Lois turned and watched as Arthur gathered his pack to leave. None of them spoke to her, but all of them save Lancelot gave her meaningful nods and whispered thanks. She surprised herself by missing them already.
Maybe it’s the knowledge of their shared fate, she thought. Maybe I’ll find them and join them if Bernie can’t fix me.
She dismissed the terrifying thought. Bernie had to fix her.
If he can’t—
A tap on her shoulder derailed her depressing train of thought. Her head and body spun to face the intruder, her fists raised in a ready stance.
But it was only a grim-faced Superman. “Ms. Lane,” he said, “may I take you back to your hotel room?”
She relaxed. “Sure. I don’t have a reason to stay. As long as we make a stop in that second-floor room—” she pointed to the balcony from which she’d first leaped “—so I can pick up my other clothes.”
He lifted her into his arms, then into the air. Without another word, he set her down on the indicated balcony and waited while she retrieve a small zippered carryall. Lois paused for a moment and looked into his face, but couldn’t read his expression. As he lifted her again, she tried to brace herself for bad news from Dr. Klein.
When they were moving toward the hotel and were several hundred feet above ground, he said, “Bernie hit the jackpot.”
“What jackpot? I didn’t know he played the lottery.”
He gave her his usual strained-patience look. “No, I mean that he found a way to reverse your condition.”
She felt herself stiffen. “You – you mean – I won’t be a – a werewolf anymore?”
He allowed a small smile to form. “Not if you don’t want to.”
“Great! What do I have to do?”
Superman’s head tilted and he frowned slightly. “This may be difficult for you.”
“I don’t care! Just tell me!”
She suddenly realized they were losing altitude. “I’ll tell you in the room,” he whispered.
As they touched down on the balcony, the maid inside who was inside making the bed saw them, jumped straight up and shrieked, and ran smack into the door trying to escape. By the time Lois had walked into the bedroom, the young woman had mastered the door latch and had scampered down the hall, still making high-pitched inarticulate noises.
Lois laughed despite her nervousness. “I guess that’s a new experience for her, seeing Superman bringing a girlfriend to a room via the balcony.”
“We’ll have to call the desk and explain what happened, that Superman brought you up here then zoomed off to fetch Clark and left almost immediately.” He sped to the door and engaged the privacy lock, then sped back to Lois’ side. “Later. We’ll call later.”
He gave her a sexy leer, then turned and pulled the curtains across the balcony doors. Then he spun out of the Suit and finished directly in front of her.
All the way to bare skin.
Shocked, she goggled at the expanse of muscular male pulchritude. Clark put his hands on his bare hips in a Superman pose and said sternly, “Dr. Klein’s prescription, Mrs. Kent, is to spend the next one hundred hours – consecutive hours, mind you – in the intimate company of Superman. He’s to go where you go, eat beside you, stand next to you when you brush your teeth, be with you when you change clothes, shower with him beside you, and wearing as little clothing as possible for the duration of that time.”
Lois stared at her handsome husband for another moment, then purred, “Bernie said no clothing?”
“Well, to be honest, he said everything I just said – except for the clothing part. That was my own addition to the prescription.”
She grinned naughtily. “In that case—” she pulled the blue bandeau top over her head and dropped it on the floor “—we need to get started—” she shimmied out of the red spandex bikini pants “—on Bernie’s prescription as soon as possible.”
He embraced her and kissed her enthusiastically.
She responded with equal enthusiasm.
When they came up for air, he whispered in her ear, “You are a woman after my own heart, Lois Lane Kent.”
She wrapped her hands around his bare backside and squeezed. “That’s not all I’m after.”
They kissed again and didn’t stop expressing their undying love for each other until they slowly floated down from the ceiling and soft-landed atop the bedcovers.
Lois nestled into Clark’s arms and sighed. “You know, husband of mine, you still make me go ‘Wow’.”
He kissed her nose. “Me too.” He lifted his head. “Hey, are you hungry? I can order room service if you want.”
She reached up and touched his cheek. “I think what I really need is a shower. And you’ve got to stay with me, remember?” She sat up and booped his nose with her finger. “Coming, Superman?”
He sat up and kissed her again. And it was not, by any means, a solo effort.
