Page 34 of Thirsty
That was when the wolf at the head of the pack shifted back into human form seamlessly, revealing a fully naked, elderly man who beamed at the both of them. “Lorenzo!” he said cheerfully. “You came.”
“Hello, Kenny,” Lorenzo said. They shook hands as the rest of the wolves transformed back into humans, all of them naked, all well past retirement age. Charlie tried not to gape.
Kenny, who seemed like the leader of this particular group, had thick gray hair on his head and all over. “This must be your friend,” he said, turning to Charlie.
“Uh, nice to meet you,” he said, shaking his hand gingerly.
“Welcome to our community!” Kenny said, clapping his hands together in satisfaction. The others had gotten to work lighting fires and setting up the campsite, not seeming to let their nakedness interfere with their work. “Sorry to be late meeting you, we were just going for a midnight run.”
“I...” Charlie was lost for words, which was rare.
He caught Lorenzo’s eye, and realized that he was smirking. A blush rose to Charlie’s cheeks.
Twenty minutes later they were sitting around a campfire with the werewolves, most of whom, to his gratitude, had finally pulled on clothes. A woman across from him was assembling s’mores and passing them around the circle, while a guy to his left lit a joint. “So—the full moon thing—” Charlie asked.
“Eh, that’s a young wolf’s game,” Kenny said, waving arelaxed arm. “Once the pelt starts growing in a bit grayer, all that stuff gets easier. You can shift on the full moon, on the half moon, during the day. Whenever you want, really.”
“Wow,” Charlie said. “So you just—do you all live here?”
“Here, around,” Kenny said. “Wherever the beast calls us.”
“The beast?”
“The beast within,” he said, waggling his coarse silver eyebrows. “We run for miles sometimes, making the mountains our home.”
“Wow,” Charlie said again. As he grasped for a more cogent response, he glanced at Lorenzo, and saw him gazing back smugly again. Like he’d engineered all this to put Charlie off his game.
Sitting up a little straighter, he said, “Y’know, you all are the first werewolves I’ve had the chance to talk to in depth. I’d love to ask you some more questions—is that okay?”
“Sure,” Kenny said easily. “There’s nothing wrong with ignorance, only incuriosity.”
“Thanks,” Charlie said. “So—do all, um, senior werewolves live like this? Nomadic, more in touch with nature?”
“Some do,” Kenny said. “Some stay tethered to their human-passing lives.”
The woman making s’mores scoffed at him. “Human-passing? You still go down the mountain once a week to check in on your accounting firm.”
“I want to make sure it’s in good shape for when Niall takes it over! My youngest,” he said to Charlie. He added pointedly, to the woman who had laughed at him, “And we don’t judge here.”
There were nods around the fire. Across the clearing, two of the werewolves had wandered over to a small stream and started splashing each other, quickly shifting into wolf formso they could grapple and snap at each other playfully. Charlie sighed. “You seem so...happy.”
“We are,” Kenny said. “We don’t concern ourselves with the things that defined us when we were younger. The rat race, the struggle for material goods, the duality of man and beast. We’re at peace here.”
“Sounds nice,” he said.
“It is,” Kenny said. “Say, speaking of the rat race—did you say your name was Wever?”
“Uh—yes,” Charlie said hesitantly.
Kenny sat forward. “Any relation to Professor George Wever, over at the university?”
“Oh,” Charlie said. “Yes. That’s my father.”
Lorenzo glanced over at him, but Charlie didn’t look. “Fascinating,” Kenny was saying. “I must say, I disagree with just about every one of his theories on economic stimulus, but you can’t deny he’s made quite a contribution to the university’s scholarship.”
His father’s scholarship was the beginning and end of his priorities. Charlie honestly couldn’t even be sure if his dad would be upset to learn that he’d been back in Brookville for weeks without reaching out, or if he’d just be...
Well. It wasn’t like Charlie being here or not had any effect on his dad’s career, so he dismissed his guilt and decided that none of this made for good conversation. “I’ll tell him you said that,” he said politely.
