Beware The Wolf - Pt6 - Revengence Machine

Brutus realizes he has lupine desires, which means Fresh Meat!!! He also gets his bike back and learns something useful about himself. 

----

“What exactly are you doing?” Steven asked, having passed by Brutus’ ‘room’ about fifteen times in the last half hour and finally deciding to satisfy his curiosity. “You look like a viral dog video.”

Brutus was hunkered on his mattress with a blanket draped over him like a massive hood, and he stared out the un-doored doorway back at Steven. “I’m hungry.”

Steven rolled his eyes. “Ahh, so you’re hungry, and that means sitting and staring at me as I try to organize my shit out here. Are you hoping I’ll help you solve that problem, too? So far, I’ve helped you break into my job and steal things, and I helped you basically squat in a dubiously livable forgotten upstairs of a weird and failing gay bar.”

The wolf continued to stare, undeterred. “You live here, too.”

Steven started to roll his eyes and instead wrinkled his face up in a, ‘you got me’ snarl.

“You think it’s cool. It’s like the gothiest place either of us have ever been.” Brutus slowly rose from hunkering to kneeling, and the blanket slid back. He was nude, and as he perked up, so did his black erection.

Steven stared at it. “I thought you said you’re hungry,” he said, and sounded distracted.

After another few seconds of dull, feral staring, Brutus looked down. “I’m hungry. I gotta go eat something. And I mean, I’m hungry. Not like for takeout.”

“I don’t really think, ah, you should be both hungry and horny at the same time. That sounds like a bad combination.” Steven set down the box he was carrying and moved between sides of the empty door frame. “And, not for takeout? I was going to show off my new pet dog to my aunt-”

“I said I’m not that kind of hungry. I need to…” Brutus said, and stood, towering for a moment before he broke into a hard stretch that showed all of his teeth, peeled his lips back, pointed his ears flat until they trembled, and rose up to his toes. Then he licked his chops. “I need to hunt something.”

Steven pursed his brow and his slight adam’s apple bobbled as he swallowed, mouth dry. “I don’t like the sound of that, and I also don’t think I can help. That sounds like an… an entirely wolf… what exactly would you hunt? Are you going to go eat a squirrel? I’ve seen them eat the woodchips outside the lit school, they must put some sort of fungicide in them because they start to trip out and do backflips off tree trunks, they’d be easy to catch, my parents’ cats never could catch squirrels and cats are basically apex predators that purr so any sort of advantage-”

“Stop babbling. I’m going to go find,” Brutus said, and then paused for effect. His muzzle started to twist into a grin, and he then pulled it into more of a snarl for even more effect. “I’m going to go find a deer.”

His friend immediately twitched. “You cannot eat Brad. You cannot eat the person who is providing us the only solace we have from a world that, I swear, any second is going to find out that you’re a monster for real.”

Brutus cocked his head. “At least two people already have seen me as a wolf and nothing’s happened. I’m not gonna eat Brad. Brad’s too cute to eat. Also, Brad’s a human.”

“Really? You’ve made sure to refer to him as a deer and threatened to eat him multiple times,” Steven reminded, with his finger up.

“I’m going to go find a real deer and eat it. I’m going to kill it and eat it. I’m going to tear its throat out and drink its blood and then rip its flesh off its bones-”

Steven winced. “That’s disgusting. I’m not that kind of goth.”

“You like that Japanese gore horror stuff.”

“That’s not gothy, and it’s not real either. My dad used to hunt and he tried to make me go with him to man me up and ungh, he tried to get me to skin a deer and I just threw up literally in his face when he asked why I was being a pansy faggot about it.” Despite the content of the story, Steven seemed more typically irritable than wounded at the memory. “Where are you even going to find a deer?”

“Where do you fucking think? Do you think they just end up on the side of the road dead by old age?”

“You’re going to go eat roadkill? You’ll get worms. You’ll get your eyes pecked out by a vulture.”

“I’m going to go into the fucking woods, idiot.” Brutus growled, and looked around his ‘room’. His leather outfit was strewn all over one corner of the bed. He started picking up pieces and putting them on.

Steven crossed his arms and tilted his head up. “I’m not going to help you with this. This is a wolf problem, and you’re the wolf.”

“I don’t need your help. I could just get a rideshare and-”

“Oh god no, don’t do that, the driver will shit himself, or worse, they’ll be a furry and try to fuck you. And I’m not joking, I was in one the other day and he had one of those dragon dildo company stickers on the passenger airbag thing. And then you’ll be hungry still and probably eat him.”

