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Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Taking a break

I’m taking a little break from ‘Chasing Tail’ and writing in general. I’ve enjoyed revisiting some of the places in England I loved so much, but I’m struggling with the characters. In addition, work has, despite my best efforts, really taken a front seat lately. A little hiatus is probably what I need to recharge and to get a fresh perspective on the latest book.
 
I’ll keep you updated on Bud. As of yesterday, the contracts have been signed. Still waiting on the final draft from Penumbra. If I had to guess, I’d say we’re looking at a January release.
 
Book 2 has already been edited and is ready to go. Hopefully, sales pick up to warrant it’s publication. My latest books have not had anywhere near the sales of Blood and Sunlight though I think they’re far superior (for whatever that’s worth). I’ve got high hopes for Bud.
 
Struggling through the holidays. Kids are in present overload and I am dire need of a Rumplestiltskin-like nap. 
 

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Chasing Tail- Part 3

Victoria Station wasn't much better. The cab sidled to the front of the gothic exterior and got in line behind a long row of identical looking taxis, all driven by similarly complexioned men. Todd and Katrina wrestled their bags from the trunk of the cab into the cavernous and sickly lit main hall of the station.
While Heathrow was crowded, it was at least orderly. People of every nationality rushed this way and that, but always to get in line—for the Tube Station or airport security or to sample the new cinnamon pretzels.  Here, it was complete madness.
Throngs of people criss-crossed the hall in dozens of directions. Police officers moved calmly in between; large boulders moving slowly in a rushing stream. Occasional homeless people with wide, blue eyes got an even larger berth. Londoners, and they were easy to spot as they were the only ones not actually moving, loitered in front of the only pub, or leered over the nude models in the daily newspaper and the occasional tourist. Todd moved a little closer to Katrina. 
The whole place gave him the impression of a living organism. A terrible, mysterious creature whose inner-workings had not yet been understood. And he had just been swallowed whole. It was hard to believe that a country as crowded, as bustling, and hectic as this could house anything spectral or nightmarish as a werewolf. If even the idea of a lonely moonlit moor was a complete fantasy, too.
"Uh," was all he could manage.
"What time is it?" Katrina asked. She didn't wear a watch. Todd speculated that being beautiful meant never having to own a timepiece or a cigarette lighter or, and he said this without resentment, money. Certainly, there was no shortage of people just dying to give Katrina the time of day, but it was Todd who'd she chosen to rely on. That had to mean something.
"Noon."
"Our train's in twenty minutes. Better ask for help. If we miss it, we shan't get out of London. The next one's not until tomorrow."
That might not be the worst thing. London probably had nice hotels. And didn't his uncle say something about a Ritz and a wonderful place to eat pancakes with whipped cream near the British museum? Certainly a walk along the Strand lent itself more to an impromptu kiss than picking burrs out of your ass in a glorified meadow. But Katrina's pleading look told him that wasn't an option.
Todd searched the room. "There's a policeman over there." He gestured past a Norwegian tour group wearing plastic Viking helmets. He reached out to take her hand.
"I'll wait here," she said.
"But…" was all Todd managed. Claude once explained that you couldn't leave a pretty girl alone in a public place for longer than two seconds before some other guy would start chatting her up. The prettier the girl, the less time you could leave her by herself. Katrina, he figured, was about a one second kind of girl. So whenever she consented to being seen anywhere in public with Todd, he always swore off liquids for at least four hours beforehand. And, if for any reason, she had to go potty, he escorted her all the way to the door and back again. Better to date an uggo, Claude told him. You can go to the bathroom, comb your hair, and have time to pick up a pack of gum before you have to get back. But you do have to get back. Because eventually, someone's gonna be desperate enough to want to nail her, too. 
"Come with," he said, trying to make hurdling a bunch of drunken Norwegians acting exactly like a bunch of drunken Vikings sound appealing.
"I'm feeling a little flush," she said and fanned her perfectly white cheeks.
All that walking to and from the cab, Todd thought sourly. Or watching me carry your luggage. But he could see she wasn't budging. "All right. Stay here." He pointed to the ground for emphasis. "Watch the bags," he added, and gave his black Samsonite a look that said 'don't let anyone fuck her while I'm gone.'
To get past the Norwegians, he had to agree to downing two shots of a strange liquor that tasted exactly like dead fish and to give a sample of his best roar. By that time, the cop had moved on to sit sternly near the bathroom door and there wasn't anyone else helpful looking in sight. But from this new spot on the concourse, he spotted the train schedule, found the track they were supposed to be on, and even spied the exit that would take them to their train.
He sprinted back to Katrina who was, of course, talking to someone taller and much better looking than Todd and who was somehow successfully dressed in a pair of black of leather pants. Todd tried on a pair once. He looked and felt like a cow who'd suddenly lost 100 pounds and whose skin hadn't quite caught up yet. He hated this man instantly.
"That's so funny!" Katrina said and twirled a strand of honey-gold hair.
"I found the train," Todd said, ignoring the guy. "We better hurry." He put a huge emphasis on the We.
"Oh Todd, this is Colin. He's from London," she said, like it was some place magical. Like you couldn't swing a dead cat and hit twenty other douchebags with faux hawks from London right now.
"Oi," the man said and gave Todd the universal douchebag acknowledgement—a head nod.
"Oi," Todd said back and then took Katrina's arm. "C'mon. We've only got ten minutes."
"Good news. Colin's heading up North, too. He said he could drive us."
"Don't know if we're all going to fit, love. My Beamer is just a two-seater."
Of course it is, Todd thought and he realized something about Katrina. She didn't just seek danger. She attracted it. A trip to the English moors, sure. A ride with a stranger in a foreign country, why not!
"Is it convertible?" she asked.
"Whatever you like, pigeon." Colin winked. When Todd tried winking once, the girl asked if he was having a stroke.
"Would you mind if I went with him?" she asked Todd.
"What?" He couldn't even believe she was asking that. Not that he'd ever hold it over her, but he paid for the whole damn trip. He wasn't expecting a lap dance or anything in return, but it would've been nice, he thought, if she actually stayed with him.
"It's just, public transportation, you know. It's so gauche."
Todd gnashed his teeth together. No, he didn't know what gauche meant and he suspected that Katrina didn't either. If Katrina was incapable of protecting herself, well then he'd just have to be that much more vigilant. He tried another tactic. "You don't even know this guy. I'm not going to let you just wander off with some stranger." He dropped his voice to a whisper, but loud enough that Colin could still hear. "He could be a serial killer or something."
"All the serial killers are from America, mate." And in that last word, Todd heard a distinct warning. "Maybe," Colin said turning to Katrina, "I should be worried about you." And he poked her playfully in the stomach. "You wouldn't try to be luring a poor bloke out to the middle of nowhere to have his way with him, would ya?"
Katrina squealed and playfully hit his arm. Todd held back the urge to be sick. That little poke to Katrina's belly was farther than Todd had gotten in almost eight months of pursuit.
"Please," Katrina said then looked imploringly at him and he knew he had already lost. At least she asked, he thought softening. He snuck a glance at Colin. There was triumph on his face.
"Fine," Todd said.
"Yay, thank you!" Katrina threw his arms around his neck. "I'll meet you in Chatterton. At the pub."
"Chatterton? What the hell are you going there for?"
Katrina and Todd turned to look at Colin. He had stopped midway in the process of picking up Katrina's bag. His pasty British face looked a few shades pastier. "Is this a fucking joke?"
"No," Katrina said and she exchanged a look with Todd. "We're going to find Peter—"
"There's fuck all in Chatterton," he said. "Go somewhere else." And the way he said it, it wasn't a suggestion.
"That's where we're going," Katrina said and she turned the full effect of her green eyes and crossed arms at him. Todd almost felt sorry for the poor bastard. In a minute, he was going to be licking her shoes and begging to carry her there on his back.
But 'the look' had no effect on him. He threw the bag back down. "Forget it. No bird is worth going there." He looked at Todd. "Do yourself a favor, mate," and this time he said it as a plea, "Go to Newcastle. There's plenty of slags up there who'll give you the time of day and they won't go dragging you off to fucking Chatterton." 
He left muttering to himself about listening to his mom more and finding a nice, boring English girl.
Todd and Katrina exchanged a look then he glanced at his watch. The train would be leaving in five minutes. He could see indecision on her face. If ever there was a time to get out of this trip, it was right now. They could be at the Ritz in less than an hour.
But just then one of the Norwegians threw back his head and let out a long howl. It echoed across the main hall and for just a few seconds seemed to silence the entire station.
Todd and Katrina exchanged a nervous laugh. "We better get going," he said and he reached down to pick up Katrina's bag.
"I got it," she said and smiled weakly at him. And he led her towards the platform, the faint echo of the wolf howl, soon giving way to the high pitch scream of the train's mournful whistle.

