She ignored her conscious. “Sleep in the bed with me,” she invited. “I mean … well, it’s not like anything is going to happen while you’re a wolf and I’m a woman. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t like the idea of you sleeping on the floor, either, and I doubt I could talk you into going to your own bed.”
Slowly, Thomas stood up and came to stand beside her. Shara crawled under the covers of the bed and patted the space beside her. After another moment’s hesitation, Thomas jumped onto the bed and lay down, putting his head on his front paws, his eyes fixed on Shara.
Shara fell asleep with her hand rubbing the thick fur of the wolf’s neck. She dreamed of running through the woods as a wolf, chasing deer and howling at the bright moon. A few hours after falling asleep she awoke to the sound of a buzzer. She sat up quickly, realizing first that she was alone in the bed, then recognizing the buzzer.
Someone at the gate!
She jumped out of bed and went to the television monitors in the front room. Thomas was already there, his snout pointed toward one monitor. Shara found a middle-aged man in a black trench coat standing between a shiny new Ford pickup and the gate leading to her driveway, his finger reaching for the buzzer button on the brick pillar again.
Shara pushed the intercom button. “Who are you?” she asked.
“My name is Summers,” the man replied, leaning close to the intercom speaker. “Douglas Summers.”
“What do you want?” Shara asked.
“I have a message for you,” the man said. “From Ulrik.”
Ulrik
“I am restless. The old man is weak and the boy is insolent and afraid. I think you are wrong about him. About both of them. The boy is not the Alpha and Ulrik is not the one to train him if he is.”
Ulrik listened to the conversation between Kiona Brokentooth and John Redleaf through an earpiece connected to a wireless receiver in a pocket of his shirt. The conversation was taking place in Kiona’s room. Every room in his house was wired with discreet microphones in anticipation of this time when the Pack would gather. Internal politics is a problem not limited to those who are purely human, and Ulrik had long ago taken steps to know what was discussed in his home.
“You underestimate Ulrik,” Kiona said. “He is old, yes, and maybe not as quick as he once was, but he is cunning. You, especially, cannot underestimate him. I brought you here to watch him.”
“I believe I brought you here,” John Redleaf reminded. “He cannot even make the boy change shape. If the boy won’t transform, he can’t become the Alpha. Joey isn’t the one you’ve been waiting for.”
“He is!” Ulrik heard the sharp slap of Kiona’s hand coming down on some hard surface as she emphasized her words. “He is the one, and I will be his mother.”
No, you will not.
Ulrik rubbed at his brow. After another day of trying to coax Joey into changing his shape, and failing, Ulrik determined another approach was needed. He’d made the call to Douglas Summers and told him to make contact with Shara.
He may be with her right now.
Summers was a man of European descent. In his human life he’d been a minor nobleman in Romania, but had been forced to flee his home country following the questionable death of his mother’s new husband. While traveling through France in 1795 he’d been attacked by a werewolf and lived. He had then educated himself in the history of the Pack, coming to America shortly after the Civil War. Douglas Summers was the oldest werewolf Ulrik knew, other than himself.
And Fenris.
Ulrik shook the thought away. Even he wasn’t sure about the age of his enemy.
If Shara accepts my terms, she could be here in two days. With her here, perhaps Joey will be more willing to accept his destiny. Perhaps the fear will leave him.
Ulrik wondered about Shara. He knew she was at the house she had shared with Chris Woodman near Stillwater, Oklahoma. He also knew that Shara’s husband was not with her, but that Thomas McGrath was. He knew about the girl, Jenny, who had been abducted from the hospital in Montana after being admitted for the bite Joey gave her. He knew about the deaths in the hospital and suspected Fenris was responsible. But Chris had not been with Shara and McGrath when they arrived in Stillwater and he had not joined them yet.
Did Fenris kill him, too?
Ulrik knew it was possible.
“So, what do we do now?” John Redleaf asked. “Continue to wait? To watch the old man bark at the boy? Watch the boy pout and ask for his mother?”
