Run with the Moon

A story of magic and love for the Valentine's Cafe!

Deep in the hour just before dawn, Adam jolts awake.

What did he hear, out there on the old Airstream’s makeshift front porch? Or was it nothing but a dream of gunfire and roadside bombs in that other desert, half a world away?

He lies still, listening. No sounds now but the usual ones: a night bird’s sleepy chitter and the yip and giggle of coyotes down the wash. But after a moment, there it is again, a rustle and thump right out front.

“God damn it,” he whispers. Where’s that crazy streak of magic when he needs it the most? Well, he’s got other ways to handle business. Swinging out of bed, he reaches for the pistol that’s always beside his pillow.

Slipping silently as his bad leg lets him, he pushes the trailer’s metal door open just a crack and peers out.

There’s a white full moon hanging just over the mountains, and along the horizon the sky is turning silver blue with daylight coming. Across the stretch of empty desert out front, a neon sign blazes bright: Holland’s 24 Hour Truck Stop and Cafe. A couple of big rigs, a handful of cars and a pickup truck dot the parking lot, but there’s not a soul to be seen.

Pistol first, Adam steps out onto the little deck he’s built out of old pallet wood. And he smiles.

What with the war and the witchery it gave him, Adam’s heart is a cold dark place. But right now, warmth like summer noon spreads right through his body.

Curled bare bottomed behind his rusty lawn chair in a nest of her own clothes, a woman sleeps soundly like a puppy. Long copper-blond hair streams across her face and her legs are streaked with dried blood.

There’s a long raw cut on her forearm and a smear of blood on her lips, and Adam’s never seen anything so beautiful in his life. She must’ve stretched in her sleep, and thumped the side of the trailer.

He leans in and gently pulls a twig of mesquite from the hair behind her ear.

“Morning, Velocity.”

Her eyes pop open, whiskey gold and wary wide, but then her mouth curves up. “Hey, Adam.”

She sits up cross-legged, her bare skin fairy dusted with freckles and her little nipples firm in the chill of the morning. For a dizzy moment Adam feels like flying.

What do you think that means? This voice in his head is his own. What the hell do you hope that means, boy?

“‘Want some breakfast?” he asks. “I can do bacon and eggs, toast maybe.”

“I already ate,” she tells him, glancing at the blood on her leg.

“Guess you did.” Adam leans against the Airstream’s curving side. “Had a good night?”

Velocity stretches out her arm, examining the cut. “Oh, yeah. That moon - did you see it? Just burning in our eyes, so bright. Uncle Silver and the pups flushed out some rabbits down by the wash. Me and Auntie Whitefoot and Sweetwater were coming up behind, but we all got some.”

She licks thoughtfully at the wound. “Sweetwater and I jumped the same big old buck. We got into it a little bit, but Uncle settled things down pretty quick.” A flashing grin. “Sweetwater’s all right. That ear’ll heal up fine. She’ll think twice next time, though. You got any coffee?”

If his leg would let him, Adam’d probably be dancing right now. Instead, he nods and limps back inside to put the coffee on. Odd thing about mornings with Velocity. Most days, he wakes up to the endless mutter of the voices in his head, talking and talking till he falls asleep at night. But whenever she stops by, they shut right up.

Waiting for the coffee to brew, his thoughts flicker back to that chill evening last fall, when a copper haired woman in blood-stained jeans and a denim shirt had come limping through the scrubby brush behind the trailer. She was shaken and hurting, with a mess of jagged cuts around her ankle, and she told him a tale of hunters setting bounty traps for the coyotes and the mountain cats in the wash.

He’d asked her no questions, only helped her onto this very porch to sit while he surveyed the wounds. And that’s when his world cracked wide open on a wonder he’d never thought to find.

For as soon as her fingers touched his own, the power came surging through him the way it always did, unlooked for and ungovernable, and knowing filled his mind. Under this woman’s fair freckled skin lurked another form, furred in gray and russet red, with hot amber eyes and teeth made for ripping.

He’d glanced down, seeing awareness dawning in her eyes. He nodded, and something like relief crossed her face. Unchancy creatures recognize their own.

