Nadia's Children

by Steven E Wedel

  “Sometimes,” Jenny answered. “Why do you want to kill Joey’s mom?”

  Fenris put the picture down and pushed it back across the table to her. “She’s a bad woman,” he said. “She works with Ulrik.”

  Everything bad was blamed on Ulrik. Jenny wondered if one person could really do so much bad stuff. Friends had told her Santa Claus couldn’t be real because there was no way one man could deliver toys all over the world in one night. Maybe Ulrik was made up like Santa Claus. She looked back at the picture of her dead parents. Somebody had killed them.

  “What about Joey’s dad?” she asked.

  “He’s bad, too,” Fenris said. “I thought he was going to help us, then he broke his promise.”

  Jenny remembered being in a dark, smelly room with windows high up in the walls. She’d been sick. It was after she’d gone to the hospital, but the room wasn’t a hospital room. It was like a laundry room or something. There had been a washer and dryer. She knew that. And Joey’s dad had been there, too. She knew she’d woken up a few times and Joey’s dad was there offering her water, smoothing her hair and saying nice things to her. He wasn’t a bad man. She felt sure about that, but she didn’t say it.

  “Are you ready for bed?” Fenris asked.

  “I guess,” she said. She put her crayons back in their yellow-and-green box. “Can I ask you something?”

  “So many questions tonight,” Fenris said, and he laughed a little. “What would you like to know?”

  “Is Fenris your real name? It’s a funny name.”

  He smiled at her, his thin face almost as white as his hair in the dark. “No, it isn’t. But I won’t tell you my real name tonight. As werewolves, you know, we live for a long, long time. If you keep the same name for hundreds of years, people get suspicious because you look just like you did when their grandparents knew you. So you move a lot and change your name a lot.”

  “Will I live a long time, too?” she asked.

  “Yes, you will.”

  “You’ll never let Walter kill me?”

  Fenris’s expression changed for just a moment and he looked a little angry and surprised. “No, Jenny, I’ll never let Walter hurt you. Why do you ask that?”

  “He scares me.”

  “Well, I scare him, and that’s enough to make him be good. Now, off to bed. Brush your teeth.”

  Jenny left him there, hurrying through his room and into the hallway beyond, to her room to change into her pajamas, then she brushed her teeth and returned to her bed.

  * * *

  Walter Hess had stumbled to his assigned room in Fenris’s house and passed out crossways on top of the bed. The cell phone ringing and vibrating in his pocket did not wake him up immediately, but eventually it did disturb his slumber enough that he rolled over and fished it out of his pants and put it to his ear. Then he pulled it away and hit the talk button.

  “Yeah? Hess,” he rasped out, his thick tongue not eager for the task.

  “Wake up.”

  Hess’s blurry mind processed the voice, cogs fit together and he found a match. “What is it, Will?” he asked.

  “Turn on your computer,” Will Wieland said. “I’m going to stream you a video you’re going to want to show the boss.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just turn on the computer. I’m uploading it now.”

  Hess pushed himself from the bed. “Fucking computer,” he muttered. “Why can’t you just tell me?”

  “Because Fenris is going to want to see it for himself.”

  “It’s big?”

  “Oh, it’s big. Computer on?”

  “It’s booting up.” Hess waited. “Okay,” he said when his background picture of Salma Hayek in nothing but a white sheet filled the screen. He opened his Internet browser. “Where is it?” He used his right index finger to punch in the URL his Oklahoma contact gave him.

  “Now watch it,” Wieland said.

  “I thought I’d just type all that shit in and walk away, dumbass,” Hess growled.

  “Is it playing yet?”

  “Loading. I need another drink.” He looked around the room, thinking he’d brought what was left in his bottle with him. Then the staccato introductory music of a TV news station pulled his gaze back to the computer. An older woman sat behind an anchor desk, her face solemn.