“You always get this way before your cycle is due,” Kiona accused. Ulrik found this most interesting, as he had been wondering when John Redleaf would have to submit to his bear nature.
“Yes. And what am I to do when my time comes?” the man asked. “I can’t very well stay in the house. I won’t stay in the yard like some pet dog. Ulrik’s henchmen guard the perimeters of the property and we don’t even know how many of them he’s already gathered here.”
“Yes. I didn’t expect that,” Kiona said. “I thought he’d planned this to be me and him training Joey. I should have known he would have had guards around the place after what happened to that girl, Dora.
“I don’t know what to tell you to do,” Kiona continued. “I would rather you stayed nearby. It may work to our benefit that the damned Scandinavian hermit insisted on giving you the Gift on the night of the full moon. At least your cycle coincides with Ulrik’s. Except his ends a day sooner. Still, that will give me five days with Joey without Ulrik’s influence.”
“You think he will leave during his cycle? I doubt that. I think he will stay here, in his house, watching you and the boy,” John said.
“Maybe,” Kiona agreed. “But what can he do, really? He can’t talk to Joey as a wolf.”
“Are you safe? I think we should take the boy, get back in my plane and fly away. If you want the boy to raise, fine. We can take him and go. He is not the one the legend speaks of. I am convinced of that. If you stay here and I leave to become the bear, Ulrik may well kill you if you openly defy him.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” Kiona argued. “I have known Ulrik for over one hundred fifty years. He will not harm me.”
You are too sure of that, my cub.
“I do not like it,” John Redleaf said.
“Are you going to leave for your cycle then? Fly somewhere else, spend your time as a bear and then come back?”
“Yes. I will not stay here and have Ulrik’s wolves stalking me, not knowing how many there are.”
“You’ll come back?”
Ulrik could tell by the sound that Kiona had moved in the room. He knew she had gone to the man and put her arms around him and likely was kissing him, using her feminine charms to manipulate him.
“I will come back,” John Redleaf said. “I will – ”
There was a frantic banging on the door and Joey’s voice called out, “Aunt Kiona? Aunt Kiona, let me in!”
Ulrik sat up, wondering what had excited the boy. He listened to Kiona’s footsteps running across the room and heard her throw open the door. She laughed.
“Look!” Joey cried. “I did it. But now I can’t make it go back.”
“Very good,” Kiona said, still laughing. “Come in and we will help you focus your mind so that you can get your human hand back. Or, would your rather try to become a complete wolf?”
Ulrik lowered his head into his hands. So, the boy has found partial success. And he has gone to share that success with Kiona. He pulled the earpiece from his head and took the receiver from his shirt pocket, carefully locking them in a drawer of his desk.
“You play a dangerous game, Kiona,” Ulrik whispered. “I will not have you usurping my authority in this matter.”
He left his bedroom and walked up the hallway toward Kiona’s open door.
Chris
The basement held nothing but two mattresses and a white plastic five-gallon bucket provided as a bathroom. Morning sunlight, gray but welcome, filtered into the deep basement fr
om windows high up in two walls. The windows were out of reach, and there was nothing but the short bucket to stand on. On one of the mattresses, a young girl slept peacefully. Her light hair was matted to her forehead with sweat and her pink flesh peeked out of the rips in the blood-stained blue hospital gown she wore.
Chris Woodman watched Jenny Brown sleep. She’d been thrashing on the mattress when he was first pushed into the basement and had continued to do so until sometime the previous night. He’d cared for her as much as he could, but that consisted of little more than holding her right hand to keep her from clawing at a bite mark on her left arm. Chris knew the bite was from his own son’s teeth.
Sometimes a man came downstairs to look at Jenny and leave food and water for Chris. The man didn’t speak much. He was short and always wore a brown leather jacket. He checked Jenny’s temperature when he came, looked at the bite on her arm and cleaned and applied some kind of brown salve that smelled of camphor. Chris thought of him as the werewolf doctor. Whenever the doctor was in the basement, there was always somebody else at the top of the stairs with a shotgun.