His lips still touching hers, he murmured, “You set the water temperature and I’ll lay out the extra towels.”
She pulled back and tried to glare but failed. “Extra towels? How wet do you think I’m going to get?”
He smiled and slid off the bed, holding her in his arms. “They’re for any excess water we splash outside the stall.”
She smiled back and wrapped her arms around his neck as he carried her toward the shower. “Then let’s get this cure started!”
He paused and grinned. “I thought we already had.”
She laughed and pointed to the bathroom door. He pushed it shut with his foot and leaned over to let her adjust the faucets.
I’m going back to just being me, Lois thought. No more changing physical form. No more open-faced triple-meat sandwiches. No more urges to bite flirting waitresses’ faces off. No more dreams about chomping into raw rabbits or pulling down deer in flight. No more fighting angry werewolves.
And lots of unclothed reality with her sexy husband. This trip had a shaky beginning, a pretty rough middle, but it couldn’t have ended any better.
*****
They spent five days working on her cure. “Just to be on the safe side,” she told him. Not that he argued with her, of course.
They never did find those musicians again. Not that they looked all that hard.
*****
Perry watched Clark and Lois walk down the ramp to the news floor together. The freezing rain and snow had stopped over the previous weekend, and the temperatures were rising above late February average and melting the accumulated ice. The city was still due for some clean-up, but most businesses were fully staffed once again, less anyone who’d gotten injured or sick during the visit of the Siberian express. Even Ralph was back at his desk.
He glanced at the clock. Two-thirty-eight. They weren’t really late, because technically they were returning from an out-of-town assignment today and weren’t required to come in until tomorrow. But he needed some up close and personal closure from his two best reporters, so he gestured for them to come to his office.
“What’s up, Chief?” Lois asked.
“Just a little follow-up on your travel piece. Good work, you two. Come on in so we can talk without everyone else listening in.”
He turned and sat behind his desk, then motioned to the door with one hand. Clark closed it and pulled two chairs closer to the desk. Perry picked up the unmarked folder on his desk and pulled out some paper.
“Y’all know what this is?”
Lois frowned. “I assume it’s our story from the Big Easy. The real one.”
Perry put the sheets of paper down on his desk and sighed. He looked at Lois and Clark sitting opposite him and felt the weight of his years. “I’ve read that thing all the way through at least four times since you emailed it to me from New Orleans and I have not changed my mind. That, kids, is a completely unbelievable narrative.”
“We know, Perry,” Lois said, “but every word of it is true.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it at all. I believe every punctuation mark.” He pushed his chair away from the desk and stood. “You know, of course, that we can’t print a word of it.”
“We know that too,” Clark answered. “But we both thought you needed whatever closure you could get from the truth.” He hesitated, then added, “I’m sorry we never could prove who killed Evelyn Carstairs, although we’re both pretty certain it was the Patriarch.”
Perry nodded, then said, “Lois, I assume from this narrative that you’re back to full health. Am I right?”
She tipped her head to the right in an abbreviated shrug. “Better, I think. I don’t have my enhanced wolf-level strength any more, but I feel stronger and more agile than I did. Lin Chou says that I’ve gotten quicker, too. I don’t know how long it will last, but I plan to enjoy it while it does.”
Perry stood and slowly walked to the wall where several of his memory photos hung. “You’re sure the pack of Naturals is neutralized?”
“Maybe not permanently,” Clark answered, “but I don’t know what else the police and city courts could have done without going public with everything or shooting them down where they stood. There’s one judge who was in on the whole secret – we still don’t know his name, Inspector Gautreaux refused to tell us – and he explained to Andre and Roger that they could leave the state or face trial for multiple first degree murder charges. And he didn’t give a plugged nickel for any of their chances if that happened. In fact, we were told that the judge all but guaranteed the death penalty for every one of them if they went to trial.”
He drifted along the wall until he ended up in front of the group photo from his New Orleans adventure nearly three decades before. “I guess they didn’t call his bluff.”
Clark leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. “I got the impression that they didn’t believe it was a bluff, not with the two dozen twelve-gauge riot shotguns pointed at them.”
Perry made a sound that might have been a sigh, might have been a chuckle. “You wrote that one group went south to Mexico and the other ended up on the Canadian Pacific coastal area.”
