She shook her head, trying to dislodge the thoughts, but they wouldn’t go away. She knew the truth. She’d spent too much time waiting for the moment when the Alpha male would be with her. She’d seen too many boys she’d taken under her wing stolen away by Ulrik only to be returned to their parents or to some shelter.
I may need an ally. I won’t give up this boy without a fight.
The aisle slowly cleared out. At last Kiona stood and motioned for Joey to do the same. She took their two suitcases from the overhead compartment and they left the airplane, passing the smiling captain and flight attendant, went into the terminal and waited. A moment later and Kiona found John Redleaf leaning against a post at the back of the waiting area.
“There’s our next ride,” she said, motioning for Joey to follow her. She pushed her way through the crowd. John Redleaf was a tall man, thickly muscled, of pure Cherokee descent, with long, thick black hair, a square chin and deep black eyes that never gave away his thoughts. The eyes watched Kiona as she approached, moving over her, then sliding away to find the fair-haired boy following her. When she stood before him, John straightened to his full height, towering over Kiona.
“This is the Alpha?” he asked.
“Yes,” Kiona said, putting down one suitcase and placing a hand on Joey’s shoulder. “This is Joey.”
John studied the boy for a long time. Joey tried to return his gaze, but had to look away. Finally the Indian put out a hand and said, “It is good to finally meet you. My name is John Redleaf.”
Kiona watched with pride as Joey shook John’s hand, his tiny white fingers swallowed by the red fist of the big man. “Are you ready?” she asked.
“I am,” John said, nodding at her.
“Joey, John is a pilot. He has his own plane and he’s going to fly us down to Mexico. He’ll be staying with us, too.”
Joey nodded. “Is he my uncle? Mom never told me we had Indian relatives.”
“No, Joey, John isn’t your uncle. He’s a friend of mine. A very good friend.”
“Okay,” Joey said. “Can I go to the bathroom before we get on another plane?”
Kiona laughed. “Of course you can.” The three of them walked along the concourse until they found a restroom. Joey pushed his way through the door and disappeared.
“I don’t like it that he went in alone,” Kiona said.
“There are no skin-changers here. I’ve been watching,” John said.
Kiona nodded, but said, “I still don’t like letting him out of my sight.”
“Ulrik won’t like you being so protective.”
“That’s why I have you along.”
“He will have others with him.”
“You think so?”
John nodded. “He has been planning this since before you or I were ever born.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kiona said. “The boy trusts me completely.”
“He has only known you a week. It is you who have been watching him for so many years.”
“Yes, but it was me who ran with him during the first cycle he’ll ever remember. It was me who was there for him when his cycle ended and he returned to his human form. It was me who held him as he cried with the pain of his transformation. It was not his mother. And it was not Ulrik.”
“It is a dangerous game you play,” John said.
“It’s no game. Ulrik will acknowledge that I am the Mother. When I am the only one the boy trusts, he’ll have to.”
Before they could say more, Joey emerged from the bathroom. Kiona smiled at him and the boy smiled back, his face almost glowing as he did so.
“You may be right,” John said.
John Redleaf picked up the luggage and Kiona took Joey by the hand. She followed the pilot along the corridors of the sprawling airport to the runways for small private planes. He helped her and Joey into his Cessna, then went to his seat. Joey was wide-eyed over the tiny aircraft at first, but he’d lost interest and gone back to sleep before they’d crossed the border into Mexico.
The further south they went, the more nervous Kiona felt.
I have the upper hand as long as Joey trusts me completely.
She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes, trying to get some rest before the plane landed.
Ulrik
The sun was just coming up in the east, turning the sky a rosy pink and hopeful gray. Ulrik sat beside the telephone in his bedroom, a pen in his heavy hand, scrawled notes on a pad on the desk. His face was set, his deep eyes troubled.
She is not on the agreed-upon flight.
Ulrik drew one more line through the Southwest Airlines flight number from San Antonio to Mexico City, then put the pen down, pressing it hard against the desk with his palm for a heartbeat before returning his gaze to the sunrise taking place outside his open patio doors. The possibilities were too many. Did she simply miss the flight? No, he didn’t think so. She had been on all the flights they’d agreed upon, flying a random pattern across the United States in an effort to throw off anyone who might be trying to follow them. Ulrik knew Kiona and Joey had been on the plane in San Antonio. He had personally reserved seats for them on a flight from Texas to Mexico’s capitol city and had arranged to have a rental car ready for them. But the flight tickets had never been picked up.
Were they attacked?
That wasn’t likely. Not in a crowded airport. Fenris’s followers could be subtle, but Ulrik believed Kiona to be shrewd enough to stay in the crowd, moving from one terminal to another, avoiding places where she and Joey could be cornered.
Plus, there had been the incident in the Bozeman, Montana, hospital. People murdered, Joey’s playmate abducted. Ulrik felt sure that was the work of Fenris, and if the man had been there to do that, he would not have been available to track Kiona’s elaborate route to Texas.
