Ulrik

by Steven E Wedel

  “Don’t you ever say that kind of stuff to my son again,” Chris said. “God, I can’t believe how that happened. I just lost it when I saw Shara and that other guy. Why did I say those things to her.”

  “Grow up,” Kiona said. “She dumped you. You didn’t see her trying to come with us, now did you?”

  Chris felt his eyes watering and turned his face away so the Indian woman wouldn’t see him crying.

  “I want Mom,” Joey said.

  “Joey, you need to buckle your seat belt and keep your head down when we go through this little town. Will you do that for Aunt Kiona?”

  “Mom said you’re not my aunt.”

  “Maybe not by blood, Joey, but I love you like an aunt,” Kiona said. “I need you to trust me right now.”

  “Dad?”

  Chris wiped at his face and looked down at the boy. He nodded. “Mom might catch up with us later. For now, let’s do what Aunt Kiona says.” He was aware of the look the woman gave him when he mentioned Shara catching them later, but he ignored it.

  “You shot Ulrik,” Joey accused.

  Chris nodded. “I guess I did.”

  “Why’d you do that?”

  “I don’t know, Joey,” Chris said, his voice rising in anger. “I don’t know. I just – I was mad and I thought he was going to hurt us.”

  “Ulrik wouldn’t hurt us,” Joey said.

  “Come on, Joey, buckle up,” Kiona interrupted, pulling the seat belt across the boy’s lap. “We can talk about all of this later.” The seat belt clicked and Kiona started driving again.

  Chris stared out the front window, replaying the events that had just unfolded, remembering pointing a gun at his wife, thinking of how she held her stomach and how protective the other man, McGrath, had been.

  She thought I was dead.

  But she didn’t mourn very long.

  “Joey?” Chris asked, taking his son’s small hand in his own. “When Mom told you I was dead, did she cry?”

  “Yes,” the boy answered.

  Chris nodded and squeezed Joey’s hand.

  “Be a man,” Kiona snapped. “Be ready with that gun.”

  The path had turned into a road and the first buildings of Las Sombras were looming ahead. Chris took a deep breath and released Joey’s hand. He reached to the floorboard and picked up his pistol; he released the clip, checked that there were still bullets, then replaced the magazine.

  Other than a few curious glances, none of the residents of Las Sombras paid the truck any attention, then a young man pointed at the driver and yelled something in Spanish. The only work Chris recognized was Kiona’s name.

  “Ulrik must be dead,” Kiona said. “Otherwise these people would have known we got what we came for and would try to stop us.”

  The village dropped away behind them as more men ran out of buildings carrying guns, but they were too late to stop the truck. Chris put a protective hand on Joey’s leg.

  We got what we came for.

  “We’ll call Fenris when we get closer to the border,” Kiona said. “Cell phones won’t work out here. He’ll send a plane for us. Dammit! I can’t believe they killed John.”

  For the first time ever, Chris believed he detected a note of sadness in the Indian woman’s voice. Maybe she isn’t a complete bitch.

  He looked out the side window and thought of Shara holding hands with Thomas McGrath. A warm tear rolled down his cheek, but he ignored it.

  Ulrik

  Fire.

  Everything was burning.

  No. It is fever.

  Ulrik knew death was near. He struggled against it, but his muscles were useless. All around him was fire and darkness and he felt himself slipping down a long slope where there would not even be fire.

  Something, some other force, was pulling back, but the effort was feeble compared to the force drawing him toward darkness and death.

  It is the Alpha. He is calling the Pack together.

  Ulrik fought against the darkness, fought to answer the call of the Alpha he had spent so long trying to find, but he continued to slide toward nothingness.

  The Pack is gathering …

  Shara

  A massive female wolf stood in the doorway of Ulrik’s bedroom. The eyes of the animal were captivating, unlike the eyes of any wolf or human Shara had ever seen. She stared at the wolf and the wolf stared back. Then the beast stepped into the room and came to stand before her.

  “Do you know this one?” Shara asked.

  “No,” Thomas said. “I thought I had visited everyone guarding the property, but she is new to me.”