He cleaned the cuts and bandaged them. And as that lavender evening faded into a sharp cold night filled with stars, he’d talked too, telling her about the war and the sudden appearance of strange gifts he didn’t understand, about the way his skin crawls and his heart begins to hammer when he’s among people and how the voices in his head are screams and muttered conversations he can’t quite understand.

At the end, they’d walked up to the parking lot at Hollands, where her dusty black pickup waited under the neon signs. “Thanks,” she’d said, dropping a hand lightly on his arm. “I might stop by again. If you don’t mind.”

Did he mind? That night he’d slept more soundly than he had in months, the voices quiet and the pain pushed to the back of his mind, and he lived for the soft patter of her feet on the porch in the morning, fresh off a run with the pack.

Now, as he brings out two steaming mugs, she’s just about dressed, in a T-shirt and jeans and a pair of battered caballero boots from Mexico. She’s twisted her hair into a messy bun and used one of his shop rags to wipe her face.

Adam hands her a mug. The sky’s turning to pearly pink and the moon’s faded to a ghost of itself over the ridge. This moment is going to slip away fast. Velocity wraps both hands around the cup and runs her tongue along the rim before she takes a sip.

“Aah, that’s good.” She sprawls in the lawn chair, legs outstretched. “That’s one thing you don’t get — out there.”

She glances at the desert stretching behind the trailer: low creosote and mesquite scrub, and a few big cottonwood trees following the angle of the dry wash off to the north.

“I imagine not.” Adam follows her gaze. Beyond the wash, the coyotes still yip and howl. A shadow crosses Velocity’s face. She’s missing them already. What must it be like, to shed your clothes and your human shape and go running under the moon, eyes blazing and senses on fire with the night?

A moth flitters past Adam’s nose, coming to rest on the screen door. Soft grey wings spread wide, it regards him with blank black insect eyes. For a moment, Adam’s inside its busy little mind, looking out in a dizzying multifaceted way at himself.

Velocity watches over the rim of the mug. “You were inside that bug brain, weren’t you.”

Adam shakes his head to clear the fuzzy insect thoughts.

“That hasn’t happened for a while. Can’t seem to stop it though.”

“Don’t try. You’re Adam Voss the witchman. And seeing inside is your power, ain’t it?” Velocity glances at the glow rising over the ridge, and Adam’s heart sinks.

“I got to get back to town,” she says, just as he knows she would. “Open the cafe. Charlie Juan’s not coming in this morning, so I’ll have to do breakfast all by myself.”

She shoots him a sideways smile. “You could come and help.”

Ride with her all the way back to town? Help her open the Hummingbird Cafe for its breakfast run? Adam entertains a wild, wonderful thought of the two of them standing side by side in the kitchen, baking muffins and turning omelets in the pan. Oh hell yeah.

But the sounds of morning traffic and the endless concrete and glass of downtown and the constant stream of people moving, jostling, jabbering on their cell phones …

He can feel the panic rising just to think of it.

Velocity sees the change in his face and the smile fades. “Damn. I am so sorry. I was just — I didn’t mean to —”

“No, it’s all right.” Adam takes a swallow of coffee, pushing it past the lump in his throat. “I would. If I could.”

She sets the mug down on the deck. “I know. But you don’t have to.” She meets his eyes, with a smile that drives the panic clean away.

“Because I’ll always come here. I belong to the pack.”

Rising, she leans in, drops a swift kiss on his lips. “And to you.”

He tastes coffee and the metallic tang of blood. And then she’s off, quickstepping across the stretch of bare sand between his trailer and Holland’s back lot.

Adam watches as she hops into her truck and drives away, following her till she turns onto the interstate at the top of the on-ramp and disappears over the ridge.

It’s starting to warm up now. He gathers up the mugs and starts toward the door. But there’s a sudden sense of eyes on his back and he turns slowly around.

Half hidden in a thicket of creosote a couple of yards away, a coyote stands watching him. Sun gleams silver on the big male’s shaggy coat, and his golden eyes meet Adam’s own in a long, considering gaze.

A prickle sneaks across the back of Adam’s neck. But he stays put for the wild one’s once-over, like a boy facing his girlfriend’s protective dad.

“Don’t worry, Uncle Silver,” he says. “I love her too.”

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