Unwilling Ch. 10

"Just you," Darwin replied, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach. "Is there something wrong with that?"

This time, she turned around and threw him a heated glare beneath furrowed brows. Darwin could see the tendons at her neck tighten until they protruded through the skin, but she didn't move from her spot, just stared at him with dripping hate.

"I could kill you, right here, right now, and nobody would know it was me," she snarled, and there was a rough, grinding tone of delight in her voice. "And then, just when I think it'll be finally enough, that I'll finally be able, willing, ready to rid myself of you, you turn around and do something like this! Why? Why do this to me?"

Darwin felt his heart pound against his ribs, his fingers tingling with the strength of his harsh pulse. His eyes flitted over her face, the way she held her hands and arms, the slightly forward stance, but he couldn't find a clue as to what she was talking about. "What did I do?" he asked through the tightness in his throat, swallowing dryly.

Darla didn't answer. She shook her head and gestured to the phone booth, grumbling, "go make your call. I won't walk back on foot, now that you've made me run through the woods all the way down here. And make it quick, before the others realize we're both gone."

With that, she turned around again, watching the bushes growing behind the ditch.

Darwin kept his eyes on her for a few seconds, but when she didn't add anything, he sighed and turned towards the public phone. Though he didn't want to admit it, he felt safer with her around, hatred or no hatred. Maybe one day they would be able to clear the air between them, but until then he would take what he got.

~*~

"Hello?" George said gruffly, his voice sounding metallic and muted through the unfamiliar phone line.

Darwin's heart jumped in his chest, then started a feisty gallop against his ribs. He hadn't taken into account his father might pick up and was on a loss for words momentarily. Hearing George's voice brought home how much he missed his father, his home, his friends and the peace he had known as a kid.

What should he say?

"Dad," he said softly, unable to mutter more than that one word, for fear his home sickness might become audible in his voice. His throat closed up for a moment.

A sharp intake on the other side of the line caught his attention. "Darwin? Is that you?" George asked, sounding tentatively hopeful. The anxiety in his father's voice made Darwin look around to make sure nobody was listening in, but of course there was only Darla.

Darwin took a deep breath and concentrated on the task at hand. "Yes, dad, it's me. I don't have much time, the others are waiting for me. I wanted to check in and tell you I'm alright." And he had questions he wanted to ask, but not wanting to stress George made it a hard thing to do. Darwin was still trying to work out how to ask about Carl, when George surprised him.

"You're not alright. You haven't been for a long time, have you?"

Darwin held the phone away from his head and stared at it incredulously, then he quickly pressed it back against his ear. "I don't know what you're talking about," he muttered, leaning his forehead against the metal chassis of the phone.

"Yes you do, but I guess it's a hard thing to speak out loud," George hesitantly replied. Then he seemed to think better of it, and added, "I know there's something bad going on with Carl, something really bad. And I know you have been keeping quiet for years, for my sake. I just want you to know that I'm sorry."

It was getting hard to breathe through the rush of adrenaline. Darwin pressed his hand against the glass side of the booth, leaning his back against the other side to keep himself from crumbling to the ground. Darla appeared on the outside right in front of him, so he closed his eyes. He didn't want to see the pity and disgust on her face in that moment.

George seemed to take his silence as an invitation to continue. "I know you meant well, but this has to stop. You're a kid, my kid, and I need to take care of you, not the other way 'round. Now tell me. Tell me everything."

The world stood still for a few seconds as the constant fear and panic, the need to protect his father, fought a war against the exhaustion and the need to finally come clean, have it done with. His heart beat fast and faster, and then it stopped for just a breath,... and finally, Darwin broke and told it all.

It took a long time and a lot of coins, but he got through it with a lot of silences and pauses and quite a few outbursts of either tears or anger. In the end he told his father everything, from the beginning to the end.

When he was finally done and the phone silent, he found himself sitting on the floor, his face wet with tears he hadn't noticed, surrounded by darkness. Blinking, he tried to get up, only to find himself too weak and tired to do so. He scrambled for a grip, finally relenting to grabbing on to the phone and pulling himself upright, but there was no way he'd be able to drive, shaken up like this.

