A Canadian Werewolf in New York

Chapter Thirty-One

Knell kept walking toward the stage and I could feel every single hair on my back and neck standing straight at attention. I knew it was the wolf-blood coursing through me attempting to make me appear bigger, more menacing. I wondered if the hair on the top of my head would also start to stand out tall like a big thick Mohawk.

His cold white-blue eyes glared into mine as he approached, and it took every inch of will-power in me not to leap at him and attempt to rip a huge gash in his throat.

Every incoming sensation feeding into my brain told me he was feeling the same thing.

When he reached us, he put out his hand to shake Letterman’s saying he was delighted to be here. I was surprised to hear him speak with a subtle Yorkshire accent, something not at all discernable when he was singing.  Then he turned and stuck his hand in my direction.

“Pleasure to meet you, mate” he said in a voice everyone could hear. Then, in a whisper that only someone with my extraordinary senses could detect, added: “Again.”

I took his hand when what I really felt was the desire to thrust my arm full force, right through the flesh of his belly and rip out his stomach with my bare hand.

“Charmed,” I said in a loud voice. And in a similar whisper to his own, one I knew only he could hear, I said. “And disgusted.”

He gripped my hand with a quick bone-crushing grip.

Three of my fingers actually cracked. I knew he could both feel it as well as hear it. Letterman, Shaffer, the others onstage and back as well as the studio audience couldn’t tell. To them it was simply a quick hand-shake between two celebrities.

To Knell and myself, it was the acknowledgement that this was the beginning of the stand-off in which one of us would not come out alive.

Letterman, Knell and I all sat down, this time with me on the couch and the shock rock musician in the chair beside the host. They made less than a minute of polite small talk – most of which I was paying little attention to, my heart still racing, my broken hand throbbing – before Letterman announced they would be cutting to a commercial break.

As Shaffer’s band started to play, two aides rushed onto the stage and started to apply make-up to Knell’s face. They fussed over and pampered him the whole time of the break, one of them offering him sips of a dark cold liquid that smelled like prune juice. He sat back, enjoying the moment, seeming to forget I was even there, and just basked in all the attention. I tried not to let that worry me, or at least not to let it show, but realized there was no preventing him from detecting that. There was a brief moment where his eyes turned to me and he grinned, seeming to acknowledge how uncomfortable and nervous I was in his presence.

“You’ll get yours soon,” he whispered to me as his aides rushed away, Shaffer’s band wound down, and the off-stage producer counted down to us being back on air.

“So, Knell,” Letterman said. “I’m continually amazed at how every time you perform you’ve got some sort of different costume, different look to you. You’re like a male Lady Gaga.”

The audience laughed and the host continued. “Do you come up with these fantastic fashion statements all on your own?”

“Yes,” he said, and I could tell immediately that he was lying even before he began to elaborate. Based on what I just witnessed, the guy likely didn’t wipe his ass without a team, never mind dream-up the costumes and stage sets he employed in his act. “The designs and fashions I sport come to me in dream-like visions. I’ve always had the desire to express myself through various outlets. Music is one, body language is another and, of course, fashion is yet one more.”