Azucena

Tiny, wrinkled things, Suzy's umbilical cord among them, and a small pile of nail and hair clippings, the leavings of all her known forebears and siblings, lie in that box.

She touches these mementoes with reverence before taking the flagon up and looking at it in the waning light: Within swirls a dark liquid, almost black except for flashes of red twinkling in it like flame as the liquid sloshes about. She touches these things in turn as she takes the cracked leather thong off the amulet, which she slips into a small, Velcro-fastened pocket sewn into the wide inside hem of her black shorts.

Suzy removes the stopper from the flagon and touches the dip-stick to the pulse-points at her neck, inside her elbows, in the valley between her brown breasts, anointing herself in the scent of tuberose, her namesake, and in the blessings of her grandmother.

Tonight is special and she will find the perfect man. Tonight she will fully own her future and embrace who she truly is.

***

Matthew sits on the sand with his feet dug into little sand slippers as he gathers up the fine white powder and lets its slip through his fingers in little slipstreams of time. The sky is glorious in the sunset, like a Van Gough painting, but with none of the sadness. The warm air plasters his gray t-shirt to his back and the last warmth of day radiates up through his surf shorts and the soles of his black flip-flops.

I could live and die happily in this place, on this island, he muses. I could leave my pack back home and just stay here. The moon is going to be full enough tonight for him to make a meal of that sweet little masseuse - or, maybe, raise a litter of cubs with her.

Ah, yes, dining al fresco is so much more fun in the Philippines for a werewolf, he muses to himself, making a pun on the latest Philippine tourism pitch that brought him here in the first place. That, and the fact that the PNP is not very good at solving murder cases, no matter how gruesome or public they are.

A shadow falls silently over him and he smells her again. He rises and turns to look at her, an almost feral smile on his face as he takes her hand. "Hi, Suzy." He looks into her eyes and is startled to find her gaze just as intent as his is, just as hungry. "Hi, Matthew."

Suzy lets Matthew take her hand in his as she smiles. "Where do you want to go? We can go to that Japanese place in D. Mall now that they've allowed the place to open up again. A woman was killed there late last night and they had to cordon it off until this afternoon. She was attacked by a big dog or something like that. Now it's become notorious, a real tourist draw, if you like things like that."

"And that doesn't scare you, Suzy?" Matthew is intrigued by this small woman and her lack of fear.

"No. Dogs don't come near me for some reason," Suzy says with a small laugh. "It must have something to do with the fact my grandmother used to cook dogmeat when it was still legal to do so, and feed it to us. Whatever it is, dogs shy away from me, so I have nothing to fear if it was a dog that killed that girl. Though I doubt that. Besides, you're big and buff and I do hope you won't let anyone or anything attack me while we're out together."

She looks up at him with womanly guile and teasing in her eyes and he feels his heart beat a bit faster, his blood begins to sing in his veins as she rubs the palm of his right hand with her forefinger.

"Dog meat, huh? Well, I never did like dogs myself, and I'll keep you safe from everything but me," he promises her with a teasing smile. "But maybe it isn't such a good idea to dine at D. Mall, then. Any suggestions?"

"Well," she looks hesitantly at him and fidgets with her fingers, "it would be safer in my house, if you don't mind sharing a meal with me and my siblings. I can also cook, though you will have to bear with local cuisine."

Privacy is a good thing, Matthew smiles at Suzy, and she has siblings. Mmmmm. I hope they're just as juicy as she looks. "Sure, why ever not? I'd love to see what Filipino home-cooking tastes like, this being my first visit and all. Maybe we can buy something on the way, just so I have something to bring to your table."

"Just bring yourself," Suzy says in an earnest voice. "You will be a good addition to our table as you are."

They walk down the beach past Station 1 and on a little further into the interior of the island until they come to a small concrete bungalow with a neatly-tended front lawn made colorful with potted flowering plants and climbing vines that give off various scents, tuberose among them.

"Allan," she calls out in her dialect, "Jessie-Mae, I'm home." A teenage boy and a young girl of about eight years come running out to hug Suzy, their big brown eyes taking in the breadth and height of red-headed Matthew without fear as she introduces them to each other. "Now, is dinner ready? I left the caldereta simmering on the stove and I hope you didn't let it burn, Allan."

"It's ready na, Ate, and Jessie-Mae was the one who cooked the rice and set the table," Allan announced proudly in perfectly phonetic English. "But we need to add one more place for Kuya Matthew." With that, the children rushed back into the house.

The four of them sat down to eat and, for the first time, Matthew sat down to dine with Filipinos who do not say grace before meals - they just dig in and launch into lively discussions about the tourists who frequent the island and what the children learned in school over the past week. Such a refreshing change from the other Filipino hosts he's had, Matthew grins. Less godliness and more earthiness. So very nice.

"That was a fantastic meal, Suzy," Matthew says to her as they sit on wooden benches in fenced-in back yard drinking San Miguel Beer and shooting the breeze. "I have never tasted anything so well-cooked in my life."

"Oh, you. You're just saying that to get into my pants," Suzy looks at him with very dark, very intent eyes. "All you need to do is ask me, you know. My brother and sister are already in bed, thanks to the many rounds of pusoy dos we played with them."

Matthew can feel the moment for the chase to end arriving as the moon begins to rise to its zenith, as the hairs begin to crackle on his skin and the change begins in his veins. He comes in close, taking Suzy's face in his big hands and licks at the corner of her lips. "I guess you're right. I do want to get into your pants. I want to taste you, to eat you up."

