Fenris would not let him approach them. It had been the pulling, nagging instinct in his gut that had led them to the large, fortified house where the Mother and young Alpha lived, but Fenris would not approach them.
“They are poisoning the mind of the Alpha,” Fenris had explained. “They are turning him against us. They want to use him to control all of us.”
“Him?” Skandar asked, puzzled. The gender of the Alpha was clear and, though Fenris spoke in English and this new language was still new to Skandar, he felt certain the word “him” referred to a male.
“Yes,” Fenris had replied. “They call him Joey. Named him after Josef Ulrik. I haven’t seen that old bastard or the boy. Where are you, Ulrik? Where are you hiding the boy?”
Skandar remained silent, letting Fenris believe what he would. The white-haired wolfman was obviously keeping some secrets, Skandar reasoned, so he might as well keep one of his own.
They’d left Mexico with Fenris convinced Ulrik had taken the boy named Joey away from the complex for some training. Fenris had dismissed the girl child as the whelp of the blonde woman only Skandar had recognized as Holle. At first Fenris snorted at the idea of turning a child, then he’d said something about a person named Jenny and was quiet for a while.
“Dead?” Fenris suddenly screamed. Skandar’s head snapped away from the window to look at the two men in the front seat. The crescent of Fenris’s visible face was scarlet with rage. The other man’s voice trembled as he answered.
“Jenny killed him,” the man said. The driver had short black hair and a sharply trimmed beard that traced his strong jaw line.
Fenris said nothing, but the tension in the car mounted as his lips tightened. Nervous, the driver couldn’t seem to stop talking.
“She’s not a little girl, anymore, you know” the driver said. “Hess went to her room one night about a week ago. In the morning, we found him dead in there.”
Skandar watched the man’s knuckles whiten on the wheel that controlled the truck’s direction. A jerk of that wheel, Skandar knew, was likely to send the metal box of a speeding truck into oncoming traffic, against the cliffs or outcroppings to the right, or maybe even into the ocean on the left. Finally the man added, “She’s gone.”
Fenris was quiet for a moment more, but Skandar felt the rage boiling inside him. “Jennifer Brown killed Walter Hess, then just walked away. That’s what you’re telling me?”
“She – she stole a truck. Just left.”
After a long, tense silence, Fenris asked a question even Skandar knew the answer to. “Who was on duty at the gate?”
The driver visibly squirmed in his seat. “I was. Fenris, I didn’t know. I didn’t – ”
“Pull over,” Fenris demanded.
“I didn’t know,” the man said again.
“Pull over,” Fenris said again, then changed his mind. “No. No, keep driving.” He pulled a black device from his jacket pocket. Buttons glowed green beneath a bright screen. He pushed some buttons, then held the device to his head. After a moment he barked into it. “Who is in charge of my house?” He waited, then said, “Put her on the line. Now.”
Skandar watched the driver. The man’s eyes flicked quickly from the road ahead to the angry white-haired man beside him to the glow of the instrument panel. Ahead of them, a long line of red lights was stopped on the highway. Far up in the line, brighter red and blue lights flashed.
“Kelley?” Fenris demanded. “Is it true about Jenny?”
Skandar could just hear a female voice answer in the affirmative. “Hess was getting more and more bold toward her the longer you were gone,” the woman said.
The truck rolled to a stop at the end of the line of motionless vehicles. Skandar could hear the driver breathing in short, quick gasps.
“Draper here was on duty when she left?”
“Yes,” the woman’s tiny voice answered.
“She had the gate code,” the driver whined. “She said she was going for supplies.”
Fenris spoke over the device held to his head. “It never occurred to you that she is too young for a driver’s license? That she had never driven before? That she was all alone?”
The man, Draper, didn’t answer.
“What?” Fenris snapped into the phone. “I see.” He’d held the phone against his head tightly enough that Skandar couldn’t hear what the woman had said. “There seems to have been an accident ahead of us. We’ll be there soon,” Fenris said, then closed the phone, hiding its array of lights.