And suddenly, Darla was there again, standing right outside the phone booth like an evil spirit. Her face was unreadable, or maybe Darwin was just too exhausted to bother having a good look, but she probably had heard everything. All those gut-wrenching details he hadn't even told Jared yet, and probably never would. He'd be a happier person if he could forget everything Carl had done and made him do and Jared constantly pitying him would make that impossible. At least he didn't run that risk with Darla. She'd never feel bad for him, not after what he had done to her.

Slowly, unsteadily, he stepped out of the phone booth and fumbled for the car keys. "I can't drive right now," he husked, trying for a weak smile and only partly succeeding.

Surprisingly, Darla didn't say a word. She just grabbed the keys, threw him a dirty look and started walking, making Darwin stumble after her in a haste not to get left behind.

They drove in uncomfortable silence, but it helped Darwin sort his thoughts. Darla had to have heard what he had told his father, and Darwin knew that none of the others would have told her anything about his past, so it had to be news to her. On the other hand, she probably had gotten bits and pieces of information over the last few days, so maybe the whole matter finally started to make sense to her.

If it did, though, she didn't show it. Her hands were gripping the steering wheel tight enough to turn the skin around her knuckles white, and her lips were frozen in a perpetual unhappy sneer. She looked just as cheerless and angry with him as she always did, so maybe hearing that Darwin's life had been quite fucked up in the last few years didn't make much of a difference to her.

And it shouldn't, Darwin decided. Whatever he had gone through, his actions had pulled Darla down into the same dirty, dark hole he'd been sitting in all this time. They would never become friends, and this was how it should be, how he deserved it. But maybe, just maybe, they could find a way to act civilized around each other. It was all he could hope for.

Trees were rushing by and the road got bumpier, the higher they drove. Stars blinked between shreds of clouds, drifting across the sky with increasing speed as the wind surged. There was a bit of moonlight, but not enough to improve Darwin's night vision, which was bleary at best after all the crying and the stress he'd had in the phone booth. Darla didn't seem to have any problems navigating, but as soon as the road leveled out again and the hut came into view, she stopped the car.

They sat in silence for a few moments, as Darwin's heart tried to leap out of his neck.

"You are one pitiful little fucker, you know that?" she finally growled with a voice void of heat and full of artificial anger. "If I didn't know I followed you on my own, I would accuse you of staging that phone call shit just to win me over. Either way, you didn't succeed. I still hate you."

"That's okay. You should hate me. I hate myself for what I did to you," Darwin replied softly and smiled just a little.

That silenced her for a moment. He could feel her stare at his profile, but he didn't add anything. He had said all that he'd needed to, it was up to her to decide how to proceed.

A dismissive sniff echoed through the car, then she put it back into gear and drove the last few yards. "I won't tell the others," she finally grumbled, sounding unhappy with her own decision, "but I'll leave the pack as soon as this is over."

As Darwin sucked in air to voice his protest, she already had put the car in park and jumped out, leaving him to sit there and stare at the empty driver seat open-mouthed.

Well, that didn't go well.

~*Carl*~

Anger had a very unique aroma, especially when it had been brewed slowly and left to simmer for a long time.

Werewolves always had an extraordinary sense of smell in both of their physical forms, but as a human, it usually was a bit weaker. The only really good thing about the human form was the sheer strength a werewolf still possessed and, of course, opposable thumbs combined with a keen talent for target throwing.

The office chair creaked in its own rhythm beneath Carl's ever-shifting weight. He liked the lulling sound and had never bothered to oil it and make it stop, but now it just egged him on to shift around faster, and he couldn't have that. Oddly enough, he time and time again resumed shifting and twitching, no matter how hard he tried to sit still.

The article about anthropological studies concerning the question of why humans had been so successful, evolutionarily speaking, also just wouldn't stop ringing through his head. Humans ruled the earth because they could throw really well, the article said, and it wasn't right. Not right, because god had shaped the earth and ruled that humans would be on top of all the other little creatures, hadn't he? He sure had and there was no place for opposable thumbs or ball-throwing in creation. Humans were god's children, and had always been meant to be the dominant species. But then, where in the bible would the apostles have put werewolves?

