The Accidental Werewolf

Chapter One

Well, it was official.
Lavender was soooooo not in her color wheel anymore. Not looking like this, anyway.
It clashed with her hair and made her skin look sallow.
Marty Andrews was now an autumn. Thus, fall colors would best suit her new pallor. Greens, gold and a couple of shades of yellow were presently her complexion’s new friend.
However, the color lavender?
Not so much.
That was the color she’d once been so suited to. A spring color. Or was it winter?
Spring, winter, spring, winter?
Sweet mother, she couldn’t even remember her seasons of color. Where were her color wheel of life skills? Each season had colors it represented. Any woman worth her salt knew that. Didn’t they?
She shook her head and fought for a moment of clarity. Lavender was a spring color. It was the color all the newly promoted, first level Bobbie-Sue Cosmetics reps wore and the color of the suit she’d worn with pride until a week ago.
Jesus, everything was such a blur since that night. She was lucky to remember her own name let alone her seasons of color. It had all become a mixed up myriad of sound, light and surreal happenings.
It had steadily worsened since he’d shown up earlier.
Her eyes darted to the man sitting across from her in her living room. His hard, probing stare made her sink further into her chair, tucking her legs beneath her.
 He was dark, devilish.
Nuts.
“Are you all right, Marty?” His smooth, husky baritone deserved to be showcased on a late night radio show.
The cloud of confusion she’d been drifting on parted for a moment, and she cocked her head at him. “I don’t think I am and, you know, this really isn’t a good time for me. I just made the first tier of Bobbie-Sue Cosmetics and I’m busy. See?” She held up her new suit to show him, recently torn from the scuffle of that dreadful evening. She’d only had it for a bloody week, and now it was senselessly ruined. She twisted the fabric with hands that shook. “How could this have happened now?”
Of all the times.
“Marty, there are things we need to discuss,” he pressed with tight words, shifting position and crossing his legs. “Do you think you could try and focus? It’s crucial that you do.”
Focus. Hmmm. Well, she could try… Just not right now. Right now someone needed to hear the pickle she’d been left in and tag, he was it. “You know what’s funny?”
“Ah, no. What’s funny?” He was humoring her. That much was clear from his tone.
“Do you know how long I’ve been working on becoming a lavender? Do you have any clue?”
He shook his dark head, clearly bewildered, while he kept his voice calm and soothing. Though if her wits were sharper, she’d suspect he was coming very close to losing that cool façade, cuz he did have that pinched look around his mouth. “I still don’t even know what a, er, lavender is. But I get the feeling I’m going to find out whether I want to or not.”
He was screwing with her chi and he deserved to know the degree of his chi-screwing. Marty ignored his comment and finally gathered enough steam to spew a weak rant for what she’d lost. “A frickin’ year. That’s how long. I busted my ass working two jobs and it might seem meaningless to some, but I did it and not without plenty of doors slammed in my face. Some people make jokes about selling Bobbie-Sue because it’s door-to-door sales. I ignored those snide remarks about my dreams of cosmetic greatness. And I was this close.” She held her thumb and index fingers together for emphasis. “And now you show up, telling me something like this? It just ruins everything.”
“It definitely changes things,” he answered dimly, a look of discomfort flitting across his hard features before they returned to their granite scowl.
Changed things? Hell yes, it changed things. Like irrevocably. “I was well on my way to sky blue.”
His black eyes flashed more confusion. “Sky blue?”
What didn’t this interloper get here? Did she have to explain everything? Spell it out? “Yes! Sky—blue. If I reach the final level at Bobbie-Sue, I get a sky blue convertible. Do you have any idea how important that is to me?” Marty averted her eyes to anywhere he wasn’t. She wanted that frickin’ sky blue car with a burn in her gut. Damn it, she would have looked so fetching in a sky blue convertible. Well, when she’d been a light-blue eyed, sunshine yellow blonde anyway.
Now sky blue just wouldn’t enhance her color aura.
Not after this week.
Ah, the agony of defeat.
“Look, Marty. I’m sorry about the, ah, lavender thing and convertibles and whatever it is you keep harping on so single mindedly, but you have to listen,” he urged through lips clearly compressed due to lack of patience.
