up with them but to get in front of them, head them off. That’s why when I came to the steep gully formed by years of winter runoff, I leapt straight across rather than heading up where it is narrower.
I made it to the other side, but not before jamming my ribs into a shattered root sticking out from the far wall.
But I keep going.
I have no choice but to keep going.
Chapter 18
Constantine
It’s early morning by the time we are on the quiet country highway heading back to Homelands. Luckily, there’s no one around to notice the naked werewolves twitching nervously in the truck bed.
As we turn into Homelands, they leap away, the cab bobbing with each jump. As soon we reach the parking lot, Ziggy follows, leaving nothing behind but a pile of clothes slowly deflating on the driver’s seat.
Filthy and exhausted, I slam the door shut and start for the Bathhouse.
The Bathhouse is a large and mostly windowless building buttressed on one side by a woodshed and on two sides by a screened-in porch festooned with sprays of leafy branches hanging from the rafters. When I’ve been here before, long empty chairs have been occupied by naked werewolves, their sauna-heated skin steaming in the cool evening air.
Inside smells clean and damp and woody with overtones of eucalyptus and a smell I can only identify as damp feather pillows. I collect a towel and a brush and, on a whim, a bouquet of branches. In the shower, I scrub myself raw with the determinedly neutral shampoo they use.
There is a large mirror built into the tile of the shower room and spotted with black spots where water has condensed underneath. While I’ve caught sight of myself in it from time to time, I don’t do any real “gazing”: something to do with the dozen or so naked werewolves sniffing around my crevices and saying, “What is that smell, Egbert?”
The man in the mirror pulls his hair back same as I do. He stretches his lips over gritted teeth same as I do. I still can’t quite believe he’s me. All the emptinesses have been filled in. Even the gaunt hollows under my eyes and my cheekbones are gone.
I stroke the beard over skin that looks more golden than before. Or maybe that’s a trick of the gold trickling from the fogged window of the sauna.
Someone needs to turn the light off.
Among Lukani at the compound, menial labor was left to the humans. It was a point of pride.
“Someone needs to take out the trash.” “Someone needs to fill the ice-cube tray.” “Someone needs to turn off the light of the sauna and bank the stove.”
If there’d been a poll at the compound, I’d probably have been voted least likely to be “someone.” Exhausted as I am, I head to the sauna to turn off the light and bank the stove… Except when I open the door, water explodes into steam on hot rocks. The Alpha drops the ladle back in the bucket of water and sits down on the lowest of the ranged benches, a towel wrapped tightly around her. It’s unusually modest for pack.
“Close the door.”
I only then realize that I’ve been standing here a while, letting all the heat out.
“They’re wild,” she says, half question, half statement.
“Yes.”
“Glad.” She stares unseeing at the stove. “Will it work?”
“I think so. We’ll know better after a decent rain.”
“Hmm.”
“Alpha…” I pat my shoulders with the branches. “There was a little trouble with men who came. I—”
“Crushed their MTVs. I saw.”
“ATVs actually, but yes. The men too. A little.” I take down the branches so that I will have something to look at that isn’t her.
“I’ll tell the lawyers.”
“I doubt they’ll be any trouble. I don’t think there was any lasting damage, and men like that…three against one. They won’t report it. Point of pride.”
She starts to laugh, then draws up short, her face tight. “Still,” she says. “Lawyers.”
Feeling suddenly awkward, I continue my futile swatting with the dry branches.
“Here.” The Alpha holds out her hand, taking them from me. “I’ll show you. Turn around.”
She submerges the branches in the bucket filled with water next to the stove. The first thing I feel is the cool lash of water against my overheated skin, followed by the beat of stems. The caress of leaves. The green embrace of birch.
I drape my arm between my legs, hoping the friction from the rough towel will tame the bulge my exhausted mind could not have imagined