Chapter 11

Trevor visibly crumbled. His ears again flattened against his head and his tail went back between his legs. A pitiful whine escaped his throat. He stared at me for the longest time, then turned and loped away without another word.

"You're a suicidal idiot, do you know that?" I asked, releasing Dinah from my pin.

She eased herself to her feet and promptly spewed her remaining stomach contents all over the ground. "Fuck you." She huffed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

"Yeah, you've said that already…several times. Did you really think it was wise to get drunk before attacking our compound? Boaz and Trevor were going to rip you apart. You realize that, right?"

"I don't care." She growled, glaring daggers at me. "I talked to the search party after you left, Eli. You took that Iris girl, didn't you, you fucking monster?"

I didn't answer.

"Oh, and that's not all!" She laughed bitterly. "Oh ,no, the damn cherry on top is that I waited for your sheriff buddy to come back from your little field trip and when I told him to investigate your freak show of a family, he slammed the fucking door in my face! How did you do it, huh? Are you lining his pockets or some shit? You God damn, piece of shit!" She grabbed a rock from the ground and hurled it at me. I made no move to dodge it and it hit me square on the snout. Blood dripped from a small cut on my nose splattering the ground at my paws.

"He can't do anything to us, Dinah. He knows what we are and he has a daughter to protect." I said, licking the blood away as it trickled across my lips.

"So he just lets you rape and kill everyone else's daughters?"

Her hateful stare was steadfast. Mine wavered as shame washed over me like a wave. "Let's get back to your car. I'll take you home. We need to go before Boaz comes back or my Dad and Carl show up." I said, dodging her question.

"I can drive myself home." She protested, staggering away.

"No, you can't." I trotted after her.

I followed her back down the road for a mile and a half before we reached her grandparents' light blue van with their shop's logo painted on both sliding doors. She continued spouting curses and occasionally would throw things, but I think she had finally realized just how plastered she actually was.

"You don't happen to have some spare clothes in there I can throw on, do you?" I asked, realizing with horror that I had forgotten to grab some clothes. The trunks of our cars are usually filled with clothes, just in case, but I doubted humans were as prepared.

She gave me a weird look, like I had two heads. "I think my grandpa's waders might be in here? You're welcome to 'em if it'll keep your naked ass out of my sight." She retrieved the waders from the trunk and threw them at my paws before retreating to the passenger seat of the van.

The wolf's cage door again slammed shut. My bones separated, broke and reshaped themselves. My canine teeth became blunt. My muzzle shortened. Finally, the human skin grew back, re-laying itself over my fur then closing tight along my spine, leaving only the familiar scar.

To say that I felt like a weirdo standing butt naked in an old man's fishing waders would be an understatement. Nevertheless, I had no other choice. Dinah burst into hysterical laughter as soon as she saw me. I slithered self-consciously into the driver's seat debating whether or not I should just lay down in front of the van and wait for her to run me over.

"Here," She said, between fits of laughter. She unzipped her jacket and shrugged it off her shoulders. "Put this on, I can see your tits."

"Oh, yeah, a girl's jacket will complete this stylish ensemble." I went ahead and pulled it on, grateful for the warmth even if it did little to improve my current self-esteem. "Thanks." I muttered, glancing at her as I zipped up the jacket. It was drenched in her scent: sugar and wet soil, like she had been baking cookies in the rain.

She was wearing a plain white tank top. I could faintly see her bra through it. However, it wasn't this scandalizing image that made me gawk at her, it was the bruises. Fresh purple and red blotches ran down both her arms and peaked out from beneath her tank top on her chest.

"What are you looking at?" She growled, crossing her arms in a pathetic attempt to cover the bruises back up.

"What happened to you?" I asked, unable to stop staring. The bruises lay in a striped pattern across her skin, like she'd been hit with something repeatedly.

"It's none of your shitty business! Just drive!" She screamed, turning the key in the ignition. "For god's sake, you and your family are torturing people, and you want to gawk at me like you've never seen a bruise before."

She turned her face away to glare out at the scenery and I obediently turned my attention to driving her home. A heavy silence fell between us for most of the ride.