Oh, no, she did not either. “This is the color wheel I’m referring to that you just don’t seem to care about…” Marty offered distractedly, pointing to the chart on the stack of papers in her lap. With a frown, she looked down at the thick ream of documents from the Bobbie-Sue corporate office. The ever omnipotent palette wheel of colors sat on top of the pile, mocking her.
Clearing her thickening throat, she explained, “Each color represents a rung on the ladder to Bobbie-Sue riches and glory.” She wanted this man to know where her life had been headed before he showed up with his wild tales. What he was telling her was something she just couldn’t digest.
“It’s a very nice color wheel.” His voice grew gentle, as if he were trying to appease her.
“Yes, yes it is, and I’ve only been at this level for a week.” Had it only been a week ago that she’d achieved the first step to color greatness?
Cheerist, it felt more like a year.
Her glare met the hunk’s on her couch and she fought another cringe.
She’d been whizzing right along, selling lip gloss by the bazillions and then, bam!
This.
Her smile grew wistful, thinking of her year-long climb to success. “I was really good at this cosmetics thing, you know,” Marty relayed with a mumble. “I’m good with people.”
“Marty, I’m sure you’re good at what you do, but we don’t have time for this stroll down memory lane. You really have to try and pay attention to what I’m telling you.” His reprimand was stern.
She waved a dismissive hand in his direction. Lost in her reverie, she continued to babble as though this man cared about how she’d arrived at where she was now. “Not everyone can do what I did in such a short amount of time. Sadly, some just don’t have the kind of dedication I do. Speaking of lack of dedication… Oh, no! I forgot Nina and Wanda. “How could I forget them? They’re my newest recruits.”
“Who?”
A sigh escaped her lips and it screamed exasperation. “Nina Blackman and Wanda Schwartz. They’re having problems. Especially Nina…” she trailed off, letting her worry carry her away again.
 “Nina and Wanda? Are they the two women who were with you that night? Are they your friends?”
“Yes, that’s them and I don’t know if they’d call themselves my friends. They think I’m pushy. We met because they answered my Bobbie-Sue ad. They’re more like business associates, I guess. I’m their independent sales consultant supervisor.” Rolling her tense shoulders Marty shrugged off a moment of remorse. If you examined her relationship with Nina and Wanda under a microscope, they really were nothing more than business acquaintances. She could’ve used a friend this past week, making her regret not cultivating female friendships in favor of her ambition. Nevertheless, she would have some explaining to do to them.
“How can I explain this mess to them? Especially Wanda. She’s very fragile right now. Very.” Oooooh, God, what would she do about Wanda? If she were any more serene in her sales techniques, she’d be comatose.
The color chart in her lap caught her eye again. She spun the arrow on it with a defeated hand. It landed on lavender. Ugh. This—this was a case of cosmetic cruelty by color wheel faux pas in the first degree.
God. The injustice of it all.
However, there was a bright side. She could buy that cute dress at Filene’s in emerald green she’d seen in the display window.
Green was in her color wheel now.
“Marty! You have to snap out of it. I don’t know what the hell you’re babbling about, but we—have—to—talk!” the man on her couch finally yelled.
She didn’t want to talk to him or anyone else about that night.
Too much had changed since then.
Upon reflection, it had all happened so fast, she was still trying to put the pieces of it back together to make sense of it.
Nina and Wanda had accompanied her to the weekly color seminar Bobbie-Sue Cosmetics held. It was designed to keep you pumped up and raring to sell, sell, sell.
They were walking her teacup poodle, Muffin, by her apartment building after the meeting at Bobbie-Sue’s corporate headquarters. And well, as was par for the course, Nina was bitching and lagging reluctantly behind them. Marty had been doing her best to stoke Nina and Wanda with motivational nudges and sales stats. She’d tried to encourage them and was failing miserably. Both were rather sullen about the report they’d had to hand in. The one that primarily had zeroes in the box for unit sales.
On this particular night, Marty was growing more agitated by the two of them than usual and Muffin was being difficult about making potties. Her fluffy, white poodle hated the cold, so she too dawdled behind Marty. The shuffle of Wanda’s and Nina’s despondent feet in her ears had left the taste of bad karma in the air and it clung to her tongue like peanut butter.
“Nina! Wanda! Hurry up, would you?” she’d chastised. “Wasn’t it bad enough we were almost late for the ‘Coordinate your Life with Color’ seminar? We almost missed it. That would have just been dreadful. Especially if we’d missed hearing Bobbie-Sue speak. She is, after all, the queen of color coordination.”