Monday, December 3, 2012

Sparkly

This weekend I let my daughter paint my fingernails—she chose an alternating pattern of hot pink and yellow sparkles. While I looked fabulous, I completely forgot to remove it before my meeting packed afternoon today.
 
More proof that I should not be allowed to live in civilized society.
 

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Bud the Crud and the Vampire Werewolf Wars (excerpt)

Things to Do in Your Room While Waiting for a Vampire
1.      Pace. But believe me this looks a lot more fun in the movies when you might walk back and forth a few times before something miraculous happens or some brilliant idea just comes to you. In real life, you'll just do a lot of walking and a lot of worrying.

2.      Practice Yo-Yo. But don't drop it on the floor. That's a good way to get Mom charging up the stairs and to start a second round of 'talks' (which by now will sound more like screaming).

3.      Write a letter to Grandma. Then give up when you start thinking this might be your last letter to Grandma and maybe you should be writing a will instead so Crazy Sanchez doesn't get all your comic books. There's not too many ways to go once you start thinking like this.

4.      Collect dust bunnies. You may keep a clean room, but you can bet there's a whole gaggle of them waiting for you under the bed. And an old GI Bob action figure. But don't get too excited, it looks like your cat gnawed on it because there's teeth marks all over it. And thinking about all that will just make you sad.

5.      Eavesdrop on Mom yelling at Dad downstairs because apparently Dad was home when I snuck in, but is so honking oblivious that he didn't notice. I'm sure you can guess she didn't say honking, just like I'm also sure you know what she really said.

You'll have to move closer to the door when she starts saying things like `bad example' and `my mistake for marrying such a colossal jackrabbit' and that this was `all Dad's fault'. Which is fine with me if I got to share some of the blame. Sorry Dad.

6.      Finally, you can quietly, and I mean quietly, go to the bathroom, wash up, and brush your teeth. (Just don't try it on tip toes because it's harder than it looks and you'll just stumble and bang into the wall and get Mom all riled up again). You can put on your PJ's and turn on your nightlight just like you're getting ready for bed. Just don't actually get under the covers. Don't look at how big and full the moon is. Don't start thinking about how one way or another this will all be over soon. And don't, for Peter's, Mike's, and Greg's sake, do not actually start to relax. Because you'll do what I did and fall asleep again and it'll be too late.
 
Excerpt from Bud the Crud and the Vampire Werewolf Wars. Due out soon!
 

Monday, November 26, 2012

Chasing Tail- Post 2

Chapter 2
"Thoreau was a coward. Make no mistake. The woods offered him a rustic escape from the bustle of modern life. But his cabin was warm and Walden Pond well-stocked with fish and a carriage was always waiting to return him to his extravagant house in the city. And so it was that I chose England. A land of Druids, and magic, and ancient pagan rituals. A country built on stone monuments, and crumbling cathedrals. A place of shifting borders and endless conflict and pockets of countryside so remote, so unobtainable, that they remained untouched to this day. I speak, of course, of the moors—a dessert of moss and rock populated by wild animals and even wilder people. The moors represent life at its basest and at its most cruel. I went there, not looking for a quiet respite, but to be tested. To see if the beast within myself, which is in all of us, could survive once life had been stripped down and reduced to its barest state. I wanted to know just what I was capable of and how far I'd go to survive."
 
