Chapter 6 The Amber Eyes
Leela awoke with a start, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
She sat up, the thin motel sheet pooling around her waist. She looked down immediately.
The wolf was asleep on the floor. He was a massive, dark mound of fur, occupying the space between the bed and the wall like a bearskin rug that breathed.
"Get it together, Leela." she whispered, dragging her hands down her face. "This isn't real. You are having a breakdown in a Motel 6."
She scrambled out of bed and fished out the last clean t-shirt she owned--a faded band tee she'd stolen from her father's donation pile a few years ago. She grabbed her toiletries and her cell phone and bolted to the bathroom.
She locked the door and turned the shower on as hot as she could stand it.
Steam filled the tiny room, fogging the mirror and chrome fixtures. Leela stepped in, letting the scalding water beat against her shoulders.
"Wash it away," she muttered to the tile wall, "Just wash the crazy away."
She scrubbed her skin raw, trying to scrub away the sensation of the dream- the smell of the clover, the warmth of the golden light and the deep, cello-like voice in her head.
"It's a coping mechanism," she reasoned, her voice shaking."It's an eleborate dream my mind made up to deal with the loneliness. I'm scared. I'm alone, so I invented a protector."
She turned off the water and stepped onto the bathmat. She reached for her phone sitting on the sink's edge.
She tapped the screen.
No new messages. No missed calls.
She stared at the blank screen. It had been nearly fortu-eight hours. She had vanished. And they hadn't even noticed. Or worse--they had noticed, and they just didn't care enough to type "where are you?" Into a text.
"They probably already forgot they have a daughter," she whispered, a bitter smile twisting her lips.
She set the phone down. That hurt, but it was a clean hurt. It confirmed everything.
She dried off quickly. She slipped on her underwear and pulled the t-shirt over her head. She wrapped a white towel around her wet hair, twisting it into a turban, and grabbed her hairbrush.
"Okay," she breathed. "Face the day. Face the dog. Get some coffee."
She unlocked the door and stepped out into the bedroom, a cloud of steam billowing out with her.
"So, did the hot water help with the skepticism?"
Leela screamed.
She scrambled back against the doorframe, clutching the hairbrush like a dagger.
The wolf was gone.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, looking entirely too comfortable, was a man. He looked to be in his early twenties, with messy, dark hair that stuck up in every direction and broad shoulders that took a lot of space. He was wearing a pair of worn-out gray sweatpants and nothing else.
"Who are you?" she shouted, brandishing the hairbrush. "Where is the wolf? What did you do with him?"
The man raised his hands, palms open in a gesture of surrender, "Leela, easy. I'm not going to hurt you."
"How do you know my name?" she yelled, her panic spiking. "Get out! I have...I have a weapon!!"
He looked at the hairbrush, then back at her. He didn't laugh. He just looked at her with an intensity that stopped the air in her lungs.
"Look at me, Leela," he said softly. "Look at my eyes."
Leela hesitated. She gripped the brush tighter, ready to swing but she stopped.
It was the eyes.
They weren't human eyes. They were bright, piercing amber, flecked with gold. They were the exact same eyes that had watched her from the fog. The exact same eyes that had watched her with amusement in the clover field.
The panic that seized her chest didn't just fade; it evaporated. It was replaced instantly by a heavy, grounding sense of recognition.
Her grip on the brush loosened.
"Fennigan?" she whispered.
It wasn't a question of identity; it was a breath of disbelief.
He offered her a lopsided, apologetic grin. "In the flesh. Literally."
Leela lowered the hairbrush slowly, though she didn't put it down, She looked at him his chest-bare and broad--and then at the worn-out gray sweat pants he was wearing.
Her brain was misfiring. She had accepted the amber eyes. She had accepted that the wolf was a man. But the logistics were tripping her up.
"You..." she stammered, pointing the brush at his knees. "You're wearing pants."
Fennigan looked down at himself, then back up at her. "I am."
"Where did they come from?" Leela asked, her voice rising in pitch. "You were a wolf five minutes ago. Wolves don't have pockets. Did you...did you conjure them or something? Is that part of the magic?"
Fennigan laughed--a low, rumbling sound that made the mattress springs squeak.
"No, Leela. It's not magic. It's logistics."
He plucked at the elastic waistband of the sweatpants.
"I keep a stash tucked under all kinds of things, all over the place."
"A stash?"
"We have clothes stashed everywhere," he explained, shifting to sit cross-legged on the bed. "Woods, highway underpasses, gas station dumpsters, motels. If you see a waterproof bag taped to the bottom of a park bench in this country, there's a ninety percent chance it's got a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt in it."
"Shifting is messy," he continued. "Clothes don't shift with us. I shift while I'm wearing jeans, I shred them. And when I change back..." He shrugged, offering her a crooked grin, "Well, if we didn't stash clothes everywhere, we'd be walking around naked a lot."
Leela felt a flush creep up her neck.
"Which," Fennigan added dryly, "is generally frowned upon by the local police. And my mother."
Leela stared at him. The absurdity of it washed over her. She was standing in a towel, discussing laundry logistics with a werewolf who hid sweatpants under park benches and air conditioners."
"So," she said, her voice trembling slightly. "You ran down a mountain, sat outside my door for two days, and ate my burger...all while knowing you had pants waiting for you under the window?"
"Priorities," Fennigan said simply, "I had to wait until you were ready to see me. If I had shifted yesterday, you would have called Animal Control. Or the police."
"I might still call the police," Leela bluffed, though the heat had gone out of her voice.
Fennigan shook his head slowly, The amusement in his amber eyes faded, replaced by that intense, grounding warmth she had felt in the dream.
"No, you won't," he said softly. "Because the fog is lifting, Leela. Look."
He pointed toward the window.
Leela turned. Through the crack in the curtains, she could see a beam of pure, brilliant sunlight slicing through the gray. The wall of mist wasn't just fading; it was breaking apart, dissolving as if the spell holding it together had snapped the moment she said his name.
"The storm is over," Fennigan murmured. "Because you finally let me in."
"The fog was you, Leela," Fennigan said, his voice quiet but certain. "It was your inner turmoil. All that fear, all that anger you've been bottling up...it had to go somewhere. So it rolled out of you and turned the weather into a wall."
He leaned forward, his amber eyes searching hers.
"Haven't you noticed these things before? Have you not felt the shift in energy around you when you're upset?"