“We can sing together while you’re teaching me to cook.”
“We can sing that Aqua song you love so much.”
“I swear I will intentionally burn the house down if you put me through that again.”
“You got no taste. Nineties Europop was the best.”
“How about I meet you halfway with ‘Beautiful Life’ by Ace of Base?”
I couldn’t help but smile. His past might have made him cold in some ways, but he hadn’t become that person who hated theworld. He was so much stronger than he ever gave himself credit for.
“Perfect.”
Chapter 34
Rough Waters
Austin
Iwanted out of whatever this was. I wanted to go back to my little blue box, but an invisible hand kept pulling along through the past. One moment I was standing in a cemetery, the next, I was in an alley, watching a scrawny teenager pick through a garbage can. He turned and looked right through me. Aside from the stench of old food, there was a brininess to the breeze that overtook the stagnant air.
Adam grabbed what looked like a half-eaten hoagie and gave it a sniff. He could still pass as human, but there were obvious signs. Slightly pointed ears, dark gray taking over the whites of his eyes, the dim glow of his orange irises, even his once smoothforearms looked a little hairier. This must have been at least a year before I met him, but I’d had no idea he was living like this.
“Still good,” he growled before furiously scarfing down the sandwich like he hadn’t eaten in days. He smelled like he hadn’t bathed in a while either. Taking another bite, he stepped out of the alley, looking both ways then darted toward the sound of waves crashing. Now that I could see my surroundings in the light of the full moon, I recognized this place.
Like a frantic shadow, Adam dashed between the streetlamps until he was finally on the beach. There was a bonfire in the distance and the sound of a guitar, but Adam stayed in the darkness, sitting on the sand while watching the moon’s reflection on the ocean. I’d never been here at night during a full moon, but it was pretty to see.
“What are you doing?” I asked, sitting next to him. I knew he wasn’t going to answer, but if I didn’t say something, I was gonna pop. “Living like a bum when you have a nice house waiting for you. It might not have been perfect, but it beats eating out of the trash. Dumbshit.”
A car door shut behind us, and I turned toward a police officer holding a flashlight. Adam jumped up and ran to the water, narrowly evading a beam of white light. Why were the police looking for him?
A couple walked by, and the officer flagged them down.
“Excuse me, I’m looking for a teenager. Black male, about seventeen, showing signs of lycanthropy. He was last seen in this area.”
“We just got here,” the man said. “We haven’t seen anyone like that, just a werewolf up the beach.”
“All right, thanks.” He turned off the flashlight and grabbed the radio from his shoulder. “He’s not here, and the lifeguard hasn’t seen him.”
“Ten-four,” came a staticky male voice from the speaker.
As the officer got back into his car, frantic splashing came from farther out in the water. In the moonlight, I watched helplessly as Adam struggled to stay on the surface.
“Adam!” I shouted, jumping into the turbulent blackness. This was just a vision, but it was real to me. He was screaming and choking, and I had to do something. He was the only thing I could touch, so I could pull him out. But it was too late. He’d already been swallowed by the waves. It wasn’t long before I was pulled into the undertow as well. Could I drown in this?
I held my breath until I couldn’t anymore, struggling to get to the surface. No matter what I did, though, something pulled me further down. This was it. Reflexively I gasped, and it was still air. I was breathing air in the ocean.
Looking around, I tried to find any sign of Adam. The moonlight was just bright enough to illuminate the area ahead, and I saw him. He was still, lifeless, just buoyant enough not to sink further, but not enough to surface. A large, dark figure several feet below me grew larger, frantically trying to get to the boy.
The shadow would go up, sink, come up, reach for Adam, then sink again. It doggy-paddled and flailed, but I couldn’t make out what it was until it got closer. The shadow morphed into a huge man with a shark head, a shark tail and a dorsal fin. Despite all that, he couldn’t swim worth a damn.
With a final jump, he grabbed Adam, pulling the boy as he seemed to skip along the bottom of the shallower part of the ocean shelf. He was hydrodynamic enough to run like he was on the surface of the moon, his tail propelling him forward as he finally emerged, carrying Adam in his arms.
The fucker was as big as me, but he had this wide, sad stare. The shark man wore what looked like a pair of Darryl’s red shorts, and a necklace made from bone and driftwood with a seashell in the middle.
“Oh no, oh no,” he said in a high-pitched panicked voice, pacing back and forth along the sand. “What do I do, what do I do?” He turned toward the bonfire and the sound of a guitar, then took off toward it like a ghost crab.
“Darryl, Darryl,” he shouted. He had a strange way of speaking, always repeating himself, his tone alternating between high and low.