England was neither wild nor magical. It was, in fact, just wet and dreary. Todd was pretty sure that the word 'dreary' had been coined centuries ago by an early tourist specifically to describe the English climate to his friends back home. He had reached that opinion even before the plane touched down at Heathrow. After flying over miles of endless sea, a thick bank of clouds rolled in obscuring the ground below so when the plane finally did land, it gave him the impression of touching down on some mysterious city in the clouds. A wet and gray city in the clouds.
He would've gladly shared this opinion with Katrina, but she swallowed two mysterious white pills right after they boarded and had been sleeping in a ball against the window ever since.  Todd thought she looked smaller when she slept. Like a child. In life, he felt dwarfed by her, in constant awe, but now, with her hand pressed against her face and her chin touching her chest, she looked tiny and vulnerable and he thought about reaching out and putting her in his pocket. For safekeeping.
When the plane landed, he leaned over and whispered, "Hey," then gently touched her shoulder.
She stirred, swatted absently where Todd's hand was, then settled back to sleep. A crush of passengers filed past them, mumbling curses in various languages all related to the woes of air travel.
"Katrina," Todd said a little louder and he smiled expectantly. Claude once told him that if you're the first face a woman sees when she wakes up, she'll fall instantly in love with you. Which, Todd figured, was only effective in two circumstances: if you'd already gotten the into bed or on public transportation. It was a dumb theory, but given his track record, this was certainly his best shot.
She opened her eyes. Her lovely green eyes. That is to say, one was a lovely shade green and the other was gray. Like the bricks of a government building. Or the floor of a cafeteria.
"What?" she asked and smacked her mouth together.
Alan pointed to her right eye.
"Oh, my contact," she said and dug her finger unceremoniously into her eyeball to adjust it. "Better?"
"Yeah," he muttered, but he was staring at the ground, trying his hardest to forget what he had just seen.
"Are we here?"
Todd nodded his head.
"Lovely! What are you waiting for?"
Todd looked back at her. Two sets of impossibly green eyes looked back at him. And beneath that murky gray. His heart sank. He wondered if her wraps of velvet concealed anything else. A blemish? A stray hair? God forbid, a mole? The thought was too horrible to conceive so he did what he always did when faced with something tragic—reconciled it as quickly as he could so he could forget it forever. Contacts are just like sunglasses, he told himself. Or lipstick. It doesn't change anything about the person underneath. Or… so your parents are dead. You were going to be moving out in four years when you went to college anyway and how much time did you really spend with them to begin with? And your uncle looks just like your dad. Right? Right?
"Sorry," he said. "Let's go." And he wrestled his and Katrina's bags out of the overhead compartment, down the tarmac, through an intensely and almost anatomical customs inspection, and into the first squat, black cab he could find.
"Victoria Station," he told the cab driver.
The plan was to take the tube there, but when Todd saw the opening of the subway station plummeting into the underground and the rush of people pouring down the steps into the sickly lit opening, he couldn't bring himself to do it. He wasn't claustrophobic, per se. He just needed to know that if the circumstances dictated, he could see the sky anytime he needed. 
He also couldn't believe just how crowded England was.  He expected something more pastoral. Flocks of sheep jockeying for space near the luggage carousel. Bales of hay instead of Starbucks. Though he'd never admit it to himself, he had actually bought into some of Peter's descriptions of England. And worse still, he was disappointed when the truth failed to meet reality.
Outside, Todd felt he could breathe a little better, despite the pervading gloominess that the United Kingdom seemed to wear like a wool sweater. The color of the street matched the sky—all around gray ate gray. The ground was wet and stained, and sick, anemic looking trees hung limply in the foreground.
"Guess we just missed the rain," Todd said, staring out the window of their squat black cab as tiny, indistinct houses with flat roofs and elaborate gardens replaced the dismal emptiness that was Heathrow.
"Haven't had rain for a fortnight, guvner. It  always looks like this," the cab driver said who, according to the license hanging prominently off the rear view mirror, was named Sanju O'Keefe.  He then proceeded to prattle on about the merits of English soccer versus American football, Michael Jackson, and a local politician suspected of impropriety with a Welsh girl, something the cab driver regarded as a crime just below bestiality. He continued to talk long after Todd gave up the pretense of listening by interjecting the occasional 'I sees' or 'You've got that right.'
Katrina was staring out the window. Her expression could only be described as forlorn, and preferably by a guy wearing a shirt with puffy sleeves and using a feather for a pen.
"You okay?" he asked, and suspected that maybe she shared some of his earlier disappointment. He'd already lost count of how many McDonald's they'd passed. And there hadn't even been a single sheep. Just gloomy strip malls and rows of identical brick tenant houses and highway. It was like someone had taken the worst of America and dumped it into England's backyard. This was hardly a place that seemed capable of producing something as esoteric as a werewolf, let alone enough romance for a drunken screw.
"Fine, it's just…" Katrina's voice trailed off and she touched her fingers to the glass. She looked exactly like an angel, if that angel had been crammed into the back of an English taxi and been told that the next stop wasn't heaven, as originally planned, but the dentist's office for a rather painful and unnecessary root canal.  
"Yes?" Todd asked breathlessly, vowing silently to fix no matter what it was that troubled her. He felt her pain as if it were his own, like she were an extension of himself. No matter that it was felt just one way. Eventually, that would change.
"I think I left my red wrap skirt at home."
"Your skirt?"
"You know, the one that ties up in a cinch and is cut up the side?" She gestured to her upper thigh to mark just how much the dress revealed.
Todd did know that dress. It was one of his favorites. But he couldn't get over how little the drab scenery seemed to have impacted her. Maybe she was just trying to remain optimistic. Or maybe she was just holding out until they got to Chatterton. Either way, if she didn't let a little disappointment in now, she would be setting herself up for a major disappointment later. And that might be a huge mood killer.
"I know Peter loves the color red, so I thought I'd wear that—"
"You picked out a dress to wear for him?" Todd was flabbergasted. The one time he'd made the mistake of complimenting a piece of Katrina's wardrobe (it was a half-shirt that exposed a green dragon naval piercing), that piece of clothing promptly disappeared and was never seen again.
"Dress, makeup—he seems to like the goth look so I was going to do my eyes in kohl, even some lacy underwear."
"Underwear," Todd swallowed. Normally hearing Katrina talk about her panties would be something he'd treasure and reference often when he was lying in bed at night, but this time he felt it in his gut (about 8 inches higher than usual). She was picking them out for another guy, real or not, dead or alive, it didn't matter. A guy she had never met and who she was fully prepared to show her underwear to, and all the goodies contained therein. And for the first time since they'd begun planning this trip, Todd began to have doubts that they'd ever end up together.
"Doesn't the book talk about Heathrow?" Todd said sharply.
"Sure. That's where he first touched down. We even flew the same airline as Peter."
Todd, whose memory usually only lasted about the length of an average commercial, had to dig really hard to recall this line, "Heathrow. A gruesome monstrosity in glass, sentry on the border, doomed to forever look out at empty plains and blank faces." He liked the bit about 'gruesome monstrosity in glass'. It made him think about the time Claude tried to moon the cheerleading team, but forgot to roll down the car window.
"So?" Katrina asked.
The cab drove through a seemingly pointless roundabout and passed another strip mall. A sign indicated that passer-byes shouldn't fret, a McDonald's was coming soon and they should please be patient.
"So this isn't exactly empty plains. Except for the guy driving on the wrong side of the street and screaming about lorries, we could be home right now."
As if on queue, the cab driver added something about 'Billie Jean' and moonwalking, and then turned on the radio, apparently finally out of conversation.
"I'm sure the country has changed since Peter first arrived here."
"It wasn't even three years ago!"
"Have faith, Todd," Katrina said and patted his knee condescendingly. But Todd didn't care, she had touched his knee.
"Have faith," he muttered to himself. And don't forget why you're here. "Good advice," he said and wondered if he should phone ahead to the bed and breakfast and see if it wasn't too late to book the 'rose petal and champagne' welcome package.
***

Friday, November 23, 2012

Top 10 Vampire Books You Haven't Read

Here's a sampling of some vampire books that you may have missed. These are a must-read for anyone interested in bloodsuckers!

1. The Light at the End by John Skipp- a vampire stalks the NY subway system and the oddest assemblage of vampire hunters in the world (a geeky film buff, a sexy goth, couriers, and a Holocaust survivor) are on his trail. Surprisingly dark and complex, this book takes place in the grittier, run-down NY of the early 1980's during punk rock's last gasp.

