The Daemon's Disguise (Sequel to He Was A Dog + previously Out There)

Out There (Sequel to He Was A Dog) - Chapter 5

Chapter 5:

Blue:

Weekends were reserved for Elijah. It didn’t matter what had happened during the week, I would always be up at eight o’clock on Saturday, ready to spend the day with my main man. A main man who was currently clutching three cuddly animals and talking nonstop about what he was going to see at the zoo to his Uncle Marshall.

I had to hand it to Marshall; he nodded and responded in all the right gaps, grinning happily at what Elijah was saying. My brother was a Saint; we could pretend that he had moved here with me out of a sense of brotherly loyalty, and forget the fact he’d been dumped rather brutally by his girlfriend the week before. But at the end of the day, he’d become my best friend once Elijah had been born, and the most consistent male figure in his life.

For that I was thankful for.

“Sure I can’t come?” Marshall asked, looking up from the kitchen table. “I like giraffes!”

“No, it’s mummy and Elijah day!” my son trilled, skipping around the room. “No-one else allowed!” What could I say? He was a mummy’s boy, through and through. I grinned, setting down the pancakes  in front of him.

We didn’t need Bruno. No way, no how.

Marshall rolled his eyes, leaning back in his rickety chair.

“Well, I’ll just have to do fun stuff on my own,” he said childishly.

He was going to spend the afternoon in front of the television, watching the X-Rated films he hid under the sofa and raiding the cupboards for food. I knew my brother too well.

“You do that,” I replied, nodding. “Think you can give the place a run round with the hoover while you do it?” Marshall made a face before making a non-committal noise, slouching across the table like a petulant child.

Sometimes I forgot I was just a mother of one.

Elijah ran to the front door, giggling loudly as he pulled on his shoes. It was understandable for him to be excited; I’d been working so much recently that I hadn’t had much time to spend with him. He’d been in bed the last three nights when I’d got home, and while I knew Marshall was good with him, it didn’t have make me feel like a neglectful mum.

So today would be a day for just him and I; no work, no magic and no absent fathers.

“You ready to go, lovely?” I asked him, pulling on my coat. His eager face shone up at me, eyes bright with the trepidation of going somewhere he loved. I reckoned he would grow up to be a vet or something; the kid was obsessed with animals. He’d been begging for a pet for months but it wasn’t exactly practical.

I’d promised him a dog when we weren’t living in the flat. Whenever I could afford to rent a house with a garden, I’d get him a dog. Because dogs – when they weren’t turning into attractive men – were really rather faithful animals.

And with Inga apparently in the vicinity, I’d need all the protection I could get.

That being said, I hadn’t seen Isaac or Ronan since that faithful night, and that had been nearly three weeks. Three weeks was a long time when you were apparently in a lot of danger; perhaps they had gotten themselves in a state about nothing, and decided to leave well enough alone.

By the time we reached the zoo, Elijah had worked himself into an excitable state. It was endearing, really, to be distracted by childhood joy. His undiluted gratitude for just this trip would bring a tear to a glass eye.

“Lions!” he squealed, racing ahead. In his woolly hat and bright red wellies, my son was the poster child for cute kids everywhere. A group of students in front of the enclosure awed, several of them snapping photos and “accidentally” getting Elijah in the snap. It was ironic, really – had my life not included Elijah, I would be one of the students and I would be the one giggling carefree, watching animals.

Would I give up being a mother to Elijah? Never. Did I sometimes wish that motherhood had come a little later? Yeah, occasionally. Not as much as I had done when Elijah was a newborn baby with colic, when he screamed the house down and no-one could settle him, but yeah, sometimes I wondered what my life would have been like without Elijah.

Most of the time, I came to the conclusion that I would be obscenely lonely and bitter and cynical.

“Mummy Lion, Daddy Lion and Baby Lion!” Elijah announced proudly, pointing them all out to me. In all fairness, Daddy Lion was on the other side of another enclosure, watching Mummy and Baby Lion together. A sudden pang in my chest made me realise that the situation was far too familiar for my liking.

“Let’s go look at the wolves, baby,” I mumbled, gently ushering him away from the big cats. My feet crunched beneath the sand-coloured gravel, and Elijah’s infectious happiness was no longer working on me. However, the Boy Wonder didn’t seem to notice, skipping along the path with a grin on his face, pointing and saying hello to all the animals.

He skidded to a halt in front of the wolves, his eyes bulging outwards.

“Wow,” he breathed, straining his neck to get a closer look. As long as he didn’t, you know, fall in beside the wolves, I was happy to observe from a distance, letting him drink in the sight of the powerful animals in front of him.

The largest wolf, probably the leader, sniffed the air, whipping his head around to look at us. Then, one by one, the pack of wolves – probably eight in all – started to make their way towards Elijah. I frowned, moving towards my son.

“Mummy, look!” he squealed, pointing at the large canines on the other side of the enclosure. The large canines which were staring at Elijah with huge brown eyes and were crowded around as though they were trying to get closer.

And then the howling began; the low, mournful howls of the wolf pack as they looked up at the sky.

Someone’s hand clapped down on my shoulder, the sudden application of pressure making me jump.

“They know he’s Philip’s son,” Isaac muttered. “They sense the wolf in him.”

I swallowed, gripping onto Elijah’s hand.