“Oh, yeah. God forbid we should miss the color coordination of one’s life, Marty,” Nina snorted, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk, her stance defensive, her slender silhouette outlined by the black night. “I don’t know how I managed to get to thirty-two without knowing my color aura. Who fucking knew I wasn’t living my life to its fullest color potential by coordinating my lipstick to match my toilet paper? I don’t think I can go on now that I know gold is in my color aura and everything I happen to have is silver. The indignity of it and all, you know?” Nina threw a dramatic hand over her forehead.
Marty’s blonde head twitched as did her right eye while she wrapped Muffin’s leash tighter around her wrist to keep from slugging Nina. Nina was such a nay-sayer, but she was holding on to her waning patience like the last set of sheets from a White Sale at Macy’s. Yet, a touch of her frustration with Nina slipped out anyway. “Why must you be so flippin’ negative, Nina?”
Nina, tall and slender, dark and doe-eyed, shrugged her shoulders and rolled her eyes at Marty. “Gee, I can’t quite put my finger on it, Marty. Maybe it’s because I sold one shitty lip gloss all goddamned month?”
If Nina could sell her sarcasm-slash-pessimism by the bottle, she’d be rolling in greenbacks.
Marty shook her head and shot for encouraging again. “No, Nina. You sold two. Two. Biiiig difference.”
Nina swirled her index finger in the air. “Yeah, whoopee. Do you have any idea what it’s like to have to face that bunch of cosmetic Hare Krishnas and declare you sold only two lip glosses? That’s not even a unit. Ten is a unit. But wait, you’d know that, wouldn’t you? Because you sell hundreds of units.”
“It’s soooo embarrassing, Marty,” Wanda agreed enthusiastically. With a bob of her dark brown head, she stooped to give Muffin a scratch on her ears. Wanda, a recently divorced podiatrist’s housewife who’d never worked outside the home, was living off her alimony and fighting to make her way in the world alone. Her way hadn’t been much enhanced by her sales quota.
Marty stopped them both by a dark alleyway, planting her hands on her lavender clad hips, clinging to Muffin’s leash. “Look, girls. It takes time is all. You don’t think I got to where I am overnight, do you? I worked my ass off.”
Wanda giggled and cupped Muffin’s face. “Ohhhhh, look. Marty swore, Muff. She’s getting pissed. Everyone knows Bobbie-Sue reps don’t use foul language. I think Nina’s pushed her too far now.”
Nina crossed her slim arms over her small breasts and harrumphed. “Well, your ass is a lavender now, Marty. It’s easy for you to preach from where you’re standing on the color wheel of life game board. Wanda and I don’t even have a color yet. We’re color queen wannabes. A lighter shade of pale. It sucks.”
“Did you fill out your goal sheet, Nina?” she asked her testily. “If you can see it, you can be it. Maybe deciding on the level you’d like to achieve at Bobbie-Sue just might give you some much needed perspective.”
Nina’s snort filled the chilled night air and blew out of her mouth in a puff of smoke. “I’ve got perspective all right. I want my old job back. I miss hearing a good case of matrimonial homicide. I was a good stenographer, you know. But I can tell you my perspective sure as hell doesn’t include accosting little old ladies with my handy-dandy mascara wand and teaching them about strengthening their auras through mascara fucking application.”
Marty’s temper flared and she gasped. “I did not accost a little old lady. I merely suggested and you,” she pointed a lavender polished finger at Nina, “are a potty mouth today.”
“Damn right I’m a potty mouth. I paid five-hundred bucks for that bullshit color wheel starter kit, and I’m no closer to color orgasm than I was with my last boyfriend And you did too accost that poor woman. Jesus, Marty! We were in the I-Hop, for fuck’s sake. Who wants to find out what their season is over pancakes? Not to mention the lesbian you thought might be able to find a man if she’d just wear a little eye shadow.”
Marty’s lips puckered. “I was only trying to help.”
“Help?” Nina shouted with a sharp bark, shoving her hands into her jacket. “She’s a lesbian, Marty! Girls! She likes girls, and no amount of frosted eye shadow is going to make her want dick.”
“Take it easy, Nina.” Wanda rose and stepped between them, her tone edged with worry. “Marty’s just trying to help us achieve color success.”