2. Carpe Jugulum - part of Terry Pratchett's Discword series (though you don't have to be familiar with his books to appreciate this one). By far the funniest take on vampires anywhere (and he throws in some witches, phoenixes, and a couple other mythological creatures). Forget Christopher Moore- this is the book you want for lighter reading on the subject.

3. Lost Souls - Poppy Z. Brite's masterpiece. This is a sensual, drug and rock-infused tale of vampire's, sex, and, of course, New Orleans. Though the story can be a bit convoluted at times, Brite's imagery is narcotic and her vampires are to die for!

4. The Traveling Vampire Show - Richard Laymon's coming of age book is beautifully written and perfectly paced with some genuinely creepy and lasting moments of terror. The ending sadly divulges into a ridiculous splatter fest, but read it anyway- the build-up is just that good. Winner of a Bram Stoker award.

5. Let the Right One in - this book stands up outside of the vampire genre. Lord of the Flies meets Dracula. It's brutally realistic and the characters will remain with you. In my opinion, this is one of the best vampire books, if not the best, of the last 30 years.

6. The Moth Diaries . Is she a vampire or isn't she? That's what the emotionally damaged narrator, a student at a secluded and claustrophobic all girl school, wrestles with as she becomes more unhinged. It's more Hitchcock than it is Charlaine Harris, but you'll find this book subtle, creepy, and unnerving.

7. Sunshine. Robin McKinley's semi post-apocalyptic tale of a world suffering the consequences of a 'Voodoo' war. McKinley drops the reader in the middle of a strange struggle with no compass and the details are exquisite and the fear, very real. The main character Sunshine, a baker and daughter of a famed sorcerer, is one of the more likable and believable characters you'll encounter in the genre.
8. Peeps- by Scott Westerfeld. A wholly unique take on the vampire mythos. Westerfield brings his knowledge of parasites and science heavily into play here and manages to make poetry out of it. The book, especially towards the end, tends to get bogged down in some of the scientific explanations and characters make some pretty broad logic jumps, but there's some nice surprises as well and the ending is far from neat which I always appreciate.
9. Vampire$- John Steakley's novel inspired the dismal film 'John Carpenter's Vampires', but don't let that dissuade you from picking up this fast-paced, macho, adrenalin-fueled novel. In a genre largely dominated by female writers (and female sensibilities-not that there's anything wrong with that), this book stands out as a wholly male take on vampire hunting. It's explosive, tragic, and the vampires are suckers in every sense of the word.
10. The Hunger- another book adapted to film (this one far more successfully). If you enjoyed the David Bowie film which first introduced the world to the wonderful vamp song Bela Lugosi is Dead, you'll love the book. A wonderful mixture of the scientific and the historical, the romantic and the horrific.
For classics, check out 'Varney the Vampire', 'Carmilla', 'For the Blood of the Life' (Algernon Blackwood) and Bram Stoker's 'Dracula's Guest' (a short story that was published separately from Stoker's masterpiece).
For more contemporary staples, be sure to read Interview with a Vampire, Dead Until Dark, Salem's Lot, The Historian, and I Am Legend (a very different book than the Will Smith movie).

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Tomorrow's post, today

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I plan to spend the day fully immersed in gluttony and self-loathing so here is tomorrow's post. This is the first chapter of a new book I'm working on.

Chasing Tail-
Werewolf Love
 
Chapter 1
“There are two worlds competing equally for possession of our souls—the civilized and the natural. Among the cities and concrete and tar, the voice of the latter is muted, barely heard. But here, among the moors and the bright moon and the heather and the wonderful and terrible loneliness, the voice is deafening. And as much as I longed to follow its call, to escape the last vestiges of my civilized nature, I feared it would change me irrevocably into something wild, sinister even, beyond the boundaries of what society calls good, into something evil. And yet still, I went. Little did I know that I knew nothing of what true evil really meant.”
--Peter Sangree, from the introduction to ‘The Beast Within’