Their kiss lasts several heartbeats, their tongues sparring like kali warriors until Matthew feels a pinprick puncture the very center of his tongue and pauses, feeling a weakening in his thighs that he attributes to lust.

She leans in closer, pressing herself against him as she withdraws her sucking tongue and now-swollen lips, her voice husky and low. "I want to taste you, too. I want to feel your texture on my tongue. I want to eat you."

The clouds scudding across the moon casts the entwined couple in shadow and, as they kiss, Matthew's transformation comes to the surface, with his tail sprouting out long and proud, the fur thickening on arms and legs that are beginning to turn into wolf's limbs and, as he pulls away, his nose and lips sprout a snout and his ears go up in points as he howls.

The moon comes out and a wide-eyed Suzy looks at Matthew, the wolf. Her surprise is complete as she holds a huge, man-sized wolf in her slim brown arms. Her eyes take in the red-gold fur of his pelt and she takes her hands away from his back with a smile.

"I guess dinner is azucena tonight, huh?" Suzy asks the wolf, who begins to snarl and slaver and lick his chops in anticipation of the meal he has planned, thinking he has her cornered between the countertop and the concrete wall abutting it. The werewolf nods slowly, growling as if he'd won before the battle had truly been joined.

"Okay, azucena it is, then," she says letting her fingernails grow to their full six-inch length and bringing them forward to plunge them right into Matthew's throat before he can let loose another howl. "Azucena, Matthew, is also what we call dogmeat stew."

His green eyes go wide as he realizes her nails have punched through his thick fur and hide. How could that have happened? "Didn't you notice? I painted my nails silver, Matthew, with a lot of pure silver dust added to the polish."

Suzy, sweet Suzy, was gone and in her place was this fierce beauty with hungry eyes and a grip on him as strong as his own grip would be if he could get air. "I smelled the wolf on you before you smelled the graveyard earth on me. Now, silver is your weakness, no? I love the internet. It is so informative."

He is struggling for air, his lungs are screaming for oxygen and his legs are starting to weaken from the lack of it. This makes Suzy laugh, having such a big wolf at her mercy. "Mmmm, Matthew, you will taste so good. Give it up."

"Oh, and my tongue, my tongue can prick your very soul, Matthew. I will eat you, taste you, and waste nothing, not even your soul. I am an aswang. We also eat souls." Suzy opens her mouth to show him her black tongue, a withered, prehensile thing with a small, hollow, needle-like tip. "It's my grandmother's. I hope you like it." She opens his mouth wide once more and wraps his wolf-tongue with her grandmother's aswang tongue, pumping paralytic poison out of the hollow tip now embedded in his uvula.

With all the strength he has left, Matthew jumps for the roof of the house, yanking Suzy up with him. I have to make her let go of me so I can heal, he thinks desperately, clutching at her deceptively fragile wrists.

Suzy laughs, despite the fact that her black tongue is still wrapped around his. She smiles a grotesque, open-mouthed grin as she rolls with him, leaps with him, falls back to earth with him beneath her as her cushion - all the while crushing his throat with her silver nails and inhumanly strong grip. Matthew barely feels the thud of his back against the concrete floor behind the tiled counter.

The last things he senses before his soul is sucked up Suzy's black tongue are the beautiful harvest moon gliding a yellow path across a black sky, the throb of music washing over the island and Suzy's slow, deliberate sucking, her satisfied sigh.

Getting up off the werewolf called Matthew, Suzy rearranges her tank-top and shorts and reaches for the gulok on the countertop. She licks her lips as she begins to dress out her kill, careful to preserve as much of the pelt as she can. It would make a lovely rug for the living room, she thinks. Lola would have liked that. She would also have liked Matthew azucena.

***

The Mayor summons his nephew, the policeman, to his office. PO1 Santino is getting used to his uncle's tirades now, but he still flinches at all the invective getting hurled his way over the latest police SNAFU. It's not like I'm the police chief, Santino says resentfully to himself. It isn't my fault.

"There's been no movement on the case of that woman who was attacked by whatever kind of animal you think attacked her three months ago and then this!" The Mayor is now pointing toward his computer monitor, with a photo on Facebook enlarged to show a missing person poster for one Matthew McNaught, last seen on Boracay island in a gray shirt and black surfing shorts. "How can a big, caucasian man with red hair - RED HAIR! - go missing on an island this small, I ask you?"

PO1 Santino scratches his head and bows before his uncle, his voice barely a whisper. "I don't know, sir."

"Well find out! It is your job to do that, after all and these things make our island look bad," the Mayor screams at Santino. "And if you stop carrying on with that masseuse Azucena for just a day or two, you might just get results, you son of a dog."

***

Twilight washes the sand of the Boracay shores a rich lavender as Santino and Suzy walk through the shallows, barefoot. The throb of club music and the chimes of distant laughter surround them like a gentle sea breeze.

"So, what about dinner tonight, Karlo?" Suzy looks at him with barely-banked hunger in her eyes. "Will you let me cook for you? I have some lovely stew at home just waiting for us and my siblings are sleeping over with their cousins."

"I can't tonight, Suzy," Santino says, the sadness in his voice mostly due to the fact that he won't be getting his special 'massage' tonight rather than the prospect of missing a home-cooked meal. "I've got to find that missing Brit and then find a way to close the D. Mall mauling case."

"Well, don't work too late," Suzy says with an understanding smile. "If you text me later, I'll be up and I can always prepare the table for you. You know I want to taste you tonight."

Santino groans against her lips as she kisses him. "Okay, I'll do my best to get away from work tonight, I promise."

With that, Suzy is content and she sashays away from him without a backward glance as she licks her red, red lips.