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Assholes.
You should have been an actor because you are nailing the whole mopey Eeyore routine. That comment came from his inner beast, a piece of the wolf god, Garou, that inhabited his body and always had a smart-ass remark for everything.
“Fuck off,” he muttered.
You get better results when you fuck on.
Baptiste tuned out Garou and went back to his lament. What did a man have to do to get some well-deserved discipline? Why would no one put him out of his misery?
Speaking of misery, he shivered with cold.
A fire would be nice, Garou remarked.
He didn’t deserve to be warm.
Then think about me, his beast growled.
“You don’t deserve it either,” he muttered. “We’re both guilty.” Guilty of murder.
How much longer are you going to whine about it?
“Until I die.”
Rather not. And Garou meant it. Garou had been foiling Baptiste’s attempts to take his own life, pushing past his usual control to make sure he didn’t step in front of a train or off the edge of a cliff.
Damned bossy beast.
Gonna get bossier if you don’t do something about the cold. Don’t make me take over again.
The last time Garou had shifted and taken control, Baptiste woke naked in a dumpster, covered in pasta sauce. He got chastised by the goblins living in it because they didn’t want to share.
“Fine. You want fire, I’ll give you a fucking fire.”
Baptiste pulled a lighter from his pocket and headed for the splintered stump of a large tree. The base of it, with its inside hollowed from rot, made a great place to dump the dry branches he snapped from the fallen trunk. Once he had a pile, he lit it. Fire shot up from the stump, the warmth easing the trembling in his limbs. He held out his hands to the blaze and sighed. If only he didn’t feel guilty at enjoying such a simple pleasure. The woman he’d killed would never feel anything ever again.
Here we go on the pity-me merry-go-round.
Once upon a time, Baptiste was a good guy. He worked as the muscle for the Cryptid Authority, assigned to a division known as the Special Monsters Unit—SMU for short. He’d been friends with his coworkers to the point they shared most meals and hung out when the workday was done. A good son, he visited his mom a few times a week. Fuck, how he missed her spicy chickpea, potato, and faux bacon crumble casserole. He missed his mom’s hugs even more. He knew he could show up now, dirty and pathetic, and she’d drag him inside, instantly forgiving.
Like your mom. We should visit.
Even his Pack—werewolves like him—would have taken him back. He was their Garou, a rarity with his kind, ranked higher than an Alpha because he was thought to be imbued with the spirit of their wolf god.
We are blessed.
More like cursed. It had been his wolfman shape that had torn his fiancée apart. He might not have loved Diandra—their marriage had been arranged—but he’d liked her. She didn’t deserve what happened.
She wasn’t the one. Garou had been clear on that from the beginning.
“Neither was Ruby.” The woman Garou had fixated on. A redhead with a power to cancel magic, she’d come to work for SMU. His first meeting with her, he’d thought she was okay. By the second, he was instantly smitten.
Bad magic. Should have never eaten that donut.
Someone had placed an intense love spell on his honey cruller. It made him shirk his obligation, chase after Ruby, and, in the end, it made him snap. Poor Diandra died because of it.
Unlike others, he wouldn’t blame the curse he’d been under. He should have had better control. What was the point of being the avatar of a god if he was susceptible to malicious spells?
Gonna learn to play the violin if you keep whining.