The great wolf paced back and forth, never once taking its eyes off of Katrina’s throat.
“Isn’t it spectacular?” she asked.
“It’s weird is what it is.”
“You need to look beyond. Witness the majesty and the ferocity in its eyes. In no other animal is it so well captured. No wonder Peter wrote about them. Just imagine what a creature like that is capable of!”
Yeah, like pooping while still maintaining a slow trot. Todd was sulking. He’d been sulking for the last hour and he’d be damned if he was going to stop now. He’d competed over women before—with frat boys and jocks and even a mathlete, but he’d never gone toe-toe with a glorified dog with mange. And worst yet, he felt like he was losing.  
The wolf suddenly turned his attention to Todd and let out a low growl.
“Oh, knock it off.” He banged the glass cage with the palm of his hand.
“Don’t do that!” Katrina touched the glass, stroking it like the wolf could somehow feel her gentle petting.
“What? It’s not a fish.” He banged the glass again for emphasis. The wolf didn’t budge. “See?”
The wolf, according to the small blue placard next to its cage, was a maned wolf of the species chrysocyon brachyurus and was the largest canid of South America. Its name was El Diablo, “The Devil”. With its enormous ears and pinched face, Todd thought it looked more like a fox or demented rabbit. But to Katrina it represented so much more. 
Of course things always represented so much more to Katrina. Or rather nothing was ever just what it was. A waterfall was a ‘glistening descent into watery madness’ and the sunset was ‘the last great gasp of regret, sinking irretrievably into nothingness.’ For all Todd knew, an English muffin was ‘buttery goodness on granulated passion.’ He was deeply out of his realm when it came to words and he was content to leave the poetry to Katrina, felt lucky in fact just to be allowed to associate with someone like her.
Poets, you see, were good in bed.
At least that’s what he’d been led to believe. Or rather it’d been suggested by his roommate Claude that crazy women were good in bed after his then-girlfriend sewed the zipper shut on all of his jeans. Todd made the logical and understandable leap that since all poets were also crazy they were ergo excellent lovers, though his only experience with poets so far had been with Katrina. And he hadn’t even been with her at all. 
At least not in the sense that would land a high-five from Claude. He hadn’t in fact been with any woman, but that was all going to change, he hoped, after this trip.
***
They met last year in Earth Science, the first and last time Todd saw Katrina outside of the English department. At one point, he even suspected that she was some kind of ghost haunting Cardiff Hall, tormenting lesser poets and anyone who dared to leave a preposition dangling at the end of a sentence.  She was too beautiful, too ethereal to belong to anything on this plane of existence anyway. 
When she sat down next to him in Science, he was doodling stick figures doing wildly inappropriate things to each other; a confusion of arms and legs and long bent lines meant to represent genitalia. He didn’t even look up when someone occupied the chair next to him. But then he caught a whiff of lavender or honeysuckle, he always got the two scents confused, and he knew a female of the species was nearby, always a good reason to abandon whatever it was that had occupied him, even enthusiastic stick figure orgies.
He snuck a sideways glance at first and caught a glimpse of blonde hair. Though not just blonde hair. A crown, no, a mane of yellow that fell in uneven strands around a perfectly white cheek. Sex hair. The kind of bedraggled, just dragged myself out of bed right after a marathon fucking session that probably took hours to perfect. Promising. Todd leaned back in his chair under the guise of stretching and turned his attention directly at his new desk mate.
She was staring directly at him.
He turned away embarrassed, but not before he’d gotten a lasting impression. In the space of two seconds, he fell madly, irretrievably, helplessly, adverbially in love. She had the greenest eyes he’d ever seen and he was so far gone; the kind of green that might make a pine tree envious. Her mouth was red and full and smiling and utterly cruel in that Todd couldn’t kiss them immediately.
“Dick sucking lips,” was how Claude described them one night before Todd punched him and the subject was never brought up again.
Her ears stuck out through her hair giving her face an elfen look—mystical, elusive, a force of nature. She was wearing a complicated assemblage of velvet, silver, and leather. She would have looked as easily at home on a barge sailing down the Nile as she would in the role of tormented princess in any number of Shakespearean plays.
“I like your drawing,” she whispered to him a moment later and Todd found himself wishing class was over so he could find the nearest hole to crawl into. He glanced at the clock. Awesome, only 50 minutes left. It wasn’t the quality of the drawings that embarrassed him; truth be told he was rather proud of the detail he had, ahem, endowed his stick figures with, rather it was the visual demonstration of his complete lack of knowledge of all things sexual. If his drawing was a report on the human reproductive process, it would have been heavily marked in red pen. With a note at the top that read ‘Didn’t your parents teach you anything?’
“What’s that one doing?” Katrina asked and leaned across Todd’s desk to point out a particularly crude sketch of one figure putting a body part where, he suspected, no one else had hitherto thought of doing before. He wasn’t even sure if it was anatomically possible.
“Uh,” was all he managed. Her perfume or shampoo or whatever it was that was the source of that sweet cloying smell that clung to Katrina like an aura enveloped him and he was dizzy and stupid with it.
Mercifully, the professor took that moment to swing by Todd’s desk, glare at him, then ball up his obscenities and toss it in the trash. He let out a small sigh of relief.
“Pity,” Katrina said which was how she talked. Like an 18th century governess or rejected Jane Austen heroine. Her voice, spoken above a whisper for the first time, was rich and dripping with cinnamon. Another puzzle piece for Todd in the perfect rendering of the female form.
After class, he bid a hasty retreat, afraid he’d say something colossally stupid and ruin any future chances with this goddess. One did not just proffer oneself to a deity—you had to spend months in supplication and silent worship and even martyrdom. It wasn’t enough to be able to read the words to open the doors of the temple, one had to commit them to heart. So Todd spent a lot of time getting drunk, making promises to himself to visit the gym at least once in his miserable collegiate career, and then telling himself how worthless he was as a man, a human being, and then a microorganism.
It was two months, right before the semester end, before he said another word to her. When she started bringing that damn book to class.
***
“Do you think it’s the same kind of wolf he saw?” Katrina had propped herself up on the small ledge so her back was against the cage. Her short skirt got pushed up in the process and Todd had to fight the urge to stare at her perfect thighs. It just isn’t fair, he thought. The wolf pawed desperately at the glass trying to get at Katrina’s shoulder blade.
“No,” he said absently and turned away from her as much to stop himself from staring as to hide the growing lump in his pants. Though even knowing that Katrina’s thigh was exposed anywhere near him was enough to make him break into a sweat.
“No?” she asked sourly.
It occurred to Todd he’d never used that word with her before.  He didn’t like it any better than she did, so he softened his tone. “This wolf is from South America,” he said. “If he saw any, it probably would have been a grey wolf.” And even that would be a total freak of nature. England had done the sensible thing and wiped out its wolf population nearly 1000 years ago. In fact, the largest predator left in the whole country was no bigger than a poodle.
“What do you mean ‘if’?”
Busted. Todd was not a believer. At least not in Katrina’s mythology. His salvation would be spending the afternoon licking every part of Katrina’s body, not traipsing after wolves in Europe like a mythological dog catcher. And he’d do just about anything to get there. Even if it meant pretending the book (to Katrina it was THE BOOK) had affected him just as deeply. That he would abandon all else to following THE BOOK to the letter of the law—even blowing off a cherry job at his uncle’s country club over the summer to go hunting in dreary, water-soaked England.
“You know what I mean,” Todd said.
But Katrina’s attention was already back on the wolf.
Lucky bastard, Todd thought.
“I got my passport,” Katrina said after a long pause.
“Oh good. Did I give you money for that already?”
