The Killer in You

They are laughing, and they are talking like it’s all a bad dream.

“They say there are wolves in the area. They say one killed a man last night. Tore him to pieces and left him there.”

She smiles, because some part of her lost and disturbed enough to find that funny. She smiles to herself and buries the smile in a drink that she can’t taste, because it takes more than hops and barley to get her drunk. It’s not what she’s looking for at the moment, but she’s getting there and in an hour she can picture herself downing shots, except that’s when it’ll start to get bad. When things start to get fuzzy and she starts to get violent or playful but she’s not in the mood to kill.

Not yet anyway.

She can still smell the blood on her own breath and see some of it crusting and flaking beneath her nails. Didn’t she wash her hands last night? She remembers scrubbing at them, but her eyes weren’t there, didn’t really watch as the red ran off her skin into the basin. She could never wash her hands enough, and she doesn’t know if that bothers her. She sticks a nail into her mouth and sucks the last taste of metallic death from her fingers.

“That’s not what I heard.” The men at the table glance up to the bar, where she sits unperturbed and unremarkable on her stool. She turns halfway around, fixing the men with a look and a half smile, still tasting red and blood on her lips. She licks it off and finds herself wanting more in a sudden rising urge that passed through her veins like wildfire. Beneath her skin the wolf growls and grins. “I heard that it was a werewolf.”

One of the men starts laughing at her.

“Don’t be stupid woman. All the wolves were burned years ago.”

Something rises in her, something bitter and vengeful and violent and in an instant she’s walking across the room. There is nothing spectacular about her features. She is not stunningly beautiful but she is not horribly ugly. But in that moment there is something predatory and animalistic in the way she moves, not unlike a hunting animal. There is nothing of feminine grace in the movements but something more fluid and more deadly and for a moment the man finds himself recoiling, as if he has stepped upon a snake and only now realizes what he’s done.

“Really? Would you be willing to bet your life on that?”

She is standing over their table, seemingly uninterested in them, studying her nails and seeing the red that’s always there, always staining her skin and she wonders what it’ll take for it to wash off and she wonders if that’s what she wants at all. Because right now the wolf is rising in her and it’s making her eyes flash golden and all she wants is it show these men what death looks like and see their eyes dim. The thoughts come too naturally to her and she wonders what it felt like to be human.

“Everyone knows that all the wolves were killed years ago. So don’t worry your pretty little head about werewolves. They’re nothing but smoke and legend now.” He is grinning, and raising his glass to toast himself and his bold words. His friends are laughing alongside him, waving the barmaid over for another round of drinks so that they can lose themselves in liquor and ignore the fact that their pathetic lives are little more than a nuisance to the one who stands over them. Smoke and laughter and conversation flow and ebb around their corpses.

Then she is leaning down to whisper in the man’s ear.

Long, graceful fingers catch his chin, nails digging into his skin and drawing a drop of blood as a flow of words drip from her lips. “Do you know what it feels like?” she is saying, a cruel smile drawing a line across her face and it seems natural on her at this moment. “To feel your jaws close around a human neck, to feel the muscle and bone and vertebrate crunching beneath your teeth and the blood that’s flowing like a river?”

Soft laughter.

He is shaking, and fear rises from him in a wave.

He can’t say why, but something about the steady growl in his ear and that laughter echoing in his mind has made him considerably less comfortable. “Do you know what it feels like to hunt? To hear your prey as it stumbles through the underbrush? Humans are such clumsy creatures. So loud and arrogant. Did you know that you stink of fear? Do you know what that smells like? Have you ever felt the thrill of the chase and the death and the hunt?”

She laughs again, shaking her head. “No, I think not.”

Then she is standing and the man’s friends are staring at her and him because they did not hear the words and don’t understand why he is suddenly pale and clutching at his drink or why she is grinning so or her eyes are flashing colors that human eyes do not know. They don’t understand, but suddenly they don’t want to understand. “No,” she continues. “I don’t think I’m the one that needs to be concerned about werewolves, am I?”

The man looks up at her, fear and loathing and disgust written on his face and he is opening his mouth to say something, but it’s her turn to move, and she is thinking how satisfying it would be to kill them here, right in public, and she doesn’t believe it would truly matter to her. She could kill them all and it would be little more than a lark to her. It was a game. One hand was reaching forward, and she was already picturing the red that his veins held.

She smells him a moment before his hand closes around her arm.

“Time to go, Maria,” he hisses the words.

Next thing she knows he is dragging her forcefully through the crowd and she has no time to struggle, but a part of her is suddenly confused, like a child that knows she is in trouble but could not place the reason why. David’s face is taught and strained and she does not understand why, but it makes her sad. That in itself is an emotion foreign to her, but it is one he has summoned and the wolf is retreating in the face of an alpha male and she is left feeling weak and suddenly more human than she’s been in a while.

They burst outside and it is if she is waking from a dream.

The night is crisp and clear and beautiful, and though the moon is out and visible it is not full, and that means she is free for the most part, to pretend that she is human. She is bad at that game, bad at pretending, but she tries anyway because sometimes it’s good to wear a human’s skin. Anymore she is more wolf than woman, and she has accepted this and feels neither happy nor sad about that knowledge. At least, not until he appeared.

She turns her attention to him, and his face is tight and hard. She knows she has upset him, but does not understand why because she is not used to human emotion. She is used to kill and hunt and survive, not to things like compassion and worry and care. These are words invented for people, and she does not consider herself one of them anymore. He knows these things, but he is more man than wolf, even though he is the same mix that she is. The same cursed and twisted species.

“What did you think you were doing?” He finally says.

She frowns, not understanding the anger she smells on him. She is rubbing her arms, feeling strangely cold and she does not know why. She has no answer for him because she does not see the problem with her actions, so she remains silent as he paces back and forth, frustration rising from him in a dark cloud. “Sometimes I think you want to be caught. Sometimes I think you want to die. Honestly Maria! In the middle of a tavern?”

A growl escapes his throat, and she understands that.

“They annoyed me.” She shrugs.

He is shaking his head and running his hands through his dark hair, still pacing in front of her and she wonders what it is she did wrong. She only talked to them. She only drew a little blood and that reminds her of the red on her fingers and she begins to raise it to her lips, wondering if he will taste like the alcohol drowning out his system. David of course catches her hand before it gets there, drawing her eyes to his tormented face.

“I don’t understand you,” she says, and it’s the truth.

He shakes his head, suddenly pulling her into a hug. She does not understand this either, but she does not fight it, simply remaining stiff and unresponsive. His arms are tight and she believes that he is shaking, but could not say why. “I don’t want to see you get killed,” he whispers, and his breath is hot against her ear. “Don’t you understand? If they find out what you are, even Catherine and all the royal family can’t save you. They will take you and they will burn you and you’ll die screaming and in agony. I won’t see that happen to you. Not to you.”

She tentatively wraps her arms around his waist, letting him hold her for this one moment. She does not understand why she doesn’t mind, because she has never been comfortable with physical closeness. Not unless it involved killing. But she feels suddenly weak and all too human and she is shaking now and pressing herself tightly against him, finding a small coil of fear running through her. “I’ll be okay,” she whispers. “I’ll be fine.”

“I wish I could believe that,” he says, and she has no answer for him.