Dream Lover Read online

Once upon a time, a wolf came out of the dark while she searched an abandoned campground for leftovers and stuck his nose right up her backside. She swung away, tucking her tail, and tried to get around him. The wolf chuffed, mouth open, and absorbed her scent through his tongue. He was erect. She was scared; it was against nature this way since she didn’t want to mate with a wolf. The wolf grabbed her.

  She struggled, snarling, trying to get away, and the sound the wolf made was like a chuckle, and so she stared. What was he?

  An animal with black fur and dark eyes.

  Without hesitation, she twisted away and ran.

  She ran into the winter night, cobalt sky and starlight, a twotone moon above her. She ran from the campground toward town. She ran until her sides hurt, until she felt her tongue lagging from her mouth. She was weak from scavenging. She’d been alone too long. Time folded; memories overlapped. Not long ago, although she wasn’t sure when, she’d ducked into a library and read about Eve, the first woman on earth, or maybe it had been Lilith, the Devil’s wife, but who’d been the first one like her? Children’s stories were full of wolves. Myths included shape shifters. Where was her book of Genesis? She couldn’t find anything like that.

  The wolf had followed her out of the woods. They’d entered another kind of forest, one of newspaper like animal skins stuck to the concrete and wheels of cars. She heard the wolf chuckle again and stopped. Crouched against a wall, she regarded him. The wolf was sleek and muscled, obviously not hungry like her. He was full. The beast was beautiful. He lowered his head and growled. She ducked around a corner and ran again. He followed. At the door to her motel room she shifted. Fast as she could, she tried the door. It was unlocked: good. Inside the room, she slammed the door then secured the lock. She held still. The woman heard him coming. Her skin reacted. The ripples were like electrical zaps that lifted the hair on her arms then crowded into her stomach.

  The woman felt a pelt of fur rising along the bumps of her spine.

  Who’s afraid of the big, bad wolf?

  She held her human form.

  On the other side of the door, the wolf’s claws clicked on the pavement then stopped. She heard him panting and imagined his breath fogging the doorknob. The woman rushed across the room. She was light on her feet, quiet. She dropped to her hands and knees behind the bed. Meanwhile, the wolf sniffed her remains on the sidewalk: fur, teeth and skin. She heard him eating her, chewing her up, cleaning up after her.

  The wolf scratched the door.

  She held her hand to her mouth and didn’t move. After a while, the woman went to a window across the room. There, near the glass, the air was cold. She shivered. Finally, she opened the curtain. The wolf waited on the other side of the glass. He pulled his jowls back and showed her the lovely canines. His dark eyes took in her human form, and then the wolf shed his fur in piles; his canines fell to the sidewalk before his head shrank and his ears retracted and went soft at the side of his head. For a moment, he stood bent over like a monkey, and the sight of an animal transforming into a man was ugly, so frightening she couldn’t watch anymore. The woman cringed from the window and then hugged herself. She closed her eyes, waiting. After a while, she couldn’t resist. When she looked again, the wolf man stood upright; he was built like an athlete and tall, but his skin appeared so pale she imagined a vampire before an endless myriad of monsters paraded through her head, the impossible all in existence now.

  The wolf man raised his hand and made it into a fist before knuckling the window. The woman shook her head. She stared at him through the glass, the beauty of the wolf man, his evil.

  Let me in, he said.

  She shook her head no again.

  The wolf man smiled. I’ll huff and I’ll puff and then I’ll blow your house in.

  Just like the story.

  The woman exhaled a breath.

  Moongirl, the wolf man said.

  Across the woman’s skin, she experienced one ripple after another. The fur on her spine stood on end. Fight, run…what? Even if they both could shift, it didn’t mean they were the same, did it? It didn’t mean she could trust him.

  The wolf man tapped the glass again. His human teeth glowed. He’d get in, yes; she couldn’t stop him. Some things, you just know. The woman let go of the curtain to stall a few seconds. She backed away from the window stalling more.

  Moongirl, aren’t you hungry?

