Life With A Werewolf

Absentminded Accusations Part 2 - Killer Comes To Town

          The cashier smiled oh so sweet at me as she told me “That will be eleven dollars and eighteen cents. Murderer.”

          I’ve grown used to the accusations by then so I simply swiped my card, smiled back, grabbed my bag and left. I tried not to make it obvious that I was carrying. These days I carry everywhere I go. When you get idle threats pumping gas, walking down the block, going into the Dollar General, you tend to make sure you’re protected. If I went to church, I’d even carry in there at this point. Not that I go out much anymore.

          What did I have in my bag? A couple things for the kitchen and doggy shampoo for Crash. Specifically stuff that was supposed to kill mange. We’d tried everything else and was growing a bit desperate. Soap and water came first. Then came changing laundry detergent. He sniffed around in his car, in his clothing, in the garage around the house. In the woods. Everywhere he could find, and couldn’t come up with much. There was a new strain of wolfsbane growing in the wooded area behind the house, but Crash didn’t give it much thought. “Wolfsbane doesn’t do much,” he grumbled. “I’d have to consume quite a bit of it for it to do any harm.” The blue flower was beautiful, but I was told “it is poisonous to you. Don’t mess with it without gloves.”

          We stood in the woods in the late evening as he pointed it out to me. He continued to itch, and pretty much was just a werewolf twenty-four seven now. His arms were in red patches, with ugly scraps of fur sticking out here and there. Some of it caked with blood. “Poison ivy. Gotcha,” I said.

          He gave me a glance that spoke of bemusement and exhaustion. “Not poison ivy. Wolf’s Bane. Poisonous, don’t mess with it.”

          I shrugged. “Poison Ivy. Gotcha.” This is the attitude that usually got me in trouble in the military. It was about then that whatever superior I was joking with would teach me in harsh detail the benefits of respecting authority. As they say used to say, there’s the smart, and the strong. I was always strong. I don’t play these games to be a jerk, I do it because my mind relies on associations. Associating the plant with poison ivy worked a lot better for me than trying to learn separately what it did and how it could harm you.

          “Whatever,” he snarled, and started scratching his arms again. We headed back towards the house, ignoring the encroaching plant. This was beginning to puzzle me, and when I started asking Crash about it, he snarled. “Don’t. I already know who it is.”

          “Kheid,” I snarled.

          Crash ear tipped me a smirk that made me feel as though I had just got the werewolf’s equivalent of ‘bless your heart’. “No. He’s in another county right now. Over ran a home.”

          “What?”

          “Yes,” Crash nodded. “Those poor people are gone.”

          When I asked Crash what happens when I lawn gnome gets inside, he gave it to me in vivid detail. At least there’s no blood involved. Life for the victims become a whole lot more…ceramic we’ll just say. I gave a shudder thinking about it. “You mean, when Kheid almost got inside, he was going to,” I asked, not finishing the sentence.

          “Yes,” Crash said. “You were almost gnomed.”

          The longer I live with Crash, the more I learn that it always pays to listen to your neighborhood werewolf. There’s a lot of crazy creatures out there that we don’t even know about some of them we don’t honestly even have myths for that these poor, overworked individuals keep at bay for us.

          We were no closer to an answer for him. I was so paranoid of outsiders at this point that I had nearly shot the poor mail lady. She at least didn’t call me a murderer, but did call me a psychopath. Guess I can’t blame her. But hey, she made an awful lot of noise with that mailbox when she dropped off the bills and that game for Zack. It isn’t completely my fault that I thought this sweet sixty something year old lady who was always kind to us was going to bomb the house, is it?

          “Arkansas,” Crash said, bringing me out of my memory.

          “Arkansas,” I asked, a little confused. “You mean an entire state of people want me dead?”

          “No,” Crash growled, that turned into a wolf like grumble as he started scratching at a spot on his leg. “Let’s get out of this forest first, please. I’m starting to get worse.”