Ulrik sighed. The only option left was the most likely one. Kiona had always been a defiant one. From the day her father dumped the girl on the doorstep of Ulrik’s Rocky Mountain cabin a year after the American Civil War ended, Kiona had exhibited a headstrong attitude. As she grew older she became convinced she was the female destined to be the Mother. But she had never conceived. When it became obvious she would never bear children, she took to kidnapping young boys and male infants. She had killed some by transferring the Gift to them. Most, though, Ulrik had taken away from her. Watching her had become one of his many responsibilities.
Has she taken him? Would she dare defy me on this?
Ulrik couldn’t be sure. He mulled the possibilities, but kept coming back to the idea that she had followed their prescribed course until the final stop. Had she wanted to steal Joey and hide from him, Ulrik believed she would have done so earlier and at a point further away than San Antonio.
She would have done it when they were in Boston.
That would have been the most logical place, the furthest point from where Ulrik waited, and where Kiona and Joey had been faced with a four-hour layover between flights. Had she wanted to steal the boy, she’d had a window in which she could have slipped away and Ulrik would not have known of it for at least four hours.
Ulrik rose from his chair and went through the connecting bathroom into the room that would be Joey’s. He looked around the room, thinking the boyish things he’d added seemed out of place and insufficient.
She will have bonded with the boy. She will try to be his favorite. And she will want me to know it.
Not for the first time, Ulrik regretted the manner in which Joey had finally come to the Pack. He had wished that Shara would eventually embrace her heritage and return to them. Barring that, he had wanted to wait until Joey was old enough to make the decision for himself.
And I should have been the one to convince him.
But it was too late for that. No matter the method, the Alpha had now experienced his first cycle since he was an infant and he was in the company of a werewolf female who would care for him.
“But where are you, Kiona, my cub? What welco
me have you given our young Alpha?”
Ulrik remembered well his own first contact with those who were different, those who did not know he was a werewolf. Gar had warned him that, outside the Indian villages, shapeshifters were feared, were seen as evil, and that he must hide his nature from the European settlers. After Gar’s death, Ulrik could not bear to remain with the Indians. He had left them and lived alone in the woods for a while, until curiosity got the better of him and he crept into a small village of white people.
* * *
Magwa felt out of place immediately, wearing his shirt and breeches made of tan buckskin among the black-clad men and women in somber dresses. He shifted the bundle of pelts he carried over his shoulder, letting his eyes move quickly from one person to the next as he walked slowly along the narrow road between buildings in the village. The people stared back at him, pausing in their labors to watch as he passed.
One man, who wore a white apron rather than a black coat, was sweeping the steps leading to a building with glass-paned windows. There was a display of dresses behind the window and, beyond the display, Magwa could see shelves of various items. He paused before the man, who had stopped sweeping and was watching him.
“Hello, friend,” the man said, nodding.
“Hello,” Magwa answered.
“You seem lost.”
“My father said there would be a place here to trade these furs.”
“Ah, a trapper,” the man said, nodding again. “Luck is with you, friend. My name is Frances Cavendish. I own this store and am willing to trade with you. Please come inside.”
The man leaned his broom against the wall and opened the door of his store. Magwa followed him inside, immediately feeling nervous when the door closed behind him. The store was rife with the aromas of fabric, flour, dry beans and other foodstuff. Behind a counter, a young woman smiled at them as they approached.
“This is my daughter Emily. She helps me in the store,” Frances said. “What is your name, friend?”
Magwa hesitated. He did not want to speak his Indian name to the white people. He groped for any European name he could remember his father teaching him. “Ulrik,” he said. “Please call me Ulrik.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Ulrik,” the girl said.
Magwa turned his attention back to the slender young woman. She was about his age, he guessed, with sparkling blue eyes and dark hair that fell in waves to her shoulders. Her skin seemed very pale and exotic to him, so unlike the Indian women he was accustomed to. She blushed under his gaze, her white cheeks turning crimson a moment before she ducked her head and turned away.
“Let’s take a look at what you have there,” Frances said.
Magwa knew the store owner had seen the look that passed between him and his daughter. He looked away from the girl and swung the roll of pelts onto a bare space on the counter. He pulled the rawhide strings and let the bundle unroll.
“Lots of beaver,” Frances said. “Excellent. Good condition, too. Yes, I can take all of these.”
“Good,” Magwa said. “I am glad.”
Frances named a price and Magwa felt his own face flush. He was not sure if it was a good price. He looked away and studied a barrel of beans. “You will forgive me, please. My father raised me in the forest. He died recently. I do not know your ways. You will give me the coins he told me about and I can give them back to you for these things in your store?” He waved a hand at the shelves of goods.
“Yes, that’s it,” Frances said.
“And the price you have named. It is good?”
“It is the current rate,” Frances answered. “The price of furs goes up and down, depending on how badly people want them.”
Magwa nodded. “I see. Why do your people not go into the woods and hunt for the furs they want?”
“Some do,” Frances answered. Magwa was aware that the pretty girl was studying him again, but he kept his attention on her father. “But many people in the village have other jobs, farming mostly, that keeps them too busy to hunt and trap. They sell the food they grow, then come to me and trade their money for the things they need.”
