Instinct

23. Somewhere, Someone's Watching Over You

Ice cold rain sluiced down his face, dripping from his scalp and the ends of his hair until it ran in uncomfortable rivulets down his back. Hands jammed in his rapidly dampening pockets, Brennan snuck a glance across the dark, pothole-ridden street and shrugged his shoulders higher. The weather, typical for the transition days of spring, was the least of his problems.

Splashing through another hidden pool of murky water on the sidewalk, he snarled a curse. The lingering frigidity of winter painted itself in the bite of the wind that drove the stinging rain into his skin, even through his hoodie.

A dark car drove by, sending further spray consisting of the dregs of melted snow and dirt in a dispersed wave over Brennan. He held his temper in check, despite the cold in his toes and fingers, the burning at the tip of his nose and the numbness of his cheeks. The headlights of the passing car illuminated the quiet street as it passed, broken streetlights and empty houses aside. Brennan cast sharp eyes around.

It could have been the cold, or the driving rain, or the whipping wind that had goose bumps littering his pinched skin, but whatever was making the hair at the back of his neck rise had been there for longer than this unfortunate turn of the weather had been. There, and yet not.

He had neither seen nor heard anything to indicate that someone was following him. Even so, that strange itch in his mind never faded, teasing at the shadows that danced in his vision, bending them out of proportion and into the monsters that were there for one moment and then not the next. Brennan supposed that it was all part of the unfortunate secret that made him who – or rather, what – he was.

And that secret had only become an increasingly frustrating burden to carry.

It was because of that clandestine fact that the house – once a home, his home - Brennan was returning to would be borderline empty. Slowly but surely, bureaucracy, democracy, fear – whatever it was, had caught up to them. The grace period had fallen away, disintegrated as the hype faded and human nature reasserted itself.

“How are we supposed to protect ourselves against them?”

“How can we tell if we’re dealing with a werewolf?”

“Why is the government letting them roam free, unidentified and unsupervised?”

“What about the full moon? What is the danger there?”

“What steps are the government taking to ensure our safety?”

It wasn’t that Brennan hadn’t expected the sudden outcry for order. Fear bred the need for order, for orders. A clear direction. He’d just… well; he’d just hoped it wouldn’t happen – at the very least not quite so soon.

It was law, now, that werewolf status was displayed on all legal documents: birth certificates, passports, and drivers’ licenses. Fraud was what it was if you didn’t declare it, if any government official found out. Brennan didn’t doubt that the blood tests were amalgamated by places like the facility he and Rebecca had rescued Stephanie from.

Not that anyone had found out about that for certain yet.

He was still waiting for the day that they would, even though the search parties had suspended their time. Scouring the Breadloaf Wilderness in winter was not a feat he was sure anyone would accomplish if they didn’t know exactly where the doors were buried in the ground. Searching it in spring, or any other season, wasn’t looking very promising either.

Brennan’s new passport and driver’s license had come through that morning. He’d had to declare it to his employers – that, too, was law. Tomas, as intimidating as he was, had looked at him with pitying eyes even as he informed Brennan that he would have to let him go. Brennan hadn’t expected anything less. It was more of a formality than anything. Tomas’ workforce had declined exponentially since the laws came out.