  “Grisly details about the death of a couple in Texas tonight,” she said. The picture changed, hesitated as the computer processed, showing a distorted image of a small, rustic building surrounded by trees. Then the video resumed with the old anchor providing voiceover. “Craig Light and his girlfriend Sheila Hale were found in this cabin near Deer Lake in eastern Texas this morning. The bodies were mauled as if by wild animals, but the couple’s 1998 Chevy Silverado pickup truck was stolen. Campers and park officials say they have heard wolves in the park, though there is no record of any wolves being in this part of Texas for nearly a century.” The image changed to show a fat man in a crisp uniform.

  “We haven’t had wolves here since they were hunted to extinction in the first couple of decades of the twentieth century,” he said, his jowls flapping as he spoke.

  The woman at the desk returned to the screen. “Police say the keys to the vehicle are missing. Speculation is that the truck was stolen, leaving the couple marooned in an area without cell phone coverage, and they were attacked by wolves, or wolf hybrids released in the park by a private owner,” she said. “The investigation is ongoing.” She turned to a curly-haired man in a blue suit seated next to her and shook her head with empathy. “Sad story, Kelly.” The video ended before he could respond.

  “Who was it?” Hess asked. “Do we know?”

  Wieland answered, “Don’t know yet. I have Rick and Tracy headed down there.”

  “How long?”

  “Three and a half, four hours,” he said. “They left about an hour ago. Take a little longer for them to see what’s going on. The place will be crawling with cops, and they’ll be looking for wolves. Could take a while.”

  “Anything else?” Hess asked. “Who do you think it was?”

  “Fuck if I know. Not out of the question for Ulrik, but I can’t believe he’d be there and kill just to steal a truck,” Wieland said.

  “No,” Hess agreed. “I’ll let Fenris know. Maybe he’ll figure it out. Call as soon as you know something.” Hess hung up, gathered the laptop and headed for Fenris’s private room.

  Skandar

  Waves rolled up the beach, foaming and whispering. The wolf jumped away from the cold, fish-smelling saltwater, then looked out over the blue expanse of rippling ocean. He whined, but there was nothing to be done about it. Something deep within his chest pulled him toward the water, toward the west, calling him, demanding that he move west. But the ocean blocked him.

  As soon as he turned away from the rolling sea and moved east up the bank and into the shade of the forest, Skandar felt restless. The thing within him made him stop and turn, looking back over the water from his elevated place, but there was still no denying that the way was impassable. He followed the tree line south, his head turned to face the west.

  Skandar could not remember feeling so alone and sad in hundreds of years. Two days before, he had been human. He had to keep telling himself that. For no reason he could fathom, after centuries as a wolf, he had fallen down and returned to a human form he scarcely remembered. Then, in a moment of panic, he lost it all.

  He couldn’t get it back. He’d tried. Many times he’d simply stopped in his walk toward the setting sun and tried to recall how, exactly, he’d gone from wolf to man. But nothing happened. He walked on.

  The sun went down, turning the sky and the water a deep, luxurious orange before the gray and black swallowed it and the sky was filled with the sparkling of millions of stars and a shining crescent moon. Skandar found a place between the roots of a massive oak tree, circled around twice, then settled down. He sighed, then lifted his head and let out a long, mournful howl.

>   The lonely, frustrated call had hardly faded before it was answered by another voice.

  Skandar perked up, his ears pricking forward. Had he invaded another wolf’s territory? It happened often enough, and he’d killed many wolves that tried to challenge him. This howl, though, was different. It wasn’t a warning. It was almost … recognition. Skandar scrambled up from his nest of leaves between the tree roots and set off southward, pausing every now and then to lift his head and howl, then listen for the response. The other wolf also was moving closer.

  Soon, the two animals found one another. They faced each other from the safety of tree trunks, each peering around to examine the other, watching and waiting. The other wolf kept his tail up, but otherwise his posture was not threatening. Skandar, too, kept his tail high and defiant. He had not shown submission to another wolf since the first year of his curse. So they stood, studying each other.

