Nadia's Children
Page 15
“I can take us there on foot,” Skandar said. “I do not want to ride the airplane again.”
“I barely have the money for a bus ticket,” Draper said. “And we won’t find any transportation here. We need to get back into San Fran and find a way out before Fenris gets anyone on our trail.”
They arrived back in San Francisco at noon the next day. Draper used a credit card to buy two bus tickets to Yuma, Arizona. They slept in the bus station, boarded their bus at 8:30 a.m., and spent most of three days riding in buses.
“This is worse than the airplane,” Skandar muttered to Draper during one of their few conversations. “It is just as crowded, but the people smell worse and it takes longer.”
“It’s cheaper, and it’s less likely he will look for us on a bus,” Draper hissed back. He’d made it clear he did not want to talk about Fenris, the Mother, the Alpha, or anything related to shapeshifters with other people around.
Skandar leaned back and stared out the window at the passing countryside.
Kelley
The advantage of being a woman in Fenris’s house is that he expects you to be his secretary, Kelley thought as she paced in her bedroom. I pay the bills. I buy the groceries. And I keep the mundane paperwork.
That included the information on a certain 2006 model Chevrolet Silverado that had been driven away from the house by Jenny Brown. Fenris was out of the house. Kelley was sure of that. And so far, no one but Vincent Oldham had dared come back to face the master of the house. Vincent was asleep in his room at the other end of the long hallway. Kelley flipped her cell phone open and closed, open and closed in her right hand while her left hand held the registration information for the Silverado’s Northstar system.
Finally, she took a deep breath, flipped open the phone and dialed the customer service number. “Hello,” she said. “I’m calling because my daughter took one of our trucks the other day and she hasn’t come home. I was wondering if Northstar can locate where the truck is.”
The female voice, belonging to a woman who identified herself as Sue, asked for confirmation information that Kelley provided. “I’m showing that this truck is registered to a Mr. John Fenris,” Sue said dubiously.
“Yes, he’s my boss,” Kelley said. “My daughter and I live with him. I’m his personal assistant.”
“Does Mr. Fenris want to report his Silverado stolen?” Sue asked.
“No,” Kelley answered quickly. She pressed her left fist into her hip. “No. He’s very understanding. He only wants the truck back. I’m going to go get my daughter and bring her back. With the truck.”
Sue asked, “Is Mr. Fenris available to speak to me?”
“No, he’s out of the country on business. Can you please just tell me where the truck is? I’m not asking you to open the doors or anything like that. I don’t want to steal it. Hell, I have keys to it. I just want to know where it, and my daughter, is. Can you tell me that?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sue answered. “Your truck is parked on Main Street in Gunnison, Colorado. It would appear that address is a Walmart store.”
“Gunnison?” Kelley asked. “Colorado?”
“Yes, ma’am. Is there anything else I can help you with at this time?”
“No. Thank you,” Kelley said, then ended the call. She paced the room again. “Colorado.” She counted on her fingers. “Jenny’s been in her cycle for two days.”
Kelley flipped her phone open again and called the San Francisco International Airport. “I need a one-way ticket to Denver, Colorado. First available flight,” she said.
Within an hour she’d packed a small bag, raided Fenris’s safe and taken several thousand dollars in cash, and was on the highway heading south into the city. While driving, she flipped open her phone again and dialed another number. Her call went to voicemail.
“Cerdwyn, it’s Kelley. I’m leaving California to go after Jenny. She’s in Colorado. If you’ve done what we talked about, plan to meet me there. The town is called Gunnison. Call me as soon as possible.”
She dropped the phone into the passenger seat and pressed the accelerator harder. Behind her, she knew, it would not be long before Fenris figured out she hadn’t really just gone into town for groceries.
Joey
Joey lay on his side, an arm over Kiona’s side. Their cot mattresses had been dropped to the floor of the hut and pushed together. Under the blanket, they were naked, still sticky from their most recent surrender to passion. Joey’s hand, awkward and inexperienced, groped at Kiona’s breast one minute, then pushed down her side to stroke her hip and buttocks.