“Fine. There’s woods in town,” Brutus shrugged, and hunched his shoulders into his aggressively punk-studded leather jacket. “I’ll fucking walk.”

—

Brutus almost did not walk. Once outside in the back alleyway, out of sight of the clearly-worried best friend who hesitated when closing the door, he fumbled around in his pocket and pulled out his smartphone, the singular electronic possession that had survived his eviction. He had pre-paid his pay-go plan for half a year and still had several months. He opened several ride sharing apps, then closed them, thinking about what Steven had said.

Being a wolf was a problem. It was such a huge problem that Brutus mostly had spent the past few days ignoring it, with a few instances of letting the anti-social nihilism take over for effect. Now, his appearance was simply a liability. Seemingly equally bad would be Steven’s reaction, so Brutus put his phone back in his pocket and set off on foot in the late dark of night.

He thought about his roadkill comment earlier, and thought about just where he’d seen cervine carcasses while out on rides. One particular segment of road west of core downtown seemed a good culprit, as it led to a highway on-ramp and aside from a few industrial buildings was devoid of housing and thus people at the late time of night. It was an hour’s walk to go several miles, so he set off.

As the small city lights of Treetown gave way to only the safety streetlights of the woodsy arterial road, Brutus stopped to look around. Look, and listen; despite the nearby highway roar, he could hear so many things. He could hear animals moving around in the woods constantly, from small rustles to larger cracks. Squirrel chitters, raccoon trills and squeals, possum hisses, the occasional hoot or cry from an owl, and the large cracks of what he hoped were deer. His brain told him they were, though consciously he wasn’t sure if he knew what a deer would sound like.

And the smells! The stink of civilization’s car and truck exhaust, heady gasoline and rank oily diesel, the raw scents of the fluids from the edge-of-town gas station he had passed a half mile back, then asphalt, dirt, gravel, wood, grass, a hint of flowers from those that didn’t close up at night, his own scents of leather and human sweat and pervasive sex scent from his cock and balls, other animals, other animals’ shit and piss, fumes and trails of excrement that he could see if he defocused his eyes and walked around in a slow circle.

One of them was ‘deer’, and it led him to continue forward and then off to the left into the woods a few yards from the road. He quickly found the still-steaming pile of pebble-like scat, and then a few more yards to a depressed area in the undergrowth. Despite the deep moonless night, he could see the deer trail that was battered and knocked aside through evergreen shrubs, the saplings with their missing lower limbs from winters’ of frantic starved nibbling.

The trail led back to the road further ahead. Brutus found that he could move through the woods with as little sound as possible - it was hard to avoid the sounds of his leathers, and he cursed his excited need to wear them, but if he trusted his feelings he put his boot soles down without much disturbance.

And there it was, up ahead, a young buck with a small rack. As soon as he detected it and felt his heart rate quicken and drool pour out inside his mouth, the rush of tires out on the road grew. There was no loud purr of an engine, only a faint mechanical-electronic whirr from an electric powertrain. The car’s low-beams flicked up to high, and the light illuminated the deer into a silhouette while simultaneously blasting Brutus through a slot in the trees. The driver was unlikely to see anything, though the deer immediately saw him when he flinched and stepped on a twig. It bounded out into the road to escape the predator.

Fuck fuck fuck, hit him you son of a bitch, you and your fucking headlights, you stupid fucking deer, do it, do it, do it! The deer ran across the road, not frozen in the light but focused on his escape. Brutus squeezed his hands into fists so tight that it hurt, that his gauntlet armor restrained over his gloved knuckles. At the last second, the car slammed on its brakes, tail-lights flickering all-colors as it emergency braked. The deer got away across the road.

Brutus then hung back and hunkered down behind a tree. I’m alone, he thought, though it wasn’t loneliness that flooded in. I can’t get a deer by myself. They run. I can run. I wish I had friends. I wish I had wolf friends. Then, after another half hour of nothing resembling a deer, he allowed another human thought in. They have to come back to their little deer nest. If they went across the road like that one did, then they’ll come back. The trail crosses here.

He kept waiting. He didn’t care about his smell. He didn’t care about needing to piss. He didn’t care about the occasional buzz from his phone in his pocket, though he did imagine that Steven was likely messaging him. Looking at his phone meant light, and it meant being seen. Aside from that one car, there were so few others, with little reason for anyone to drive on that particular road at that particular time of night.

