Nadia's Children

by Steven E Wedel

“Joey is learning to hunt,” Thomas said.

  “And Ulrik is not his teacher?” Fenris mused. “I’m surprised he’d trust the boy to anyone other than himself and Shara.”

  Neither Shara nor Thomas answered.

  “Make your choice, Shara,” Fenris urged. “Mommy and Daddy are waiting.”

  “Let them go,” Shara said. “I’ll … I’ll bring Joey to you.”

  She watched Fenris’s eyes narrow. His hands clutched at Don and Sue’s shoulders, digging in, making Sue cry and Don wince in pain. “You don’t have him,” Fenris accused. “That Indian bitch got him. Didn’t she?”

  Shara felt her mouth working, but no words came out. Thomas tried to rescue her. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  “Don’t play stupid with me, McGrath!” Fenris roared. “She got him, then kept him for herself. That bitch!”

  Shara watched, transfixed, as the little window on the computer showed Fenris transform to the wolfman stage. He towered over Don and Sue, snarling and slavering, his eyes burning pits of hate.

  “No.” Her voice was nothing more than a squeak. “Mom …”

  Fenris’s head came down and he tore into Sue’s throat. He shook once, twice, then ripped her head away from her body. Blood pumped into the air, staining his white fur while Don screamed like a woman. Fenris held Sue’s head in his mouth for a moment, then flicked his mighty neck and flung it away.

  “Daddy!” Shara screamed, her hands reaching for the computer screen.

  Fenris bit Don in the shoulder first, ripping away a huge chunk of meat that he swallowed. He stood over his victim, his own chest heaving as Don screamed in fear and pain while blood turned his pajamas bright red. Shara buried her face against Thomas’s chest and didn’t see the end, when Fenris took Don’s head between his deformed hands and pulled slowly upward.

  “Close that!” Thomas snapped at Ron. The click of a mouse ended the screaming, but Shara could still hear it in her head.

  She pushed away from Thomas and glared around the room. Everyone, even Thomas, shrank away from her. Inside herself, she felt her skeleton responding to the rage, and she welcomed it. She growled, clenching her fists, letting saliva run down her chin as the change tried to overcome her.

  But it didn’t. The pregnancy kept it from happening. Her failure only added to her frustration. Shara raised her head to the ceiling and screamed until her lungs were emptied. She looked at Thomas, then Ron, and finally to Holle, who’d stood behind the computer the entire time. “I’ll kill him,” she said. “I swear to God I’m going to kill him for that. Leave me alone for a while.”

  She pushed past Thomas as he tried to decide to reach for her or get out of her way. She left the house and hurried toward the forest at the base of the mountain that loomed to the west. She knew people were watching her from the house, but they couldn’t see the tears, so it was almost like she wasn’t crying.

  Skandar

  The man spoke in a nasally voice, using a language Skandar did not understand. He did understand from the hand motions and repetition that the man called himself Lucas. The man – Lucas – lay on the ground, then rose to his hands and knees, then to his feet. He bent over Skandar and said earnestly, “Vous devez vous concentrer.” Lucas stared, but Skandar didn’t understand.

  Lucas spun away, then turned back to the wolf and demanded, “Devenez un homme!”

  Skandar whined sympathetically. The man slumped to his buttocks and sat staring at the wolf. He took a deep breath. “Regardez-moi.”

  The change came to his eyebrows first. The hair grew and thickened, the brows stretching toward his temples as more hair sprouted from the pores of his arms, legs and belly. His jaw stabbed forward, his fingers became claws and he groaned with pain as his skull reshaped itself. Within a few moments, the dark-haired man had become a lean wolf.

  Instinctively, Skandar growled a warning. The wolf returned a whine to indicate he wasn’t a threat. Lucas, as a wolf, moved forward. Skandar’s hair bristled, but he remained seated, waiting to see what Lucas’s intentions were. Lucas whined encouragingly, then nudged Skandar’s neck, as if wanting him to do something. Lucas moved away, stood still, then began to transform again. He whimpered, moaned, and finally stood as a man again. With wolf hairs cascading from his arms, he waved at Skandar, wanting him to duplicate the change.