“Dad will be home soon,” Joey said at last.
“Yes,” Kiona agreed.
“He’s not gonna like this.”
“What’s for him not to like?”
“Well, aren’t you sort of his woman?”
Kiona rolled toward him to look at Joey. “I am no man’s woman,” she said. “Your father and I have used one another for mutual benefit is all.”
“You gave him the Gift. Doesn’t that mean something?”
“It means I thought we would all be better off if he shared the abilities you and I already had,” she answered.
“You don’t love him?”
“No.”
“Do you love me?”
She smiled up at him. Joey stared into her black eyes, waiting for an answer. “Of course,” she said. “I have always loved you.”
“That’s kind of creepy,” he said. “I mean, I was just a little kid at first. Now …” He shrugged, unable to put into words the transformation in his mind of Kiona, the mother figure, to Kiona, the lover.
“You’re thinking of it in human terms,” Kiona said. “Think of it as a wolf would.”
“I guess,” he said. “It still just seems weird. I guess I won’t call you Aunt Kiona anymore.”
She laughed softly at him. “What will you call me?”
“Just Kiona, I guess.” He paused and his hand moved up her belly to cup her left breast. She grinned at him. “I still think Dad’s gonna be really mad at us.”
“Maybe,” she said.
“Are you … I mean, will you … Are you still going to do this with my dad?” Joey asked.
“Would that make you angry?”
Joey thought about it, then said, “Yeah. I don’t want that.”
“Now you think I should be your woman?”
“I don’t know.” Her calm maturity and disregard for monogamy confused him. “Do you still want to? With him?”
“Not right now.”
“Ever?”
“What if I say yes?” she asked.
Joey felt a shiver of jealousy run down his body.
“Would you fight him for me?” Kiona asked. She lifted a hand to run her fingers through his blond hair. “Would you?”
“Yes,” he answered.
Kiona smiled up at him, then pulled his lips down to hers. A few minutes later, she welcomed his weight on top of her.
Shara
The morning sun shone through the sheer drapes of the bedroom, finally waking Shara from her sleep. She opened her eyes and stretched, then realized Thomas wasn’t in bed beside her. She turned her head and found him standing shirtless near the window, looking outside without touching the drapes. His back was straight, his arms crossed over his chest. His hair was still mussed from sleep. He wore only a pair of black boxer shorts.
“She came for Morrigan just as the sun came up,” Thomas said without turning to face Shara. “I heard her in Morrigan’s room. She told her, told my daughter, that she was going to spend a lot more time with her now. That she would do even more of her training. She told Morrigan how she would be a great queen and everyone would love her.”
Thomas finally turned his head and Shara saw the wet streaks where tears had coursed down his face. She pushed the covers away and hurried off the bed and went to him. They held each other, Thomas’s hands pressing her close to him and rubbing roughly at her back.
“What if you’re wrong?” he asked. “What do we offer her? Nothing that compares with being a mighty queen.”
“We love her, and she loves us,” Shara said, but for a moment she remembered again the chewed umbilical cord and the brother born dead. “It’ll be okay,” she promised. “Holle said to call our friends. That will be how we get her. I’m still the Mother of the Pack. The werewolves loyal to us will do what I say. We’ll run Holle and the other Old Ones out of here.”
“I hope you are right, lass,” Thomas said. “Shall we eat breakfast before we begin making calls?”
“Yes, I’m starving.”
Downstairs in the kitchen, they were greeted by Audric, a lean, muscular Old One with a grizzled profile, hawkish nose and suspicious eyes. He had not yet fully adapted to being able to walk like a man. His English was still broken. He had made himself the pet of a Russian emigrant family crossing to Alaska at the start of the twentieth century. They’d brought him over on a steamship, then he’d abandoned them, Holle had explained.
“I watch you,” Audric said.
“Why?” Shara demanded. “You are in my house, accepting my hospitality.”
“Holle say watch you. You no do leave here.”