Magwa nodded slowly. He looked around the store, but did not see anything he needed for the small hut he had made for himself in the forest. He knew it would seem strange to the man and his daughter if he did not buy something. He wondered how many furs he would have to bring Frances Cavendish to purchase his daughter.
“What is this?” Magwa asked, pointing to a small barrel filled with a curious-smelling liquid.
“Pickles,” Frances answered.
Magwa looked at the man. Emily giggled from her place further down the counter.
“Please, Father, let Mr. Ulrik try a pickle. I think he never has.”
Frances smiled, looking from Magwa to his daughter and back to the man. “Would you like one?” he asked. “No charge.”
“Yes,” Magwa said.
“Go ahead, then.” Frances motioned toward the barrel. “Reach in and get one.”
Magwa looked hesitantly at the barrel. He could make out dark shapes floating in the greenish fluid and suddenly they looked like turds in a puddle. Nonetheless, he quickly dipped his hand into the liquid and lifted out a green vegetable. He studied the dripping item for a moment, then sniffed it. The smell was not pleasant. The storekeeper and his daughter were watching him, both wearing half-smiles. Magwa bit into the pickle.
The taste was horrible, sour and overpowering. Magwa spit the crunchy thing onto the floor and stepped away from it, his face still puckered. Emily laughed at him and Frances chuckled. Magwa felt anger building inside himself.
“They are sour,” Frances said, taking the remaining pickle from his hand and setting it aside. He patted Magwa on the arm and asked, “Tell me, what do you need? You still live in the forest?”
“Yes,” Magwa said, the sharp bitterness of the pickle still heavy in his mouth.
“Perhaps you need powder and lead for your rifle? Or dried beef? Flour for bread? Or I can give you the money and you can come back when you know what you need.”
Magwa nodded at the last suggestion. “I will have the money, then.”
“Good.” Frances went behind the counter and lifted a wooden box. He opened the box and counted out several coins. He held them in his hand and looked to Magwa, then hesitated and reached under the counter again for a small cloth bag with a drawstring. He slid the coins into the bag and closed it, then held it toward Magwa.
“Thank you,” Magwa said as he took the bag. He tied the drawstring to his belt and was ready to leave when the man stopped him.
“Mr. Ulrik, I am not sure how to offer this, but … I sense that you are unfamiliar with the ways of, well, of most white people.”
“It is true,” Magwa admitted.
“Your father raised you alone?”
“No. We lived among the Chawanas.”
Frances nodded. “You live there still?”
“No. I live alone.”
“Please forgive me if I seem blunt, but you are a white man and you would do well to learn our ways,” Frances said. “My home is the last one on this street. I would be happy to have you as a guest and teach you things that I think will be valuable to you should you continue to visit our village.”
Magwa looked from the man to his daughter. Emily’s eyes were shining hopefully and her hands were clasped before her bosom. Magwa looked back to the man and nodded. “I would be very grateful,” he said. Then he turned and left the store, the tiny bag of gold and silver clinking at his belt as he made his way back toward the shadows of the forest.
* * *
Ulrik breathed a deep sigh as he sat on the edge of the bed that waited for Joey. “And I will teach you things that will be valuable to you, my young leader,” he said.
He stood to return to his own room, but paused. He cocked his head for a moment, then was sure of what he heard. It was a buzzing – an engine of some kind. He went to Joey’s patio doors and opened them, steppin
g onto the patio itself and shielding his eyes as he scanned the grounds below him.
But the sound did not come from the ground. Ulrik raised his eyes and found a small airplane descending from the bright morning sky toward the long road that led to his house. Panic seized him. With his own fear of flying, he had not considered that Fenris may seek to attack from the air.
No. He does not know where we are. I am sure of that.
“Then who are you?” he asked.
The plane was nearing the ground. Three large wolves were closing on it as it came closer to the earth, the animals running as fast as they could, ready to attack whoever emerged. Ulrik hurried through the house to the front door and was stepping off the porch when the airplane’s tires touched down, kicking up little clouds of dust before the machine settled to earth and came bouncing up the long straight road toward the house.
Thomas
Thomas McGrath drove his rented Subaru up to the open gates of Shara’s home. He paused for a moment, watching the red and blue lights flashing up the driveway, near the house. It had begun snowing again, just a light shower of flakes, enough to make him keep the windshield wipers going. He didn’t like being in an enclosed car. His senses were dulled by the slap of the wipers, the blowing hot air of the heater and the closed windows.
It was a surprise to Thomas when a uniformed policeman stepped from behind one of the brick posts that supported the iron gate at the head of the driveway. The man held a Styrofoam cup of steaming coffee as he walked in front of the car, his eyes fixed on Thomas.
Thomas smiled and lowered his window, leaning his head out a little. Snow pattered onto his face and melted. “Is everything okay?” he asked.
“Can I get your name?” the cop asked.
“Yates,” Thomas replied. “Fred Yates.”
“And what’s your business here, Mr. Yates?”
“I came to visit some friends. David and Linda Stewart. I have the right house, don’t I?”
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