by Holley Trent
“No! No, don’t. Just give me a chance to resolve this without anyone using force. The police in Fallon don’t know there are people like us, and if there’s any way for me to reach A—”
She’d been about to say Andreas’s name, but stopped herself before she could speak it. She didn’t want to rouse his attention.
“If there’s any way for me to reach him without anyone else coming in and escalating the situation, I’d like to try.”
“Well, jeez Louise, woman, are you safe?” Sheldon asked.
“Safe enough for the moment. I’m being careful. I know that wild animals can sometimes be unpredictable.”
“You got that right,” Sheldon murmured. “Okay. Give me a minute to see who I can get in touch with over at the mansion. I don’t have Maggie’s number, but the queen’s executive aide, Lora, would certainly have it. I just need to… Ugh. Need to figure out how to put you on hold. I’ve got a new phone system and don’t know all these damn buttons yet. Ugh. Oh! Here it is.”
He must have hit the right button, because playback began of a cheerfully recorded marketing spiel about Sheldon’s services.
She switched her phone to the other ear and leaned rightward.
Andreas had given up his perch at the window and, just as quickly, she’d lost him to the room.
“Where’d he go?” she murmured. She turned hear hearing outward to the big storage space and listened for sounds of movement, but there were none.
She hated not being able to sense him. Having taken the wolf form, he’d gone completely off her psychic radar. She’d never heard of anything like that happening amongst their kind, and she wondered what other kinds of long-suppressed magic people were hiding for fear of conflict.
Sheldon came back on the line. “You got a pen?”
“Yes.” Mary quickly rooted one out of her tote along with one of her pads.
He gave her the number. “She said she’ll be expecting you to call.”
“Great. Thank you so much!”
“Oh, I’ll just consider this advance pay.”
She furrowed her brow. “Pardon me?”
“Signing bonus?”
“Sheldon.” Sighing, she pinched the bridge of her nose.
“Ah, come on. You know you wanna.”
“I’m still thinking about the move. After so long in Vegas, I figured I’d stay in Fallon for a while. I’ve got memories here.”
“The memories won’t go away if your scenery changes. Maybe they’ll even become more precious.”
She considered that. He was probably right. All of her good memories of Fallon were of her father, and she’d never forget him, no matter where she went.
“I’ll let you know,” she said quietly.
“Okay, then. Don’t be a stranger. And hey! Pick up the phone when you can and let me know you survived.” Chuckling, he hung up.
Mary immediately started dialing Maggie Gilisson’s number. She’d gotten to the eighth digit of the sequence when the hairs on the back of her neck prickled.
She forced down a swallow and raised her gaze slowly.
The wolf was in front of her, sitting back on his haunches and staring at her dead-on.
Oh shit.
For an animal, the creature’s eyes seemed far too intelligent. That frightened her even more than his size—big as a man, but made more imposing with all that fur and those sharp teeth. He looked at her like she needed to be watched. Like he meant her harm.
She didn’t know if he did yet. She didn’t know if that animal and Andreas were one in the same. In spite of what Andreas had done to her—drugging her unconscious and carting her to his basement—she didn’t want him harmed. Had she been in his shoes, she might have done the same thing he had.
“Andreas?” she whispered.
If the animal recognized the name, he didn’t give any hints thereof. He just stared.
“Are you in there? Is your mind still there? How do I get you back?”
Of course, he didn’t answer. Just stared.
She laughed nervously and dragged her hand down her face.
“Okay. Well then.” She backspaced the numbers she’d input and instead of making the call to Maggie, opened her camera app. If the wolf were going to sit so close, she wanted to document him. Should Andreas ever return to his two-legged form, she could show him the beast that took his place.
She hoped he returned. She hadn’t considered that before—hadn’t considered that perhaps he wouldn’t. Maybe he was stuck in that form.
Gods, please don’t tell me you’re that cruel.
She willed her nervous hands to still and took the picture. Her first effort was blurry.
“Just be still for me,” she said, propping the bottom of her phone against her knee.
Her second image was clear enough. She closed out the camera app and pulled up her phone’s dial pad again.
“I’m not going to hurt you as long as you don’t try to hurt me, okay?” she said. “I’m going to make a call. I’m going to try to find out what you are. That’s all. Do you understand?”
He stared.
“I’m just getting information. I wouldn’t hurt you on purpose. Not unless you show me you’re dangerous. Please don’t show me that.”
She hoped he wouldn’t, but she had no way of knowing if she were getting through to the beast.
He didn’t even blink.
___
She sounds like the goddess.
Is she? Is that the goddess there?
Why is she cowering? What happened?
Why did she stop talking to me?
The woman in his domain—he’d seen her before. He’d seen her in the streets, walking with others. They were all beneath her. She was everything, and they were nothing. She had to know that.
How did she come to this place? Did I bring her?
He couldn’t remember. There was something in his brain hidden away from him. He couldn’t access the information, or maybe he just wasn’t smart enough to understand the significance. He felt like he’d once known more.
Who is she? She’s mine, is she not?