Marty’s smile was pinched when she looked at them both. “That’s exactly right. I want you both to be successful. Again, I ask, did you fill out the goal sheet, Nina?”
“Yeah, right after I wiped my ass with it.” She cackled a laugh, scaring Muffin into a whimper.
Wanda gasped. “You haven’t finished your goal sheet? No wonder you’re not making any sales! I filled mine out the day I signed up at Bobbie-Sue, Nina. You have to pay attention to what the video says—if you can see it, you can be it. Seeing your goals is the first visual aide to success!”
Nina made a face and cocked her dark head. “You are kidding, right, Wanda? You sold three lip glosses and one of them was to your mother. She doesn’t count.” Nina shook her head in obvious disgust and asked, “You actually filled that stupid thing out?”
Wanda’s feet shuffled beneath her in obvious embarrassment and her dark head hung low between her sloped shoulders. “Sort of…”
Thinking back, Marty remembered that she might have stuck her tongue out at Nina’s opposition to Wanda’s at least trying, but that would have been very un-lady-like and sooooo not Bobbie-Sue. “Obviously, Wanda’s seeing something that you missed by a color coded country mile.”
Nina then cornered Marty, hovering over her and glaring at her with those almond shaped coal eyes. “Well, maybe Wanda’s just better at ‘being’ it than I’ll ever be. The only thing I see, Marty, is my credit card balance at its maximum for this starter kit that I couldn’t afford and my bank account weighing in at zip. If I don’t sell some eye shadow soon, color me doomed. Do they have the color doomed on that stupid, cardboard color wheel chart?”
Marty pursed her lips and narrowed her gaze at Nina. God, they were so frustrating as recruits. Marty had little left up her sleeve to help them make sales. She’d been as perky and bubbly as she could be so far, but Nina had a way of deflating a person’s bubble with her pin of pessimism. “You know they don’t and you’re not doomed. You’re just a slow starter. The same goes for Wanda. We just have to think of a new plan of attack.”
Nina’s face contorted and again she’d made Muffin whimper. “Plan of attack? Helllloooo in there, Crayola Color Wheel Queen. I don’t have a lot of time left to attack. I have bills to pay, and my cable’s going to be shut off if I don’t do something soon. I’m not like Wanda here who has alimony to fall back on. Damn it, Marty! I don’t know what the frig the problem is with my sales techniques. I’ve done everything you said and I sold two stupid lip glosses. I was supposed to be learning from the best.”
Her inference that Marty hadn’t done her job as a recruiter had made Marty bristle.
Wanda placed an insistent hand on Nina’s shoulder, drawing her a step back from Marty. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong either, Marty. I hate to agree with Nina, but… I mean, I filled out my goal sheet, I attend all the classes. I wear Bobbie-Sue wherever I go because, after all, I am my own best advertisement—”
“Jesus Christ, Wanda,” Nina cut her off. “You drank the juice, didn’t you? Yum-yum.” She rubbed her belly in a circle. “Does it taste just like Kool Aid?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Wanda yelped.
Nina faced her dead on, eyeballing her with an apparent flash of venom. “It means that you sound just like all the other crazies who sell this shit. It’s like some messed up cult or something. You’ve been brainwashed is what you’ve been.”
Tears immediately filled Wanda’s pretty blue eyes and she gnawed at her trembling lower lip before responding with a choked cry, “I have not! I don’t even like Kool Aid. So there! I’m just trying to figure out life without marriage. I’m trying to find my purpose and selling cosmetics seemed easy at first. So I did it and I’m not any better at it than you are, but I’m trying and yelling at Marty because we suck isn’t going to help.”
Well, this was going swimmingly, Marty remembered thinking. Her two recruits, her only recruits, were at each other’s throats and their fun, festive night out was going down the shitter rapidly. “Okay, stop it right now!” she yelled, facing the two of them with a frown before bending to scoop Muffin up into her arms. “Fighting isn’t the answer. If I can do this, you two can do it too. I was a nobody before Bobbie-Sue. I worked in a mail room, for heaven’s sake, but when I found Bobbie-Sue, all of that changed. It took time and determination, but I did it. I’ve seen lots of others do it too. There simply isn’t any reason you both can’t as well.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Nina spat, twisting the lavender scarf around her neck symbolizing her newbie status. “That’s easy for you to say. You’ve got the lavender suit to back up your crass reminder that we’re losers, Marty. We have stupid, lavender scarves that blatantly advertise we’re newbies, and to make matters worse, lavender isn’t even in my color wheel.”
