Wolf Hunted

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Or so I believed.

  “Well, yes,” I said. “Maybe. It won’t be that simple.” How much was Akeyla willing to sacrifice for Jax? What was he asking her to do? I looked out over the lake, at the moon streaking across the water and the faster-than-expected rebuilding of the Carlson house.

  Helping Ellie wasn’t that simple, either. Every evening, I went out looking for a woman I felt compelled to help. A woman who meant more to me than I remembered and who wanted me to stop.

  “Friendships are complicated,” I said. Friendships and relationships.

  Over against the fence, Sal huffed.

  Jax looked at the axe. “What’s her problem?”

  Sal found the little wolf’s attitude wanting. His alpha-ness was moot when it came to elves.

  I chuckled. Of course Sal would only consider the elf part of this problem. “She also thinks you need to apologize to Akeyla,” I said.

  Jax sighed and dropped his arms to his sides, but didn’t respond.

  “I’m going to be straight with you,” I said. Maybe I needed to learn the same lesson. “I’m not going to talk down to you, son.” I wasn’t going to squat the way Maura did, though. Playing the physical hierarchy might get him to listen.

  He nodded.

  “When your mom went to college, what happened?” He needed to learn that no one’s ditch was isolated from the other ditches in the community.

  “Dad drove to Fargo every full moon,” he said.

  The deliberations around Axlam’s college years had been a major event in Alfheim. The pack had long wanted to increase their integration into mundane life, and to test living away from the central group. Axlam was the first candidate who had the will, creativity, and intelligence to try it.

  The wolves and the elves made a plan and set up a schedule. Axlam made it through four years at the University of North Dakota in Fargo with zero mishaps. She graduated with honors, and came home with the training necessary to help Dag manage the city—and a mate.

  “Or your mother drove home. That was not a small feat for either of them, or for the pack.” Axlam had come home from Fargo about the same time Maura had gone to Hawaii. “An elf always went with your father when your mother couldn’t come home.”

  She’d had full buy-in. She’d had community help, and a mate capable of communicating with her about every aspect of the journey.

  “Jax,” I said, “the point is that you will be asking a lot more of Akeyla than either of you realize right now.”

  Was I asking more of Ellie than I realized? I forgot her every evening. I’d be forgetting her within the next half-hour for sure, once the sun fully descended behind the horizon.

  And every morning, I yelled out for her anew. I wailed like a little kid who didn’t understand why my best friend had moved away.

  “I know,” he said. “We’re kids and we don’t understand adult things.” His wolf reared up. “It’s not like we’re going to have a baby!” His innate wolf magic flared.

  Babies, I thought. A possible family.

  I set aside the thought and stared down his flaring magic. “I’m going to leave explaining that bit of your mate magic to your parents,” I said.

  His wolf subsided, but this time, he did roll his eyes.

  “My point,” I said, “is that one day you will be the alpha of your aspirations. And if you value yourself more than you do her, fated mate or not, you will lose your best friend.”

  Was I even capable of carrying my own burden? How could I possibly understand Ellie's if I didn’t understand my own?

  He blinked and his face contorted with kid confusion. His body tensed and his wolf magic reformed.

  It snarled, not at me, but at the wider world—as if anger was creeping in to replace his inability to grasp what I said.

  And I wondered if, once the concealments wiped my memory tonight, all I’d have left was my own creeping rage.

  I would never allow that rage near Ellie. Had I already? Was that why she told me to go away?

  Jax didn’t understand, but I sure understood allowing rage to kick away any sense of an overwhelming world. Rage was much easier to understand than other people’s needs. Rage always elicited fear, and other people’s fear was familiar. Other people’s fear I could control.

  “Akeyla is mine,” he whispered.

  Not good, I thought. “No,” I said.

  He—and his wolf—frowned again.

  “I know it feels like she is yours.” I needed to make this more concrete, or he’d get lost in his anger. “If Akeyla is going to skip a grade, she has to work extra hard and prove to her teacher that she can handle fifth grade next year, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Why would she do that?” I asked.

