by Anne Bishop
He stopped and let a shudder run through him. Even among the terra indigene, it took a little time to stop feeling afraid when the Elementals lashed out in rage.
But even Winter was calmer now that Meg was home.
Elliot’s meeting with the acting mayor had also helped calm everyone. The man had been quick to assure the Courtyard consul that all the wanted posters that had provoked such a tragic case of mistaken identity had been destroyed, and the police would do their utmost to apprehend anyone who caused Ms. Corbyn any distress in the future.
All the Others living in Courtyards throughout Thaisia would be watching to see if the human government in Lakeside would keep its word.
The man who sent the enemy into the Courtyard, the man who had given Meg a designation instead of a name, was still out there. Her skin was still worth too much profit for him to stop trying to get her back.
That Controller was still looking for her, and now the terra indigene were looking for him. The governor hadn’t known much, but he’d told the Elementals who came visiting his house in Hubbney everything he knew about Meg’s enemy. Sooner or later, the Others would find the man, and a human piece of Thaisia would be reclaimed by the wild country.
Simon looked at his hands, which had grown furry. He snarled when he couldn’t get them back to looking human, a sign that he was too agitated to wear this skin. Since he didn’t want to scare off Heather, he did the sensible thing.
He stripped off his clothes, shifted to Wolf, and went to the Liaison’s Office to have a few minutes of playtime with Meg.
* * *
Meg put in a music disc and turned on the player. She didn’t want to listen to the radio anymore. She didn’t want to hear about the people who died in the storm or the damage the city had sustained. Maybe she should feel bad about not wanting to listen to the news, but what happened wasn’t her fault. If she had let those men take her, the Elementals still would have savaged Lakeside for the death of old Hurricane, if for nothing else. She could argue that, being the reason the storm ended, she had saved more people than she had harmed by being here.
Didn’t make her feel any less sorry for the people who had been hurt. And it made her wonder whether Lieutenant Montgomery felt the same way.
She had expected to die in the Courtyard, had seen the images from the prophecies come to pass. But the outcome had been different. Not only had she survived, but she had also prevented Asia Crane and those men from taking Sam.
She would always be short, but she wasn’t helpless and she wasn’t small. Not anymore.
She glanced at the clock. Bracing for the sound, she set the mail on the sorting table a moment before Nathan howled. Apparently, he intended to do that on the hour, every hour, while the office was open.
The Meg Report. Meg is here. Meg is fine.
She hoped he would grow bored with this particular game very soon.
Hearing a sound from the back room, Meg picked up a stack of mail and barely glanced up when Simon trotted into the sorting room.
Something had changed between them while she was in the hospital. She wasn’t sure if Simon considered her a friend, a playmate, or a valued toy, but he seemed to enjoy playing games with her.
Speaking of games . . .
Standing on his hind legs, Simon rested one forepaw on the table and extended the other to touch her nose. She suspected the name of this game was Plop the Hat on Meg. If her nose wasn’t warm enough according to whatever criteria he was using at that moment, he would fetch the floppy fleece hat he had bought for her and make her put it on.
But she was no longer helpless or small. If she was going to be a squeaky toy for big, furry playmates, she was also going to have some say in the games. Starting now, with the choice of game.
She pulled back her head and glared at him. “If you try to touch my nose again today, I won’t give you any cookies.”
Simon withdrew the paw, seemed to consider that for a moment, then reached out again as if testing her.
“I mean it, Simon. No cookies for the whole day.”
Nose or cookies. Hard choice. But in the end, the cookies won.
Read on for an exciting excerpt from Anne Bishop’s next Novel of the Others,
Murder of Crows
Now available in hardcover from Roc
Nudged awake by his bedmate’s restless movements, Simon Wolfgard yawned, rolled over on his belly, and studied Meg Corbyn. She’d kicked off most of the covers, which wasn’t good for her since she didn’t have fur and could end up catching a chill. To a terra indigene Wolf, catching something meant you wanted it, and he couldn’t think of a single reason a human would want a chill, but apparently humans did and could catch one in cold weather. And even in the last days of Febros, the Northeast Region of Thaisia was plenty cold. Then again, if she started feeling chilly, she’d cuddle up closer to him, which was sensible since he had a good winter coat and, being a Wolf, liked the closeness.