"Is she still alive?" She asked, after twenty minutes of dead air.

"Yeah, if you can call it that. Boaz took her…so…the fact that she's still conscious is a miracle to me."

"It's not right, what the sheriff is doing: letting others suffer, just so he doesn't have to take any risks. I know he's trying to protect his daughter, but it still feels...just…I don't know…wrong? I don't think that's even a strong enough word for it." Dinah shook her head, gritting her teeth. Her nails dug into the flesh of her arms as they tightened their grips.

"Well,… He knows better than anyone what goes on at our compound." I paused for a moment slightly uncertain if I should share my past with the girl who has tried to murder me on multiple occasions. Then I glanced back at the bruises on her arms. Her life wasn't exactly kittens and rainbows either. Someone was hurting her…and I wanted to know who. Perhaps if I shared a bit of myself with her, she'd do the same. "He's my uncle." I said in a robotic sort of tone. The words burst from my mouth in a rush.

Dinah's gaze shot back to me. She stared, wide eyed, her mouth slightly open. "Your uncle? You mean his sister was one of your dad's victims?"

I nodded quietly. "My mom's disappearance was what made him want to be a cop in the first place. Once upon a time, he actually wanted to help people, help give the families of missing people the closure that he never got."

"So what happened to make him change that tune?" She asked.

"My Dad and Carl showed up on his doorstep one day…with me." I smiled bitterly at the memory of standing on Andrew's front porch when I was just four years old. He towered above me in the doorway, his familiar face twisted in an ugly mixture of horror and grief. I could tell, even then, that he had known who I was the moment our eyes met. From the very first moment, he saw my mother in me. "When Carl found out that Andrew was about to become sheriff, he saw a golden opportunity. With the sheriff in our pocket, we could move around more easily. If any suspicion was raised, he could easily sweep it back under the rug. I remember we sat around Andrew's living room. I sat on the couch between my Dad and Carl and drank strawberry Kool-Aid while they blackmailed him into submission. They told him everything about what had happened to his baby sister after she had vanished on her way home from school five years prior. For proof, they gave him the tattered book bag she'd carried to school every day. They told him what they were, showed him their teeth and their claws. Then they warned him about what would happen if he disappointed them. If you knew half of what they told him that day, you wouldn't think so badly of him."

"He should have gathered a posse and driven you away, at the very least. He's sacrificing little girls, Eli. No matter what they told him, he could have done something to stop you. He just chose the easiest path and decided to help you." Dinah sighed heavily, leaning her head against the glass of her window. "I'm not saying he needed to become a Turnskin killing vigilante, believe me it's not an easy profession to get into. I've been training my whole life to kill your kind and all I've managed to do is give you a stern talking to. But he could of done something, anything other than go along with what your family wanted, anything but let all those girls die."

"Maybe, but a family tends to look after their own. If someone were threatening to kill your mom wouldn't you want to do everything you could to protect her?" I asked as I made another sharp left turn around the mountain.

Dinah turned her head to reply, "You don't know anything about my mo- Watch out!" She screamed, grabbing at the wheel to force me to swerve. She'd seen him before I had. The disheveled man in a faded green baseball cap standing in the middle of the mountain road. We swerved into the other lane, narrowly missing the man and I slammed on breaks just before we could careen into the mountain.

I was out of the van before it had even completely stopped rolling. I knew who that man was instantly, even from the short glance of him I'd seen. The flashy lure stuck on the brim of his hat marked him just as plainly as his scent. "Tobi!" I screamed as I ran to him. He turned towards me at the sound of his name and his dry, cracked lips stretched into a relieved, weary smile. I threw my arms around him and his gangly, bony arms wrapped around my waste to weakly pat my back.

"Eli, no cryin'. Grandaddy'll whoop ya if he sees ya." He muttered with his usual deep southern twang.

"I'm not crying!" I sniffled. I pulled away enough so that I could see his face better. His golden hair was greasy and matted to his skull beneath his cap. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes recessed and haunted. "What happened? What are you doing here? Why aren't you at Grandaddy's?"