  He stared at the Carlson house, but his wolf settled down into a contemplative shadow. “Because she likes school.”

  “Yes,” I said. “You’re excellent at baseball, and good at school. Akeyla is excellent at school and good at baseball. You have common interests, but different preferences.”

  He groaned. “She’s not good at baseball, Mr. Frank.”

  I shrugged. “She could be, if she wanted to. She’s an elf.”

  The frown returned.

  “Jax, you demanded that Akeyla exchange her preferences for yours. How would you feel if she did that to you?”

  His attention suddenly, utterly shifted away from me. He perked up and craned his neck to look around the house. “Mom and Dad are here.”

  He wasn’t going to answer. Not with the distraction of his parents’ arrival. Hopefully he wouldn’t forget any of our exchange—the way I’d be forgetting about my moment with Ellie at the church. I’d forget, and not learn my lesson.

  I counted three, two, one… and the faint glow of headlights swept the house. Axlam and Gerard pulled into the driveway.

  “Do you understand what I mean?” I patted Jax’s shoulder. “You need to be more than a good friend, Jaxson. You need to be Akeyla’s best friend. Always.”

  I still wasn’t sure he understood, but he and his wolf had calmed. At least he seemed to be contemplating what I said.

  “Make sure you say good-bye to Akeyla and her mom,” I called. “Don’t forget your burger.”

  He looked over his shoulder. “Thank you, Mr. Frank.” He ran toward the door.

  I’d need to have a talk with Gerard and Axlam about our conversation. Maura, too. Hopefully I’d helped.

  Sal reminded me that I’d left her leaning against the deck rail.

  “Yes?” I asked.

  She wanted to know if I was going to keep my promise to take her for a walk tonight.

  “A walk?” I asked. I usually went out at night for an hour or two looking for Ellie.

  She was out there, somewhere. Alone, and I hoped okay. I didn’t know, or at least I didn’t think I knew. I’d been keeping notes on my phone. I should probably check them before going to bed tonight.

  I watched Gerard squat down so he was at his son’s height. He placed his hand on Jax’s shoulder. Words were spoken. Jax looked at the floor.

  Slowly and self-consciously, Jax walked over to the table, where Akeyla ate her burger. He touched her arm.

  She pulled away and wouldn’t look at him.

  Jax slumped. His face fell. And the consequences of his behavior landed fully on his young soul.

  He looked up at his father, who shook his head. Jax picked up his meal from the stack and walked away, presumably toward his parents’ car.

  Akeyla chewed. Gerard followed his son toward the door, with Axlam and Maura following behind. And I stood on the deck watching everyone leave my little niece to eat her fries alone.

  Something that, at least tonight, she seemed perfectly happy to do.

  Sal tossed me another request for walk.

  I rubbed my forehead and looked out along the lakeshore. “I should go in,” I said. My burger was getting cold, and my family needed me.

  Ellie needed me, or so I told
myself every night when I walked into the woods to search for stray magic and my dog.

  Or maybe she didn’t. Maybe I needed her. Maybe I was intruding into a life I had no business touching.

  Women were confusing.

  I swung Sal onto my shoulder. “Maybe later,” I said, and walked away from the woods and toward the bright, burger-scented kitchen.

  Chapter 9

  It turned out our interloper had showed up two more times on Saturday, first at the Wolftown Gallery, and later still at Alfheim’s main grocery store out on the highway. Both times he’d sauntered in, done a lot of sniffing, and made a scene. Nothing broken, thank goodness, but he did rant about the “tribal” art at the gallery. And at the grocery store, he complained about the “pedestrian” deli choices.

  Then he vanished. No security camera picked up a car with a license to trace. None of the local hotels or resorts had anyone staying who matched his description.

  I was beginning to think that Alfheim had been crashed by the world spirit of Entitled Arrogance.