The computer screen in front of him flickered to black as the monitor switched to idle, but that was alright. He didn't have to stare at the small black console window to have his tracing program run its course, and his mind was too preoccupied with too many things to stay alert anyway.

Humans were god's creatures, but that thing about their success gave Carl strange thoughts. Humans were better than chimps at using tools, throwing and handling objects, and this had made them so dominant. A werewolf was both human and wolf, and now that he thought about it, they had gotten the best of both species. Opposable thumbs, good spatial awareness, intellect and intelligence, keen instincts, a perfect sense of smell, sight and hearing, and unprecedented strength.

Following those arguments, the only logical conclusion was that werewolves would one day rule the world, wasn't it?

And it would put us in the hands of the devil for overturning god's plan.

Carl didn't like that, not at all. He had always been as god-fearing as he could manage with all the craziness his pack poured on him, but this... thought, this terrible, horrible idea, it was too much. His legs started to bounce once more, slowly at first, but steadily speeding up until his heels made a clack-clack-clack-clack sound on the wooden floor from the sheer force with which his leg muscles twitched.

At first, his prime motivation had been his thirst for power, he wasn't going to deny that. The subs, the submissives, had held him back, lulled him, calmed him, and he hadn't needed calm. He had needed anger, strength, cold-bloodedness, to keep everything from falling apart. He had taken them out of the equation, each and every one of them, except Darwin. Now, he saw a greater picture in his quest, and with every minute ticking by, it became clearer and clearer. Maybe he had started all of this killing in a grab for power, but it was god's work now, god's hand guiding the devil's weapon against him.

If Carl controlled all the werewolves, first in his own pack, then in the neighboring cities and at some point in all of the US, he would be able to stop them from becoming the dominant life form on earth. He would be able to stop them from eradicating humanity. Maybe the devil had spawned them to kill god's creation, but he still had a will of his own, still had a choice!

Carl, sitting there in the darkness, chose god and evil.

Still, there was Darwin. Darwin was a hitch in Carl's plan that could ruin everything. He had seen too much, he knew too much, and with this knowledge he could warn others, incite them against his mission, and this was something Carl couldn't have. Darwin would have had to die either way, but now, god was involved. It wasn't Carl's pride and his fight for power anymore, he now had a bigger plan.

The tracer program gave a blip, alerting Carl to phone activity in George's house. His old friend was the one and only link Carl still had to Darwin. Poor George really didn't know what was best for him anymore, and this, too, was Darwin's fault as far as Carl was concerned. Submissives were the thorns in Carl's flesh, and this one, Darwin, had slowly but surely driven a wedge between Carl and his best friend from the moment he had entered their life.

Darwin was the culprit behind George's health problems and Carl had proof, too. Since that boy's disappearance, his pack members were reporting unusual activity at George's house. The old dog had found his fire again, or so he had heard. Not a lot, but enough to give Carl hope. Hope that maybe George would get healthy again, once Darwin was dead. Unfortunately, George was heading down a dangerous path: the wrong one, the one towards Darwin and away from his pack. And this, again, put Carl on the spot. He missed his best friend more than anyone, but now that he had a mission from god, he couldn't risk George stopping him.

The screen came to life with a blinding flash of conservative white. Carl stared at the data streaming through the small console window, furrowing his brow at the numbers. It wasn't much, just a bunch of relay stations and the number calling, but it was enough information. Whoever was making the phone call to George's home, did so from out of state and wasn't using a mobile phone. The tracer program wasn't as sophisticated as the software police were using, so it couldn't follow the caller all the way, but it would have been enough for a regional call by mobile phone.

To Carl's surprise, this wasn't a mobile phone, but a land line. With a regional code. He didn't need to see what relay stations it used, he could simply follow the number to its position.

Carl grinned harshly. God was with him, there was no doubt about it.