  “Maintenant vous le faites. Devenez un homme,” Lucas said.

  Skandar hung his head dejectedly.

  “Vous pouvez le faire!” Lucas urged.

  Skandar closed his eyes.

  “Vous devez vous concentrer.”

  Skandar focused, looking inside himself for the man he had lost for centuries, then found so recently, only to lose him again. He wanted the man back. He wanted to walk on two legs, to hold objects in hands, to speak words like Lucas was doing. Skandar visualized his own forelegs changing to become arms like he’d just seen Lucas do. He thought about his head changing shape, his legs lengthening and the wolf’s hair falling away from his body.

  It began in his chest. A tickling itch. It spread, filling his chest, then moving into his shoulders and haunches, through his neck and into his head, buzzing and itching. Then the dull ache of pain came, intensifying until his mouth opened in a silent, drooling scream that wouldn’t come. He fell over, his limbs thrashing, his tail pounding the earth, his eyes rolling up and tongue hanging out. Suddenly, one huge pain more agonizing than all the others ripped through him and he felt his body tearing itself apart.

  A change here. A change there. And then it was over. Skandar lay still, his chest heaving as his breath came out in short, sharp gasps.

  “Mon Dieu! Vous l'avez fait! Vous l'avez fait!”

  Joey

  “Is Daddy going to be like us now?” Joey was on his knees in the front seat of the crew cab pickup, holding on to the headrest and looking at his father lying across the back seat. He couldn’t see him very well because it was dark and they were on the highway. There were no street lights on the highway.

  “Yes,” Aunt Kiona answered.

  “I don’t think he’s going to like that,” Joey said.

  “He will. He’ll just have to get used to it,” the woman answered. Joey looked at her, his brow wrinkling, but she spoke again before he could argue any more. “Turn around and buckle up.”

  Joey gave his father one more look. Chris had stopped thrashing and was quiet again. It looked like he was asleep. Joey did as he was told, but kept listening for sounds from the back seat. Aunt Kiona wasn’t in the mood to talk very much, but that was okay.

  A lot had happened since he’d bitten Jenny Brown at recess. He tried to remember how long ago that was. It seemed like a long time, but really, he thought, it was this school year. But he hadn’t been to school for a long time, he reasoned.

  “What month is it?” he asked.

  “April,” Aunt Kiona said. She didn’t say it nice. Not mean, but like he’d interrupted her at something.

  That’s how she’d acted since she came back to the little house in the forest with the new truck. She’d used a mean voice to tell him to pick up all their stuff, then she’d turned into a half-wolf and carried Daddy to the truck. Joey guessed he hadn’t been going fast enough, because she grabbed everything away from him and threw it in the back of the truck and told him to get in.

  Joey liked that other truck better than this one. It had smelled good, like his mom’s perfume and something else, something that made him think of a grassy field. But Aunt Kiona had parked it in some trees and left him sleeping with his dad. When Joey woke up, she was back and pulling Chris out of the smell-good truck and putting him in the back seat of this one that smelled like cow poop.

  He missed his mom. He remembered her telling him he was a werewolf after he’d bitten Jenny. He hadn’t believed it, but she’d been right. She was always right. Aunt Kiona and Ulrik had taught him how to turn into a wolf whenever he wanted. It was fun. Then Aunt Kiona had gone away and come back with Daddy,
but Daddy was mad at Mom and he’d shot Ulrik, then made Joey come away with him and Aunt Kiona.

  Then Aunt Kiona bit Daddy in that little house they’d stayed in.

  He almost wished he was still in Mrs. Lentz’s class at home in Montana and that all of this hadn’t happened.

  “Where are we going?” Joey asked before he could stop himself. Of course, he’d already asked that question several times.

  “Be quiet, Joey,” Aunt Kiona said. She didn’t look at him. Last time he’d asked it had still been light enough for him to see the mad face she’d given him when he asked.

