Amber Waves of Angst

Chapter 13

As Erik and Robin walked through the turnstile and entered the amusement park, memories long buried suddenly unearthed themselves and hit him with an almost physical force. Human beings often experience a flash of memory when confronted with a long forgotten scent from their childhood. Werewolves however, like most canine creatures, have a vastly larger capacity to retain and categorize scents...as well as the proportionately stronger ability to call up memories associated with them. As the scents of sawdust and popcorn and caramel and cotton candy and roasting meat assaulted his nose, he was suddenly transported backwards in time ten years, when a frantic Robin searched the park for his mother, unaware that she was doing the same for him. (Robin's father had dropped them off to get the car's oil changed while they were there.) Bad luck dogged mother and son several times as they just missed each other in the crowds. Instead of finding his mother, Robin was found by Carl Stucky.

"Are you lost, little boy?" he asked.

"I don't talk to strangers." Robin told him, as he had been schooled.

Carl flashed him a fake badge. "I just met someone who said they lost a little boy who sounds just like you. Do you want me to take you to...her?" Carl took a chance and guessed a pronoun, since there were far more mothers present in the park than fathers.

"You know where my Mom is?" asked Robin, eyes wide.

Carl smiled broadly. The kid was dressed in expensive clothing, and would probably fetch a pretty hefty ransom. Running a diner in a deadbeat town was not helping him pay off his gambling debts. Soon the guys whose job it was to casually break your legs and thumbs (or if you were really late with your payments, your neck), would be coming to see him.

"She's at the office, about five minutes from here. I'll take you to her."

Carl took Robin's hand and the child did not protest (though on some level he must have disbelieved, since he kept glancing around him hoping to spot his mother).

They arrived at Stucky's car, a non-descript gray van outfitted with phony license plates. Inside the back, a metal mesh effectively turned it into a cage. Stucky took a chloroform soaked handkerchief and suddenly covered the frightened boy's face with it. When he was out, Stucky put him into the back of the hot van and hid him under a tarp in the back in case he got pulled over by a nosy cop. The rear doors were padlocked from the outside. There were no windows. The van pulled out just as Mr. Stark drove up, in time to meet his frantic wife, her tear-streaked face red and swollen. Neither gave the van a second glance as it carried their son away.

Robin had a great deal of difficulty adjusting to his new life with Stucky, but he learned...eventually. Stucky was a compelling teacher. Once he abandoned ransom as a viable plan (too many of his buddies were getting caught), he just decided to keep the kid as free labor and a way to work off his ever-present aggression. The kid represented everything Stucky hated; a snot-nosed rich kid born through sheer accident into a life of privilege while he had grown up in Hell's Kitchen to a life of poverty and violence. It wasn't fair; so this was his way of balancing those scales.

Now, Robin had once again entered a new life, a life that he had never dreamed was possible. He was safe; surrounded without by a large family of people who cared for him, and an inner companion whose wrath was terrible... a wolf who suddenly roused itself to full alertness as old and frightening memories came to life with each inhaled breath. His eyes flashed bright blue, and his skin rippled like waves on a beach as new muscles swelled beneath the surface.

Erik sensed his mate's shift at once; they were holding hands when Robin's grip suddenly became crushing.

"Robin?" he said, alarmed. The Alpha wolf within him also communicated with Robin's inner companion, reacting out of pure instinct.