Now that the sun was up and he could see her again, Chris moved from his mattress to sit beside Jenny. He lightly touched her forehead; her fever had broken. He smoothed away the matted hair. She was a pretty girl, with very red lips and a dainty chin.
“I’m sorry,” Chris whispered to her again. He knew if Joey hadn’t bitten the girl, Jenny never would have become mixed up in what seemed to be a battle of werewolf clans. And the hospital workers taking care of Jenny wouldn’t be dead, either. Chris couldn’t let himself think of that too much. He didn’t know who or how many had been killed. Didn’t know for sure anyone had been killed, but Fenris’s word, given just before the police returned, led Chris to believe something very bad had happened.
He rested his back against the wall. His flannel shirt had been taken so that he wore only a gray T-shirt with his jeans and boots. The basement was cold. He pulled his knees up and crossed his arms over them, then held out his left hand and looked at the base of his third finger, where his wedding ring should have been. There was still an indented circle, paler than the rest of his finger, from so many years of wearing the gold band.
He could only guess why the shirt and ring had been taken. He wondered if the werewolves living in the house above him actually knew where Shara was. Or Joey.
Chris didn’t know how many others were in the house. He heard footsteps above him most of the time, but couldn’t determine anything by them. He didn’t know where he was or how long he had been here.
The door to the basement opened, spilling more light into the little room. Chris looked up, squinting at the bright stairway. The little werewolf doctor was descending the stairs, followed by Fenris, his long white hair spilling over a black leather jacket. The doctor was looking at Jenny, but Chris noted that Fenris’s eyes were locked on him. It was the first time he’d seen the man since their conversation through the video cameras at his home.
The pair came to Jenny’s mattress. The doctor examined Jenny quickly, then turned to Fenris and said, “It has finally worked. She will be well. And one of us.”
“Very good,” Fenris said. “A young one. It has been a long time since I last had a young one to train.”
“You’ll train her yourself?” the doctor asked.
“Of course! It will be fun. Now, go. I want to talk to Mr. Woodman.”
The smaller man nodded, gave Chris a quick glance, then hurried back up the creaking stairs and vanished into the light at the top. Fenris squatted down before Chris and held him in a steady gaze.
“Where is your wife, Mr. Woodman?”
Chris eyed the white-haired man suspiciously. He wasn’t sure how to answer. Or, rather, how to respond in a way that would draw information from Fenris. Finally, he answered honestly. “I don’t know.”
“Where is she likely to have gone? Surely you had some meeting place arranged.” Fenris smiled, showing his small teeth and the slightly longer canines. “Surely she had not put her heritage so far in her past that she neglected to think of this possibility?”
“She did,” Chris said. “We did. We were …” He paused for effect. “We were more worried about Ulrik. We’d never heard of you.”
“Ah.” Fenris chuckled. “You thought the death of Tony Weismann ended the threat from those who believed as he did.” Now Fenris paused, the smile sliding off his face. “Would it surprise you, Mr. Woodman, to know that I sat in a dingy motel room with your wife two nights ago?”
Chris knew his face gave him away. He averted his gaze and studied the sleeping face of the child on the mattress next to him for a moment. “You know it would,” he admitted.
“Yes. You’ve noticed the absence of your flannel shirt and your wedding ring, I’m sure. Your wife has those items now. I believe she thinks you are dead. The shirt was very bloody, you know. And I may have said things to help her in her belief.”
“Bastard,” Chris said, his voice nothing more than a husky whisper. “That’s not even smart. Tell her you killed me and expect her to turn over our son to you? You’re stupid.”
“Umm. That may be. Though she seemed surprised to learn of Ulrik’s plans for your son. If Ulrik succeeds in his plans, you, Mr. Woodman, would live under the reign of your werewolf son. Who, of course, would be under the influence of Ulrik. At least, for as long as Ulrik lives.”
Chris’s brow wrinkled. He remembered Shara telling him of Ulrik’s cryptic words about the Pack gathering and the elimination of culls. Is this what he was talking about? With Joey as their king?