Marty’s sigh of exasperation echoed against the buildings and she stroked Muffin’s white fur, hoping to slow the rise of her blood pressure. “You know, Nina, I really am growing tired of your negativity. When I brought you on as a recruit, I did so thinking you had the get up and go it takes to sell Bobbie-Sue. I thought we had the same values,” she accused. Where she’d ever gotten the idea that a bully like Nina could sell makeup to women left her confuzzled. For a split second, Marty doubted herself. Maybe she really was as rabid as they’d accused her of being and she just couldn’t see the writing on the wall.
“Get up and go this, you two-bit sales ‘ho!” Nina shouted, pulling her hands from the pocket of her jacket and clenching them into fists.
Wanda’s hand flew to her mouth and she chided her from between her fingers. “Nina! You cannot call Marty a ‘ho. It’s mean and definitely not in the spirit of Bobbie-Sue.”
“Okay.” Nina loosened her posture, breathing in the cold night air. “I’m sorry, Marty. I didn’t mean it. Not a lot anyway. I’m just sick of the evangelist like speeches about the Bobbie-Sue way of life. I’m also sick to death of the perfectly made up smiles those senior cosmetics reps wear. Everyone’s so hyped at these things, chanting the Bobbie-Sue motto and clapping and shit. I need money and I need it now. Not two-hundred units down the road. I’ve looked everywhere for another job and in the meantime, I’ve been sucking sales wind. I don’t know why. I followed all the sales techniques in the new edition of the Bible known as Bobbie-Sue. I attend all the meetings, but they kind of freak me out. I mean, it’s makeup, Marty. Not heart valve replacement.”
Marty giggled a little and felt immediate remorse for her anger with Nina. She was in a predicament for sure and Bobbie-Sue, if she was honest, could look a little cult-like to an outsider. In her overzealous, overachieving way, Marty had tipped her own sales boat overboard. No one could ever accuse her of not digging in her heels when she wanted something and she’d wanted the first color on the tier to Bobbie-Sue worthiness. She didn’t plan to stop until she was a sky blue either. Sky blue was sooo in her color wheel. “I know sometimes I get a little fanatical, but it’s only because I’d still be in a deadbeat job if not for Bobbie-Sue, Nina. I really have come a long way and I know you guys can too. Granted, I didn’t start without a job. I had backup, but I was able to quit that job within a year. And now look. I have a lavender suit.” She curtsied, holding out the lapel of her brand new jacket.
“You know, Marty? I think I fucking hate the color lavender,” Nina quipped.
Marty clung to her rationale and tried to remember that what had brought Nina to Bobbie-Sue was one part desperation, two parts destitution. Mix together and you had a dangerous brew of potential new housing in the way of a cardboard box and curbside service. In other words, Nina had lost her job due to downsizing and seeing Marty’s ad in the paper for cosmetic sales had given her hope. Marty had tried to cultivate that hope, but it wasn’t working out quite the way she’d planned. “All you need to do is just believe, Nina. You’re always making some snarky comment about makeup selling, but if you just believe, you might sell some. However, with your performance and attitude so far…”
Nina rolled her eyes again at Marty and flipped her the bird. “My performance? Oh, that’s rich, Marty. Just because I don’t want to attack every woman who has flaky skin with this Bobbie-Sue bullshit makes me a slacker?”
Wanda, in auto mode, repeated the third most important commandment from the Bobbie-Sue handbook. “Well, yeah, Nina. You should want everyone to wear Bobbie-Sue makeup. You should care if some poor, lost woman isn’t realizing her potential color palettes of life.”
Marty watched Nina’s eyes flash with anger and prepared for the usual onslaught of now predictable jokes she resorted to about cosmetics when called on her lack of sales. “It’s makeup, Wanda, not a permanent solution for erectile dysfunction we’re selling when Marty attacks some poor woman in a buffet line with her samples of eyeliner,” she said flatly. “We’re not offering them the meaning of life in a jar of cream blush. Not everyone wants to be pretty like you, Princess Marty.”
Bingo. Right on cue.
“There it is again,” Wanda pointed out before Marty could accuse Nina of being a negative force. “That’s your whole problem, Nina. In a nutshell, you just don’t believe.”
