Adelmo was knocked backwards, the creature snarling, its fetid breath hot in his face. He could feel its powerful paws scratching at his face as he desperately tried to raise his hands to protect his eyes.
They tumbled backwards out of the alley and rolled into the street, bowling over several revelers rushing toward the corner where the parade was passing along the perpendicular boulevard.
Masks and noisemakers went flying as the Adelmo and the wolf rolled over and over until they hit the opposite curb, coming to rest against a beaten up garbage can that would have toppled had it not been full and resting against an old streetlamp whose light flickered with the force of the two bodies.
Adelmo tried to roll over onto his back with the creature still on him, and felt its claws rake across and around the tender skin of his neck. He turned his face toward the cement, certain his throat was about to be torn out.
Adelmo saw the face of his grandfather in a shallow pool of dirty water that had collected in the street, and then suddenly the creature was gone and the weight of it was no longer pressing heavily against his back.
He rolled over and tried to sit up, but a sharp pain in his back exploded with the effort and Adelmo collapsed back onto the street as the revelers collected themselves and moved on.
The event had happened so fast they all assumed Adelmo's disappearing attacker had been two things: human and drunk, and so they quickly moved on toward the parade, too busy to wait around for the police if they would even come out to investigate a couple of fools rolling around in the street the night before Mardi Gras.
Adelmo rolled over onto all fours and this time managed to stand with the help of the streetlamp, whose flicker had turned to darkness.
He looked around, but the wolf or the man or whatever it had been was gone. Adelmo wasn't entirely sure if the incident was even real, visions of the slaughterhouse in the hallway, the flying woman, and the shape-shifting wolf still fresh in his mind. Not to mention the face of his grandfather in a puddle of dirty water.
He looked up at the full moon and felt himself tingling all over, as if the pale moonlight was somehow crawling slowly across his skin beneath his clothes.
He trudged after the crowd toward the noisy street, stifling the sudden urge to howl.
***
As he walked, his head began to clear. He hit the main drag and walked a couple more blocks, and all of a sudden his head hurt as bad as it ever had. It felt like someone had driven a stake into his skull. Adelmo stopped and leaned against the window of what looked to be a small antique store. Suddenly he was unbelievably tired, and had to forcefully gulp air to catch his breath.
He tilted his head back and caught the reflection of a neon sign that hung on the other side of the plate glass.
It read: Granny’s Attic.
He turned around and faced the glass. This place was familiar. He looked up at the sign.
Granny’s Attic.
Adelmo was standing ten feet away from his own shop.
He jumped back, startled at the realization. How long had he been walking? It seemed like a couple of blocks, but he had actually traveled three miles across the quarter. He needed to sit down and rest, collect his thoughts, figure out what part of the evening had existed only in his imagination, but suddenly the last place he wanted to be was inside the dusty office of his shop, all alone with a few thousand books.
Adelmo walked past Madison's knowledge and entered the Rock Bottom Lounge. He neither felt the blood running down the back of his neck from the superficial scratches, nor saw the yellow eyes following his progress from inside the dark window of his bookshop.
***
He decided to get a drink to see if it might ease the pain in his head. Mike, the usual bartender, wasn't there, so Adelmo got a booth and waited for someone to come to him. The place was much less busy than it would be after the parade, when the patrons would probably all flow back in like water and go back to their pre-Fat Tuesday celebrations.
A pretty young waitress he'd never seen before walked up to the table and set down a dish of peanuts and a coaster.
“What can I get you?” she asked.
“I don‟t know. What have you got for a headache?”
She laughed. “You came to a bar to get rid of a hangover?”
He smiled tiredly. “Good point.”
She looked him up and down, paying him closer mind. “Water is probably better. Or tomato juice.”
“Rather have a shot.”
She smiled back, and then noticed the blood on his collar. She reached down and touched his chin to turn his head to get a better look, and before he realized what he was doing, Adelmo turned and snapped at her fingers like a dog.
“Holy shit, mister!” she yelled, pulling her hand back quickly.
Adelmo slid out of the booth and stood up, apologizing profusely. “I'm so sorry. I don't know what I‟m doing lately.”
“Your neck is all scratched!” she said, still angry, but a little less concerned than before.
Adelmo just stared at her for a moment.
“I‟ll take that tomato juice, okay? And I‟m really sorry!” he said, and rushed across the bar to the men's room.
The waitress just shook her head and walked to the bar muttering, “Fucking Mardi Gras.”
Adelmo stared at his reflection in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot and wet, and he almost didn't want to turn his head to check what he could see of his neck, but he splashed some water on his face and slowly turned to the side.
There were no marks on his neck.
He turned to the other side and then back.
Nothing.
Then he noticed it. Blood on his collar. Somebody had been bleeding, that was for sure. And his neck felt like it had been scratched up in spite of what it looked like.
He left the men‟s room and sat at the bar.
The bartender was talking to the waitress at the other end of the bar. She whispered something to him, and he looked at Adelmo curiously, then walked over.
“Tomato juice?”
“Make it a shot,” Adelmo said.
“Shot of what?”
“Just make it strong.”
The bartender smirked and turned, taking a quick glance at Adelmo‟s neck as he did, but there were no marks.
They had completely disappeared, as if he'd spontaneously healed.
After about five shots, the pain finally started going away, replaced by numbness. He had another and stood up to go to the bathroom, but when he saw the waitress taking the order of two guys sitting where he had been when he first walked in, suddenly the events of the entire night flooded his head like some cacophonous slide show, and he abruptly turned and walked out the door and into the street.
People were everywhere as the parade had ended for the night, and they were starting to pour back through the side streets and into the bars.
Adelmo was going against the flow, knocking shoulders and not caring, just needing to get away from there. As he walked past the door to his shop, a sharp pain shot through his skull like before, and he nearly doubled over with the intensity. He stopped and looked at his reflection in the window, and a pair of yellow eyes met his, lining up almost exactly with his from the inside.
“Hey!” he cried, as a hand fell on his shoulder and spun him around.
It was a cop, a big one, at least 6'-4” and well over two hundred pounds.
“Adelmo Madison?”
****
The cop probably would have arrested Adelmo if he hadn't almost immediately thrown up on the sidewalk, barely missing the cop's buster browns. Adelmo had walked out of the bar without paying, and the bartender saw the cop across the street on crowd control. He knew Adelmo from his shop next door, although they'd never met.
Adelmo managed to convince the officer he'd rushed out because he didn't want to throw up on the floor of the bar, and the cop even took Adelmo's money back inside to take care of his tab.
When he came out with the change, Adelmo was gone, so the officer went back into the bar and gave the bartender half of the change, keeping a ten spot for himself.
Adelmo hurried back to where he'd parked Lana‟s car. He felt like death warmed over and needed to get some rest before his flight tomorrow. He always had trouble sleeping on planes. The only good thing was that he was sure the police didn't have enough evidence to get a warrant for his arrest, otherwise the cop would have recognized his name and hauled him in.
He wished he could call Nik before he left, but it was just too risky. Nik didn't want him running off until he'd gotten things straightened out, but that was exactly why Adelmo needed to leave.
Somehow, he knew the answer to the mess he was in would be found with his grandfather. In Romania.
As he drove home, a dark figure slipped out of his shop and disappeared into the sea of costumes.
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