If someone had told him a few weeks ago that he would befriend a human and care enough to watch over her at night, he would have laughed his tail off. But here he was, in Meg’s apartment in the Green Complex, while his nephew Sam stayed with his sire Elliot at the Wolfgard Complex. Before the attack on the Courtyard earlier in the month, he and Sam had cuddled up with Meg to nap or even sleep through the night. But things had happened that night, when men had come to abduct Meg and Sam. For one thing, Meg had almost died while saving Sam from those men. For another, something had happened to him on the way to the hospital, causing him to feel out-of-control anger. He had suspicions about what had happened, which was why Sam, who was still a puppy and lacked self-control, no longer slept with him when he curled up with Meg.
Meg told people her height was sixty-three inches because, she said, that sounded taller than being five feet something. She was twenty-four years old, had weird orange hair that was growing out to its natural black, clear gray eyes like some of the Wolves, and fair skin. Strange and fragile skin that scarred so easily.
She was a cassandra sangue, a blood prophet—a female who saw visions and spoke prophecy whenever her skin was cut. Whether it was a formal cut with her special razor or a gash caused by a sharp rock, she saw visions of what could happen in the future.
The Sanguinati referred to females like Meg as sweet blood because, even when they were adults, these women retained the sweetness of a child’s heart. And that sweetness, combined with blood swimming with visions, made them not prey. Made them Namid’s creation, both wondrous and terrible. Maybe made them something more terrible than the terra indigene had imagined.
He would deal with the terrible if and when he had to. For now, Meg was Meg, the Courtyard’s Human Liaison and his friend.
She began making noises and pumping her legs as if she were running.
Intending to nudge her awake, he pressed his nose under her ear.
In the dream, Meg heard the monster coming closer and closer. A familiar sound, made terrible by the destruction she knew would follow in its wake. She tried to shout a warning, tried to yell for help, tried to run away from the images that filled her mind.
When something poked her under the ear, she flailed and screamed and kicked as hard as she could. Her foot connected with something. Terrified, she kicked again.
Those kicks were followed by a loud yelp and a thump that had her scrambling to turn on the lamp.
Breathing hard, feeling her pulse pounding in her ears, she first noticed that the bedside table matched the image she had of it just before she went to sleep, except the small clock beside the lamp said three o’clock. Comforted by the familiar, she looked around.
She was not in a sterile cell in a compound controlled by a man who cut her skin for profit. She was in her own bedroom, in her own apartment at the Lakeside Courtyard. And she was alone.
But she hadn’t been alone when she turned off the light a few hours ago. When she’d gone to sleep, there had been a big furry Wolf stretched out beside her.
Grabbing as much of the covers as she could, she laid down and pulled them up to her chin before whispering, “Simon?”
A grunt that sounded like it came from the floor on the other side of the bed. Then a human head came in sight, and Simon Wolfgard stared at her with amber eyes that held flickers of red—a sure sign he was pissed off.
“You awake now?” he growled.
“Yes,” she replied meekly.
“Good.”
She had a glimpse of lean muscle and naked skin before he scrambled under the covers. She turned away from him, her heart pounding with a different kind of fear.
He never slept with her in his human form. What did it mean that he was human now? Did he want . . . sex? She wasn’t . . . She didn’t . . . She wasn’t even sure she could with . . . But what if he expected . . . ?
“S-Simon?” A tremble in her voice.
“Meg?” Still plenty of growl in his voice.
“You’re not a Wolf.”
“I’m always a Wolf.”
“But you’re not a furry Wolf.”
“No, I’m not. And you’re hogging the covers.” That said, he grabbed the covers she was clinging to and yanked.