  The wolf pressed its muzzle against Shara’s abdomen and sniffed loudly. Then she closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, Shara was sure she saw tears in the wolf’s eyes. The animal stepped back a pace, then lowered her head to the floor.

  “Is she … is she bowing to me?” Shara asked.

  Thomas nodded. “Aye, I do believe so,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I cannot say.”

  “Who are you?” Shara asked. “Can you change your shape and talk to me? If not, come back when you can. I have to take care of Ulrik. He’s been shot with silver.” She glanced back at the bed.

  “Thomas, you said Ulrik treated me with that brown liquid when I was sick, right? Do you know where he keeps that?”

  “No, but he always came to this room before treating you. It must be in here.”

  “Find it,” Shara said. “Tear the place apart if you have to. We’ll treat the wound with that.”

  She saw that Thomas’s attention was distracted. She followed his eyes and watched the wolf slip out of the room.

  “Ignore her,” Shara said.

  “There is something odd about that one,” Thomas said.

  “We’ll worry about her later. Find that serum.”

  Thomas went to the desk and began opening drawers. Satisfied he was looking, Shara went to the bathroom, looking for tweezers and razor blades. She found them and cotton balls. She took them back to Ulrik’s room, saw that Thomas was pulling stuff out of a closet, then hurried downstairs for a pan. She brought the pan back to the upstairs bathroom and filled it with hot water.

  She entered Ulrik’s room and stopped, frozen in her tracks. An old woman with long gray hair stood beside the bed. She’s wearing my bathrobe. Then Shara noticed that Ulrik had returned to his human form. He lay naked and covered in loose wolf hair. Werewolves return to their human form when …

  “He is dying,” the woman said.

  “I found it,” Thomas said, holding up a brown bottle nearly filled with darker liquid.

  “Who is she?” Shara asked.

  “I was called Holle,” the woman said in accented English. “The earth was young then. I have not worn the shape of a woman for many centuries.”

  Thomas lowered the bottle he held, his eyes widening as he looked at the woman.

  “You know her?” Shara asked.

  “Are you an Old One?” Thomas asked. “One of the first?”

  The woman nodded. “I was there the night Nadia brought the beast curse upon us,” she said.

  Shara shook her head. “All right,” she said. “Whatever. I don’t have time for that.” She pushed past the woman and placed the pan of hot water on the table beside Ulrik’s bed.

  “The bullet passed through his flesh,” Holle said. She pointed one crooked, aged finger at Ulrik’s shoulders. “A flesh-wound. But the silver will kill him.”

  “Give me that,” Shara said, taking the bottle from Thomas. She uncapped it and tipped it over a cotton ball.

  “Shara, do you realize what this means?” Thomas asked.

  “What?” Shara asked as she pressed the cotton against the wound on Ulrik’s back. The wound really was nothing more than a scratch. “This isn’t bad. I think we can treat it.”

  “He will die,” Holle said.

  “Shut up!” Shara yelled, turning her head to face the crone. “Just be quiet. I have
to think.”

  “You are the Mother,” Holle said. “I have watched you as I have watched him.” She pointed to Ulrik again. “You carry the Alpha in your womb now.”

  “She is an Old One,” Thomas said. “One of the first werewolves ever, Shara. They could not regain their human form, the legend says, until …”

  “Until the Alpha comes,” Holle finished.

  “Joey is the Alpha,” Shara said, daubing more of the thick brown solution onto Ulrik’s back.

  “No,” Holle said. “He is not.”

  “Be quiet,” Shara said.

  Ulrik moaned and rolled onto his back. His eyes were open, but clouded. “Shara?”

  “I’m here,” Shara said. She took his big, rough hand in both of hers and squeezed. His chest and stomach were covered in blood from multiple wounds caused by John Redleaf’s bear claws. “Don’t you die on me,” she said.

  She saw Ulrik try to smile at her. His eyes closed, then opened again. “I believe my time has come. I failed you, my cub.”

  “No.” Shara shook her head, fighting back the tears.

  “Who is this?” Ulrik asked, looking past Shara to the crone.