Another car came up, from the opposite direction. Prompted by the need to escape the oncoming lighted beast, a different deer - a doe - bounded across the road again, this time with the car slowing down and no chance of an impact. It also was not illuminating Brutus this time, and the deer at a run headed straight for him.

Do it do it do it do it do it he snarled to himself, and when it felt right, sprang out into the path. He timed it perfectly and collided with the deer, which squealed out a bleating sound and then a terrific huffing sound as she toppled. Brutus managed to catch an arm around her leg and another around her neck, though as a human he had not given any thought to how large an adult deer would be, how heavy one might be, and how fast it may be running. The impact was hard and both were flung off to the side, Brutus rolling away to avoid being trampled. The deer, partly airborne and disoriented, smacked into a tree with her head and neck wrapped around, an awful whack and fleshy thump. She tumbled onto the ground and lay there.

I fucking did it I fucking did it! Brutus then felt terrible panic after the reward, as if the dog who had finally caught the car. The deer was not dead, clearly breathing, either unconscious or stunned. Just stunned, as she jumped up, though when she tried to run off, she loped and limped and looked disoriented.

She caught sight of Brutus and snorted again, then tried to bound away but tripped instead. Despite the injury, she could still move fast enough that Brutus had to rush after, and he found that in spite of being a preternatural monster, he couldn’t move that much faster than he could at a blind sprint as a human. He chased the doe off deeper into the woods, trusting his senses to keep him from flailing and tripping himself, and succeeded, though the deer slowly gained distance.

She made a sudden zigzag and leaped towards something, but misjudged or was unable to go exactly in the proper direction. She smacked into something in midair and bounced back, toppling down again with another bleating noise of panic, clearly not understanding what had happened.

Brutus, on the other hand, was human and could clearly see what had happened. The deer had leaped towards the side to get him off her tail, and had leaped straight into a tall metal chain security fence gate. A battered two-track road led to the gate, and a security light above it flicked on, further dazzling the deer. Behind the gate was seemingly nothing of import, just battered old scrap junk.

The wolf took his chance and leaped at the deer, and grabbed her. His human sense panicked, as he realized what he had to do, and felt like he had to do, and muscles quivered as they prepared what to do. He had a wolf’s muzzle even if it was partly human and a little shorter, and he had a wolf’s set of teeth, so he sank them into her throat. Hot blood gushed into his mouth and the deer struggled, while he used his two hundred pounds and change to physically restrain the deer.

The next few moments were a blur that ended with him dragging the deer off to the side and into some brush, and then began to tear and bite and rip. While initially disgusting, swallowing the hot raw meat sated his hunger and after filling his stomach, he sank back to the side, messed with blood and offal and deer hair and thought about what he’d just done.

The security light, on the other hand, thought only that something was moving and kept turning on and off as he’d done a poor job of hiding himself completely. If the doe had been part of a family, they weren’t trying to do anything to stop him from eating her, or even being present. That left Brutus to keep turning on the light over what clearly was a disused back entrance to a large lot used for a scrapyard.

The chain fencing protected old and degraded junk, though as he squinted forward, he could see that after a hundred feet or so, there was a much more sturdy solid security fence that had yet another gate.

No longer ferally hungry, Brutus now was humanly curious. I bet there’s something useful in there. And I have a funny feeling… The chain fence gate was poorly designed and the earth had been dug under by animals around one of the posts. He crouched down and sniffed; foxes, woodchuck, coyotes.

He grabbed part of a broken branch and started enlarging the hole, and while the security light blinked on and off for the next fifteen minutes, no human came to investigate. Once the gap was big enough, Brutus squeezed underneath it and came up on the other side, now smeared with as much dust and dirt as with deer blood.

Once up at the tougher fence, he peered through the gap into a more typical junkyard. Except it was more than that. Some of the vehicles weren’t scrap at all. Perhaps most of them weren’t scrap. They looked quite clean. While he watched, a flatbed towing truck pulled into view and unloaded a slightly older-model BMW which had no visible signs of being a wreck. The truck read “J. C. Johnson - Automotive Hauling.” Whoa, deja vu, but from where, he thought.

“Hey you wanna check some shit? That fucking security light’s on the fritz,” a male voice said, not at all as gruff as Brutus expected a junkyard employee would be. “Way out back.”

Brutus looked around. The cars and equipment on his side of the security fencing were in much better condition, obvious wrecks and discarded vehicles. He quickly moved away from the gate and hid behind one.