  Thing was, the Wolftown Gallery was within three blocks of the homes of half the Alfheim Pack’s members, and according to Ed, no one had sensed anything weird. Same for the one elf who’d been in the grocery store.

  That was five days ago. He’d left behind no magicks, and had somehow managed to avoid leaving any clear security footage. No one had seen—or sensed—him since.

  Not me. Not Ed or any of the elves. Not the pack. Our interloper had disappeared as quickly as he’d appeared.

  So Alfheim went about her business of preparing for the Samhain runs and the coming blizzard.

  Because we most definitely had a blizzard coming. I felt it in my bones—and on the skin of my face. The morning was the coolest yet, as if the coming storms wanted to make sure all of Alfheim remembered to buy milk and coffee, and to make sure we all had gas for our generators and wood for our fireplaces. I left the garage door open anyway, for the bright Thursday morning light.

  I probably should have dug around for a space heater.

  Still, I had a bike in my garage that needed fixing. The kids had Thursday and Friday off for the yearly Minnesota Educators conference, and Akeyla was home, so I figured today was a good day to at least get one chore out of the way.

  Turned out that the green bike’s brakes needed tightening. The rear tire also needed replacing—a patch would hold, but both tires were worn and in bad shape. The frame showed a little rust, too, and at least two coats of paint under the green—one red, and under that a thick layer of orange. The entire crank and pedal assembly wobbled enough that the chain easily slipped off the gears.

  The frame had a heft to it that modern bikes did not, and all the mechanisms were well-worn and heavily used.

  I wiped my hands on a rag and stepped back. The garage needed cleaning before the snow hit, otherwise Maura’s sedan would be out on the gravel with Bloodyhood. I couldn’t get the truck into the garage with the plow, so Maura might as well use it.

  But for the moment I had an old forest green bike leaning on its loose kickstand in the middle of the garage floor as I tested its parts and wiggled its bits.

  “Vintage” best described the bike’s workings. It was a lovely bit of craftsmanship, but like all old things that had lived a good life, it really needed to retire.

  I pulled out my phone to snap a few images of the frame. Perhaps the shop in town could get me the parts I—

  And there she was looking out at me, my sad-eyed mystery woman hugging my wayward dog.

  Her name was Ellie. Ellie Jones. I had notes.

  The bike was hers.

  I looked up at the clear blue of the pre-blizzard sky. I was to fix the bike and leave it with a new cellphone against the outside railing of my deck, near the gap that led to the path into the woods.

  That explained why I had a second phone sitting on the kitchen counter next to my landline.

  My notes read like a hostage exchange—leave the bike, the phone, your million small, non-sequential doubts and worries under the oak tree or you will never see your dog again.

  Why would I be so terse? My healthy and happy hound came home regularly. The hostage here was a woman named Ellie Jones. Or maybe the hostage was me.

  I must have talked to her, otherwise I wouldn’t have written myself such detailed notes about the bike, or about making sure she had a cellphone.

  The bike’s handlebars halted and slipped, and I shook my head. “You need to go to the repair shop in town,” I said. “I don’t have the tools or parts you need here.”

  I’d take it into town. Ellie couldn’t use it until spring, anyway.

  I should probably leave the cellphone, though.

  The crunching of tires on my gravel drive and the purr of an engine rolled in through the open garage door. I dropped the rag on the table and walked out into the open area between the garage and the house.

  Axlam waved as she pulled her sedan around and parked next to Maura’s by the front door. She often came by on the weekends with Jax. The kids played while she and Maura had coffee on the deck. But today she was alone.

  She fiddled with something on the passenger seat, then unfolded herself from the vehicle.

  The wolves were all graceful, but Axlam’s grace often matched an elf’s, and I’d long suspected her poise would have been there even if she wasn’t an alpha werewolf.

  Today she wore a silver-blue headscarf that matched her innate magic in both color and shine.

  “Sometimes I think you can see magic, too.” I circled my finger around my face to indicate the scarf. “You match exquisitely this morning.”