  “She is an Old One,” Thomas said reverently.

  Shara watched Ulrik’s eyes widen. The old woman nodded once. Ulrik returned the gesture. “The Pack is gathering, then,” he said.

  “Yes,” the woman said. “Others will come to us now. They will be drawn to her.” She motioned at Shara.

  “I’m going to sing to you,” Shara said. “You know the song? The one you sang to me. You sang it to me every time you rescued me.”

  Ulrik’s eyes closed again and his breath rasped in his chest. Shara felt herself losing the battle against her tears. Her voice trembled as she summoned the first syllables of the song.

  “Ah, I thought no human lips remembered,” Holle said.

  Ulrik opened his eyes again. “The Old Ones are coming,” he said. “There will be war.” His eyes closed again.

  “No!” Shara screamed. “You will not die.”

  “Sing, child,” Holle said. “Sing with me.”

  Shara did.

  An Excerpt From

  Nadia’s Children

  The Werewolf Saga

  Book 4

  Paul

  Paul Danvers lay naked in the tall, parched grass of a low hill, watching the mansion on the next rise through powerful binoculars. His clothes were rolled and stored in a plastic bag buried about six inches below where he lay. Once upon a time people believed a werewolf’s clothes turned into stones until the werewolf needed them again. Paul, a former British Special Forces member, thought that would be damn convenient.

  In his binoculars he could see Fenris pacing on a patio at the rear of the house. The man’s long white hair fluttered behind him like a banner. He was bare-chested and muscled, and obviously angry. As Paul watched, Fenris struck one of the two men he was talking to. The man fell over sideways and Paul could see a spray of blood come from his face.

  Sitting at a black wrought-iron patio table reading a book was a young girl, maybe eight years old, with blonde hair. She flinched when Fenris hit the other man and Paul got the impression she’d like to run away, or at least crawl under the table to hide.

  There was no sign of the Indian woman, the boy, or Shara’s previous mate. That fact, coupled with Fenris’s behavior, told Paul all he needed for the moment. He put his binoculars in another plastic bag and placed that in the second of the two holes he’d dug. He pushed dirt over the hole, replaced some sod and patted it all down. It wasn’t perfect concealment, but someone would have to be studying the ground pretty bloody well to find it.

  Paul gave the sprawling white mansion one last look, then took a deep breath and prepared for the transformation to his wolf form.

  Something struck him in the neck, stinging like the bite of a dragonfly. He reached to swat it, but already knew he’d been caught. He pulled the dart out of his neck and looked at it for a moment before it dropped out of his weak hand.

  “Bloody hell,” he murmured, then sagged so that his face was again buried in the dry grass. He slept.

  * * *

  Electric light filled a spacious room. A werewolf who once served England’s queen squinted at one of the lamps beside the bed where he lay. The light hurt his eyes. He closed them and turned his face away from the source.

  Behind his closed lids he saw again a trio of Afghan soldiers in a machine gun pit as they peered over the edge of the pit and down a slope toward a silent encampment of British soldiers that had only recently realized they were caught between the machine gun nest and a Soviet tank battalion. The three soldiers never heard the wolf until the first man was dead. The last man standing drew his pistol, but lost it and the hand holding it before losing his bowels.

  Paul opened his eyes and stared at the white ceiling of the room. He lifted his hands and rubbed at his eyes, paused when he realized he wasn’t tied to the bed, then rubbed some more. He dropped his hands back to the mattress. His right hand landed on something puffy that made a crinkling noise. He grabbed the thing and held it above him. It was his bag of clothes.

  “I don’t know your name yet, but I know who sent you,” a deep, rich voice said. “How long have you been watching me?”

  Paul let his arm fall back to the bed, but kept a grip on his bag of clothes, just a denim shirt and khaki trousers with some light hiking shoes and socks. He realized he was covered with a thin white sheet.

  “Fenris,” Paul said, his voice still thick.

  “We haven’t met before,” the man’s voice said from somewhere off to the right. “I would remember. I’m very good at that sort of thing. You, I think, are relatively new to the Gift.”

