Fur

07 | A Familiar Stranger

I decide I won't stop and wait if they don't show themselves first. I'll roll over the bridge in a crawl, doors locked.

I don't reach the halfway mark.

I lay a heavy foot on the brake pedal, sitting like a statue in my seat as I watch a man climb up over the side of the bridge just a handful of meters ahead. The sight is worse than seeing a ghost—more like seeing a zombie rise from the dead. It spurs my heart and chills my skin.

I hadn't seen much of the culprit in my driveway besides the tanned shade of his skin, so that's what I have to compare to this man who's on his feet now, shielding his eyes from my lights.

The comparison is a match. He's shielding his eyes with a tanned forearm, just like before. I have mercy and switch on the low beams despite my clenched stomach. This seems to ease his arm a bit until finally he drops it to reveal his face.

I stare at this face for three seconds before becoming gripped by a feeling so great I think it may explode my heart.

It can't be...

I've not seen this face before. Not this version of it. But the underlying familiarly is there and overwhelming. The version of this face I've seen, and memorized day after day, is a younger one.

My body moves on impulse. I shove the door open and step out on one leg, pausing mid-departure. Over the top of the Hummer's door, we stare at each other.

I don't remember that I have the ability to speak until he does so first.

"Leila." His voice is a cold metal in my ears. It is deep and smooth and disbelieving, so unlike the boy's whose I hold in my memories. When he told me goodbye, it was with a high voice susceptible to cracking.

My mouth is dry. My throat is shrunken. I can manage only a whisper. "Zakai."

But this whisper seems an invitation to speak louder, and the speaking of my name an encouragement. I step out fully and shut the door.

A laugh jumps out of me and I'm smiling, however hesitantly, as I search this stranger's face. "Zakai," I say louder, stronger.

He beams in return, that smile seizing my lungs. "Leila," he says again, deciding that label is correct and right.

We meet in the golden fog of the headlights. A daze seems to have us both in its grasp. I don't know who initiates it, or if it was even initiated. I just know that it happens, that my world is reduced to him: my vision nothing but the olive green of his shirt, my ears saturated with the sound of his pounding heart and ragged breaths, and my sense of sensation nothing but the firmness of his body fitted to mine. My arms have linked around his midsection, much broader than I remember. His arms have wrapped around my shoulders, covering more of me than they used to.

Never in my life have I met a more familiar stranger.

I've touched Zakai many times before, wrestling, hugging, or just simply fighting, but not with this body. This body is foreign, with its broadness and its solidness, a far cry from the lanky, stick thin one I was used to.

"Why are you here?" My voice is muffled against him.

"Why are you here?" he returns into my hair.

We have to separate. No matter who we once were to each other, I have to remember the current situations. A stalker, a serial kill, and werewolves in Heisenbühl—him being one of them.

"This is home," I answer, stepping back.

"You moved countries? Continents? Where's—"

I raise a hand to stop him. "It's just me. I left."

His face falls as the gravity dawns. He knows what I am—or rather, what I'm not. He knew how I felt when we lived together in the place of my birth, with the people who'd birthed me. All those years ago, I would mention how I felt to him, and once even my desire to leave. After he did, those feelings worsened.

"Damn it. I'm sorry, Leila, I..."

"It's not your fault, Zakai." I don't know that it's really anyone's fault, nor do I care to ponder it. "Now you answer my question."

When Zakai's family had left mine, they had been set to return to their native Italy. When leaving myself and looking for a place to go, I hadn't had the gull to follow them, uninvited and imposing. Besides that, I didn't expect to find much difference between the families Belfiore and Ardeneux. They're both the same. They're both werewolves.

"My family is in Italy," Zakai confirms, "But the elders decided us youngers should go off on our own. Something about life experience." He looks away as he speaks that last part.

"So you all came to Heisenbühl?" I ask, an unintentional edge to my tone. That would explain the sudden werewolf presence here... or Sophie's death, if one of those in Zakai's group had strayed from the rest. Unless it didn't stray at all. Unless the group itself... No. Zakai wouldn't.

"No," he replies, dispersing my recent pop up theories. "We're not in Heisenbühl. Just me. I was passing through and I... I thought I smelled you."

A pang of guilt aches in my chest. He remembered my scent. I had forgotten his.

I force a small smile and a joke, despite myself. "What?" I raise my arm in confusion and sniff it. "That bad? I showered."

He grins, rolling his head. "Stop," he says in good humor, "You know what I meant."

Headlights that are not mine are approaching the bridge from the village's side. I come back to reality quickly. The serial killer. The murder investigation. Lattie and Nanni waiting at the café.

"I have to go," I blurt, and then, seeing the familiarity in that face, "Do you need a ride?"

"No," Zakai responds, having seen the approaching headlights as well. He watches them with a rigid posture.

I take a backward step toward my Hummer. "Zakai," I warn, uncertain of his intentions, "Don't be caught near this bridge."

He straightens as he looks at me, still in my vehicle's headlights. "Why?"

"A girl was found dead beneath it. They're looking for her killer." And so am I. And if he—a new face with no alibi or viable connections in the area—is found at the crime scene, the police will think the same thing I did.

I reach for my handle, the smooth black paint cold to the touch. I open it. The interior light bursts on.

"Leila, wait!"

Zakai jogs to reach my door, the panel of metal separating us.

"Where can I find you?" He asks. "So we can talk."

I hesitate for a second before leaning across the front seats and seizing the letter that had been lying in the passenger one. I retrieve a pen from the console and scrawl a series of numbers on the unused side of the paper.

"My phone number." I hand it to him. He takes it with a hidden smile. "Ring twice and hang up, then call again. I'll know it's you."

But werewolves don't own phones. So, morals be damned, I pull from my pocket the repairman's company smartphone and slide it into his palm.

He lets his smile out of hiding. "Have a good night, Leila."

"You, too. And don't go sneaking around anyone else's house. They might not be as kind about it as I was." I offer a smirk, closing the door before he can retort back.

The approaching car has nearly reached the bridge. Through my window, I watch Zakai melt into the dark of night, back into the woods from which he came.

At the bridge's village-side threshold, the other vehicle and I roll past each other in a slow crawl, I suspicious of them, they suspicious of me. There's nothing out this way from the village except a single residence. What's someone doing out here, on a lonely swath of road so late at night?

The other driver, I imagine, is wondering the same.