  Her hollow gut answered for her. She was sick from eating trash, sick of begging. She was sick of stealing from men and then having to disappear like she’d never existed.

  Moongirl, the wolf man said again. I’ll feed you.

  She went to the window and pushed back the curtain again. He was patient, the wolf man, waiting for her to surrender, a knife of light from the moon across his eyes. She smelled her fear, her desire for him. The curls on top of his head were black as midnight. He was perfect in his human form. The woman unlatched the window.

  His breath came in with him—mint, meat, blood.

  Hello, Moongirl.

  She shuddered.

  He was on her fast.

  His favorite song was “Hungry like the Wolf.” He forgot the band but thought they were British boys popular in the eighties. He’d been a boy once. He didn’t remember.

  Time didn’t mean much to a wolf man, not the way it meant something to humans who were either out of time or bitching how time went too slow for them. Life was a whirlwind. That’s all. Time was like colors bleeding, shadows merging, a river that rolled into a sea.

  The wolf man was multidimensional, as transcendent as music. He liked “Hungry like the Wolf,” not because he’d attached it to any particular memory but because it was catchy. In fact, the song was hilarious. Whenever he caught it playing in a club or coming from some unsuspecting person’s window, he tried not to crack up. Once he’d climbed through a window, then let himself start to shift while he sang the song and let the drool fall from his lips. The woman in the room had screamed. Hey, it was his swan song, right? Like someone chanting “Bloody Mary” three times in a mirror.

  The wolf man had a hold of her by her hair; he studied the line of her throat then her chin before staring into her eyes. He tapped a fingernail below her left eye then her right. He smiled still staring into them.

  Yeah, he said.

  The woman detected a smell of meat in the wolf man’s hair and pushed her face at him before whimpering against his mouth. Instead of meat, he gave her tongue, and when she kissed him it was trying to get something out of him, the way cubs stuck their snouts between their parents’ jaws until they regurgitated. She tasted blood from his last meal, and like that she kissed him and clung to him around his shoulders—for sustenance.

  Want me to kill something for you? I’d do that, you know, if you were my bitch. The wolf man smiled.

  She held him. “Yes,” she said.

  Yeah? You’re my bitch then?

  “Kill something for me.” The woman licked his lips.

  The wolf man curled his fingers around her neck. You’re pleasing in your human form, you know that?

  “I want to be,” she said.

  The wolf man pressed his thumb to her throat. He kissed the base of her throat at the pulse. You like me?

  “Yes.” She shivered.

  The wolf man dragged his hand down the length of his chest to his torso all the way to his cock, which was hard. What was it like, a wolf man’s body? She touched him across his arms, his chest then his torso, and he felt like a man: warm, firm, smooth.

  He pushed her toward the bed behind them.

  Sitting on the edge she looked at him. “Who are you?” she said.

  Call me Hayden, he said.

  “Hayden,” she repeated. “Is it the name your parents gave you?”

  Parents? The wolf man opened his mouth and flexed his jaw before smiling at her. Did I mention I’ve been looking for you like forever.

  She scooted back on the bed. “You have?”

  He crawled o
n with her. Would I lie about it? The wolf man studied her face, her breasts. You want to do it like this, fuck like humans?

  “Okay.”

  Ever fuck as a wolf?

  “No.”

  I tried to.

  “I know.”

  So you don’t want to then?

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know.” She was confused. “Where you from?”

  Oh, that. Okay. Massachusetts originally then Rhode Island. Well, went to school there long time ago, Brown University. Heard of it? What a dumb, fucking bore that was. The wolf man got on his knees in front of her and then grabbed his human cock again. What do you think?

  The woman’s cunt had gone wet. There was his answer. He could smell her, something like ripe earth and raw rainwater, a little like meat and honeycomb too.

  The wolf man opened his mouth and closed his eyes. He jerked himself off.

  Bite me, he said.

  The woman bit his right nipple and then licked his blood. What a pungent taste he had. She wiped at him with her tongue, wanted more. The wolf man shuddered against her. She touched herself between her legs. In three smooth maneuvers, he had her on her stomach. He rubbed her asscheeks, squeezed them.