  She smiled as she walked over. “It seemed the correct color to wear today.” She pointed at the sky. “With the storms coming, ya know,” she said with her slight Northern Minnesota lilting accent. Axlam mostly sounded as if she lived in The Cities—it helped with City Manager business, she liked to say—but her thirty years in Alfheim did register in her voice.

  Up until recently, she’d been the only person of East African descent in the city. There’d been some harassment issues with a few of the outside-of-town locals this past year, but regional Alfheim seemed to be better behaved with our recent immigrants than several other small Minnesota towns.

  I was pretty sure the mundane issues wore on her. They wore on Ed, too. And like with Ed, she really didn’t share those rough edges with me.

  I figured that if they needed my help, they’d ask.

  Axlam pulled her blue jacket tight around her frame.

  “Got the new plow.” I pointed at Bloodyhood. “So don’t worry about your drive while the family’s out running.” Plowing wasn’t something they needed to ask about, though. They lived about three miles up the road, on one of the other local lakes. Once it became clear that Axlam was as alpha as Gerard and Remy, the pack rearranged a bit. Gerard and Axlam built a big pack-ready house outside of town, while Remy stayed in Wolftown with most of the members.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “No problem.” I nodded toward the car. “Can’t help but notice you’re little-wolf free.” Even though Maura said there’d been a few moments of semi-disruptive behavior at school this week, I expected Jax to visit. He usually never passed over a chance to see Akeyla.

  Axlam did the maternal version of an eye roll—that face I’d seen so many times in my two hundred years when a mother wished her child would get on with the process of learning a lesson. “Jaxson has not yet fully come to terms with his behavior, so Gerard took him to Duluth to pick up Remy for some quality alpha male time.” She grinned and shook her head.

  “Ah,” I said. Remy must be flying in today. I was kind of surprised the elves had brought him straight home on a charter. But then again, that was Magnus’s territory, and he was in New Zealand. “I hope I didn’t make things worse,” I said, “when I talked to Jax.”

  Axlam patted my arm. “You helped. He needed to hear that his behavior was inappropriate from an adult male
of Akeyla’s family.” She glanced at the house. “Better you than one of the elves.”

  Her shoulders shifted under her coat. Perhaps she hadn’t come to have coffee with Maura.

  “The house across the lake,” she said, “the one destroyed by that vampire who claimed to be your brother?” She never entertained the possibility of my brother actually being family. “It’s owned by a lawyer, correct?”

  She was probably here to talk about what happened with the interloper. “Aaron Carlson,” I said. “He specializes in immigration law. His wife does intellectual property, I believe.”

  Axlam nodded. “What was your impression of him?”

  “Arne put the fear of Odin into him. He also seemed to be an overall good guy,” I said. “Honestly, I haven’t talked to him all that much.”

  Axlam rubbed her hands together. “We may need him,” she said. “The elves can work their magic, but they can’t update Federal databases.”

  “True,” I said. Modern mundanes and their technology had presented a whole host of new thorns in the sides of many magicals.

  Axlam looked up at my face. “Do you have his contact information?”

  This was about more than the pack, or the interloper at Raven’s Gaze. “Everything okay?” I asked.

  She patted my arm again. “We are trying to be proactive about mundane protections. That’s all.” She sighed. “That man, the one who lied about being a photographer and made the scene, what do you remember about him?”

  So this wasn’t a “that’s all” kind of situation, after all.

  The man had been a walking cliché. “He seemed too rich for his own good. Arrogant, too. He knew much more about the magicals living here than he should have, and like you said, he’s a liar.”

  Axlam stared at the wine bottle gate longer than I expected, then inhaled sharply. “He felt… familiar… in the park.”

  Familiar? “How so? Like Old World familiar?” The wolves did sense something dark when he showed.

  “We aren’t sure, but the consensus among the pack is that he’s involved with some sort of wolf magic.” Her magic flared ever so slightly. “And with him vanishing immediately…” She shook her head.