“Of more immediate interest to you, perhaps, is the traveling companion of your wife,” Fenris said. Chris looked up and found the man’s cold blue eyes still fixed on him. “You know of Thomas McGrath?”
Chris shook his head. “No.”
“Surprising she didn’t tell you about him. They met about five years ago, when your wife was shopping for groceries. They went to lunch afterward. He is a werewolf, once part of an old clan that came to America from Europe specifically to seek out the Mother.”
“You lie. She would have told me if she’d met one of your kind.”
“Thomas McGrath is not on my side.”
“He’s … with Ulrik?”
“I don’t think so. Thomas McGrath has no allegiances these days. Ah, well, apparently he does, now. Like me and Ulrik, he has been watching your wife for many years. And now he is her only companion. What do you make of that, Mr. Woodman?”
Chris had no answer. He looked back to the sleeping girl. Why? Who is this Thomas McGrath? Why wouldn’t Shara tell me about him? Is she …?
“Tell me where to find your wife, Mr. Woodman, and I will ease your mind about McGrath,” Fenris urged. “Your wife will not be harmed.”
Chris snorted. “You’re a liar. I know you’re lying about that. You’ll kill Shara if you find her. That makes me believe you’re lying about this McGrath guy, too.”
Fenris smiled a false smile and reached into a pocket of his shirt. He removed a photograph that he handed to Chris. Chris took it and slowly looked at it, forcing his expression to remain neutral. The photograph showed his wife standing before the open door of a motel with another man. Thomas McGrath had thick black hair that was long enough to cover his ears. He was wearing a black leather jacket and jeans. His eyes were on Shara in the photograph.
“That was taken in Salt Lake City two days ago,” Fenris said. “The afternoon before I had my evening chat with Shara.”
“What – ” Chris had to clear his throat to make his voice work. “What else did you talk about with Shara? If you were there with her, why are you asking me where she is?”
“You come to it at last,” Fenris said. “Our conversation was cut short by McGrath, who returned to the motel earlier than expected. Unlike your wife, he was prepared for our presence. He killed my associates. I was lucky to escape.” He paused and casually looked around the basement before continu
ing.
“Yes, Thomas McGrath killed for your wife,” Fenris said. “How does that make you feel?”
Chris bit his lip and answered, “I’m glad she’s with someone who can protect her.”
Fenris laughed. “I do admire your determination, Mr. Woodman. Well, in the confusion after McGrath’s return, we lost track of them. Now, will you tell me where they might be?”
“Hell no.”
“Umm. We are watching the home of her parents, though we hardly expect her to return there since she has had no traceable contact with them for as long as we have been watching her. We would have more information if Mr. Weismann had not been so eager for power. Being a protégé of Ulrik, he became obsessed with Ulrik’s preference for Shara, particularly after it was learned Shara was able to bear children to term. Following Weismann’s death, Ulrik was able to take possession of his records relating to Shara. There were others, you may remember, who harassed you and Shara at a home you shared in Oklahoma. Ulrik and his followers dispatched most of them. Unfortunately, I was not organized enough at the time and collected no information from them. You see, I was foolish enough to believe the legend of a Mother of the Pack was no more than that, just a legend.”
“I remember shooting a werewolf inside our house in Stillwater,” Chris said. “But it was a rental house. We abandoned it when we came north. I don’t know where she is.”
“Your eyes tell me you are lying to me, Mr. Woodman. I believe you know exactly where your wife is. What’s more, I believe she has returned to Oklahoma.”
Chris looked away, back to Jenny. He tried changing the subject. “What will you do with Jenny?”
“She is none of your concern. She lived through the bite of your son. She will be given the chance to join us.”
“To help you hunt Joey and Shara?”
Fenris shrugged. “Perhaps.” He paused, then asked. “Are you comfortable down here, Mr. Woodman?”
Chris’s head snapped up at the werewolf’s tone. Fenris’s eyes were colder than usual. His thin, colorless mouth was a wound in his hard face. “I’m fine,” Chris said.
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