Brotherhood of the Wolf

Chapter 5.2: Hard Talk

Clayton offers to stay until the cops finish snooping around outside so I make coffee.

"Thanks. For showing up when you did, I mean," I say, placing a steaming mug in front of him. It has a cartoon bird with the words "F*ck nuance" printed on it. Obviously it was a gift from Lark.

Clayton cradles the mug in his hands and my gaze lingers a beat too long on his strong grip. Catching myself, I turn back around to get my own cup.

"You left the party so suddenly. I wanted to see if everything was okay," he says with what sounds like genuine concern.

The fact that he was watching me and he's willing to freely admit it takes me off guard, but I try to brush it off. "Those type of events aren't my sort of thing," I say as I take a seat across from him at the kitchen table before adding, "but at least I'm glad it was you since I thought I could feel someone following me."

"Really? Well, that's actually a good sign," he says, taking a small sip to test the temperature of his coffee.

I watch him lower the still too hot beverage. "A sign? Of what?"

He uses the tip of his tongue to lick a drop of brown liquid off his top lip. "That you're already becoming more in touch with your wolf," he says with an unmistakeable air of pride.

I scoff. "Don't be ridiculous. I've barely been here a week and we've spoken a handful of times, and you think that's already giving me a heightened intuition after I've neglected it for over twenty years?"

Clayton pushes his mug aside and interlaces his fingers on the tabletop before leaning forward. "Listen, Barlow. There are a lot of things here that you have no idea about."

He's taken on a distinct professorial attitude I detest, so I lean back in my chair and cross my arms. "Care to fill me in, then?"

He smiles at my antagonism. "How about you answer a few of my questions first and then I'll answer yours."

I'm not exactly loving this tit-for-tat deal, but I'm looking for information and if this is the easiest way to get it, then so be it. Uncrossing my arms, I sit up straight and look him in the eyes.

"All right. What do you want to know?" I ask.

He doesn't even need to think about his first question. "Did you hurt that missing student?" Clayton asks.

I lean forward so fast that the legs of my chair scrape against the floor. "What? How can you ask me that?"

"How can I not? The police apparently have evidence that you spoke to her that night, but you originally denied it. If that doesn't make you look guilty . . .."

He's borderline accusing me of . . . what? At best assault. Maybe kidnapping. And at worst, murder?

I stand and walk to the sink where the window above looks out onto the unfenced back yard and the forest beyond. Two flashlights are still scouring the area. "You were with me, remember? It was a full moon and we ran and even hunted together," I say.

He turns in his chair to face me. "So you remember more of what happened that night? You were pretty fuzzy about things the next morning."

"Erm, not really." I scratch my forehead before self-consciously tucking a lock of my silver hair behind my ear. "But based on what you told me and the blood I had to wash off, I'm assuming that's what happened. Isn't it?"

"We were together most of the night, that's true. But you had only found me after you'd turned. I don't know how long you'd been roaming around and what you may have done before then."

"Surely if there was a large werewolf traipsing through the neighborhood, there would have been sightings."

"Not if the only witness was a young woman out alone, walking back from having dropped off her car in the parking lot across campus. And who is now nowhere to be found."