At that moment, the driver threw open his door and bolted. Fenris lunged at him, grabbing a fistful of shirt, but Draper was strong. The shirt ripped, and the man was gone, running along the shoulder of the highway in the direction they’d come from. Fenris examined the bit of faded denim shirt he held in his hand, then threw it to the floorboard. A second later the SUV crashed into the back of the car in front of them.
The jolt wasn’t serious, but it caught Skandar by surprise and he felt an instant of panic. But then the truck stopped moving and there was only the sound of Fenris cursing. He grabbed the knob on top of a stick between where he sat and where Draper had been and shoved it forward. He threw open his door and stepped out as a woman got out of the driver’s side of the car ahead of them. A younger man, probably the woman’s son, got out of the other side of the car. Two younger faces turned to look out the back window.
“You stay here,” Fenris ordered as he got out of the truck and slammed his door.
Skandar watched Fenris talk to the woman. The breeze from the sea played at his long white hair and he was constantly pulling it away from his clean-shaven face. He smiled at the woman, listened to her, or pretended to, as she gesticulated while complaining. Finally Fenris reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and took out a wallet he bought at the airport in Mexico. He counted out several pieces of green paper and handed them over to the woman. She accepted them, and her frantic pointing from Fenris’s truck to her smaller car stopped. She and her son returned to their places in the car and crept forward after the slowly advancing line of tail lights. Fenris came to the driver’s side of his own truck and slid in behind the wheel, closing the door left open by the fleeing Draper.
“He got lucky and played his hand well coming up on this traffic,” Fenris muttered. “Still, we’ll catch him, and he’ll pay for his negligence.”
“Who is this girl who escaped?” Skandar asked.
“No one,” Fenris answered curtly. “Just a child. I had a plan for her. I have a plan for her. We just have to bring her back. She’s never lived on her own. She won’t be difficult to find.”
“You will not tell me your plan?”
“I will not.”
Skandar was quiet. The truck moved slowly forward. Fenris seethed silently. Skandar looked out the window again. Traffic moving south was almost non-existent because of the accident ahead of them.
“You should not keep your secrets from me,” Skandar said at last.
“What? What did you say?” Fenris demanded, twisting around in the seat again.
“You are old by the standards of your kind,” Skandar said. “And you are wiser in the ways of this time of the earth. But you are not a good leader. I should kill you, but I will not because you have taught me much.”
Skandar pulled the door lever similar to the one he’d watched the driver pull just before he’d run away. The truck was still moving, but not very fast. Skandar hopped out, steadied himself after a few rushed slaps of his boots on the asphalt, then dropped into a fast lope heading south, after Draper, back toward the Alpha.
“You have to be fucking kidding me.”
Skandar ignored Fenris’s incredulous curse and kept moving. He crossed the road, using his hands and feet for holds in the sloping, blasted rock face until he was among the trees above the highway, then turned south again.
Kiona
The turtle had wandered close to the house on stilts. Joey, shirtless, had been splitting firewo
od while Kiona set out a jar of tea to brew in the sun. Kiona was studying the sheen of sweat on Joey’s tanned chest when the turtle’s slow movement caught her eye. She turned her attention to the massive reptile lumbering across the dooryard. Joey’s chopping stopped. He’d noticed the turtle, too. Or, Kiona figured, he’d noticed she was no longer looking at him and wanted to see what she was looking at now.
“Turtle soup?” he asked, letting the axe handle rest over his right shoulder. He smiled at her. His face, for the moment, was nearly acne free. His long, sun-bleached hair was damp on his brow. Kiona could smell his virile man-scent.
“Cook him?” Kiona called back. “The meat would lose its flavor.”
“I don’t eat raw meat as a man,” Joey answered.
