Page 41 of A Brighter Yellow
“You’re beautiful,” he said, loving the way the sunlight curved over her pale skin and caressed her breasts. He realized that if he kept staring at her, he was going to put her right back down on the grass.
She was staring at him as if trying to work out the secret meaning behind his words.
“I think,” she said, “that I will take this opportunity to shift, and then we should actually proceed with our original mission.”
“Probably a good plan,” he agreed.
“I’m going to shift right here,” she said. Something about the way she said it told him that there was another message in the words that he wasn’t getting.
“Do you want me to turn around?” he asked. Transforming seemed like a private thing. Maybe Anna was trying to tell him she wanted privacy?
Her lips pursed, and she scanned the horizon line, and then she looked back at him, her blue eyes meeting his with a calm, steady look. “No, you can watch.”
The breath caught in his throat. He felt like he had just been given something precious. Anna shifted, and that was the right word, as her skin and bones shrank and grew, rearranging themselves with bone rending cracks that left him wincing. It didn’t look easy. Like most magic, the movies had given him the impression that it was far easier than it really was. When it was done, Anna used her hind leg to scratch her ear and then stood up and looked at him as if waiting for comment. She had a pale white face and reddish-gray coat—her best friend necklace hung much tighter now around her thick wolf neck.
“You’re beautiful in every shape,” he said. “But damn, that looked hard.”
She gave him the wolf equivalent of a shrug. He gathered up her discarded clothes and sandals and then followed her toward the bunker. A few minutes of plowing through the knee-high grass later, they reached the back entrance. Ochre crawled forward and peered through the long stalks at the door.
Anna cocked her head at him, and he nodded. “I know. It looks suspiciously unguarded. That seems either like a trap or like they’re really, really dumb.”
As they watched, the door opened, and two men stumbled out, shoved by a third.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” demanded the man doing the shoving. He was wearing boxers and a bathrobe, and fuzzy bunny slippers. “I told you to fucking guard the door, and I expect you to guard the door.”
“From who?” whined one of the others. “No one even knows this door exists. We’ve been staring at the same damn grass for six weeks!”
“And you’ll stare at it for another six weeks,” screamed the man. “Or do you want to make the next offering?” He looked from one man to the other. “Do you?” he demanded, his voice dropping to a threatening hiss.
“No, man, no,” said the second guy, elbowing his compatriot in the ribs.
“We’re cool,” said the first, getting the hint.
“The wolves have fucking spies everywhere,” said the bathrobe guy. Belatedly, Ochre realized that bathrobe guy was Brett Hubbard. He no longer looked like the comfortably padded Wallstreet guy. His hair was shaggy, but he’d clearly been spending his free time working out. His abs were ridiculous, and the boxers seemed to hang from his hips as if they were a size too big.
“We cannot be too careful,” said Brett scanning the grassy hill, and Ochre and Anna ducked down.
“Yeah,” said the second guy. In jeans and a leather vest over a black hoodie, he looked like the standard-issue Warlock MC biker to Ochre, but he might have been a brain cell or two ahead of his friend. “We’ll be careful from now on.”
“Good,” said Brett, flapping his bathrobe around himself and tying the belt. He took a vape pen out of his pocket and took a hit. “We got to keep this shit locked up tight. If those creepy wolf fuckers find out about… They can’t know, you know?”
“Well, they gotta know at some point,” said the first one, earning a glare from both the bathrobe guy and his friend. “You know, when we unleash it on them, and they all die,” he added hastily. He pulled his vest over his paunchy belly, unconsciously copying Brett’s movements from a moment earlier. Probably for the same reason—a chill wind had kicked up, and he was in his shirtsleeves.
“Oh, well, sure,” said Brett, letting out a stream of smoke. “Yeah, they’ll know then. And then Liam Grayson is going to die a slow horrible death.”
Anna looked over at Ochre, and he shrugged. He didn’t know any more than she did. Brett leaned over and spat into the grass.
“OK,” he said, looking at the two men, “good talk.” Then he turned and went back into the bunker, slamming the door behind him.
“Man,” said the second guy, “Brett is getting fucking crazier and crazier. He is spending way too much time communing with the source.”
“I seen him,” said the first guy, who rubbed his hands over his bare arms. “He pokes his fingers and feeds it his own blood even when it’s not his turn. And he talks to it. Like, he whispers shit to it. That’s not normal. Damn, I hadn’t even finished my sandwich, and I left my coat in there.”
“This is stupid. Let’s just go to the shack out by the front gate. We can see practically the same thing from there.”
Ochre watched them stride off along the path that led to the front of the bunker. “OK, so…” He paused. “Yeah, I don’t know. I guess Brett knows Liam and hates him. But what’s the source that he was talking about?”
Anna made a few minor shifts in weight and looked at him expectantly.
