Immortal Lycanthropes - By Hal Johnson Page 0,6
slid the window open. “What’s your name?” she asked.
He told us.
“Jeez Louise, you got screwed, kid,” I said. “Look, what’s going on? Why is Benson after you? And where’d you come from, for that matter?”
“What are you talking about? How would I know what’s going on? I don’t know who Benson is. I don’t know how you fight a lion and its mane. I don’t know who you are or where you’re taking me.”
“Hey, don’t cry, Myron,” Alice said. He was crying. “My name is Alice, and this is my friend Arthur.”
“That’s me!” I said.
“Benson was the big guy who was chasing you. His driver was Mignon Emanuel. They work for Mr. Bigshot. Does that help?”
“I have no idea what you’re even talking about. Are you police?”
“Oh, lawsy, no,” Alice said. “We’re, you know, like you.”
“Like me?”
“We’re lycanthropes.”
“We’re what?”
“Technically,” I pointed out helpfully, for I abhor imprecision, “we are therianthropes.”
“You’re werewolves?” Myron asked.
“No, no, I was just saying, and this is why I abhor imprecision,” I said, “lycanthropes are werewolves, and we certainly do not turn into wolves.”
“I was using lycanthrope colloquially,” Alice insisted. “I didn’t mean wolves, I meant were-animals.”
“You’re crazy,” Myron said. He had stopped crying at least, but he looked like he was going to go all hysterical at any moment.
“We saved your life,” Alice said, “crazy or not. And we can turn into animals.”
As we pulled onto the highway our truck hit a bump that threw Myron against the window. I’d been watching him in the rearview mirror, and when his face came up to the window, I gave a start. He was really ugly. The features weren’t even in the right place was the problem. One eye was lower than the other, and the bridge of his nose was shaped like a seven, and it ended in nothing. Myron drew his face away from the window, pulled off his backpack, and sat on it. The flatbed must have been wet, come to think. “What animals?” he asked.
“I’m a red panda, and Arthur’s a binturong.”
“What’s a binturong?” Myron asked.
I was getting annoyed. “It’s a bearcat. What, like you’re something cooler?”
“You turn into a bearcat?”
“No, Myron, he is a bearcat. He’s a bearcat who turns into a human.”
I growled, “Can we just say binturong? I’m a binturong. A binturong is driving your car. You’re going to have to learn the word eventually.”
Alice was still calm, damn her eyes. “What are you, Myron?”
“I’m . . . I’m Jewish?”
“No, I mean, what animal. What do you turn into a human from?”
“I don’t turn from anything into anything. This is crazy, you don’t turn into anything, either.”
“Show him,” Alice said.
“I can’t, I’m driving.”
She grabbed the wheel and swung a foot over onto the gas pedal. “You can, I can’t—I’m wearing the wrong kind of clothes.” And she was right, her clothes were for street wear, it would’ve taken her forever to put them back on. Whereas I was dressed stylishly but sensibly, so I turned into a binturong. Shaggy black fur, tufts on the tops of my ears, and a long, sinuous tail. I popped back into human form right away, and now I was naked, of course, my clothes strewn about the font seat where they had fallen.
“You can change form, too,” Alice said, relinquishing the wheel and dropping a shirt in my lap, for modesty’s sake. “Do you not know what you are?”
“Because we sure don’t know,” I said, “so don’t look to us for the answer. Also, it’s cold in here, close the window.”
Alice did not close the window between us and Myron, of course, which I suppose made sense. The kid took this all pretty well, considering, and said, “Maybe, maybe I just haven’t turned into anything yet. Maybe at puberty I’ll start turning into something, at the full moon.”
“Jeez Louise, kid, not that old full-moon bromide. And I’ve got bad news for you: you’re never going to hit puberty.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
I was so frustrated that I leaned forward and bit the steering wheel. He was so slow to catch on!
“We saved your life,” Alice said, “we’d hardly kill you now. You’re safe, we’re just trying to figure things out.”
“How do you know I can turn into something?”
“We can feel it, when we’re around one of our own kind. Can you get the feeling from us?”
“Yeah, like your neck’s all prickly. I got the same feeling from the big guy.”
“Benson. He’s one of us, too. He’s a bison.”
“That’s how he got his name,”