Angelina

The next night, Collins told me what I didn’t expect to hear.

We were sitting at the top of the building, watching the road and listening to Charlie Puth’s song on my phone.

The building had a slab roof and a stair that could get you there. It was a better view up there --- seeing the roof of people’s houses and farther than you could possibly see when you were on the ground. People could hardly notice us, and if they did, they would see a dog and a lady enjoying the evening. But the tall trees in front of my house made it difficult for anyone to see us.

Most people were returning from work, and the time was 6:30 pm. I had learned to come home as soon as work closed. There was no need to wait behind.

“Something strange happened last night,” Collins said.

I stopped reading on my phone. I had been looking at the list and names of places I could visit to consult a witch. I had collected a few names of places in Scotland and India that seemed legible from reviews from strangers online.

“What happened? I know you didn’t tell me everything.”

“When that guy walked past, I felt something strange,” he said.

“Strange? Like what?”

“My body was changing…”

“Changing…”

“I was becoming human again.”

I turned to him fully. “You haven’t said something since yesterday.”

He turned to face me and stared into my eyes. “Do you remember how you reacted last night? You should have seen your face when I told you about him yesterday.”

I had been scared of what could happen if he made it into a pack where the alpha was dominant and a criminal. They would steal, rob, and hurt people. And once you join a pack, the only way to break from such is to leave town or die.

“I know what you’re thinking alright. I know you feel something. Like you’re transforming into a human, but that’s not completely true.”

He stamped his foot on the roof. “You didn’t tell me about it.”

I sighed and locked my phone. “You need to know an Alpha has some better abilities than all of us. As a wolf, an alpha can transform you into a werewolf temporarily. He could do that if he wanted to send you on an errand. Transform you into a werewolf, but no, you can’t become human. He doesn’t have the power to do that.”

He smiled. “Well, like a master.”

“Well, you can call it that. But why would you want to become a follower to anyone when you can just be here? Just you and me.”

“I should have talked to him,” he said.

“It’s dangerous. A cruel Alpha will own you and use you for criminal activities. Most of them are crazy. Power-obsessed.”

My grandmother had told me some of these stories, and some I heard from strangers about how packs of wolves had been hunted out of town in the past for criminal activities or for trying to attack humans.

“We can’t… They are too dangerous,” I said. Unlocking my phone, I continued searching the internet for answers.

“What if the Alpha can help us find a witch?”

I lifted my head up and looked at him. That was a great thing to say. The alpha could probably help us find a witch. No one would know this city better than an Alpha of the city and his or her pack. This would have made sense if they were good people.

“We need help to find what we are looking for?” he said.

The silence grew. We could run into a lot of trouble by looking for an Alpha. Finding a witch could be the same. How sure were we that the witch we would find could not hurt us? Would every witch be a good person? I leaned back on my hands and looked at the sky.

“It could be…”

“Dangerous… That’s why you should allow me to take the risk this time.”

“What’s your plan?”

“I will go back to the Hollywood neighborhood. I think the Alpha probably hangs around there. I could feel it when I was walking around. I could feel it…”

“And what if things go wrong?”

He moved his front feet on the slab and nodded. “We would be lucky,” he said. “Maybe it’s time I accept my fate after that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it is a win-or-lose situation. We have to take a risk.”

“I can’t lose you, you know that.”

He nodded. “But we need to take some risk or the majority of my life will be gone forever.”

I stared into his eyes. The sadness in his eyeballs made me blink and blink. No one would want to lose half of their life in a form that limited their potential. I was being selfish for staying afraid. “Okay,” I said, nodding. “Let’s go for it,” I said. “You think we can find him with his scent tonight,” I asked. “If we go to that area again.”

“We should try… I wanted to, but I lost him while I was following him.”

I nodded. “Good thing you didn’t do it alone. I might never have found you,” I said.

“I saved a life when I was coming back. I’m glad I did.”

“Two lives. You saved two lives,” I said, putting my arms around him. “We will go, once it’s dark…” I said.

We sat there and continued listening to songs. We didn’t say a word to each other anymore. Each was occupied with their own worries. I feared we would have to join a pack and do their bidding. I feared we would have to bow to someone and obey what they said. But there was another possibility. An Alpha could be the answer to our problem, an indirect solution. But we would be careful and leave if we realized they were not kind and trustable werewolves.

So, later in the night, Collins and I hit the road again. As usual, he was sitting in the back seat, and I was driving. No playing of songs or anything like that. I had a bottle of smokescreen, specially made from wolfsbane, in the car. I had two masks too. If we needed to run, we would just wear the mask and uncork the bottles. It would do much, but it would slow werewolves down and give us time to run for our lives.

We drove for an hour before we drove past Hollywood neighbor. We stopped by the same alley where I had walked the other night to find Collins. Then we alighted from the car and began to walk down the road.

The road was so quiet; only the sound of my shoes made noise within the ten- or twenty-meter radius. We headed down the alley and kept walking anyway. Down the road, in, say, fifteen minutes, we would come to a place full of woods.

An old man was sitting on the floor on the pavement with a big gun on his side. He had a Panama cap and a cigarette in one hand.

“Young lady. It’s getting dark and dangerous,” he said. “You should walk faster and lock your door when you get home.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

We walked past him in his heavy smell of alcohol. Perhaps this neighborhood had been tormented by werewolves. Perhaps it was just a cautious warning from a drunkard, but there was only one way to determine whether we were telling the truth. I checked the time, and it was some minutes to 10.

We kept walking and walking as fast as we could, but as noiseless as possible. We didn’t want to call attention to ourselves. A lady walking around with a giant dog could be suspicious to anyone around here.

Collins looked back at the old man. Although it was dark and we had walked far away from him, we could see him clearly. “He’s asleep,” Collins said.

I looked back, eyes turning orange. “Yeah, he is,” I said.

“Let’s run,” he said.

I nodded at him. “Yeah,” I said, smiling.

We began to growl and jog slowly. Then like the superhumans that we were, more hairs grew out of my skin, and my eyes turned, giving an orange hue to everything and a vision a hundred times better than humans. We started running, hands moving and legs hitting the hard ground as fast as we could go.

We soon came to the woods. Then, we stopped under one of the trees. There, we hid and scanned the area for movements and scents. We were surely getting into something, but at the moment, we didn’t know what we could find.