Lois shrugged. “That’s where they said they were going. We don’t know if they actually went to those locations.”
Perry sighed. “More Bigfoot and Chupacabra sightings coming, I guess.”
“Probably,” Clark replied.
Without turning, Perry asked, “Did Superman not follow up on that?”
“Sorry, no,” Lois said. “He was a little busy turning me back into a normal human. Besides, you know Superman has no law enforcement authority in Mexico and not much in Canada. Either country is thrilled if he helps at a natural disaster, but they’d rather deal with bad guys their own way.” Perry turned as if about to say something, but Lois added, “I think it’s short-sighted, but life’s too short to argue with idiots.”
“That’s a truth if I ever heard one. Where did Arthur’s bunch end up?”
“Central Canada, I think,” Clark responded. “Good hunting there, all wild animals. They weren’t any threat to humans, but the situation was just too dangerous for them to stay. And I’m pretty sure that tall Natural girl, Jane or Ishmael or whatever her real name is, went with them.”
Perry nodded, then asked, “Did any of the other Turned ask to be – I don’t know what to call it – de-wolfed?”
Clark almost hid a grin. “No. Discounting the fact that Lois would have been somewhat put out had I offered—” he paused to field a fake glare from Lois “—they’ve all been werewolves for decades, so putting them back into human society would not be a kindness. They don’t have any real modern professional skills, no background to check, no modern education, the few financial resources they have aren’t quite legally clean, and if anyone learned they used to turn into really big dogs and kill wild animals for their meals, either their sanity would be questioned or, worst case, their lives would be in danger.”
Clark’s face turned pensive. “On top of that, Bernie said that his prescription for Lois probably wouldn’t have worked if she’d been a Turned One for another week. Maybe not if she’d been one for two or three more days.” He looked at her and took her hand. “I’m so thankful it wasn’t too late for her.”
“Me, too,” Lois breathed. Then she leaned in for a brief but meaningful kiss.
Perry smiled slightly as his two best reporters momentarily left his office without moving from their chairs. After a moment, he cleared his throat and said, “Okay, you two, you need any more time off? You did give me a great travel piece, with a terrific birds-eye review of the Mardi Gras parade, so you’re caught up here.”
Lois turned her smile to her boss. “Sure, if you’re offering. I’d love a chance to catch up on my sleep.”
Perry gave her a mock-frown and growled, “A hundred-plus hours in that luxury hotel and you need to catch up on your sleep?”
Lois grinned and snorted at the same time. Clark smiled shyly and blushed a little.
Perry took pity on them. “Fine! You have the rest of the week and the weekend. Will five straight days be enough for you? Or will you still be tired?”
Lois’ face went blank, all but her eyes, which opened ingenue-wide. “Oh, no, I’m sure I’ll be rested by then.”
“Uh-huh. Okay, you two reprobates get out of here! Enjoy your time off, because everything comes with a price. And that price is a record number of front page headlines starting next week!”
Clark stood and gave him a sloppy salute. “Got it, Chief.”
“And no cheating!”
Clark frowned. “Cheating?”
“Superman stories don’t count, y’hear?”
This time they both snorted. Lois grabbed Clark’s hand and pulled him toward the office door. “We got it, Chief. Real stories from real reporters.” She opened the door and almost pulled Clark off his feet. “See you Monday!” she called.
Perry watched her lead him to the elevator bank and punch the “down” button. They were the best, he thought, and the best for each other. Kinda like Alice and me.
Only a little more so.
He shook his head. They weren’t the only reporters on staff. The paper wouldn’t go under if the byline of Lane and Kent took a brief sabbatical. He’d make sure of it.
But it was good to know that Superman wasn’t dominating that relationship. Lois had always been her own woman, and despite her obvious love for Clark, she still was her own woman. Nor did Clark disappear into her. They were truly a whole that was more than the sum of its parts. It was wonderful to watch, and even more wonderful to be a small part of it.
He turned back to his desk. He had to start marking up tomorrow’s morning edition. The New Orleans travel piece would fit perfectly in the Sunday morning edition.
The real story would go home with him tonight and reside in his safe for the rest of his life.
He might let Alice read it if she cajoled him sweetly enough and swore to keep it a secret.
# end #