“Yes. Thank you.” She gnawed at her bottom lip, apparently trying to work up the courage to say something. “I’m going to pay you back, you know.”
“I know.” And what Todd knew was that she wouldn’t. But poets and poverty apparently went hand in hand and Katrina was no exception. Though he often wondered how she could afford so much jewelry and make-up and such an expansive wardrobe. The truth was, he didn’t really care. He had a trust fund. And a lot of it. And a couple of thousand dollars seemed a small price to pay for Katrina’s undivided attention for two weeks. Two weeks! If he couldn’t seal the deal in two weeks, then Claude was right, he might as well donate his nuts to science where they might serve some useful purpose.
He would be there to encourage Katrina when they couldn’t find the town. He’d hold her hand when they went on some half-assed trek across the first random moor they found. Maybe they’d get lost and have to spend the night out there, clinging to each other for warmth and security. And maybe, just maybe, she’d come to him one night out of frustration and loneliness and, yes, maybe even gratitude.
But he wasn’t interested in just one regretful night (regretful, that is, for her), he wanted Katrina forever. He’d come home with a girlfriend and he could tell Claude exactly where to stick it and how far. From there his mind would wander to a hasty engagement, a quick elopement, and a long honeymoon.
A couple thousand dollars for a chance at that? Any day, Todd thought.
“I just don’t want you to think,” Katrina added then went back to gnawing at her lip, hoping apparently that he’d get the hint.
Todd shrugged.
A small sigh escaped Katrina’s lips. “I don’t want you to think just because I’m taking the money that…” and she raised her eyebrows. 
Todd shrugged again.
Her sigh became an outright moan of frustration. “That you should expect anything. You and I can never be...”
“Right.” Todd said absently even as Katrina mumbled something about ‘fate’ and ‘destiny’. But he wasn’t listening. He was debating whether they should honeymoon in Maui or Paris. In the end, he decided it didn’t matter. They’d never leave the hotel room anyway.
***
To call the book garbage would be unfair to garbage, would do even the moldiest banana peel or tiniest fragment of egg shell a gigantic disservice. Garbage, at least, was at one time useful. The book was thinly disguised fiction, so thin that the author didn’t even bother to rename his protagonist and just left it at Peter.
The Beast Within tells the story of a man so discontent with the calamities of city life that he hightails it from New York City to the English moors.
At least Thoreau had the decency to find a place with trees. 
He spends half of the book figuring out which berries are edible, drinking his own urine and weighing the morality of strangling a sheep with his bare hands (“The fur acted as a cushion and my hands could not find purpose. A lesser man would have relented. But the land is hard and I was hungry and large rocks were unfortunately keenly in abundance here...). 
The other half of the book is where it gets mildly interesting (interesting, at least, in the sense that it did not involve shitting out poisonous berries, recipes for urine-flavored drinks, or bludgeoning unsuspecting sheep with small boulders). Peter begins to feel he’s on the verge of completely shedding his ‘civilized skin and discovering my beast within’ when he experiences a predictable freak-out and runs to the nearest house he can find. Except it’s not a house, it’s a castle, and the man who lives there is not a man. You know the story, boy meets werewolf, werewolf wants to eat his heart during the blue moon, that sort of thing.
As if you hadn’t felt like you’d just wasted a week of your life reading this 900-page cods-wallop, the author, excuse me, the main character Peter, does an about-face when he escapes, sees what it means to truly discover the ‘beast within’ and recants everything he’d spouted on about for the previous 800 pages.
The rest of the book is dedicated to convincing people not to do what he did and that drinking tea is one of life’s highest joys (next to properly prepared mutton, presumably one where you didn’t have to throttle the sheep yourself, and peanut butter-filled Cadbury eggs). He uses the phrase the ‘beast within’ about a kagillion times.
Needless to say it was a best-seller.  And that was before all the disappearances.
***
“I have everything planned,” Katrina said. “After we land in Heathrow, we’ll take the tube to Victoria Station. From there, we’ll catch a train to Stanbury. There’s a nightly bus that’ll run us to Hapworth and then—“
“We’re on our own,” Todd recited. “It’s six miles to Chatterton, but there’s no direct road there. We’ll be hiking the rest of the way. Through woods and moors. I’ll bring S’mores.” He held up an imaginary bag of marshmallows. “I’ve got that part.” That much, at least, had been discussed.
Katrina smiled, pleased and Todd puffed out his chest, despite himself. Getting her to smile was no easy feat. She seemed to foster the tortured Victorian poet look and anguish and despair came much more easily to her. Once, he almost strangled a guy in the cafeteria who made Katrina laugh so hard milk came out of her nose.
But he wasn’t convinced Chatterton was where the events in the book took place, if they even took place at all. Yes, the place was surrounded on all sides by moors. Yes, the place was, as the book described, an old Medieval village that’d been abandoned, re-inhabited, and then abandoned more times than Peter Sangree used the phrase ‘beast within’, yes, it was the home of murky legends involving gypsies and curses and black ceremonies, and yes, the place couldn’t be found on any maps (at least not any modern maps; modern meaning after 1700), but that could be said for just about any small town in that accursed country. 
And the question remained, what then? What happened when they got there? Katrina seemed to have a specific plan in mind, but so far she’d been uncharacteristically silent on the manner.
For his part, Todd had found a lovely bed and breakfast just outside Chatterton that offered ‘romance at every turn. From splendid walking trails to sunlit garden rooms.” And best of all, there wasn’t a double bed in the place. It was his fallback plan when everything went wrong and Katrina’s carefully created fantasy fell apart. But he had no idea, really, what Katrina was expecting from this trip and he hadn’t bothered to ask. At least until now.
“But what happens when we get there, Kat?”
She looked at him with her impossibly green eyes. Eyes that seemed to sparkle and come alive and flush a deeper shade surrounded by the wail of wild animals and the strange climbing plants of the zoo. Katrina always terrified Todd. With her beauty. With her smile. With her ability to destroy someone with a single word (that word usually being ‘no’). But for just a split second, she terrified Todd for another reason entirely and he couldn’t have explained why if he tried. But then she smiled with just the corner of her lips and his fear was gone.
“We find him, of course.”
“Him?” Todd scratched his head, then became keenly aware of the passing resemblance of his current posture to the monkey in the cage opposite him, and quickly stroked the faint beginnings of a goatee.
“Peter.” Katrina’s cheeks flushed red, bringing uncharacteristic color to her face. And for some reason, Todd thought of Frankenstein’s monster rising from its slab after a sudden and well-timed bolt of lightning.
“But he’s gone. He disappeared right after… you know. Nobody knows where he is. He may not even still be alive.” That is, if he did the honorable thing, Todd added silently.
Katrina shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I think he went home.”
“Home?” And Todd had to consciously stop himself from scratching his head again. He snuck a glance at the monkey. Its teeth were peeled back from his mouth giving it the appearance of laughter.
“Chatterton.”
“Why would he do that? Who walks away from millions of dollars to go live in some—“ He stopped himself short from adding ‘mud hut in a water-soaked, English flea trap in the middle of Fuckifiknow, UK’.  
Katrina sighed. It was the same, impatient sigh his uncle gave him when he tried explaining stock equities and junk bonds. “To stop the others from coming. To stand guard.” And then she quoted from the book. Todd didn’t recognize the quote, but he recognized the awful stilted, self-serving language and Katrina’s change in tone whenever she referenced the great book of Berry Crapping, as he called it. “I shall hold the demon at bay. It is my duty, my honor, and my curse.”
“Probably should have taken up guard sooner then,” Todd said and his hand flew to his mouth.