"Grandaddy doesn't like me no more." He said, looking shamefully down at the ground.

"Why? What'd you do?" I prodded. Tobi didn't respond, refusing to tell me anything more about it. "I'm hungry. You got food?" Tobi had always been a little off, a little slower minded than the rest of my kin. Grandfather had called him simple and in a way that was a perfect description of him. He was like a child, almost. His needs were simple, but when he wanted something, he wanted it right then. I knew there was no use arguing about it. "I don't have any food with me, but if you come with me, I'll get you something."

"Can't! They'll hurt me!" Tobi squealed. He twisted and squirmed, trying to get out of my grip. As his head turned from me, I saw his true body moving beneath the skin, his canine muzzle pressing against his pale human skin. It was like holding an egg by a candle and seeing the embryo squirming inside.

I held on for dear life. My arms locked around him. "It's okay. I'm not taking you to the compound. You see my friend?" I asked, nodding towards Dinah who had finally gotten out of the van and was walking towards us. "We're going to her house. She'll give you something good to eat."

Tobi's eyes shifted towards her and he bobbed his head in understanding and I felt his whole body relax. "Okay, Eli." He said. I took his hand and led him towards the van.

"You know this guy?" Dinah asked, still breathing hard and shaky from the near the disaster.

"He's my cousin. We've been looking for him. Do you mind getting him something to eat when we get to your place? He looks half starved."

"Oh, no I'm not feeding another monster!" She snapped, moving to shove my shoulder. Before her hand made contact with me, however, Tobi grabbed a hold of her wrist. She screamed in pain, grabbing at his arm. His eyes were glowing, his veins pulsing as he glared at her. "Stop! That hurts!" She squealed.

"Stop it, Tobi!" I snarled at his ear and pried his hand off of Dinah's wrist. He wrenched his hand back with a whine and cradled it against his chest as if I'd hurt it. "You can't do that! Dinah's my friend!" I yelled.

"She tried to hit you!" He cried, big tears falling from those hollow eyes that I just barely recognized.

"It wouldn't have hurt!" I tugged at my hair. I was already frustrated. "You can't hurt Dinah, I'll be mad at you if you do anything like that again. Do you understand, Tobi?"

He nodded slowly. His eyes darted between Dinah and me and like a curtain being drawn over a window, they seemed to darken. His tone of voice became colder and more mature. "She's your Red?" He asked lowly. "I didn't know. I'm sorry, Eli. Don't be mad."

My whole face went red hot as a blush spread across it. "No! She ain't my Red! She's my…friend?" I replied. Tobi just looked back at me with an utterly confused expression. I didn't blame him. I was confused about our relationship too. "Look, if you hurt her, then she won't give you any food. Okay?"

"Okay." He smiled weakly at me as I put him in the van and shut the door. The sight of it made my stomach sick.

"You aren't seriously going to take him to my house after that are you? I'm not feeding him." Dinah spat, cringing as she rolled her wrist around. "Damn, he nearly broke my wrist."

"He'll only be there until I can get someone to come get us. You won't have to worry about him after that." I muttered, fighting the bile that was rising in my throat. I'd found Tobi and what was about to follow was going to be terrible.

"Like hell I won't."

"We're going to kill him, Dinah." I cut her off with a harsh whisper. I heard a little gasp escape from her lungs. "I don't know what he did, but it was bad enough that my grandfather turned on him. He's been on the run ever since."

"I don't understand. You seemed so happy a minute ago. I thought you were glad to see him."

"I was. We were close when we were young, but something has to be done about him. Lone wolves don't do well. We need the structure of the pack. Loners go feral after a while. They lose their senses and begin acting more and more like an animal until they are completely driven by instinct. He's been killing people left and right ever since he left home. He's already got authorities across several state borders looking for him…" I winced as the next words left my mouth. "I love him, but he's become too much of a liability."

The ride into town was excruciating. Dinah and I didn't speak to each other. I was too busy panicking over what I needed to do and Dinah was nervous as all hell. She tried to hide it, but she couldn't control her constant squirming as she peeked back at Tobi to see what he was up to. Tobi sat looking out the window, humming to fill the silence. His bony fingers drummed against his knee as if he were playing the piano. I recognized the song as an old hymn called Are you Washed in the Blood? However, I couldn't for the life of me remember the lyrics.