  Then the other wolf moved. Skandar watched in fascination as the animal stepped clear of the tree, then convulsed as if about to vomit, but instead went into spasms, its flesh bulging and rolling as the bones beneath moved and reformed, then it stood up on two legs, in the form of a tall, lean man with dark hair and curious eyes. The naked man reached a hand toward the wolf, and Skandar hesitantly stepped forward.

  Shara

  Night crept over the land, sliding from between the trees and stretching across the wide opening toward the house, over and around the building, making the embers of Josef Ulrik’s funeral pyre glow bright orange. Shara stood alone next to the pyre. Her eyes watered, but it was from the smoke and heat. The tears were gone.

  Chris caused this. Chris and Kiona. They have my son.

  Everyone else had retired to the house, or returned to their duties patrolling the woods and mountain that provided the natural defenses around the house. Shara suspected somebody was stationed inside to watch her. Thomas was worried about her. Did he think she would kill herself? What? What did he think she might do? Shara didn’t know, but she appreciated his concern. There was no need, though. Even as the heat of the pyre diminished and the night darkened, she could feel her heart hardening.

  Chris made his decision.

  Shara moved a hand to her abdomen, rubbing absently, thinking about the day Chris and Kiona roared up in the pickup truck, their werebear friend crashing through the woods, wolves and bear and humans fighting, shooting, tearing at one another. And Joey was crying, confused, thinking his mother had lied to him.

  I didn’t know. I thought he was dead.

  It was true, Shara thought. She’d believed Chris was dead. Should she have waited longer to become intimate with Thomas? Should she have considered how it would affect Joey?

  No changing the past. It’s done.

  She picked up a thick stick charred only on one end and used it to stir the coals. Orange sparks burst from the bits of wood, rising into the night like fireflies, like pieces of one great soul broken apart and sent out to die on their own. Shara pushed bits of wood, hot embers and glowing sparks. Ulrik was truly gone now. His ashes, like the sparks, sent into the air of Mexico, never to become one again.

  Shara scraped the coals into one pile so they would continue to burn themselves out, then dropped the stick onto the pile.

  “Good-bye, Ulrik,” she whispered one final time. She looked up at the stars, wondering for a moment if he was out there somewhere, looking back at her, then she turned away and went into the house.

  She heard talk in the kitchen and recognized Holle’s voice as she retold the story of the curse. Shara slipped through the living room to the staircase and moved silently up it. She paused at the door of the bedroom she shared with Thomas, but didn’t enter. Instead, she walked on down the hall to Ulrik’s room, the one where he’d suffered and finally died. There was a woman’s voice coming from the room. Despite the years, she recognized it as the voice of a popular Oklahoma TV news anchor. She twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open.

  Thomas stood in front of a television, the phone receiver pressed to his ear, three other men sitting on Ulrik’s bed or the chair at his desk. They all turned startled eyes to Shara when she came in. The news anchor continued to talk, but it was the image on the screen that made Shara freeze in the doorway.

  It was a green pickup truck. It was the truck, the one Chris and Kiona had been driving when they took Joey. It sat on four flat tires, a small cabin beside it. The camera panned back and Shara saw trees. Then the camera zoomed down and followed the trail of several sets of wolf prints.

  “…unknown. Authorities say there are bloodstains inside the cabin, but no body. They cannot say if there was another victim of the wolf attacks in this cabin,” the newswoman’s voice said. “Authorities are asking anyone with information about whoever was staying in this cabin to contact them immediately.”

  The image on the television screen returned to the Oklahoma City news station, where the thin, blonde anchorwoman looked at a sheaf of papers in front of her before looking back up at the camera. “Again, that truck has an Oklahoma license plate but is registered to David Stewart of Bozeman, Montana. It was purchased less than a month ago from a dealer in Stillwater.”

  The woman turned to a curly-haired blond man, who shook his head and said, “This story just keeps getting stranger.”

  “Yes,” the woman agreed before turning back to face the camera. “Again, an Oklahoma connection in the bizarre, possibly wolf-related death of a couple in east Texas.” The news broadcast went to a commercial for a Ford dealership.

  “What the hell was that?” Shara demanded. “That was the truck Chris and that bitch were driving.”