Katrina glared at him and rightfully so. It was a horrible thing to say. Putting aside his opinion that the book wasn’t even suitable for lining the bottom of a parakeet cage (being so full of crap already), two people, two real people had died. About Todd and Katrina’s age, too. And though it was nearly three years ago, their deaths had cast an unspoken, until now, shadow over their entire trip.
“They went to him with shaky beliefs. They were not ready to accept the book or its author at face value.” Katrina’s voice dropped a few levels and she spoke through nearly clenched teeth.
And though Todd knew he should’ve dropped it, that the only reason Katrina let him hang around her was because he knew how to shut up, listen, and most importantly, agree, he couldn’t. He was all for chasing a dream, not that he had any of his own besides, but death was not something insignificant to be explained away in order to maintain a convenient fantasy. Death was loud and huge and all too real and it demanded that you stop everything in order to take it all in. Or the next time, it would come louder. At least that’s that what had happened with his parents. And he wouldn’t let the same happen to Katrina.
“They died of starvation and frostbite,” he said and he found himself staring down Katrina for the rest time.
“They were chased by the beast into the forever night,” she countered.
“Their bodies, when the police finally found them had been mutilated by animals.”
“Virgin sacrifices on the blue moon, so the beast could prolong his—“
“No!” Todd shouted, louder and harsher than he expected. The monkey shook his head with something that resembled condemnation. Even the wolf stopped its restless pacing and cocked its head at Todd. And when he saw Katrina’s hurt look, he softened and changed his tactic. “They were unprepared.” Went stupidly tripping after a fake story without considering very real danger. “Didn’t plan enough.” Had no plan at all. Like, say packing a winter coat. “And no fallback.” Reservations at a romantic B&B which boasted ’43 engagements and 12 reconciliations.’
“But we do,” Katrina said in a voice that sounded small and child-like.
“Yeah, we do,” Todd agreed, even if he didn’t. Though now that the other two were brought up—their names were Keith and Denise—he couldn’t stop thinking about them. No one really did find out what happened. Experts pointed to how easy it was to get lost on the moors at night. How much the temperatures dropped. And while there were no wolves left in the United Kingdom outside a few zoos and animal preserves, there were a few other carnivorous animals—fox, weasels, feral dogs.
American papers splashed old yearbook photos of the couple, hints that Keith had planned to ask Denise to marry him when they returned, long testimonies on their gentle natures and the overwhelming loss to the community. But British papers were less than kind. Todd had spent hours reading everything he could in the school library on the book, the mysterious author and the equally mysterious city of Chatterton.
On darker nights, when the moon became obscured behind storm clouds, or when Katrina smiled at some other guy, Todd would read about the deaths and Peter Sangree’s subsequent disappearance. It cheered him up to know that people elsewhere were more miserable than he was. His impression from reading the papers in England, and there was no shortage of accounts, was that England held a shared sympathy with their American allies, but also something else, though he could never point to a single passage and say ‘There!’; he detected something sinister underlying the ordinarily dry news reports. Hints of a warning. That some things were better left alone. That their deaths were simply a morality tale—this is what happens when you mess with forces you can’t understand.   
***
Todd arrived five minutes late to class, crashed into his seat making the most noise possible, and then made a big show of dropping the enormous tome on his desk (any book longer than 500 pages deserved to be called a ‘tome’—in his eyes, it lessened the pain of having to read it).
When Katrina didn’t look up, he added, “That’s not my science book, silly me.”
And when she still didn’t look up (she was adding a fresh coat of black lipstick to her already flawless lips), he dropped his enormous copy of ‘The Beast Within’ (a signed first edition that he’d bought on the internet solely for the purpose of talking to Katrina and which came with more paperwork than his aunt’s prize Corgie) on the floor.
He finally got her attention. As well as the rest of the lecture hall, his professor, and a janitor who’d snuck into a nearby hall closet for a cat nap.
“Sorry,” he added sheepishly and sunk down in his desk. And just when he was about to curse himself for spending fifteen hundred bucks on a garishly decorated paperweight, Katrina spoke up.
“Is that a first edition?”
At first, he couldn’t believe she’d actually spoken to him, suspecting that the question had come from the girl who sat behind him, the one with the back brace and the lazy eye who he suspected had an eye for him. The good one at least. But there was no mistaking that voice. It dripped with honey—thick, and sweet, too sweet even, but utterly irresistible.
“This?” Todd asked as nonchalantly as possible which was hard to do since the book took up most of his small desk. “Let me see.” He made a grand show of opening the book, pausing at the autographed page. It was inscribed, ‘To Felix, Thanks for the berry recipes.’ If pressed, Todd was prepared to tell Katrina that Felix was a distant cousin or a friend of his uncle’s in the publishing business, but she never asked.
Her eyes went wide and her mouth hung open. She looked at Todd with what he thought was a newfound respect.
“Peter is spelled with one ‘t’,” she finally said.
“What? Let me see that.” He grabbed the book and brought the page close to his face then cursed and questioned the wisdom of any internet purchase made after 2am.
“Still,” Katrina said as Todd raised the book higher, wondering if he could hold out there until class ended, “Pretty cool.”
It was the only time he heard Katrina use the phrase cool. ‘Resplendent’, ‘marvelous’, even ‘beautiful’ came as naturally to her as swear words to a construction worker. But, as Todd would soon learn, everything about that book seemed to bring out the adolescent schoolgirl in her.
“Thanks,” he said and couldn’t believe his luck. He’d found a way to strike up a conversation with this goddess, only now what? He was not a forward planner and, truth be told, he didn’t think he’d get this far.
Fortunately, she saved him the trouble. She reached out and took his hand then jotted her phone number on his palm.
“Call me,” she said and flashed him one of her rare toothy smiles.
“Yeah,” Todd squeaked, cleared his voice, then lowered his register. “I mean, yeah. Whatever.”
And as soon as Katrina wasn’t looking, he scribbled the number on a piece of paper because his hand was sweating so much, he was afraid it would’ve rubbed off completely. As it was, he’d have to play a guessing a game on the two last digits.
***
Nobody blamed Peter Sangree. Though the public also was pretty lenient with JD Salinger when Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon with a copy of Catcher in the Rye in his pocket. In Todd’s opinion, the only thing that prevented a complete repeat was the fact that no one could fit the ‘Beast Within’ in their pocket. Hell, it barely fit in a wheelbarrow.  Also, no one got shot, though Todd thought the difference was negligible.
The book was a 900 page instruction manual of what not to do. Don’t eat poisonous berries. Mud is not an acceptable substitute for a good winter coat. Don’t go knocking on strange houses in the middle of the night. Don’t think you’re more resilient than nature. You’re not. And especially, don’t go to Chatterton, England. Werewolves live there.
Of course people were going to visit, sample the local flora, and go just as batshit crazy as Peter did. He did everything but draw them a map. And though Todd knew most of the book was fiction (including, most likely the town itself which was probably just a jumping off point for a wild tale involving a piss drinker), he also knew that there were impressionable people out there who’d dive headfirst into a pile of cow manure if they’d seen someone else do it on TV.
Peter, it seemed, shared Todd’s opinion that the two American hikers’ disappearance was completely and utterly his fault. Not that he was much of a social butterfly to begin with—no one in fact knew what Peter looked like. And if the book was to be taken at face value, he was also a virgin. This was presumably before the millions started rolling in. But following the hikers’ deaths, he cancelled his radio interviews and stopped responding to fan mail. Discussion of a possible film was shelved. And just days after a short op ed piece appeared in the Wall Street Journal from Peter in which he prattled on in characteristic fashion about moon cycles and reclaiming his manhood and the dangers of berries, Peter up and disappeared himself.