Nina’s snort was so loud and raspy, she jolted Muffin who was still nestled in Marty’s arms. “Oh, I believed. I believed enough to come to another stupid seminar, didn’t I?” Anger, red-hot and spewing like lava, continued to escalate in her tone. “I believed enough to hope that I could earn a modest living selling frosted eye shadow, didn’t I? I was willing to believe anything if it meant living above the poverty level, Wanda. I need a job and I spent my last damn dime to try and get one with palettes of life and fucking moisturizer. So back off, Lip Gloss Lady!” she yelled in Marty’s face. “I’m sick and tired of you behaving like I just don’t want to try, and because I can’t talk women into this theory that putting on makeup just to go to the mailbox is critical to breathing that I somehow suck!” Then she returned her attack on Wanda. “And whose fucking side are you on anyway, Wanda?”
That was the very point when Marty decided she’d had enough. Two solid months of Nina’s negativity was screwing with her center, and she was eyeball deep fed up with it. “You, Nina Blackman, are a red today,” she offered calmly through clenched teeth. “Very, very angry. So, I’m going to ignore what you just said to me and Wanda, chalk it up to your financial situation, and continue to be a good sponsor by telling you to get your lavender-less ass in gear and help me help you.” When she finished, her smile was pinched and fighting a frown.
Upon those words and Nina’s aggressive advance on her, things had become a wee bit fuzzy. She remembered hearing Muffin growl and her sharp little nails claw at her arm. Marty’s thought was that she was taking a stand against Nina’s hostile approach. However, she could distinctly remember the sound of a much deeper growl, coming from behind her in the alleyway.
Muffin had literally hurled herself from Marty’s arms by pushing off with her hind legs and landing on the pavement with a frantic click of her paws. Marty had lost her grip on the slender leash and it dragged behind Muffin, catching on the cement. Her snarl sounded as though it had come from a German Shepard instead of a teacup poodle, but she was fiercely devoted to protecting Marty. However, sometimes her devotion was a little OCD.
Muffin thought the umbrella stand in Marty’s apartment posed a threat to her beloved owner. Hell, she thought the toilet bowl scrubber in her bathroom did too.
To say Muffin could be territorial was not a huge hyperbole. She might be small in stature, but in her mind, she had the attitude and build of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
The ensuing moments were fragmented, looking back. Distorted by yipping and snarling, tangled colors of black and white fur and the momentous event that had eventually led her to where she was now.
Apparently another dog had given Muffin reason to believe Marty was in danger, and she’d taken on the imagined challenge like a WWF champ. Marty’s surprise at Muffin’s flight to the ground was followed by her scream of shock when she saw the size of the dog that Muffin had decided to duel with.
That much Marty would always remember.
His size.
She, at the time, had assumed he was male because she couldn’t ever remember seeing a dog so bloody big before.
She did remember hearing Nina’s surprised exclamation of, “Holy fuck!” Which was part and parcel where Nina was concerned. Her potty mouth wasn’t unexpected, but she wasn’t far off the mark in her assessment of the beast.
He was ginormous.
A deep black with slashes of blue highlights along his back only the truly raven haired possessed. His height on all fours reached her waist. Marty remembered that too because the sheer magnitude of force he’d slammed into her with had nearly knocked her off her feet. If not for Nina bracing her, she would have toppled over in her cute lavender heels. As Marty scuffled to grab at Muffin’s trailing leash, she’d tripped and fallen on the massive bulk of dog. The crushing blow to her gut left her breathless, and air had wheezed from her throat while she’d struggled to fill her lungs.
Muffin attacked with foam dripping from her mouth, latching onto the long muzzle of the black beast while Marty’d watched in horror when it tried to shake her off. Unfortunately, Muffin had locked her jaw on the inside of his lip and wouldn’t let go for all the Snausages in Pet Smart.
Oddly, she could recall that he didn’t seem at all aggressive. He was simply trying to detach the small, wildly out of control poodle from his chops. His eyes, as black as they were, looked as surprised as Marty’s must have that her small dog could create such havoc. Yet, it was Muffin who became more rabid, hanging on in mid-air and swinging wildly to and fro while only clamping down harder.
She’d captured her prey and she was going to restrain it and ride it to smack down glory at all costs.