“Yeah, yeah, gimme that radio,” another voice said, followed by the dry sound of boots on dirt.

What the hell are they doing bringing in cars so late? It’s three in the fucking morning. I wouldn’t do that if you paid me, he thought, and waited. A few seconds later, the gate opened, and a man in generic big-box-store rugged work clothes walked out. He swung the gate closed but didn’t actually spend time to latch it, instead making an irritated bee-line to the far back where Brutus had come from.

Do it, Brutus thought again, and quickly toed up to the gate, peeked through the gap, saw no one, and slid inside. He immediately hid behind another vehicle and tried to find a vantage point to keep an eye on the hauler. Some loud whirrs started up, and the bed tipped slightly, then the luxury CUV slid off onto the ground. Once the car was down, more bootfalls and the hauler moved off out of sight. Another man walked back into view, this one wearing a generic light jacket and a cap. Brutus could see the back of a business building, a small and slightly battered white concrete affair with several garage bay doors and a back entry, along with a window. A light was on over everything, which illuminated a big splash of the ground; more such lights lit up the rest of the place, and Brutus looked up to see if he was on camera even as he hid. It didn’t look like the security camera would be able to see him where he was, though he probably was seen coming through the gate.

The guy didn’t seem interested in checking any cameras, and instead had a small tablet computer and was going around the car.  Up on the wall of the building was the same name, “J. C. Johnson - Automotive Recovery” with a few phone numbers: “Scrap Sales”, “Hauling”, “Finance Recovery”.  Finance recovery? That’s fucking repo services. Then the deja vu returned; he’d seen the name on a truck, though not the same color truck, before. It had been parked on the street when his apartment had been emptied out by the landlord just earlier in the week, the final epilogue of insult after his transformation. At the time, he hadn’t thought anything of it, because car haulers and wreckers were commonplace.

Now? THIS IS THE PLACE THAT TOOK MY BIKE.

Cameras be damned, Brutus started prowling around, though he tried to stay out of sight and to be as quiet as an unrepentant  leather-clad wolf monster could be. He also could hear the 2-way radio chatter between Car Inspection Guy and Car Hauler Guy.

“So is anything stupid out there?” “I dunno, the gate’s not open or anything.” “It’s probably coyotes. You can do that thing with the app where you make little squares to tell it what not to look at and control for animals and stuff and I swear the fuckers just climb up three tall and go around in a trenchcoat or something.” “Man what the hell is with you, how are you so hopped up at three in the morning?” “Don’t fucking give me shit, I gotta stay awake, we gotta get this shit done and it’s way faster at three in the morning for all the people who leave their cars out ‘cuz they’re stupid.” “Fuck well there’s a dead deer out here. Kinda partly ate up already.” “Told you, coyotes.” “I dunno man can those guys eat a deer? Coyotes are small.” “Yeah and they’re vicious. They’re like wolves that don’t give a shit.” “Hey this is kinda weird, it’s a little muddy out here but I don’t see any paw prints.” “Who fucking cares about paw prints, some coyotes ate a deer on camera. We can just put it on youtube and those weirdos who watch that stuff can-” “No man like I think something kinda dug under the gate, like there’s this part of a big stick and the rabbit hole there is kinda big now.” “Well whatever, just make sure whatever it is doesn’t have two legs and a truck to haul shit away in.”

While the two employees discussed Brutus’ leftovers, the wolf himself continued prowling around. What had seemed like an orderly lot of cars that were either up for parts, up for chop, or repossessed; turned out to be a lot of cars and motorcycles. There were ten motorcycles, and there on the end was a black Yamaha V-Max. It no longer had a license plate, but it didn’t need one. Brutus sniffed over at the seat - the waterproofed leather smelled just like his own ass. I can’t fucking believe this, I got to eat a deer and I get my bike back-

“Hey! You! Hands up!” Followed by the unmistakable clack of someone cocking the hammer on a revolver.

Oh shit. Brutus froze and did not put anything up. Despite his leather outfit, he had a hoodie on beneath the leather jacket so he could mostly hide his face. He thought for exactly two seconds, then spoke. “No, I’m not putting my hands up. I am getting my bike back, though.”

“Uh-huh. And that’s why I’ve got a .357 aimed right at your fucking center of mass.” It was, not surprisingly, the voice of the car inspector guy, the one who sounded ‘hopped up’ in his coworker’s words.