She tumbled into him. Before she could decide what to do, the covers were around both of them, and he had her pinned between his body and the bed.
“Stop squirming,” he snapped. “If you bruise more than the hip you kicked, I will bite you.”
She stopped squirming, but not because he had threatened to bite her. Prophecies and visions swam in her blood, released when her skin was cut. Simon knew that, so he wouldn’t tear her flesh. But in the past couple of weeks, he’d figured out how to nip her through her clothes hard enough to hurt without damaging skin—Wolf discipline adjusted to dealing with her kind of human.
She’d stumbled into the Lakeside Courtyard seven weeks ago, half frozen and looking for a job. Simon had threatened to eat her on a regular basis those first few days, which wasn’t his typical way of dealing with employees since most of them would have responded by writing their resignation as they ran for the door. But when the Others discovered she was a blood prophet on the run from the man who had owned her, they had chosen to treat her as one of their own. And protect her as one of their own, especially after she fell through the ice and almost drowned while leading an enemy away from Simon’s nephew Sam. Which was why, since her return from the hospital, she went to sleep every night with Simon curled up beside her, on guard.
She’d be less happy about the lack of nighttime privacy if that furry body didn’t make such a difference in keeping her warm.
Was that why her apartment was always chilly, so she wouldn’t make a fuss about Simon sleeping with her? It hadn’t occurred to her to make a fuss about it because he was a Wolf. Except now he wasn’t a wolfy-looking Wolf, and Simon as a human in bed with her felt . . . different. Confusing. Threatening in a way she didn’t want to explain.
But furry or not, he was still warm and he wasn’t doing anything, and it was still too early to think about getting up, so this was something . . . to ponder . . . tomorrow.
She started to drift back to sleep when Simon gave her a little shake and said, “What scared you?”
She should have known he wouldn’t let it go. And maybe he was right not to let it go. Her abilities as a prophet had changed since she’d escaped from the compound and ended up living with the Others. She was more sensitive now, to the point where she didn’t always need to cut her skin to see visions—especially if they concerned her in some way.
The images were fading. She knew there were already things she’d seen in the dream that she couldn’t recall. Would she remember anything by morning? And yet, even the thought of recalling the dream made her shudder.
“It was nothing,” she said, wanting to believe it. “Just a dream.” Even blood prophets had ordinary dreams. Didn’t they?
“It scared you enough that you kicked me off the bed. That’s not nothing, Meg.” Simon’s arm tightened around her. “And just so you know? You may be small, but you kick like a moose. Which is something I’m telling the rest of the Wolves.”
Great. Just what she needed. Yep, that’s our Liaison. Meg Moosekicker.
But the dominant Wolf and leader of the Courtyard was waiting for an answer.
“I heard a sound,” she said quietly. “I should know what it is, but I can’t identify it.”
“A sound from your lessons?” he asked just as quietly, referring to the training she’d received in the compound in order to recognize what she saw or heard in prophecies.
“From the lessons,” she agreed, “but from here too. And it’s not a single sound, but many things that, combined, have a single meaning.”
A moment of thoughtful silence. “All right. What else?”
She shivered. He curled around her in response, and she felt warmer. Safe.
“Blood,” she whispered. “It’s winter. There’s snow on the ground, and that snow is splashed with blood. And I saw feathers.” She turned her head to look at him. “That’s why I was trying to scream, trying to get someone to listen. I saw broken black feathers stuck in the bloody snow.”
Simon studied her. “You could see them? It’s not dark out?”
She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Daylight. Not bright sun, but daylight.”
“Did you recognize the place?”
“No. I don’t remember anything in the dream that indicated where, except there was snow.”
Simon reached across her and turned off the light. “In that case, go back to sleep, Meg. We’ll chase this prey in the morning.”
He stretched out beside her and fell asleep almost immediately, just like he did when he was in Wolf form. Except he wasn’t in Wolf form, and she didn’t know how to tell him that having him sleeping beside her, looking and feeling like a human male, had changed something between them.
