Knock knock.

I’d said that to Cal, but I should’ve been saying it to myself too.

Knock knock. Who’s there?

Catcher… as I’d told myself a hundred times before. Catcher. I was Catcher, yes, now. But before? No. There wasn’t any point to lying to myself. I’d gone bye-bye. That was six times in the past month. I could blame what had happened earlier for my last trip if I wanted, but that was still the most times ever. I could only pin one of those on Cal.

I’d seen a different side to him with the Ördögs, his Auphe side, the one I’d tried to ignore at our McDonald’s McNugget-up-the-nose stop. There was no ignoring it at the creek. I’d been right there with him when we caught up with the truck traveling off the road and also caught up with Cal ’s own traveling. What he did, I couldn’t describe it to anyone else but a Wolf. Humans couldn’t see what we could. I’d been in human form and wolf form and although as a human I saw more colors, as a wolf I saw depths and textures humans couldn’t imagine. I saw reality bleeding around Cal every time he disappeared and reappeared. It was like a visual scream. The world was screaming.

I wasn’t sure if that’s what tipped me over into wolf and nothing but wolf. It could have been that or the battle. Sleek black shapes here, there, everywhere. There was flesh ripping under my teeth and the taste of blood. I wasn’t Kin. I was proof that all Wolves weren’t criminals and careless murderers. I’d been a biologist. My cousin was a healer. I didn’t go looking for trouble. Sometimes you couldn’t avoid it, no matter how hard you tried, not in our world where almost everyone was a predator-it was only a matter of big or little, slow or fast.

But me? I was a peaceful guy, laid back and fun loving. In the day, I could bong a beer and tutor you in anatomy. I’d pledged a frat… all the better to blend in, and, to my shame, get free beer. Once in a while in my past I’d run into those a little less nonviolent than I was. I’d tried to be reasonable, but there were those who wouldn’t listen to reason. Then there were the times you just had to go to the woods, the forest, the jungle-whatever was available-to run and hunt. We were Wolves, first and foremost, above all other things. It was natural, and there was no denying we were at our most wolf in the hunt.

Either Cal or the blood; it didn’t make a difference what had been the trigger. I remembered tearing into the Ördögs and then I remembered waking up in the car. In between were the dreams you forgot two seconds after waking up. You knew there’d been something and you had a sense of the emotion, even the happy, slow drift of colors, but anything tangible was gone. I woke up floating in blissful satisfaction and to a full stomach. Deer. I could still taste it. It was a familiar taste. It was what we “tame” suburban Wolves tended to hunt. The Kin would kill and usually eat their enemy. I couldn’t do that. If it talked, I couldn’t eat it. It could deserve to be eaten, but it didn’t make a difference. If it could talk, I couldn’t knosh down on it. I was a softy that way. I couldn’t eat octopus either. I’d done a study on them in college. Those things could open jars to get at food. Jars… with screw-top lids. That was smart. I didn’t remember how long it took me to figure out how to open jars when I was a kid. I knew it hadn’t been anywhere near as fast as an octopus and I’d gotten all gold stars in kindergarten.

Rafferty had once said I was the closest thing to a wolf vegetarian he’d ever seen. A tree- hugging, vegetarian wolf-worse yet, Wolf, and he was embarrassed to be seen with me. This from the guy who healed broken wings on birds and tossed them back, free, into the sky. “What?” he’d gruff. “I just ordered pizza. I’ll take pizza over blackbird any day.”

It was why he fought the Ördögs as wolf instead of killing them with a brush of his fingers. It was to give them a chance. It was what was right and fair. He’d only ever killed as a healer to give mercy, the way he had the pregnant woman Suyolak had corrupted beyond all hope of curing. That he was going to change that when he took on Suyolak wasn’t his fault. Only a healer could stop another healer as strong as Suyolak. Rafferty had to do it because that bastard had to die. I could live with that. Rafferty could too. I didn’t know if either of us could live with his doing it by draining Suyolak of a life force that was as tainted as a well poisoned with cyanide.

Whether or not using it could bring me back to what I once was wasn’t the issue. What was, was what would Rafferty be if he did. I’d give up my furry butt-no, I’d give up my life for my cousin, and I knew he’d do the same for me. While I didn’t want it to come to that, it was part and parcel of family, the right kind of family. What I couldn’t accept was his changing. Not the way I had changed, but like Cal had changed during the fight. I didn’t want to be whole and right again, only to look into my cousin’s eyes and see a shadow of Suyolak staring back at me. If he could pull it off and make me like I once was without darkening himself, that would be great. I’d pay for the party… buffet and piñatas. We’d hit Mexico and the beaches and not come back for a year. Nothing but fun, sun, and knock-you-flat tequila. We more than deserved it.

But if he couldn’t put me right and keep himself the same in the process, I’d rather live a clean if intellectually simplistic life. I’d rather be the Catcher who lived only in the moment, a Catcher without an identity beyond the most basic concept of “me.” A Suyolak-contaminated Rafferty was not a clean life, for either of us. It was wrong, a polluted existence. And I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t change his mind; I could only hope he was telling the truth: that he could handle it.

“Ah, but, dog, what if he cannot?”

I swiveled my head as I sat in the passenger seat of the moving car but saw nothing. It didn’t stop Suyolak’s oily voice from sniffing around the inside of my brain like a cat in heat, ravenous for any satisfaction he could get. I didn’t know if anyone else could hear him, although no one looked as if goosed with an icy finger, which was how I felt. All that was missing was a doctor telling me to cough.

I closed my eyes and I could see him as he was a long time ago: human with wavy black hair to his shoulders, mischievous black eyes, and a smile that outshone a thousand commission-hungry salesmen. I didn’t think they had such good teeth in those days, but he was a healer. Who needed fluoride if you could heal a dying person or turn him inside out, depending on your mental wiring? Suyolak had some very bad wiring. A conscience was only a word to him, without any real meaning. He had never healed a bird and let it fly away.

“You think that being born without a conscience is my fault, my friend?” The moon was orange as Cal had said it had been in his dream and Suyolak was sitting on a vine-covered log by a small fire with a pot of bubbling stew. In his lap he was casually bouncing a small boy. The child was three or four years old and dressed in an old- fashioned nightshirt with colorful embroidery around the neck. His head swung back and forth, lolling without any control. His legs and arms were limp and his eyes blank, but he breathed. He had dusky skin, a mop of black curls, and a face as flawless as Suyolak’s.

“You’re smart enough to follow the rules of society.” There were only words in my head, but I heard them as if I were still able to say them aloud. It’d been so long since I’d heard my voice, even in my dreams, that I’d almost forgotten what I sounded like. “Smart enough to know they’re there for a reason even if you can’t understand or feel the reason behind them.”

“You are the first sanctimonious Wolf I’ve crossed paths with. Curious. And, yes, I am smart, more than enough to know that rules don’t apply to one such as me.” Even as he said the words, the grin was as compelling and charismatic as before. The bait to pull in the unwary. Nature at its darkest and most chaotic. Biology. I was a biologist, but I didn’t have to be to see it. I didn’t have to be a psychiatrist either to know Suyolak was a creature beyond redemption. Nature was nature. The volcano didn’t cry for Pompeii -it didn’t care whom it killed and neither did Suyolak.