“I’m sure this happens all the time, but really, I don’t think you wanna mess with me.” I’m gonna do it I’m gonna do it.

“Look, kid, the very best thing that’s gonna happen to you is you getting hauled off by the cops and it’s all downhill from there.”

Brutus slowly turned and put his arms up over his head. “Who’re you calling kid?” In the process, he flipped his hoodie back. The repo man was two-handing his gun like he was at a shooting range, as if he was absolutely dead-set on doing everything right, as long as everything included ‘shooting someone’.

The reveal didn’t go as Brutus hoped. “I don’t think going around in some kinda werewolf mask while you prowl around someone’s junkyard is gonna help your case with the police.”

Brutus sniffed at the air, and caught a familiar stink from the Concerned Citizen. “I don’t think I’m gonna get very far without the keys to my motorcycle, so maybe you should put your little peashooter down and go into your little office there and bring them out. And wipe the cum stains off them, I know you’re probably watching porn all night in there.”

“Hey I hear yelling, something going on?” the radio on the guy’s belt crackled.

“You gonna answer that?” Brutus tipped his head towards the radio. Then, he swiveled his ears.

The man responded by adjusting his grip on his gun and not reaching for the radio. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

“No, but I think you look delicious,” Brutus growled, and pounced forward. His plan worked in that he left the ground entirely and would have smashed into the man just like the deer earlier; it failed because two shots rang out, and Brutus felt like he’d been punched in the chest. He collapsed onto the ground and smashed his muzzle into the dirt. “Fuck! Fucking shit!”

He clutched at his chest with his right hand, right where the pain was. He brought it away wet with blood, congealing deer blood mixed with the hot metal of his own. The pain was not just bad, but it was bad. His vision spotted and he rolled over when he tried to stand up. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he grunted, looking up at the sky as dim gray clouds slid past some stars. At least one of the bullets had gotten him right in the heart; he could feel his pulse go uneven, and then with a terrifying sense of dread, it stopped.

Brutus lay there and thought, well, shit. I guess it was fun while it lasted. Instead of seeing a tunnel of white light or people he’d known in his life or any other sort of hallucination, all he saw was the sky. He couldn’t move anything. The man who had shot him walked over and looked down at him. Seconds later, he heard footsteps rush up and now both employees were looking down at him.

“Holy shit man you really shot someone!” “He was trying to steal that bike we recovered the other day.” “Yeah but you didn’t have to shoot him!” “He lunged at me.” “What the hell’s going on with him, is that some kinda werewolf mask?” “Yeah he’s stealing shit, you think he’s gonna let everyone see his face?”

The second guy reached down and rubbed at Brutus’ face. Brutus felt it, but couldn’t move. “Uhhh. Huh.” He rubbed and pulled, as if trying to remove a mask, and then a hood. “Hey uh this is weird, it’s not like, it’s stuck on. Like is this movie prosthetics shit? Is this guy one of those weirdos?”

Brutus could feel something very strange happening in his chest. He was entirely aware of being, as far as he could tell, dead. However, the sensation in his heart felt like it was growing worse, not deadened like it had just gotten. Fucking hell it feels like there’s ants inside me.

“Ok look we’re gonna drag this guy into the bushes, and then we’re gonna figure out what to do in the morning.”

“Dude, dude, what if this guy is what ate that deer, or ate part of that deer, this is super bad.”

“Yeah, but he’s super dead now, ‘cuz that’s a heart shot. He went down in seconds. Come on, grab one of his legs.”

The shooter grabbed one, and after hesitating, the other guy grabbed the other. They started to drag Brutus.

“This leather shit is kinda fancy, like this is queer-ass leather shit.” “Yeah? How do you fuckin’ know?” “I dunno, it’s not regular biker stuff! I have regular biker stuff and this is like that guy from that 80’s metal band, you know who I’m talking about, the English guy who could hit those high notes and always wore codpieces and stuff.”

About ten feet away, and Brutus felt his heart flop in his chest, and then start pounding. He sucked in a breath and immediately coughed. Both men froze.  “Shit, what the hell? Did he just make a noise?” “It’s probably just gas.” “That wasn’t a fart, asshole! He coughed!”

Oh my god I’m not dead! Brutus hunched into a crunch and grabbed the shooter’s right arm. “Surprise, asshole!” he barked, the sound a literal bark, and then he coughed explosively again. A spray of blood shot out along with spittle and spattered onto the ground.