“Would you stop us?” Thomas asked.
Audric grinned at them. Even in human form, his teeth were smaller than normal, but his canines were extraordinarily long. “I stop you,” he promised.
Shara motioned at Thomas to let it go. Together, they ignored the watchful eyes of Audric while making bacon and toast and bowls of cereal. They sat at the table, right across from Audric, and ate while he looked from one to the other of them, not saying anything. When they were finished, Shara stood up. Thomas stood with her.
“You do the dishes,” she said to the Old One, then led Thomas back upstairs to their bedroom.
“So, we’re prisoners in our own damn house?” Thomas seethed.
“What if we just shot them?” Shara asked. “Right now. Put on a silencer, shoot Audric, then wander nonchalantly outside to Holle and kill her, too?”
“Shoot the Old Ones?” Thomas mused, and his voice still carried a trace of the old awe. Then his lips pressed together firmly and he nodded once. “Yes. Let’s do it.”
Shara opened her nightstand drawer, and froze. On the other side of the bed, Thomas did the same. “Gone?” Shara asked.
“Aye.”
She slammed the drawer closed. “How? How could they get in here and get the guns without us knowing it?”
“They have centuries of experience on us,” Thomas reminded her, closing his own drawer more slowly. “Shall we check the gun cabinets?”
Shara took a deep, calming breath. “No. I trusted her. I gave Holle the combinations. If they stole guns right out from under our noses, you can bet they’ve taken those guns, too.”
“What should we do?” Thomas asked.
“Just what Holle said. We’ll call every werewolf who has tried to come here since Ulrik died. We’ll get them down here, and we’ll take control of this house again.”
Chris
Chris squatted and pushed away the brush he’d used to hide the disturbed earth. Using his hands, he dug into the soft, dark dirt until his fingers found the unnatural plastic of a Ziploc bag. He pulled the bag out of the hole and scraped loose dirt back into the cavity. The entire time he worked he was aware of Cerdwyn standing naked nearby, watching him.
“Come on,” she urged. “Mine are hidden just over here.” She raised a willowy arm and pointed to the south.
Chris looked longingly at the sneakers in the bag. “I never have gotten used to walking around barefoot outside,” he said. “How do you do it?”
“Shoes come between you and the Earth,” she answered as she drifted away from him, her long blonde hair swaying down her back, her naked buttocks shifting as her slender legs carried her away.
Chris sighed and hurried after her, feeling Mother Earth stabbing his exposed feet with rocks and sticks as he tried to catch up. Cerdwyn stopped less than fifty yards from the spot where Chris had dug up his clothes. She knelt and quickly uncovered her own bag of light khaki pants, white shirt and thin sandals.
“I halfway expected you to have come into the swamp wearing a sun dress,” Chris joked.
Cerdwyn’s laugh was musical, but brief. “That is my preferred outfit, but it isn’t really suitable for this terrain.”
“Sandals are?”
“A girl has to make concessions to fashion,” she said, smiling as she opened the bag and fished around inside. “Go ahead and get dressed,” she urged as she pulled a cell phone from the bag. She flipped the phone open and turned it on, then studied the screen for a moment. She pushed some buttons and held the device to her ear.
Chris watched her as he pulled on his jeans, then tied his shoes. He could hear a faint female voice coming from the phone but couldn’t make out the words. He straightened and pulled his T-shirt over his head, then watched Cerdwyn. Her face had become drawn and a tiny line had formed between her light eyebrows. Chris remembered Shara got a line just like that when she was worried about something.
Cerdwyn closed the phone and dropped her hand to her side. “Christopher, are you ready to rejoin the world?”
“What? What’s happened?”
Cerdwyn quickly pulled on her clothes and strapped her sandals to her dainty feet. “Have I won you over, Christopher? Do you see the danger we’re in? Not just the Pack, but everyone?”
“Won me over?” Chris frowned. “This sounds so much like grade school drama. Who’s on whose team at recess.”
“This is no game. Are you with me?”
