The second time the dream wolves caught up to me on the sleep-drifter's road, I was busy assisting an assorted team of monster hunters and occult investigators. (I have experience with that sort of thing.) I don't remember having any idea what our mission was, although I knew the three wolfish teens had been introduced as our backup muscle. Maybe we represented Team Jacob, who knows. In any case, their shape-shifting abilities fit in pretty naturally on a team that included an alien girl, a goth telepath, and a hoodie-wearing skater punk whose talent was conducting electricity. But some part of me didn't trust the wolves from the start, and I was looking out for excuses to blast their treacherous hides.
Soon after meeting the six or seven dream folk that comprised our team, one dull-witted lycanthrope wandered through the common area of our base in oblivious defiance of our leader's order to stand guard. Even when she called him on it, the stubby runt simply shrugged his leather jacket a little, then went about the business of making himself a meaty sandwich in the kitchen. Our boss, an unremarkable blond, cuffed him across the ear and ordered him back to his post. Snarling, wolf-boy instead wandered into the bedroom we guys all shared. Perhaps anticipating trouble, our leader, myself, and a skinny kid with black hair and lots of piercings followed. I entered last, and was immediately shoved to the ground by the muscular wolf, who had a knife across the boss's throat. I saw the slim goth boy pressed up against the dresser where I kept my gun.
I realized that was what the wolf had come in to get, but he didn't know where the firearm was. Other drawers were yanked out or rested on the floor in rifled-through shambles. Without a word having been spoken, I understood the threat: Our leader was dead unless I told wolf-boy where the gun hid, and I guessed that once I turned it over, we were all dead.
If only someone else could reach the gun first!
Fortunately, the goth kid's skill was telepathy, and he read both my desire and the simple plan that followed. I turned my body toward the under-bed storage, drawing the wolf's eyes, and it gave my skinny teammate a chance to shoot the beast dead from behind. Silver bullets dog-face, I wanted to shout, we're monster hunters!
Outside, the other two wolves had attacked, as well. The blue alien girl had downed one with a laser pistol when they first charged, but now she was stuck in unarmed combat on the narrow balconies ringing the second and third floors of our headquarters. As we watched, the third teen-wolf struck her in the forehead and sent her tumbling over the second-storey rail. Grinning, wolfie turned to corner our last visible teammate, a lanky skater boy in a concealing black hoodie. Claws swiped toward the youth, but he shouted angrily and unleashed a cloud of blue Zs, the way a cartoon eel might discharge its electricity. The wolf fell, fried. Impressed, my concern was nonetheless with the alien girl. The omniscience of the sleeping reassured me that she lived, but before I could follow up, daytime banished the scene.
Now, once again, I might have ignored the vision -- my boyfriend Mark hadn't dreamt of wolves this time. But on my way out the door to work that morning, I remembered a final detail: At some point the skater-punk's hood had fallen away, to reveal a familiar face, one with shifting blue-brown eyes.
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