In the immediate ruckus, the shooter wrestled his arm out of the grasp and tried to draw his gun, fumbled around with it, and dropped it. Brutus jumped him and jammed his heel down onto the guy’s wrist, trapping it against a rock. There was a dull crack and the man screamed again. The other employee rushed at him but Brutus turned and snapped in his face and the man acted like he was clotheslined and fell backwards. Brutus grabbed the fallen revolver and brandished it, without bothering to see if it was loaded or not.

“Alright! Here’s what’s gonna happen. You, are gonna stay right there.” He pointed the gun at the man whose wrist he’d just shattered. Then he turned to the other. “You, you’re gonna walk with me back to your office, get the keys to that bike, and give them to me. You got that?”

The man whose wrist was now bent wrong and immobile didn’t seem to be listening, and his skin was palid and shined with sweat while he huffed. The other one could barely stand up; Brutus helped him but grabbed his arm behind his back in a lock and shoved the revolver against the back of his head.

The pair walked over to the office and then inside, and the employee barely managed to unlock a small safe. He withdrew a set of keys and tried to hand them over, but dropped them on the desk. Brutus snatched them and pressed the alarm disarm button. Out on the lot, the bike’s aftermarket alarm chirped and signal lamps flashed. Brutus spotted a remote for the compound’s front gate, and whacked the button.

Brutus took the employee back to the bike, then pulled the gun away from his head. He opened the revolver and took out the remaining bullets, then threw them all over the area, and tossed the gun on the ground. “See? That wasn’t so hard. If he’d done what I asked,” he gestured to where the shooter was still hunkering in shock on the ground, “He wouldn’t be about to throw up and pass out.” The wolf then climbed onto the bike, stuck the key in the ignition, and then fired it up with a loud roar. He walked it backwards, then popped up to a wheelie and took off, slamming down just in time to turn and head for the front. Just as he’d hoped from what he did inside, the gate was open, and he tore out onto the road.

Back in town, he pulled in behind The Underworld and parked the bike in the alley behind the dumpster, and was just about to open the back door when someone opened it. Steven, who looked as ill as the shooter at the repo lot.

“What the hell have you been up to? You’ve been gone for hours!”

The wolf cocked his ears back. “Huh? Have you been fucking waiting for me?” He pushed inside and pulled the door shut.

“Yes I’ve been fucking waiting for you!” Steven followed him. “You went out looking to eat a deer which is… wait a minute, did you come back here on a motorcycle? Your bike got repossessed.”

Brutus ignored him and went through the back of the kitchen and then into the bar’s back room, then upstairs. Brad was not around to say anything; it was a slow night and they’d closed early. Halfway up the stairs, Steven spoke up again.

“You… you’re a mess. Is that dirt? Is that blood?”

Once in the unfinished ‘apartment area’, Brutus turned around under a bare lightbulb. “I fucking killed and ate part of a deer. It was amazing. She ran right at me and I jumped at her and chased her down and…” instead of actually describing what happened, he growled and licked his chops.

“What the hell happened to you? Turn around,” Steven hissed, and grabbed Brutus, then turned him. “You.. you have a hole in your jacket. You have two holes in your jacket. What  the hell?” He spun him back and checked the front, where there were two holes in the lapel and the leather behind it. “What the hell? Are those bullet holes?”

“Yeah so I apparently decided to hunt deer next to the junkyard and shady repo place that got my bike, so I figured hey, I’ll see if I can get my bike back. And I did. I just kinda got shot doing it.”

“You got shot in the HEART, Brutus. That’s where your HEART is in your body. You’d die from that.”

Brutus shrugged, though also half-grinned. “Yeah, well, I kinda died, but I guess I didn’t do it hard enough. I guess I fuck everything up. Now get the fuck outta the way, I wanna take a shower.” He pushed past Steven and got into the ‘functional’ bathroom, then checked in the very warpy mirror. There was something amounting to a pair of scars on the left of his chest, and one of them was directly over where his heart should be. He reached around in back and could just barely finger at the matching exit hole.

“This is unbelievable,” Steven groused from outside, pacing around and starting to busy himself with moving belongings about. “First you turn into a fucking werewolf, you steal some leather shit, you squat in a bar and you can’t die? What did I do to deserve this? Were my parents right and I’m a sinner and this is god’s punishment, babysitting a reckless werewolf?”

“Can you shut up for five seconds? I want a nice shower, not a bitchy one.” Brutus then stepped into the barely roughed-in shower and yanked the tarp curtain closed.