Catcher lifted his head, although I didn’t know if he understood his name or not. He might have recognized the scent of his cousin; the call of the same whispering in his brain. He catapulted toward Rafferty, leaping over bodies, making a sound I couldn’t identify except for “happy wolf” roo roo. His fur was even more red under the moon and Delilah moving leisurely in his wake was now a nude human statue carved from amber, her white hair now the color of fire.
Rafferty caught the boisterous Wolf that hit him, nearly bowling him over. “Catch. Concentrate. Come back, okay? I need you. I need you now.”
Standing on his back legs with his front hooked over Rafferty’s shoulders, Catcher snuffled, his eyes blinked, confused, and he bared his teeth. But then he butted his head against his cousin’s chest and left it there for several minutes. The first time that Goodfellow or I tried to say something, Niko knowing better not to, the healer glared us into silence. Finally Catcher looked up, face-to-face, eye to eye. It didn’t take a Wolf to see it or a healer. Anyone could see the intelligence in those eyes. Smart guy, he was a smart guy. He knew the scientific names of orchids, had a master’s degree in biology, had gone to college, bought a car, had girlfriends, went on spring break, wanted to save the planet. Hogger of fries and Twinkies, he was blazing with intelligence and he was trapped. No one could fix me, but to see his cousin fix him, that would make things a little better, a little brighter.
Rafferty smiled. It wasn’t much of one, the faintest movement of his lips, but it was the first I’d seen out of him. It counted. “Okay, Cuz. You’re coming home.” He rested a hand on each side of Catcher’s head, his thumbs curving under the Wolf’s eyes, the rest of his fingers cupping the round fur-covered head. I didn’t see the energy that passed from Rafferty, but I felt it in the air. At first it was warm… the warmth I’d felt when he’d healed me. I touched the bullet hole in my chest that looked as if it had been healed for years; warm, comforting, right.
But then it wasn’t the same anymore. When Catcher didn’t change, Rafferty did and what was left of Suyolak came out. This power wasn’t the heat and the sun that had coursed through me. This was cold and black. You couldn’t see it, but you could feel it. Catcher felt it too. He snarled, thrashed, and ripped his head out of Rafferty’s grip. “No,” Rafferty protested. “Catcher, I’m getting somewhere. I know it.” He reached out again and Catcher snapped at him, fastened on to his arm, and drew blood. The right- in-his-head Catcher tore a chunk out of his cousin’s arm and looked ready to do worse.
“Catcher.” Rafferty clutched the bite and healed it instantly. Back on all fours, Catcher lowered his head, ears back, hackles raised, and showed every tooth he had. “No,” the healer asserted, “it’s not poisonous. If it can bring you back, it’s not poison. It’s a cure. Can’t you understand that? It’s the only cure there is. It’s this or nothing. Don’t you get that? After all these fucking years, don’t you get that?”
Catcher stared at him. They were talking, somehow or another… Hell, the Suyolak way, they were talking the Suyolak way. Rafferty was in Catcher’s head as he shook his own. “Catch, no. No. Listen to me.”
There was a growl. I’d heard many Wolf growls in my day. Wolves loved to fight, like Delilah, but if they could fight and live, they were satisfied with that. They didn’t have the all-or-nothing attitude she did, unless they were taking on their Alpha and it was a kill or be killed situation. There were growls and then there were growls-and the last would be the one where a Wolf chose possible death over dishonor and life.
“Goddamnit, that’s not true. I won’t cure you by turning into him. We can both live. We can both be ourselves. I’m not trading myself for you,” Rafferty said, the desperation he’d kept hidden since I’d known him finally showing.
Catcher stopped growling and simply stared at him. Unblinking. Unmoving.
Rafferty fell to his knees and denied one last time. “No, Catch. I’m not trading the world for you either. I’m not. I wouldn’t be like him. I’d get rid of the rest of him before I turned like he turned. I would.” The Wolf walked forward three steps and rested his chin on Rafferty’s shoulder, his head against the other shaggy auburn head. Rafferty wrapped his arms around Catcher’s neck and buried his face in the fur. “I know. I’m lying to you. I’m lying to myself.”
I barely heard the words or the ones that came after them, but I did hear them. I didn’t know if they made me feel better for the cousins or worse.
“You can’t fix what isn’t broken.” Hoarse but accepting.
“The here and now, it’s good. It’s what’s meant to be. I know-I do. The here and now.” He sucked in a deep breath, then straightened before turning away from his cousin enough to plant both hands against the bare earth. Then he released it: Suyolak’s power. I couldn’t see it, ugly as it was and boiling with death and hunger-the same as before-but I felt it. It passed into earth where nothing grew anyway. In the old days they salted the earth after wars, Niko said, to keep crops from growing, to make the people leave. Not very neighborly. Then again, neither was war. This ground held enough sulfur to keep anything growing to several hundred feet back. It was already dead. What was left of Suyolak wasn’t going to make a difference.
And then it was gone. He was gone. Even his arms and legs had turned to dust to be stomped on the next day by a random tourist. Suyolak was nothing but the medium for someone’s footprint and I liked the poetry of that just fine. He’d thought he owned the earth and now he’d be nothing more than a footprint on it.
Off to one side, this time too far to hear, I saw Robin making a follow-up call, to say what he couldn’t before-not that I could know precisely what he said to Ishiah. I could guess, but with Goodfellow, a guess was the absolute best and worst you could hope for. As I watched him talk, it began to snow-just on Robin… snow, in the middle of summer. No. It wasn’t snow. It was feathers-white and gold feathers falling from the sky like a cascade of cherry blossom petals that I’d once seen in Central Park that had filled the air like a cloud come to Earth. Talk about when you care enough to send the very best.
Maybe there was a little magic in the world after all.
I looked away, the better to battle off any threat to my testosterone-manufactured stoicism to see Rafferty stand and say, “We’re staying here. There are wolves in the park. Not our Wolves, but wolves. It’s a good place to run and hunt; a good place to live.”
“You’re just going to…” I stopped. What could I say? You’re not going to give up everything for your family. What kind of man or Wolf would he be if he didn’t? Catcher seemed to know what I was thinking and he gave a lupine sigh. The promise I’d made him to make Rafferty one of us, to give him reason to live, to make him family, it wasn’t going to happen. Rafferty had made his own choice. He already had a family and he was staying with it.
After Catcher’s sigh of acceptance, the Wolf then perked up his ears and shook his head hard enough that I heard the jingle… metal tags ringing against each other. He wasn’t going to need that when he answered the call of the wild. I moved forward and slipped the collar over his head. If it were daylight, it would’ve been fluorescent green with butterflies and dragonflies and about the most ridiculous thing I’d ever seen. “I’ll save it for Salome, Catch.”
He grinned, blew air out his nose, and held up his front leg, this time for a fist/paw bump instead of a shake. “You take care of your family, fur ball, and I’ll take care of mine.” We both knew it tended to be the other way around, but we both had our pride.
Rafferty was stripping off his clothes. He didn’t say good-bye. He wasn’t that kind of guy. “Take care of yourselves. There’s no guarantee we’ll stay here. We might move up to Canada. You guys play rough. Better sniff out a new healer. A good one. Especially for…” He jerked his head toward me. “An apple a day damn sure doesn’t keep the Auphe away.” He lifted a hand briefly, shimmered, and a wolf stood in his place. During the day you might have been able to tell them apart, but now they looked identical. I only knew Catcher from Rafferty because he stood on the left.