  The three men with Thomas looked away from her, pretending their shoes or the wallpaper were suddenly fascinating. Only Thomas kept his eyes on her as he said into the phone, “Thanks, Ben. Let me know of anything else. I need to go now.” Thomas hung up the phone.

  “Thomas, what is going on?” Shara asked.

  Thomas reached down and turned off the television set. “I didn’t think you were ready to know.”

  “Know what?”

  “You guys go on,” he said, dismissing the other men. “Be ready.”

  “Ready for what?” Shara said. She considered blocking the door, keeping the men in the room, but changed her mind and stepped aside so she could face Thomas alone. The three left and she slammed the door after them. Thomas flinched. “What the hell is going on? Is Chris dead? Is Joey …” She faltered, then said it. “Is Joey dead?”

  “No,” Thomas said. “Well, we don’t think so. They were in that cabin in a state park in east Texas. They got away, though. Kiona killed two people in another cabin and stole their truck. That’s how we lost them.”

  “How … You mean, you’ve known where they were all this time?” Shara felt the blood rushing to her face. She stepped closer to Thomas, her fists clenched at her sides so that she didn’t grab him and shake him. “You knew?” He nodded. “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “You were grieving,” he said.

  Shara turned away, but she was too angry. She spun back to face Thomas and this time she jabbed him in the chest with her right index finger to punctuate her words. “You knew where my son was and you didn’t tell me.”

  She saw the confusion on Thomas’s face. He wasn’t expecting this reaction from her. “I … we were trying to decide what to do. We thought we had them pinned down in that cabin.”

  “Are you worried, Thomas?” she asked. “Are you worried about Joey? Not about his safety, but that he might be a threat to this child?” She put a hand over her stomach again. “To your child?”

  The look of surprise on his face seemed genuine. “No, Shara,” he said. “I hadn’t even thought of that. We didn’t think you were ready to move on.”

  “Well, I am. I am the Mother of the Pack,” she said. “The whiney woman who sat around and did nothing was burned in that fire with Ulrik. I want to know everything. Do you understand?”

  He nodded, then a
slow smile pushed against the walls of his black goatee and his brogue was dramatically thick as he said, “I think I’ll like this dominating, lass.”

  Shara smiled, but it was a flash. “I’m serious, Thomas,” she said. “Ulrik’s dead. We have to do this. I don’t know what this is yet, but Old Ones are changing shape and coming to me and that means something. This one,” she paused and placed her hand over her belly again, “this one is really the one, I guess. But Joey is still my son. I want him back. Do you understand?” This time the question was soft, but no less urgent.

  Thomas held out his arms and Shara stepped into them, nuzzled her cheek against his chest and heard his heart beating. “I understand,” he said. “I apologize that we weren’t including you. And I would be lying if I said it was only out of respect for your grief.”

  “You didn’t think I was strong enough,” she said.

  “No, lass, we didn’t. Well, I knew, but wasn’t sure it had come to the surface yet,” he said, hugging her tighter.

  “Umm. You’re full of crap.”

  “Aye, but I love you.”

  Chris had said that, too. Then he’d kidnapped their son and run away with another woman. Thomas seemed to read her thoughts.

  “You believed he was dead. You cannot blame yourself, Shara.”

  “I know. I loved him, but I guess I knew, deep down, that it wouldn’t last. He accepted me as both wolf and woman once, but after Joey came, he hated the wolf. The injections, the fake names, even the mention of Ulrik. He hated it all. Now he’s with that Indian bitch and our son, who likes being a werewolf.”

  “Shara?”

  “Hmm?”

  “There’s a chance Kiona was in contact with Fenris before she and Chris came for Joey,” Thomas admitted.

  Shara looked up, then stepped back. “What? What do you mean?”

  “We know Fenris had people outside your old house in Stillwater while Kiona and Chris were there. Ulrik had people watching, too. There was a meeting in the house, then a few days later there was the raid here. Our people didn’t realize they’d left until it was too late.”