          Seated at the kitchen table, with a complaining, grumbling werewolf who was scratching so much he was almost bleeding on the furniture, Crash asked me, “You remember when we went to Arkansas to get rescue your ex?”

          If you’re curious. It’s the “Saving Sarah” series chronicled on this blog. But to sum it up, Leeroy and Mitch were twin vampires with a taste for meth who had glamoured Sarah, my ex, into selling all of my stuff. Soon, she was running meth for them as well as being their food supply and all-around slave. Crash killed one, but the other got away.

          I looked over at Crash, and almost did his canine head tilt. “Leeroy?”

          “No! I killed Leeroy. His brother, Mitch.”

          “Huh. I thought the cartel had killed him,” I said.

          Crash shrugged. “Nah. Leeroy and Mitch was more into making their own instead of trying to buy it from someone else.”

          Yeah, that had been a whole thing too, now come to think of it. The vampire terror twins had a taste for poison after all, whether it was flooding the streets with meth or attempting to kill a certain werewolf. It was right about then that a thought occurred to me. “Could they make other people smoke meth? Under their influence,” I asked, thinking allowed. Then answered my own question. “They did it to Sarah already. So, how many people can they do that to?”

          “There was a vampire in a small town in France who controlled every citizen inside it for over fifty years,” Crash said. “From the youngest to the eldest. They all fed him, they all took care of him. They all gave a portion of their money and goods to him. He controlled their mayor, their every single thing. Nothing happened in the town without his say so.”

          “So, what happened,” I asked.

          Crash scratched at a new spot on his shoulder and shrugged. “We took care of it. The towns people weren’t happy.”

          I looked at him. “Why not?”

          “When you’re not alone with your thoughts in your own head for so long, you begin to grow comfortable with your visitor. This vampire was smart. He wasn’t a lord who went around punishing everyone. He made everyone happy in their subjugation. He was their friend who knew every thought, and when one had trouble made sure everyone else helped.”

          “How many was in that town,” I asked.

          Crash shrugged. “About four thousand. I heard it was a difficult operation, but the EU was happy to finally be rid of him.”

          Four thousand people. Mitch could easily glamour half that many I figured, with the meth baking his brain. Our county had at least that many living in it. Two thousand willing souls, providing blood and money for the meth that they now all craved. That’s not mentioning the ones who already took meth. I shuddered at the thought.

          “I don’t think he’s got control of the county,” Crash said. “He doesn’t even have control of the town. But he’s got a foothold.”

          That statement stuck with me. He’s got a foothold. One crazy meth head vampire had control of dozens, potentially hundreds of people. “Can you uh…kick him out? Like the way you did with me?”

          Crash chuckled. “No, that would take an entire pack of werewolves.” He sighed, and scratched at his arm again. Blood began to well up from it, and I stood to grab a towel for him. “Not to mention this whole town would have to be suddenly very close to them, and well, no. It isn’t possible.”

          “So, what can we do,” I asked.

          He started to shrug. That’s when we heard the knock at the door. Gary was there, and he looked pissed. Those coke bottle frames looked as if they were about to catch our poor, battered front door on fire. I opened it slowly and smiled at him. “Gary! It’s a pleasant surprise! What brings you here?”

          “Can the sunshine, murderer,” he snarled.

          “Mitch,” I grumbled. More under my breath than anything else.

          Gary scratched at his arm and smiled, “finally you guessed it,” he said. “This vessel is here to deliver a message. You are to go into the town square in front of everyone at midnight three days from now and kill yourself. A single bullet to the head. Or I will kill one of these people. And I will keep killing them and delivering their corpse to your front steps until you finally get the gumption up to do what you should do.”

          What could I do? I smiled as sweet as I could at Gary and said, “thank you, but I already have a religion,” then closed the door. Hey, it works for the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

          “Who was that,” Crash asked. Scratch scratch scratch scratch. “Mitch,” I said. “I have to kill myself in three days or he’s going to murder everyone apparently. What’s for dinner?”