We used to visit my grandfather often before Wyatt was born. I even spent a whole summer there once, helping to tend to his cows and chickens while my uncles and older cousins worked on neighboring tobacco farms. One of the things I most remember about Granddaddy's house was that he always had old gospel music playing. It constantly filled the house, even though he is the farthest thing from a Christian you can imagine

A day from the summer I turned eight came to the forefront of my memory. We ate breakfast together every morning, all twenty of us. This particular day, the record player was trumpeting from the living room, loud enough to be heard in every room, but still soft enough that we could talk to each other. The tiny room was packed with Roan boys and men, uncles, cousins, brothers all. Tobi and my younger cousins had been pushed out into the living room and were eating in front of the television, watching the local news. For the first time, I'd been allowed to sit at the grownups table with my uncles and grandfather. I had been really proud that they'd let me sit with them. I was a little like Wyatt back then, eager to belong. Granddaddy was giving out orders to his sons, telling them what he expected for them to have done by the end of the day. My uncles all just nodded, none of them speaking. Occasionally, you would get a "yes sir", from one of them, but most of the time, they just did as he said without a word. Once Granddaddy was finished eating, he turned to my uncle Ezra and said, "I'll be in the red room, if you need me." He got up and left, disappearing into the bowels of the farm house. The minute he was out of sight, Ezra went to the record player and turned it up so loud that it physically hurt to be anywhere near it. They did that every time one of them went to "the red room". I didn't realize why until I was much older.

Just listening to Tobi's humming brought up a lot of memories like that, things I haven't thought of in years suddenly bubbled up to the service. I'd all but blocked out everything about my grandfather. I really wished he would shut up.

Finally, we pulled up into the Carny's drive way. They lived in a tiny bungalow style house with yellow siding and green shutters. A white picket fence encircled it, completing the overall "straight out of a catalog" look.

"Good. No one's home." I heard Dinah mutter as she hopped out of the van. I followed her inside, tugging Tobi along by the wrist. I could feel him trembling against my skin. I couldn't tell whether it was because of fear, excitement or just because he was so lethargic. A smile was plastered on his face, but his eyes were darting around, as if he were expecting an ambush. He was always smarter than he let on.

I washed his hands for him like I would a toddler and sat with him at the kitchen table, while Dinah cut him a slice of key lime pie she'd made the night before.

She tossed it in front of him with a glass of water. "That's all you're getting." She hissed, plopping down in the chair furthest away from him and me.

Tobi made no move for his fork. He sat there, staring down at the sliver of pie, his nose wrinkled in disgust. His hands lay on the table, his fingers drumming restlessly against the wood beneath them. Though I'd scrubbed his hands, there was still a dark line beneath his finger nails. Dirt, maybe even old, dried blood.

"What's wrong, Tobi? You need to eat." I encouraged.

He turned his head towards me, cocking it to the side in a canine way. His eyes still had that glassed over look to them, like the lights were on but no one was home. "Can I have something to eat?" He asked almost pleading.

"I just gave you something. Eat it." Dinah huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. Her eyes bounced nervously between Tobi and I. She leaned further back in her chair.

His attention shifted towards her. "This isn't food." Tobi's voice was almost inaudible over the drumming of his fingers. The constant drilling was taking on a rhythm now. Slowly, I came to recognize it as the hymn he'd been humming the whole way there. Childhood memories flooded my mind: Granddaddy's house filled with that song as it was played over and over and over, the record player never going quiet, never stopping. Just below the deafening sound, when the singers' voices went low, you could just barely hear them…the screams.

The wolf inside me began to sing, his gravel voice drowning out all other sound. Dinah, with her usually stern face pinched with anxiety, said something to me. I could see her mouth moving, but I couldn't hear her voice over the wolf as he sang the words I thought I'd long forgotten.

"Are you washed in the blood,

In the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb?

Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow?

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?"