permanent captured smell, but his indecision remained as a phantom—he'd come through here, pondering, alone. And soon he'd been joined by another. Someone made of hate, or someone she knew well enough to hate. Either way, her eyes rolled angrily and her tail flagged out a stiff warning. Sis nipped at her ears to calm her.
What she could see was a black stain in the cement, but what they saw didn't matter. All possibility of a visible trail had been eliminated. Somehow the blood had been contained, but it still hung in the air like a mist, invisible to all but the two wolves who sought it.
They followed the hate and blood, because somewhere between those two distinct scents was still him. Hate began to smell more like fear with every step. Blood began to smell more like death. She didn't know why this put her on edge. Were they not hunting this scent?
Just as they neared the scent, Patti took a breath into human lungs. While she could still smell the blood, she let her memories dictate the situation to her. One thing became clear: They were standing beside a dumpster that had once been a bright shade of green, and it contained Kid, or whatever was left of him.
Liz was drawn up to her full height, front paws on the rim, but the lid prohibited her from going further. Patti nudged her gently out of the way, drawing a whine from the wolf but no further protest. She wrapped her fingers under the heavy metal and hoisted it high until it clattered against the brick wall behind. Sticking out from under the second lid was a pair of legs in black, blood-stained trousers and expensive shoes.
"Don't be dead," she prayed.
Liz leapt into the bin, and there was a sudden oof! and the legs jerked. The lid jerked with a bang as Kid sat up and hit his head. Patti grinned and threw the other half of the lid away, pulling herself up to perch on the rim.
Kid stared at her. Something about his eyes wasn't quite right, but Patti laughed, in spite of herself. "Kid?" she tried, poking his cheek.
"One. One of you. There should be two. Or eight. Eight is an excellent number," Kid muttered. He flailed his arms in the garbage surrounding him, furious tears beginning to leak out of his eyes. "None of this is arranged properly. How absolutely repugnant!"
"Okay, okay." Patti squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. "Is this like with the motel furniture?"
"How can you stand there at ease when chaos like this continues to ruin the world?"
Patti stripped the cloak from around her sister's midriff. The material was stiff with dried blood, she realized grimly, but Kid himself looked fine but for similar stains on his own black jacket. The sun mask tumbled out of the fold onto the trashbags. "Jackpot," she muttered, reaching for it. "You're so smart, Sis."
The heat of the mask bit at her fingers before she could grasp it. She gasped in pain and threw the cloak down over it, but even with added shielding, the cloak absorbed the heat too quickly around it. She could still pull the cloak away, but she was unable to use it to pick the ornery object up.
"I can't do it," she realized aloud. "Sis. I can't do it."
But Kid could. He had before.
"You gotta listen, okay?" She said, hopping down into the trash. It was becoming very crowded in the dumpster. Liz stood close enough to Kid to pant into his face, and Patti pushed her aside to gain his focus. "Pick up the mask for Liz."
"What's the use?" he asked miserably. "I've failed before I even get to begin. I'll never be a good reaper like my father. Look at all this garbage. I'm no different."
"Of course you are. We can fix the garbage later. Fix my sister first."
He went limp. Patti could practically hear her sister screeching "Uuurggh! You spoiled brat!" in her ears. But in reality, Liz stood to the side, unable to understand human words, staring unoffended at the grime-coated green walls.
Patti shook Kid's shoulders. "She's gonna be a wolf forever if you don't do something now!"
His eyes remained on the mess and his hands twitched, wanting, needing to sort the entire thing out.
"Kid, please," Patti whispered as a sob entered her voice. "She trusted you."
His lips parted in a sudden breath, and his golden eyes regarded her. Then he looked at the wolf, trying to cancel out the chaos of his own mind. He clawed for the mask as Liz stepped around his hands. Patti grimaced in sympathy, retreating to the wall of the bin as he caught hold and hissed out as it singed his flesh. But he kept hold of it long enough to set it on the wolf's head.
Liz's legs splayed out alongside Kid as she sat down hard, her change something of a fall. "Hi," she said, breathless.
"Hi," he agreed. Then he lifted the mask and she transformed again.
Patti shrieked until he put it back. Liz grabbed the edge of the sun mask and held it solidly, glaring daggers in his direction. "Why did you take it off again?"
"Sorry," he said, sounding absolutely not sorry. "It wasn't on straight."