  Behind them, Chris groaned. Joey craned his neck to look into the back of the truck. Aunt Kiona warned him to stay in his seat. Daddy hadn’t called him. He’d just groaned because he was hurting. Most people had to be bitten to become werewolves. Joey knew he was special because he was born a werewolf. But he didn’t like it that his father was hurting. Aunt Kiona said it would only last for a little while, that he’d be okay, but it had been a long time. He wanted to ask how much longer it would be until Daddy was okay, but he didn’t want to make Aunt Kiona mad.

  Daddy had said his name a lot while he lay in the back seat of the two trucks. He’d also said Mom’s name – Shara – a few times. Once he’d said Ulrik’s name, but he’d said it like it tasted bad. And one time he’d said a cuss word, “Devil bitch.” Joey wasn’t sure what it meant, but he’d gotten in trouble once for saying “bitch” after he heard it on TV. He guessed “devil” was okay, though.

  The road they were on was bumpy and had a lot of twists. There were a lot of trees, too. The trees seemed to be real close to the road, like they were trying to eat the road. That was crazy, though, because trees didn’t eat anything. Not even the birds that lived in their branches.

  Or did they? Joey looked out his window at the black shapes against a dark sky. When school started he didn’t believe in werewolves. Now he knew he was one. So maybe trees did eat things.

  They won’t eat me!

  Aunt Kiona turned the radio on again, dialed through the stations, then cussed, hit the dashboard and turned the radio off. The only thing playing was static.

  Eventually, the sun rose ahead of them, but by that time Joey had fallen asleep again.

  Holle

  Holle sat in a deep, cushioned chair of the sprawling house, listening to Thomas McGrath’s telephone conversation while thinking about Shara. Such comforts people have! She never would have imagined a chair like this centuries before, when she’d been happy to have a bed of animal skins over straw. Never mind the miracle of the device Thomas was using to talk to a man in another country hundreds and hundreds of miles away.

  Thomas hung up the phone and turned to her. “They found the truck,” he said in that delightful lilting voice he had. “There was blood in the back seat. I guess it was one of those extended cab trucks. They’re doing DNA tests to see if the blood matches the people killed. The cops found an old man who sold his farm truck to an Indian woman with cash.”

  “Nothing about the boy?”

  Thomas shook his head. “There was a Michigan map on the floorboard of the stolen truck.” His eyes moved toward the door and Holle knew what he was thinking.

  “I will go,” she said. “She loves you, yes, but I think it would be better if a woman went.”

  Thomas nodded. “She showed her parents what she was. They rejected her, and she still loved them. She is a good woman.”

  Holle grunted in agreement. “They were also the last connection to the life she had before she became a werewolf.” She rose from the comfortable chair and left Thomas sitting alone in the living room.

  Shara wasn’t hard to find. She’d traveled straight through the back yard, across the open hardpan and into the scrubby brush on the side of the mountain that cast an evening shadow toward the house as the sun began to sink in the west. Though in human form, Holle’s senses were sharp enough that she could pick out the smell of a human even without the help of the wolves guarding the area around her. Shara sat on a boulder, her hands loose between her knees, her hair hanging over her face as her head was bowed. Holle folded herself into a sitting position in front of the young woman and waited for her to speak.

  “I thought Thomas would be the one to come for me,” Shara said.

  “He wanted to,” Holle told her. “I asked him to stay and let me come. I hope that is fine.”

  After a moment Shara said, “They didn’t deserve that. They didn’t know anything about where I am. They didn’t know they were grandparents, didn’t know their daughter was fulfilling some prophecy. They didn’t know anything. He didn’t have any reason to kill them.”

  “Yes, he did,” Holle argued. “He is trying to get to you. He is trying to get you to make a mistake.”

  Shara grunted.

  “How will you respond?”

  “I don’t know. There’s nothing I can do for them. There’ll be a funeral.”

  “And police,” Holle reminded.

  Shara nodded. “And Fenris will probably have the whole thing watched.”

  “He will.”