He settled onto his belly and looked between the gaps in the wall she’d constructed around herself.
Why is she behind those things? I’m here. Why does she keep me out?
She started talking into that small silver thing she held and looked at him. Her brow was furrowed and gaze too serious.
Trouble? Is she in trouble?
He picked his head up and listened. Her words didn’t make sense to him. They were just sounds. Beautiful tones that meant nothing to him, but her face wore tension he didn’t like.
What does she fear?
“…Curse…shifted… Right now,” she said.
Those sounds—he knew those. Her sounds were language, and he’d known language once. Or perhaps he still did? But more was a mystery to him than what made sense. He couldn’t understand her.
He wanted badly to. He wanted her to come out of that castle she’d erected around herself.
Why did she do that?
“…Fallon…moon?” were some other sounds she made.
He kept listening, but he didn’t understand. He understood, however, that he was supposed to.
But how?
CHAPTER SIX
“I hate to make you repeat everything you just said,” ex-Fallonite Maggie Gilisson said, “but I think it’s important that Muriel hears the story out of your mouth.”
Mary cringed and rubbed her eyes. “Okay.”
The wolf had settled onto his belly and was watching her less intensely than before, but she still felt ill at ease. She didn’t know if what he was doing was normal—if he was waiting for her to look away so he could stage some sort of attack. The crates weren’t all that secure. If he were to brush his side against the tower hard enough, it’d topple.
“Come on, girlie,” Maggie said. “You don’t need to be afraid to talk to her. She’s just like everyone else.”
“Bullshit,” Mary said.
Maggie laughed, and so did Muriel Hall—the third party of the three-way call.
If reaching out to Maggie hadn’t been a frightening enough prospect, now Mary had to rustle up some fortitude and explain her situation to the Afótama’s last queen. Muriel, Contessa’s grandmother, apparently maintained the clan’s genealogies. She may have had some information about certain Fallonite lines. After all, they’d once been one group.
“Okay,” Mary said after taking a deep breath. “I’ll tell you everything I know, but I don’t know a lot. His name is Andreas Toft. As Maggie knows well, his family has always been something of an institution in Fallon. Very rich. Made a fortune on gold and land during the nineteenth century.”
The wolf shifted onto his side, eyes closed. She hated speaking of Andreas as if he weren’t right there but, in a way, he wasn’t.
“Mostly, the Tofts kept to themselves,” she said. “We always found them to be a bit eccentric. I suppose the same could be said for anyone around here.”
“Hear, hear,” Maggie muttered. Of course, she would have agreed. She’d lived in a parked Airstream trailer way off the grid and liked to put Mormon proselytizers to work should they dare knock. Mary had heard about one pair she’d had sort the aluminum cans out of her junk haul.
“What he told me before he shifted into this wolf was that his family had a curse that hadn’t been seen since the gods pulled magic back from our groups,” Mary said.
“Go on,” Muriel said.
Mary licked her lips and watched a muscle on Andreas’s back twitch as though it were being repeatedly plucked. That couldn’t have been normal.
“I…I think he said that when magic started flowing back to you, he was affected as well. No one in his family had shown any signs of the curse in recent history, and he doesn’t know enough about what he is to guess the triggers, or anything, really. Right now, he’s asleep on the floor in front of me.”
“As a wolf?” Muriel asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s fascinating.”
“How so?”
“I’ve pored over every book in the library here in the executive mansion, including the ones you sent. Thank you again for donating those, by the way. They were quite unique.”
“Oh! Well, you’re welcome.”
“The interesting thing about wolves is that there are numerous groups of wolf shifters, and they all came about more or less the same way. Some people might call what the gods did a curse. Others, like me, may simply say they introduced a mutation into the gene pool.”
“A mutation?” Mary furrowed her brow.
“Yes. We all have them. Different ones, of course. That’s why we have disparate magical abilities that all seem to travel down family lines. The mutation has always been there, but there simply wasn’t enough magic around for it to assert.”
“And now there is?”
“That would be my guess. We have wolves here in Norseton, actually. Newcomers. They provide security for us. Their ancestors were Eurasian wolves. Being unrelated to us, they obviously were spared the same misfortune as any shapeshifters you and I may have had in our respective clans.”
“And now?”
“And now, it would appear you have a wolf shifter in yours. Possibly the only one left, which is fascinating. Was the Toft family really so small that there are no other descendants in Andreas’s generation?”
“I believe so. I hadn’t turned up any other relatives during my search for him for work. If there are others similarly afflicted, Andreas didn’t mention them.”
He may not have known about them. Fallonites did tend to stick close to home, but there were some who were able to avoid the pull of the group and leave for good. There may have been more wolves like Andreas out stalking, possibly terrorizing unwitting humans they encountered.
Gods. She cringed. What a mess that would be.
“So, is he going to shift back?” Mary asked. “He’s not stuck in fur, is he?”
“He shouldn’t be, if I’m interpreting the history correctly. Our wolf alpha might know more. The females in the Norseton pack can’t shapeshift until they take a mate’s bite, so he’d certainly be familiar with what a delayed assertion looks like and what the triggers are.”