  Did I mention you’re lucky, Moongirl? I’ve met others who aren’t nearly as gorgeous in their human forms.

  Others? she wanted to say. Tell me about them. Oh, god. Oh, something. She tried to twist around to see him. His fingers felt longer than humanly natural between her legs. On her hands and knees, the woman arched her back then pushed against him.

  She rubbed her cunt across his hand.

  The wolf man sucked in his breath. He moved his finger inside her, fucked her like that. Moongirl, seriously. Look at you. The wolf man pulled his hand away. Look.

  “Yes, okay.” She got to her knees then regarded herself in the moonlight and didn’t get a full picture. An impression, that was all. How should she feel about her body? She knew how human men reacted to her in this form, that’s all.

  The wolf man took hold of her hair. He pulled her head back then grazed her neck with his teeth. I bet all the bitches hate you.

  She shuddered. “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t have any friends.” The woman pressed against him again, tempting him with her cunt.

  She wanted to cry. She wanted to howl.

  The wolf man stuck his face between her legs. He did something with his tongue.

  The woman moaned. He stopped.

  “No. More,” she said.

  Say please, Moongirl.

  She hesitated. “Okay, please.” And then she snarled at him.

  The wolf man started again. She gnawed the corner off a pillow.

  He remembered being cold for a stretch of time. He’d caught sight of himself in a window and thought he resembled something from Les Miserables. Weeks earlier, he’d dropped out of college. He wasn’t much of a morning person. Maybe he’d liked booze too much. Anyway, he’d experienced terror at the time as well as other things to shame and disgust him, like how he was a chick magnet who didn’t like people.

  He liked fucking a girl on all fours. He liked sinking his teeth in her shoulder when he ejaculated inside her, except most girls didn’t get into the biting. Soon as it was done, he was neurotic again, like an animal pacing its cage. He’d imagine tearing his hair out, clawing his own skin. Sure, he’d fucked his way through a whole lot of chicks because he liked the game, the conquest; he liked the release, and he needed the opportunity to stick his face between their legs and sniff them.

  He was in search of something. That was it. A smell. He couldn’t explain. He’d just know it when it was there. So he’d nose the folds of a girl’s cunt then not detect what he was after and endure another huge disappointment, no clues. Who was he? No family tree, no history, no reason. Oh, his father was just another literary cliché, not worth going into; so he wasn’t going into it. The taste of a woman’s cunt would melt away on his tongue and then he’d finger his incisors that felt dull. His mouth would water. He’d hit the booze: vodka, no tonic. Bitterness he was after.

  Hayden would dream a heartbeat against his tongue. He’d transform into an animal with a rabbit in his mouth, all powerful. The rabbit would kick in his jaws, struggling, poor dumb thing. There’d be a crunch of bones, a spray of blood.

  When he’d wake, Hayden would jerk off, ejaculate, then stay hard. The hair on his body would stand on end, and then he’d feel it, a rippling across his skin.

  Something…something about to break: Eggs his father had sent him into the chicken house to collect. Yolks on the kitchen floor, shells like pieces of teeth, egg whites like slobber, like come. You big fucking dumbass, I’m going to clobber you.

  Go ahead.

  Hayden had heard of self-fulfilling prophecy before. Inside, you had power, and with that power, you murdered shame. Rather than knock back a bottle of vodka one night, he’d leapt onto an overturned trash barrel then torn off his shirt and screamed. The trick was to believe you had magic. That was how it was done: he’d howled at the moon then threw up on the pavement. Seconds later, his skin had split open. The wolf had patrolled a warehouse district with abandoned buildings like skeletal frames, bonfires, a smell of alcohol and body odor—the wilderness of the weak.

  Once upon a time in a motel room, cold air came in behind them because they’d forgotten about the window. Moonlight spilled into the room. The wolf man admired the glow of her skin in the silvery light. Goose down feathers snowed across the bed. She’d gutted the pillow like a cat. She had feathers stuck to her face. Cunt juice smeared his mouth.

