Page 4 of Fixer
Read it here or in my apartment?I didn’t want to wait.Setting my back to the wall again, where I had a good view out the glass door, I ripped the envelope open.Eased out a snapshot.Turned it over.
Oh, hell no.My knees shook and gave way, my shoulders thumping against the wall as I fought to stay upright.Just a picture of a man, young, perhaps eighteen.Perhaps twenty-two if he was a wolf.Blond, slim, laughing at something out of the picture to the left.
Shawn.
Except Shawn never made it to twenty-two, or even eighteen.He’d never worn the kind of bell-bottom jeans this man had on, never had his hair that long.When he died in 1967, seven years— seveneons— ago, he’d been just fifteen.
The picture shook as my fingers trembled.I pushed myself upright.This had to be some unknown relative of ours.A guy who looked a hell of a lot like Shawn.A half-brother, maybe.Dad hadn’t seemed like the kind to cheat, but he died before I became an adult, before I’d have recognized any warning signs.So who knew?He and Mom were mate-bonded, but the wolf always had the power in that relationship.If he’d fooled around, she couldn’t have stopped him.
I scrutinized the photo.I had no idea what Shawn would’ve looked like with seven years more growth behind him.As a teen, he’d just begun the slower aging of a shifting wolf and he’d resembled a human in his early teens, short, with a little baby fat, no beard growth to speak of, and the stringy muscles of a kid just starting to develop his frame.At twenty-two?Maybe his nose would’ve been a bit bigger than this guy’s, his eyes not so close together, his shoulders wider.
This man who seemed so much like Shawn had to be off in some small detail.
Does Dustin think giving me a new half-brother will make up for killing my real one?
I gritted my teeth and raised the photo to my nose.Along with the chemical scents of developer, I could detect Dustin’s hand, but nothing else.
Well, no kidding, bozo.You think a photo is going to smell like the guy in it?What’ve you been smoking?
Sudden anger at Dustin and the world and at this stranger for laughing in the sunshine while Shawn was dead hit me.I ripped the photo in half, then in half again, and again, until the paper was a confetti of torn pieces.Only my pride in keeping this building clean made me stuff the bits in the envelope and shove the whole thing in my pocket, instead of letting the fragments fall around my feet and stomping on them.
My breath came short.A growl bubbled in my throat.I needed to find Dustin and, and… rip his lungs out of his chest?Ask him who this guy was first?
For seven years, I’d fantasized about destroying Dustin.At night or in quiet moments, whenever loss and loneliness kept me from resting, I’d imagined his death in all kinds of ways.Werewolves are hard to kill, but in my daydreams I’d pushed him off cliffs, run him over with semi-trucks, even resorted to buying an Uzi and mowing him down in a hail of bullets like a hate-blind human would do.
Now Dustin was here, within my reach, and I had my chance to avenge Shawn.Killing him wasn’t going to be easy.Dustin would know I was gunning for him.But after all these years of promising revenge to my brother’s ghost, the time had come.
The first problem was to find the bastard.I hated that Dustin knew where I lived, while I had no clue about him.In human form, I couldn’t rush out and smell the sidewalk, and this time of day, I didn’t dare shift and track him down in fur, even dressed in a visible dog collar.A hundred and seventy pounds of canine was too unusual to be ignored.Anyhow, odds were the scent-trail would end at the curb or the bus stop, wherever he got into his transport and made his escape.
No.I needed to be careful and I needed to be smart.Maybe I needed that knife after all.And maybe I just had to wait until Dustin came to me.Forget tracking him to his lair.He’d come for me twice now, at the window and with the photo.He’d be back.I’d be ready.
I forced myself to reopen the inner door, checked that it locked behind me, and climbed those stairs to my apartment, step by step.I wanted to go tear something apart and fix it, tackle some big repair, but didn’t trust my focus not to fuck it up.I’d never felt so caged within my own walls.My blocks of wood and carving tools mocked me, sitting there with so much to be done, and I didn’t dare lay a hand to a knife for fear of cutting off my own fingers, which trembled without my realizing it, off and on.I couldn’t rest, couldn’t think.I paced the floor.
Memories came to me, time and again.Shawn as a baby, toddling after me with determination on his chubby face.Shawn at eight, clinging to Mom’s hand as we rang the doorbell of a strange Alpha and asked for sanctuary.Shawn at thirteen, shifting for the first time, full of delight and wonder that I felt across the newly formed pack bond in my head that linked my brother to me.
Shawn at fifteen, with a purple bruise covering half his face and desperation in his eyes— No, not that memory.
Memories of the pack rose, too, though I tried to fight them back.Alpha, stern but not unkind until that last vicious betrayal.Kurt, who married Mom to give us, her sons, a place in the pack, but who never asked for more than she wanted to give.He’d been as close to a father as we had, till he refused to fight for Shawn.
And Dustin.Dustin Palmer.Tall and strong, and seeming kind, until the weak, cowardly man under that façade shone through.He’d been an adult when I joined the pack at fifteen, already pushing thirty, the fun guy who’d teased me and challenged me and brought me out of the shell I crafted to survive my birth pack.The man who made me feel like I could be somebody.First, someone I saw as an uncle or older brother, but later, when I was grown…
I’d liked him, way more than I should’ve.I could admit now I’d had a stupid,stupidcrush.I’d been a fool.His betrayal of the hero I’d imagined him to be had been one small pinprick, next to losing Shawn, but that additional abandonment still burned after all these years.
Dusk was falling when I heard a thump on the dumpster down below the fire escape.I knew that sound well.I strode to the window and peered down.
He was in skin this time, dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt, standing on top of the dumpster with his gaze fixed on my window.His brown hair was shorter than the last time I saw him, but otherwise he looked unchanged— a big, heavily muscled, pale-skinned man with a strong jaw and thick neck, the jeans straining across his impressive thighs, the T-shirt sleeves stretched around his biceps.When he saw me through the glass, he vaulted down to the pavement, landing lightly, waved me to come down, and stood waiting.
His call was probably a trap, but I couldn’t resist going.Skin?Fur?Part of me wanted to shift to wolf and rush down with sharp fangs and all my weight behind them.If he didn’t have time to shift, I might take him.Teeth always beat hands in a fight.
But the little bulge of the envelope in my pocket, full of scraps I couldn’t force myself to discard, made me snatch my keys, stuff my feet into sneakers, and slide the window open.I’d sanded and lubricated the frame until the pane eased up without a sound.I slipped through onto the metal platform, shut the window behind me, and started down.
As I descended, stepping slowly and silently from tread to tread, I kept my eyes on Dustin.He waited in the shadows until I reached the last platform, then turned and strolled off toward the road.
The final drop required lying on my stomach, gripping the rail and letting go.I landed on my feet, balanced and ready to fight, but Dustin hadn’t turned to trap me.With his back to me as if unconcerned, he’d already reached the sidewalk.
I could sprint forward and shove him out into the street.Except he’d hear me coming, was bulkier than me, and the traffic wasn’t solid enough to be sure he’d get hit.I’d probably only get one shot at Dustin and it needed to be perfect.
Dustin turned left toward the next building, and I followed, fifty feet behind, as he prowled through the neighborhood.Could he have brought the pack?I kept every sense on red alert, sniffing, listening, scanning the shadows, ready to bolt at the slightest sign of another wolf, but all I sensed was the two of us in a sea of vanilla humans.Ten blocks on, my impatience had become a painful pounding in my head to the rhythm of my pulse, until he reached a small, well-worn park where neighborhood kids played and turned in at the path.