  Paul pushed himself to a sitting position with his eyes closed. He waited for his senses to settle, then opened his eyes. Fenris sat in a brown leather chair beside a small chrome-and-glass table in front of a massive window that opened onto the patio Paul had seen from his place on the hill. Beyond the patio the sun was sinking into the calm Pacific Ocean. The little blonde girl was still at her patio table, but now she was playing with two equally blonde Barbie dolls.

  “How did Ulrik find me?” Fenris asked. He was dressed all in black now. His long-sleeved Western shirt was open at the throat and his cowboy boots were polished so that they gleamed in the light. His calm face creased a little when Paul didn’t answer. “How?” he demanded.

  “We have our methods,” Paul said.

  “Hmm. British?” Fenris asked. “Somewhere outside Liverpool, I imagine. Am I right?”

  “Maybe. It really doesn’t matter.”

  “No. No, it doesn’t. It’s just a game I enjoy. So, you have your methods. I, too, have methods.”

  Paul said nothing, only watched Fenris closely. His senses were losing the groggy feeling from the tranquilizing dart. He could smell another man outside the bedroom door. He looked toward the door just as it opened and a huge man dressed in faded jeans and a dark blue shirt entered with something rolled under his arm.

  Walter Hess wasn’t unknown to Paul Danvers, but Paul had never actually seen the mercenary werewolf. The man wore a dark, scraggly beard, long black hair and had deep, black eyes. His chest was as thick as a buffalo’s and his shoulders nearly brushed both sides of the door frame as he entered the room. He had to lower his head to come through. His forearms were like hams and his biceps were tree trunks. The Othala rune was tattooed on his right bicep.

  “I discovered a very interesting trick,” Fenris said. “It’s something Walter had been trying for years. I stole the idea, you might say. But he’s certainly learned the trick now. Show our guest what you have, Walter.”

  With a flourish, the brute unfurled the furry bundle under his arm so that it settled over Paul’s form under the sheet. Paul looked down at it and felt his blood run cold. It was the pelt of a werewolf, somehow taken from the body in its in-between stage. The brown hair was not matted, appearing to have
been combed and washed after being removed. Paul looked from the pelt to the mercenary, who grinned back at him.

  “You don’t want to end up like your friend there, do you?” Fenris asked. “I promise you it’s a painful procedure.”

  “Do you mind if I get dressed?” Paul asked. It was a pretty obvious stall tactic, he knew, but the best one available.

  Fenris gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “Fine with me,” he said. “Of course, if it comes to this, we’ll just have to tear your clothes back off.” He motioned to the skin as he said it.

  Paul opened the plastic bag and removed his clothes. Hess was a mountain of muscle, but speed and his special ops martial arts training might give him enough advantage, Paul thought. But could he dispatch Hess fast enough to deal with Fenris, too? How many others were nearby?

  Is there really any chance of me getting out of here?

  It wasn’t likely.

  “I’ve always wondered about your real name,” Paul said as he pulled on his first shoe. “Fenris. That can’t possibly be your real name. The wolf of Ragnorak, eater of Odin. Who are you, really?”

  “You wouldn’t give me your name, but you expect me to give you mine,” Fenris said and smiled just a little, showing his teeth.

  “Paul Danvers. And you were right about Liverpool.” He finished tying his second shoe and sat up straight to face Fenris, but made sure he knew exactly where Hess was, too. The werewolf pelt lay on the bed, an empty husk.

  “Paul Danvers. I have not heard of you. Did Ulrik make you?”

  “No,” Paul said. “The one who did introduced me to Ulrik a few years after.”

  “And who gave you the Gift?”

  “You haven’t answered my question,” Paul prodded. “I’m not as good with accents as you, but I hear something European in your speech. Northern Europe, I think.”

  Fenris smiled again. “I was born in Skida.”

  “Norwegian.” Paul stood up and stretched, then rubbed his neck where the dart had pierced him. “That would explain the Nordic mythology.”

  “Mythology? I suppose,” Fenris said. “Now, how did you know where to look for me?”