“Then change.” Kiona pulled her loose shirt over her head and dropped it to the warped boards of the porch. Joey’s scent immediately changed as his body reacted to the sight of her naked breasts. She grinned and unbuttoned her faded jeans, pushing them down and stepping out of them. The alligator snapping turtle was unmoved by her naked body, but Joey was another matter. Kiona watched the boy glance around the clearing, his face excited but nervous. “You’ve seen me naked before,” she reminded.
“Yeah, but …” He faced her, unable to continue.
“It’s different now, isn’t it?” she asked. “Your body is changing.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You know your father won’t be back for a few days.”
Joey swallowed. “I guess.”
Kiona nodded. “That turtle is slow, but he’ll get away if we don’t do something. Are you in?”
Slowly, Joey nodded his head as his hands moved to his jeans and pulled open the fly. “I … I … Sorry,” he said, opening the fly and pushing down his pants and underwear. His erection revealed what he was apologizing for.
“I’d be insulted if it wasn’t like that,” Kiona said. Then she called her wolf, but stopped halfway in the transformation so that she was the massive, bipedal beast with the wolf’s head, hair, and claws, but overall shape of a human. She bounded off the porch and jumped onto the turtle’s back, raising her head and howling playfully. A moment later, Joey joined her.
The turtle dropped to the ground. Its head and legs vanished into its massive shell and it remained very still. It was large, even for its species. Kiona guessed it weighed in at about two hundred pounds, with a shell at least 30 inches in diameter. She slid off it and motioned Joey away. After some hesitation, the turtle’s legs came out and the tip of its head peeked forth. It got up and took a step. Kiona dove forward, onto her belly, and snapped her jaws shut on one of the reptile’s front legs. The blood was thick and warm and delicious once her long teeth penetrated to the tough flesh.
On the other side, Joey had missed his dive. Kiona released the leg, which immediately disappeared into the shell. She stood up, put her hands under the turtle’s hard shell, and flipped it over, exposing its olive-green belly. Now the helpless animal’s limbs and neck all protruded at full length, waving frantically.
Kiona changed into a complete wolf, tilted her head, and bit into the turtle’s belly. Also as a wolf, Joey joined her on the other side. The turtle cried in pain, its voice low but piercing and sad. The wolves kept eating, growling playfully, their eyes usually locked over the bleeding belly of the reptile. After a time, the turtle’s desperate waving of limbs slowed, was reduced to an occasional twitch, then stopped and hung limply. The wolves ate for a while longer.
Finished, Kiona was first to leave the dead reptile. She frisked around the turtle and bumped her flank against Joey’s, pushing him away. He growled and nipped at her furry throat, so she pushed him harder. Joey lost his footing and fell onto his back. Kiona jumped on top of him, holding him in place as she licked the blood from his muzzle. He licked her back. She sensed his body responding to the play, so she intensified the action. She nuzzled his ear, growling and licking, then worked her way down until she was able to lick the long, glistening red of his penis.
Joey yelped and squirmed away from her. Kiona let him go. The young wolf stood up and faced her, his eyes confused. Kiona stepped forward and licked his muzzle again, then she turned away from him and lifted her tail.
That was all it took.
Shara
Shara trotted back to the shady spot where Thomas stood. The mesquite tree providing the shade was low and squatty, growing from a patch of high, course blue-green grass. The shade wasn’t much and Shara watched Thomas, naked in his human form, standing as close to the tall grass as he could to be in as much shade as possible. As a wolf, she walked up to him, sat down, and let her own shape change back to human.
“Definitely two of them,” Shara said.
“Aye. And they were here for a while,” Thomas agreed. He turned and waved in the general direction of the belt of trees that surrounded their home. “There are a few places they left scent that would offer a fair view, but it would seem they never got closer than this spot.”
“With binoculars, though, or maybe a telescope …” Shara mused.
“Aye. What would they have seen, though? Telescopes won’t tell them how many sentries are in the woods or posted on the mountain.”