Mary let out a relieved breath. “Well, that’s good to hear.”
“We’ll get him to call ya,” Maggie said. “How’s that? He might be able to tell you how to wake the beast up if he isn’t acting right.”
“Would you please?”
“Yep, I’ll get right on it.”
“I’m really grateful for your help. I’m sorry for bothering you. I didn’t know who else to ask.”
“You’re fine, dear,” Muriel said in a soothing tone. “I’m pleased that you thought to look to us for help. That’s what we’re here for.”
Mary furrowed her brow. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Do you think squirreling away all the history we’ve collected in these thousand years does me any good if I’m not sharing it?”
“Well, no.”
“One of those books of your father’s, Mary—well, we’d been looking for that text for ages. We were afraid it’d fallen into the hands of people who’d figure out what all the data meant, and who’d try to do us harm.”
“Or worse,” Maggie piped in, “people who already have done harm. Not just to the Afótama, but to all of us.”
Although they couldn’t see her, Mary nodded. She would’ve had to be living under a rock not to have heard about all the children being kidnapped from the Afótama. Queen Tess had been one of them. The rumors in Fallon were that they believed the Fallonites had something to do with the disappearances, but if the Afótama really believed that, they didn’t act on the suspicion.
“You can come visit your father’s books any time,” Muriel said. “We put bookplates in them that say, From the Library of Shawn Nissen.”
Mary let out a strained laugh that made Andreas raise his wolfy head. “I think…I’d like that.”
“Well, good. We’ll track down Adam and have him give you a call as soon as we can.”
“Thank you again.”
“Good luck to you, Miss Nissen.” The older ladies disconnected the call.
Mary tapped the side of her phone against her palm and watched the wolf watch her.
“A werewolf of all things,” she whispered. “What am I going to do with you?”
She couldn’t do anything, yet, but wait. If she were lucky, that man—Adam—would have some news for her, and she could get Andreas back on two feet and wearing his handsome human face again.
And then, she needed to go. She’d had far more adventure in a single day than she’d bargained for, and the sun hadn’t even gone down yet.
___
“Are you sure about this?” Mary said into her phone, clamping the device between her ear and her shoulder as she slowly moved a couple of crates out of the way.
“Positive,” the Norseton Wolfpack alpha, Adam Carbone, said confidently. “I’m a born wolf, just like the others here, and I happen to have a special priority code to the wolf goddess’s hotline.”
“Your goddess.”
“Well, yep, but you shouldn’t assume they don’t all communicate, or that there isn’t some overlapping in the pantheons. Whoever was responsible for making Mr. Toft what he is may very well be the same person who fried the DNA of my ancestors, too.”
“Logical.”
He chuckled. “Aw, I’m not just a pretty face, you know. I try to keep learning stuff. Stagnating is how packs get themselves in trouble.”
Stagnating was likely why the Viking clan in Fallon was so disordered, but Mary didn’t mention that to Adam.
“I’ve already got a couple of my guys heading that way to scoop him up,” Adam said.
“What? I don’t think—”
“Trust me on this,” Adam said, all mirth gone from his formerly jocular tone. “If the wolf magic
is reasserting, he’s more or less going through werewolf puberty right now, and he’s not gonna be fun to be around for a few months, probably.”
“Months?”
She’d perhaps stated the word a bit too loudly. Andreas, who’d been up on the ledge by the window, hopped down then, and started heading toward her.
Shit.
She put her crates back in place and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
“The process sucks, especially for a guy his age. What is he, like, thirty?”
“Somewhere around there, I’d guess. We haven’t exactly done very much getting-to-know-you yet.”
They hadn’t had time, but she planned to make some as soon as Andreas was back on two legs again. She liked that he was strange. He was a breath of fresh air.
“We’ll watch out for him until all the tough stuff passes,” Adam said, “and if he wants to go back to Fallon after that, we’re not gonna stop him.”
“I feel like that’s not my decision to make.”
“No, the decision should be his, but he might not be in the right state to be able to make that choice, either. If his family isn’t around, you’ll have to be the one on the hook to look out for his best interests.”
“I don’t feel comfortable being that person.” Yet.
“Just give it some thought.”
She didn’t want to, but she was used to doing things she didn’t really want to. She was a suck-it-up kind of girl. Living in Fallon around so many people who could read feelings but lacked empathy had made her that way. She couldn’t afford to be seen as the weak link. The mocking would have been unendurable. “Adam?” she whispered.
“Yep?”
“What triggers the changes?”
“If I had to guess, will does.”
“I’m sorry? Will? I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”
“Bear with me, here. Every wolfpack with a gene pool of a certain age is a little different, of course, but I can tell you that Eurasian wolves don’t have to shift for the full moon. We shift at will. When we’re kids and trying to figure things out, temper is enough to trigger a shift. Other kinds of wolves are forced by the full moon to shift, although they can choose to shift at other times, too. Doing so is not as easy for them. I can’t speak in certainties, but I suspect Mr. Toft is one of the former. He’s more like us than like moon shifters.”