Muffin’s frantic yapping had sounded like shrieks and her vicious snarling escalated, though muffled by the mere fact that she held the poor beast in her lion’s grip. Marty’s trembling hands had fumbled to grab at Muffin while Nina and Wanda screamed for help, running in circles.
With shaking hands, Marty managed to get a hold of Muffin’s muzzle, trying to pry it off the dog’s. The sudden nip to the meaty part of her hand between her index finger and thumb looked minimal, but felt like it came from Jaws. It seared her flesh with a bolt of electricity that sizzled through her entire body, attacking her senses with flames of fire that licked at her veins.
Nina had somehow found a broken PVC pipe and was thwacking the air with thrusts and jabs that were wildly aimed, missing the dog’s body and instead catching Marty’s spine.
Marty’s screech of pain had resounded, bouncing off the surrounding buildings. “Arghhhhhhhhh!”
“Ohhhh, Nina! Watch out. You hit Marty!” Wanda yelled, circling behind the backend of the dog like a defensive linebacker.
From there on out it was pandemonium. High pitched squeals and snorting huffs filled the darkened night. Blood dripped from her hand and onto Muffin, who Marty had managed to pry off the dog. She’d clung to her shaking dog’s body while Nina and Wanda stomped their feet and chased off the large animal who didn’t seem in the least angered by her killer teacup poodle.
Actually, he’d seemed rather perplexed if the last glance he’d given them before taking off like a shot down the dark street was any indication.
Nina and Wanda had fairly dragged Marty to safety, propelling her toward her dark parking garage and over to the elevator.
At some point, Marty had blacked out. What appeared to be a minor bite had taken the piss right out of her. She remembered little of that night, but the following week had her discovering enormously frightening changes in her body, the growth of her hair, and more importantly, the change in her coloring. What she’d tried to deny the day after the event had occurred simply could no longer be left without explanation.
So here she was a week later. Sitting across her small living room, clinging to her torn lavender Bobbie-Sue suit, starter kit in her lap, and eyeballing the man whose broad chest Muffin so contentedly curled against.
“Um, so say again?” Marty eyed the man, sitting across from her on her pretty leather couch, fighting desperately to stay in the here and now.
“I am the were… er, dog that bit you.”
Marty heard his words, but she couldn’t leave the idea that he did drugs alone. Hallucinogenic drugs. Yep, that must be his ticket.
“Marty?”
Looking up, she was immediately sucked into his intense gaze. It called to her with deep, dark twin pools she feared she might get lost in. “What?” her mouth answered without aid of her brain.
“You need to pay exceptionally close attention to me.” He spoke the words slowly like she was a toddler who needed simple directions given to her in small portions.
“Okay…” was what she mustered. It was vague and vacuous, but she was all ears. Well, sorta. The itch in her nose had begun to distract her and the smell that penetrated her nostrils was driving her bonkers.
“I bit you in the alleyway last week. That was me.”
Yeah, she could see that. He had really nice teeth. All pearly white and perfectly straight.
“Do you know what that means, Marty?”
“I’ll scar?”
His sigh of exasperation was evident. “I don’t know, but that’s not what I mean about the bite.”
She stroked the material of her suit like a comforting blanket and again inhaled. God, whatever he was wearing for cologne was downright sexy. “So what do you mean?”
“It has repercussions.”
“Huh?”
“The bite. My biting you has repercussions.”
For a moment, Marty saw the forest for the trees. “Oh, you’re worried I’ll sue. No, I’m not like that. I have good medical insurance. I work for Bobbie-Sue Cosmetics,” she stated, her voice hitching with an erratic volume.
“That’s not what I mean either, Marty. Did you hear what I told you before?”
She’d heard, sort of. Before she’d meandered off in her mind to the night this had all happened. Suddenly, this game of Round Robin was tweaking her and she just wanted to be left alone. “Say whatever it is that you came to say and go away. Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“Marty, it’s critical that you listen carefully. I’m not going to beat around the bush here. I’m just going to say it.”
“Then say it!” she yelped.
“I’m not a dog. I’m a werewolf.”
Nice. Very nice. “Say again?”
“I’m a werewolf and now… well, because I was the one to bite you, now so are you.”
Alrighty then.
A werewolf.
Marty Andrews, Bobbie-Sue Cosmetics newest sales dynamo, was—via dog bite—a werewolf.
Freaky-deaky Dutch.