The full moon was particularly ugly that night; low and yellow and bruised, floating belly-up in a thin soup of piss-colored clouds.
Gorzer Go-Gone smiled up at it. He straightened his pea-green bowtie with dirty claws for the nineteenth time. The roses in his sweaty grasp were a fatigued maroon. The train jolted and grunted and farted through midtown, but Gorzer jostled in his seat blissfully, a werewolf in love.
He had been waiting all month for this. Dormant, sleeping in the mind of a nameless Accountant, Gorzer had bided his time. While the Accountant swiped thirty keycards, balanced thirty books, tidily consumed thirty lunch salads, respected thirty reasonable bedtimes, Gorzer—curled up cozy inside the Accountant's brain stem—had done nothing but dream of the She.
The She was perfect. He had glimpsed her on his last rampage; her fangs pearly white, her fur sleek, tatters of a White House Black Market dress tastefully adorning her muscular bulk. The She was everything Gorzer Go-Gone had never dared imagine in the city. He had howled, the She had howled. They approached each other in the gray mist... and then the dawn had broken, the Accountant returned, and Gorzer had fallen back into the brain stem, clawing furiously for control stolen by the sun.
But tonight was Gorzer's night. Like all werewolves, he was mad—but his madness was not murderous. Well... not very murderous. He had, of course, slaughtered a well-dressed bodybuilder for his suit, smashed the plate glass windows of a florist and a grocer for his flowers and raw steak, tastefully arranged in a cardboard heart. And he was running a little late because there had been that policeman who thought he was brave.
(The train wheezed. The doors squelched open, and a rabbi entered the car and sat opposite Gorzer. Maybe he didn't notice the eight-foot-tall werewolf in the shredded tuxedo, clutching roses and a chocolate box. Maybe he did and he didn't care. You never know in Brooklyn.)
But no, Gorzer's madness was the madness of love, not slaughter. He gazed up at the hideous moon and tried to compose a poem. The She... she's a she... and me... her teeth... and we...
It was really coming together.
The train died a mile from where Gorzer had seen the She. He leapt through the window, covering the Rabbi in shards of glass. He ran on three limbs, one arm clutching the flowers and heart-box to his heaving, hairy chest. The sweaty platform, the grimy stairs, the egg-salad smell of the street, the chain-link fences, the leaking rooftops all passed in a blur as he catapulted himself towards their meeting place. He knew in his marrow that the She would be where he had left her. He knew the She had felt as he did. Their attraction was a fresh curse, equally strong and ancient and European as that which unleashed his fur and fangs each month. The Accountant became Gorzer when he saw the moon. And when Gorzer saw the She, he became... this.
He slowed his pace, his long orange tongue wetly lolling from between grinning fangs. Around the next corner was the crosswalk where their bloodshot eyes had met. He licked his hair into place, tugged at his bowtie, shook dead petals off the thorny stems that had once been roses. He took a deep breath, passed the deli, and turned left to find—
An empty street.
The She was not there.
The stems hung limply from Gorzer's claws as he cocked his head in confusion. How could it be? Where was she? He knew she was going to be there, knew it in his soul. And yet...
Gorzer threw back his head and howled his despair at the mashed moon. Never had the Accountant's howls during the bone-snapping pain of transformation sounded so anguished. Gorzer's curse was deeper, his madness more afflicting, his agony far beyond anything the Accountant's small soul had ever suffered.
Horns blared from the bridge. The train, resurrected by some necromantic engineer, shook the ground beneath his claws. A helicopter thwacked the humid air, beating with mechanical fury at the heavy night sky.
Then, for a moment, there was a beat of silence; a miracle in the throbbing city. Far stranger than the love-struck werewolf, more unusual than the impassive rabbi or the mystery of the missing She—the city was never silent, not even for an instant. But tonight, under the urine-yellow moon, for just a breath, there was quiet.
And then Gorzer Go-Gone heard an answering howl.
It came from high above, from some rooftop or bridge pinnacle or water tower. It was piercing, musical, lyrical, feminine.
It was the She.
The stems and cardboard smacked wetly to the street. The soupy clouds and bruised moon flickered as Gorzer's hairy silhouette flashed in front of them. He was a streak of muscle and drool, racing upwards and outwards, howling joy and desire. The She was out there. He would find her. Even if it took all night, another month of waiting, another month of months. The She was in the city and the She had answered his call. They would find each other, under some night, under the same curse, in the city that couldn't care less.
Gorzer Go-Gone was a werewolf in love.