  Lying on her side, she breathed.

  We’ll hunt, he said and then kissed the back of her neck. His saliva melted into the fur along her spine. At last, she twisted her head around and they kissed each other’s mouths. She tasted herself on his tongue. He licked a feather off her chin.

  The wolf man pulled her to him and asked questions.

  How many lovers have you had?

  “A few, I guess.”

  Always human?

  “Yes.”

  That’s your problem, you know.

  “I don’t have a problem.” She wriggled away and felt herself frown.

  The wolf man pulled her back then bit her throat; not hard, but it still hurt.

  “I’m lonely,” she confessed. “I’m hungry.”

  You need me, that’s all.

  “Except I lose everything,” she said.

  You won’t lose me, Moongirl. I can keep up.

  She went still breathing, thinking. He tried to read her face. After a while she said, “Is something wrong with us?”

  Wrong? The wolf man kissed her cheek.

  “Evil,” she said. “Are we evil?” It’s what her stepsister had called her. Stepsister. Was she a long time ago? The memory was more a shadow than a face; all that meanness, stuff like, “You’re an evil freak.”

  Lying beside the woman, the wolf man tried again to read her face in the spare, silver light and then saw something flicker like sadness or agitation, something. Evil in human terms, you mean?

  “I don’t know. Isn’t evil just evil?”

  We’re not human, he said. So human bullshit doesn’t apply to us.

  “We’re animals then?”

  No.

  She felt like biting him. “What do you mean? Do you even know what we are?”

  Of course I know. The wolf man raised himself to look at her. We’re magic.

  “What?” She remembered now. The old man, Riley, he’d said she was better than a magic trick; he’d sworn she was a miracle and fallen to his knees at her feet.

  The old man had called her Angel.

  She missed the old man a lot.

  We’re magic, the wolf man said again.

  She wanted to believe it. She’d wanted to believe what Riley had said. Better than a magic trick. She wanted to believe the wolf man now. So she wasn’t sick like they’d said in the mental hospital. Lycanthropy, they’d said. Ins
anity. She couldn’t always resist, that was true. She liked to change; she liked to hunt; she liked the blood too much.

  There’s magic in the blood, Moongirl.

  She looked at him. “The blood?”

  Yes.

  The woman shivered. He understood her. “I’m not crazy,” she said.

  Is that what the humans have told you?

  “I’ve been told a few things.”

  So forget them, he said.

  “All of them? Do I have to?”

  You’ve got a fixation with humans.

  “I’m not fixated with humans.”

  Moongirl, I smell them all over you.

  “I didn’t know there was anything else.”

  Now you know. There’s us.

  “There’s us,” she said, then thought another moment. “Can we turn humans into what we are?”

  You mean like a were can turn a human?

  “Yes.”

  The wolf man laughed.

  “Stop laughing.” She hit him in his face, and so the wolf man bared his teeth at her; a tooth fell out and hit her forehead. He was beginning to change. Incisor replaced by canine. She blinked. The wolf man was still human. He lowered his face and kissed her.

  “So we can’t turn others?” she said.

  No. He’d rolled onto his back. The wolf man stared at the ceiling now.

  “Okay.” She found his tooth and played with it between her fingers. She scooted closer to him. She wanted to stick her face in the wolf man’s armpit and inhale his smell.

  “I wish we could though.”

  The wolf man rolled over and pinned her. It’s a stupid fixation.

  “It is? I don’t know.”

  Right, you don’t know. The wolf man sank his teeth into her shoulder.

  She yelped then slapped wherever she could reach him. He wrestled with her. Feathers stuck to her hair. He felt one in his teeth. Then he said, A man will never love you, Moongirl, no matter what you think or how much you hope he does. You’ll be his freak, like a pet or something. Then what? The wolf man waited. The wolf man shook her when she didn’t respond.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. The old man had died: it hadn’t been his fault. The surface of her skin rippled. She remembered eating him. She liked the blood too much.