“I don’t know about the whole Earth worship thing,” Chris said slowly. “That’s not really my thing.”
“I understand that. But do you understand what’s at stake? The danger?”
“Shara’s daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah. I understand. It seems a little much, but yeah.”
“Christopher, I can’t tell you unless I know you’re on my side. Grade school politics or whatever. Are you with me?”
Chris thought about it, thought about Joey, and Kiona, and Shara and that dark-haired Irishman she’d chosen over him. And Ulrik. And Fenris, who was probably still looking for Joey. “My first loyalty is to Joey,” he said.
“What about Kiona?”
“She’s not going to go for this at all, I suspect.”
“Are you ready to leave her behind?”
Chris nodded, then said, “Yes.”
“We’ll have to work out a plan to deal with her,” Cerdwyn said, and she looked vaguely in the direction of the little hut. She sighed. “That was Kelley Stone. She left that message yesterday afternoon. Do you remember Jenny Brown?”
Chris remembered a little girl, Joey’s age, sweating and calling for her mother as she lay thrashing on a mattress in Fenris’s basement. “Yes,” he said.
“Kelley is one of Fenris’s most trusted followers. She helped catch you, as a matter of fact, and it was her idea to let you go so they could follow you to Shara. However, Kelley is what I guess they’d call a double agent in the movies. She’s really on my side. Our side.”
“The redhead?” Chris asked. His memory of her wasn’t clear. She’d been one of a handful who brought him food during his captivity.
“Yes, that’s Kelley.”
“She seemed pretty well devoted to Fenris when they had me in that basement. I think she would have killed me if he’d told her to.”
“She might have. The dynamics were different then. You were more expendable.” She laughed lightly and stepped into him, putting her arms around his neck. “I’m glad that didn’t happen, though. The thread of your life goes on, just as Gaia demands.”
“I’m not sure I’m comforted,” Chris said, gently putting his hands on the curve o
f her hips, but not pulling her closer or pushing her away. “So, this Kelley called? And I take it she said something about Jenny?”
“Jenny killed the man Fenris left in charge of his house. Fenris has been gone, out of the country, for several years. He’s found an Old One. Together, they found the house in Mexico. Fenris is planning to attack it. The Old One he found, Skandar is his name, went back to California with Fenris, then left him. Fenris thinks he’s going back to the Mother. Kelley doesn’t know Shara is in Mexico. Fenris wouldn’t tell her, and I never have.”
Chris stared stupidly at her for what seemed like a long time as he tried to process all she’d managed to say in so few words. “Who are you?” he said at last. “How … I don’t understand how you can know so much and work behind the scenes in so many camps. Do you have spies in Ulrik’s house? Looking after Shara?”
“Of course, though it was much harder. Ulrik was more particular about who he let in to his confidence. There is a woman named Cheryl who sends me reports from Mexico.”
“So it’s not Mother Earth telling you all these things?” Chris grinned.
“She works in mysterious ways through the vessels that allow her to fill them,” Cerdwyn answered. “Kelley thinks I should help her find Jenny, who is in Colorado. Gunnison, Colorado. She’s worried Fenris will get to her. I think Jenny could be useful to us. A teenage girl to keep a certain teenage boy focused.”
Chris grunted. “Joey does need somebody his own age.”
“We’ll get Joey, go to Colorado, meet up with Kelley and hopefully find Jenny quickly, then head for Mexico,” Cerdwyn said.
“The fly in the ointment will be Kiona,” Chris reminded. “She won’t let Joey go willingly. She wants to play mother to him. We obviously can’t tell her where we’re going. She’ll dog us all the way. She might attack you as soon as she hears that I’m taking Joey and leaving.”
“I’m not worried,” Cerdwyn said. “I have you to help me fight her off.”
“Yeah. And we better go. It gets dark fast in the swamp.”
About twenty minutes later, they were in the hard-packed area surrounding the little hut on its stilts. The windows of the hut were open and the unmistakable sounds of lovemaking were coming from within.