According to his agent, he had given no notice and left no forwarding address. His only living relative was a great-uncle who had never heard of Peter and quite frankly had more important things to do than discuss missing ‘book writers’ and werewolves, and ‘if you’re planning on standing around, muddying up my carpet, at least have the decency to grab a broom’. Though his interest did peak when the subject of substantial royalty checks were mentioned.
Of course the requisite searches occurred. First in Peter’s hometown of Savage, Maryland and then in the UK. But that was nearly three years ago and no trace of him was ever found. There’d been plenty of trips to Chatterton—first by the media and then by American backpackers and then, when the book was translated into Japanese, by hordes of innocent, camera-wielding tourists.
Nobody got very far.
Scores of lost thrill-seekers had to be rescued from the moors by the local British authority who didn’t take too kindly to disruptions from their Benny Hill re-reruns and cups of Earl Grey and began prosecuting. Those that did make it across the moors, had to contend with unfriendly, gun-wielding locals, who apparently were completely uninterested in fostering the tourist trade. And the few that made it past town, into the area where Peter stumbled across the crumbling ruins of a medieval castle, like Denise and Keith, reported large animals menacing the area (though the newspaper refused to say just what those animals were, the suggestion was that a pack of wolves steadfastly guarded the castle. The paper also suggested that if you were to sample the purple flowers that grew in that area, you might also think you were being pursued by a dragon, feel compelled to take off your pants, and possibly be filled with the sudden urge to eat small pebbles).
People stopped going. And when the next great publishing fad came along (unicorn porn—uniporn), the book, the town, and the wolves were all but forgotten.
At least until now.
***
Diaphanous.
Todd had once heard the word used to describe the delicate wings of a butterfly struck by the first rays of morning light. It was either in a nature special or a tampon commercial, Todd wasn’t sure which. But the word came back to him now as Katrina lit the last candle and took a seat in the clearing.
She was wearing a sheer white dress so that if she turned a certain way and caught the flickering candlelight, Todd could just make out the silhouette of her lithe figure. Had he known that with a little more light, he might be treated to a better view, he would’ve dragged a generator and a 1000-watt bulb through the woods and lit up the old outdoor amphitheater like Christmas morning. He didn’t care what a fire hazard all those candles presented.
“There’s something about candlelight isn’t there?” Katrina said off Todd’s captivated look. “It’s positively…” she searched for the word.
“Diaphanous?” he fumbled.
Katrina laughed, a high-pitched melodic tinkle, that made Todd feel incredibly insignificant. “Diaphanous,” she repeated. “I like that.”
It was midnight, the witching hour, which is precisely when Katrina told Todd to meet her here. He had to look up when the witching hour was and, when he couldn’t find anything, phoned his theology professor with the promise that he’d let her get back to sleep if she just answered the damn question.
And now here he was. In the woods. At night. Surrounded by trees and dark and leaves leftover from fall and the heat, still burning from the afternoon, and, most importantly, Katrina. She seemed oddly at home here, a piece of nature herself.
She gestured to a spot in front of her on the concrete stage and Todd obediently sat down. He would’ve rolled over and played dead if she had asked, too.
What followed that night, Todd would be hard-pressed to recount owing as much to the eight shots of Jagermeister that Claude poured down his throat before he left and outright enthusiasm to be with a girl after his normal bedtime.
The memories he did manage to salvage out of the fog were clear, but then he was also uncertain of the order.
There was Katrina swaying back and forth, dancing in the woods looking precisely like you’d expect an ancient druid to look during the performance of an elaborate ceremony to some forgotten god.
A cheap tape deck that warbled out Garbage and Throwing Muses and Tori Amos. A bottle of even cheaper wine that tasted like strawberries. A constant thick cloud of smoke from clove cigarettes perfuming the air like incense. Where any of these came from, Todd had no idea.
He remembered listening intently as Katrina talked about THE BOOK and its importance to her. Her thoughts about the author and the savagery of the human soul. A savagery that she felt anyone was capable of at any given time, but that only a few really understood how to use and control.  And then something about destruction and pain. He had the feeling that Katrina was someone who needed rescuing. Todd loved both a good project and a challenge so, he was, if anything, even more attracted to her now.
She showed him scars on her arms and told him about the night she was almost gang raped at an off-campus party on the local marine base with a lurid kind of interest that made Todd feel sick. Of her, he had the impression of someone sleep-walking along a tightrope. Above a shark infested tank. He wanted desperately to cry out to her, but couldn’t for fear of waking her and sending her spiraling into the abyss.
He remembered holding her hand, or at least trying to, before she pushed him away.
And he remembered, though he wished he hadn’t, Katrina telling him to hit her. Pointing at her perfect red lips and screaming, “Make me bleed!” Todd cried then, though he didn’t know why. And when he tried to hug her, she shoved him away and told him he wasn’t a real man.
He remembered her whispering that she was hungry and he didn’t think she was talking about food so he clumsily moved in to kiss her, but she shoved him away and told him, “Not that kind of hunger.”
And finally, he remembered sitting alone in the dark because the candles had burned out and Katrina was gone and he was too drunk to get up without help and too mad at himself for blowing what he was sure was his, to quote Claude, ‘window of opportunity’.
The next day, he slept through his morning classes and through the worst of what would have been a world class hangover. He felt…good. With a sense of renewed of purpose. Or rather, just purpose, since he’d felt so aimless all of his life. And that purpose was Katrina. To protect her from monsters both real and imaginary and, more importantly, from herself.
***
“I should be off,” Katrina said, tearing herself away from the wolf. “I can’t believe this is really happening.”
“Me either,” Todd said though he was sure they were talking about two different things.
“Just think, in less than 24 hours we’ll be setting foot in the old country. The seat of civilization. Home of our ancestors.”
Todd’s ancestors were from Akron and before that Nantucket. Aside from a distant aunt from Puerto Rico, he was certain he had no ties to anywhere exotic or old or storied.
He was feeling sour about the wolf, or rather Katrina’s fascination with it, then worried for a moment about what would happen if they actually did find Peter Sangree. If he couldn’t compete with a mutt, he wouldn’t stand a chance against a guy who’d fought off a whole pack of them (or so he claimed). And here he was practically delivering the object of his affection straight into the hands of another suitor.
He was also filled with a lingering sense of dread, that maybe the best thing would be to keep Katrina here where there were streetlights and stop signs and paved roads. Where whatever was dark and wild that lived insider her could be safely contained. Just like the animals in this zoo.
He was worried he might be leading Katrina straight to her doom.
All of those worries, however, were quickly forgotten when she leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Thanks for making this happen,” she whispered and let her hand linger on his shoulder.
“Yeah,” he managed to say even though his tongue felt like it was inflated to twice his size and his cheeks felt like they were burning. “Anytime.”
He watched her walk away. When she was completely gone from sight, he turned to the wolf and smiled, “I’m going to England with her.”
The wolf cocked his head to the side, then settled down to chew on a rubber toy.
“We’re going to get married,” Todd added, then gave the glass a gentle tap, before leaving.
He was humming to himself when he strolled past the alpaca enclosure. By the time he had reached the bird sanctuary, he was tunelessly singing at the top of his lungs which set off a terrible caterwauling throughout the parrot, peacock and flamingo cages. The noise was deafening.
And somewhere, just above the terrible din, Todd thought he heard a wolf moaning an almost human call.