“No, but it would tell them there are people there. It would tell them I’m here, and that Ulrik isn’t. Or Joey. And they’d see Morrigan,” Shara said. “They could have learned a lot.”
“It would be tricky,” Thomas said, still looking toward the house. Off to their left, two more werewolves still followed the scent of the spies. “They didn’t stay in one place very long, but moved around, either hoping to avoid being seen, or to find a better place to watch the house. I think there is no more than two months’ of scent here.”
“So?” Shara questioned.
“If they didn’t have reason to suspect Ulrik being dead, or Joey being taken, would they recognize either of those things being the case?”
“We have to assume the worst,” Shara said. “Ulrik’s been dead for years. We’d be naïve in thinking something that big wouldn’t leak out, no matter how hard we try to hide it.”
“Maybe,” Thomas said.
“They know where we are,” Shara argued. “You know as well as I do that it was Fenris himself who was here. Right here.” She pointed into the grass. “He slept under that tree, Thomas. He watched us.”
“We’ve known for years where he is, and what good has it done us?” Thomas asked.
“We’re not the aggressors,” Shara reminded. “We’re not the ones trying to kill someone over our ideals.”
“If Fenris was still there, sleeping in the grass, you wouldn’t kill him right now?” Thomas asked, his lips playing with a smile that made his goatee dance.
“You’re infuriating,” Shara said. The desert sun was scorching. She stepped closer to Thomas, who was hogging the shade. He put an arm around her waist, his thumb automatically caressing her hip. “This isn’t good,” she said. “I don’t like them knowing where we are.”
“I don’t, either,” Thomas admitted. He was watching the other wolves as they approached. The pair came close, but Thomas held out a hand before they could change shape. He looked questioningly to Shara, then back to the wolves. “They went north from here. See how far you can follow the scent.” He looked again to Shara and she nodded agreement. The two wolves loped off to the north.
“We have to think like him,” Shara said. “What is it he wants?”
“To kill the Alpha,” Thomas answered.
“Why?”
“A threat to the position he wants?”
“I don’t think so,” Shara said. “If he wanted power, that kind of power, why hasn’t he tried taking it before? He’s old. I’d think he would have spent decades, if not centuries, gathering shapeshifters to follow him, and killing those who wouldn’t. But he hasn’t. He doesn’t seem to bother anyone unless they cross him somehow.”
“It comes back to the prophecy,” Thomas said gently. “That’s wh
at he’s afraid of.”
“The Pack is gathering,” Shara said softly. “There can be no culls among us.” She shook her head. “It’s too vague.”
“Holle.” Thomas looked back toward the house as he said the name. “Could she know more than she’s telling us?”
“You think she knows what it all means?”
“I don’t know,” Thomas said.
Shara followed his gaze, thinking. “Morrigan says she has dreams. Visions. She sees things that happened before she was born. Things about the Pack. About certain people. You remember when I first took my serum and I had the vision of myself standing in front of the Pack, taking off a prom dress made of wolf hair?”
Thomas grunted acknowledgement. “We have all seen that one.”
“Morrigan has seen it. Why?” Shara asked. “Why would she see that? It obviously isn’t relevant anymore. It happened before she was born, and now I’m not taking the serum. I change shape more regularly than I ever did before. Why would she see that?”
“It’s a Pack memory,” Thomas said. “The important things are shared. Like fear of a snake is inbred in people. We should go back.”
“I wonder …” Shara said.
“What?”
“The girl you … you knew before me. The one you got pregnant.”
“Katherine,” Thomas said quietly. His tone was sad, but Shara wasn’t jealous. With her own dead or lost lovers behind her, she knew she had no right to feel jealous over a woman who’d been dead for half a century before she was born.
“Yes,” Shara said. “Her death should be an important Pack memory, right? I mean, you said she was pregnant. She could have been the Mother instead of me. Wouldn’t that make her death a big event? Something all the Pack would see?”
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