  Shara made a helpless gesture with her hands. “I didn’t ask for any of this. All these dead people because of me. I had a husband before Chris. Bryan. He’s dead. He shot himself when he found out what I was. Ulrik’s dead. Now my mom and dad. Chris hates me and he helped kidnap our son. All because of the prophecy.”

  “Few people ask for their destinies. We discover what the gods want from us as we go along. Would I and my people have raided that village if we’d known what our fate would be? No. But it was our destiny to do so.”

  “No free will?” Shara asked. “Everything is pre-ordained? I don’t believe that.”

  Now it was Holle’s turn to shrug. “It is time to use your free will. What will you do next? How will you lead us?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. I want to go after Joey. I want him back.”

  “Who will you send?”

  Shara looked up. “Send? I’ll go. Me and Thomas.”

  Holle reached up and put her hand over Shara’s, squeezing gently. “You cannot go,” she said. “You are the Mother, and you are carrying our Alpha in your womb. Traveling is too dangerous.”

  “I have to do it.”

  “You are our leader now, Shara, but I promise you that we will not allow you to leave,” Holle said. “Ulrik established a network that is already providing information about your son. We have people experienced at this kind of thing. We will find your son.”

  “What information?”

  Holle smiled at her. “A stolen truck was found and we know that Kiona bought another one from a man in Oklahoma.”

  “Oklahoma?” Shara’s brow puckered. “They wouldn’t go to our house in Stillwater? We know Fenris is watching that. Chris wouldn’t go to him for help. No way. He wouldn’t.”

  Holle nodded, but she didn’t share the younger woman’s confidence. She had never met Shara’s husband and couldn’t guess what he would do. The Indian woman, though, she had watched off and on for many years and did not trust at all. “You realize your husband will be powerless against Kiona,” Holle said.

  Shara’s lips pressed together, then she nodded. “Why?” she asked. “Why would he go to her?”

  “They both want your son.”

  Shara sighed. “I know.”

  “Shara?” Holle’s hand tightened over Shara’s until the woman faced her again. “Will his father care for the boy?”

  “Ye-es,” Shara said hesitantly.

  “He is not the Alpha.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Holle hesitated for a moment, then said what she knew Shara did not want to hear. “Your son is a werewolf, yes, but tracking him may use resources we cannot spare for one who does not hold the position you thought was his.”

  Shara pulled her hands away. For a moment Holle thought she would get up and run away, maybe curse her, but she didn’t. There was resistance, however. “We
have to find him,” Shara said. “We have to bring him back.”

  “It is something to think about,” Holle persisted. “Kiona is not going to Fenris. He would not have risked so much to kill your mother and father if he had your son.”

  “I can’t just forget about him,” Shara said. “He’s my son. My baby. I love him, even if he isn’t the Alpha.”

  “Of course you do. You have always been a loving mother to him. I watched you for many years in your home in Montana,” Holle admitted. “I avoided Ulrik’s emissaries as well as Fenris’s, but I was there.” She reached for and claimed one of Shara’s hands again, squeezing it reassuringly. “You will not forget him. Leave him with his father.”

  “And Kiona.”

  “That is the part I do not like,” Holle said. “With Ulrik’s death, I think we – I think you – should have her killed.”

  Shara nodded. “I can agree with that.” Then she paused. “But Joey likes her.”

  “All the more reason you cannot be involved. We will track them. It is in the best interest of the Pack to know where they are and what they are doing. But our most important task is protecting you and your unborn.”

  Holle felt something shift in Shara’s demeanor. It wasn’t a full concession, not yet, but she was opening herself to the possibility of accepting what she’d heard. “Tell me more about what’s going on. The trucks in Oklahoma?”

  “Thomas could tell you better than I,” Holle said. “Come home with me and he will tell you. Perhaps he has learned even more by now.”

  That was enough. Shara stood and pulled Holle to her feet. Together, they made their way down the side of the mountain.

  “You may have to be my mother now,” Shara warned. “My own mother really wasn’t so good at it.”

  “I would be very proud to fill that role for you.” Holle smiled at her and took Shara’s hand in hers again.

  “I want to know more about you. What you did for so many years, how you found me, how you learned English. Everything.”