Nadia's Children

by Steven E Wedel

  “This will change things,” Cerdwyn said, but Chris was already running for the steps leading to the door.

  Kelley

  Kelley cruised slowly through the Walmart parking lot in a rented Ford Focus, keeping one eye on the customers who thought they should be free to meander leisurely along the middle of the aisles of parked cars while she looked for the black Silverado. Would it still be here? Yes, of course, she told herself. Jenny’s cycle would not be over for another day. She was lucky there.

  Her cell phone buzzed from the cup holder in the center console. Kelley ignored it. She knew it was Fenris. Again. When she’d turned her phone on after the airplane landed in Denver he’d already called seventeen times. He’d called five more times since she’d rented the car and set out for Gunnison. His messages were curt and demanding, but Kelley could tell he was unsure if she’d deserted him or been captured by the enemy. She’d let him worry about it for a while, until she found Jenny, at least, and probably until she made contact with Cerdwyn.

  Cerdwyn. Why hadn’t she called yet?

  Kelley spotted the truck at last, parked almost by itself on one side of the building. She pulled the Focus in beside it and killed her engine. Now what? She had no way of knowing which direction Jenny had gone. And, she reasoned, she couldn’t even be sure the girl would come back to the truck. Probably she would. Jenny was smart enough to realize the truck could be tracked, at least by its California license plate, but she was also used to routine. She would probably be unlikely to abandon the truck and try to get another vehicle.

  What if she just travels as a wolf and goes …anywhere?

  Kelley started the car and drove to a nearby convenience store. She bought the local newspaper, then drove to a McDonald’s for lunch. She spread the paper out before her and scanned articles while popping McNuggets. On the last page of the front section she found what she was looking for: a brief article with the headline Farmer Blames Wolf for Lost Calf.

  The article said many rural residents south of Gunnison had heard the howl of a wolf over the past couple of days before Logan Boatman found the carcass of a young calf on his ranch two miles from the city limits, just outside the borders of the state park. Boatman said he’d also heard the howls and that he and his men would now be carrying rifles, looking for the “damn killer.” There was speculation the wolf had escaped from a sanctuary in the northern part of the state, but the people there said no wolves were missing and blamed the killing on a hybrid most likely dumped in the woods by an owner who decided he couldn’t manage such a big animal.

  “Hybrid,” Kelley snorted before poking French fries into her mouth. “You got that right.”

  Game wardens in the park denied having heard any wolves and said there had been no wolves in this part of Colorado for almost a century.

  Kelley finished her meal, folded her paper, and left. She drove into Black Canyon, rented a campground in the most primitive part of the park, then changed into a wolf and raced off in the direction of Logan Boatman’s farm. It was risky, but she paused often and raised her head to howl. Several hours later, just as the sun was beginning to set and the shadows were becoming long and dark, her call was finally answered. Kelley recognized the howl immediately, and answered it urgently. An hour later, she and Jenny found one another. The younger wolf peeked hesitantly from behind a clump of pines, probably waiting to see if Kelley was alone. Kelley made reassuring sounds and they met, rubbing muzzles as wolves for a moment before Kelley took her human shape.

  “We have to get out of here,” she said, taking Jenny’s wolfish head in her hands. The girl’s eyes retained the expressiveness of a human youth. Kelley found herself smiling despite the possible danger. “There are men with guns looking for you because of that calf you killed. They probably heard us out here howling. I have a car. Follow me, and be quiet. Do you understand?” The wolf nodded. Kelley changed shape again and they hurried away.

  Back at her car, Kelley was unsure what to do. She couldn’t very well go into town with Jenny in her wolf form. She hadn’t brought a tent. It would seem strange if anyone came upon the camp and found two wolves sleeping on the ground by an abandoned car. Finally, she reclined both front seats, told Jenny to get in on the passenger seat, and Kelley sat behind the wheel, leaned back and said, “Try to get some sleep. As soon as you can travel as a human we’re moving on. Things are happening. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

  To her surprise, Jenny pawed closer and licked Kelley’s face with a warm, loving tongue.

  “You missed me?” Kelley asked. Jenny licked her again and Kelley laughed softly. “I missed you, too. Being by yourself gets lonely, especially at first, when you’re not used to it. It’s alright, though. I’m here. With any luck, by this time tomorrow we’ll be with another friend of mine and, maybe, with someone you’ll remember from your childhood.”

  Jenny cocked her head, but Kelley pretended not to notice her quizzical look. Instead, she fished her phone out of the cup holder and checked for messages. Jenny growled softly at the sound of Fenris’s voice. Kelley patted her head absently. “Don’t worry about it,” she reassured. She sighed and put the phone back. No message from Cerdwyn yet.

  “Get some sleep,” Kelley said. “Tomorrow you have to show me where you put your clothes. Then we’ll catch a flight to Arkansas.”

  Next to her, Jenny got as comfortable as she could in the chair made for a human body. Kelley knew she was resisting the urge to claw at the fabric seat, trying to reshape it to make it more like a nest. She ignored it, thinking instead about the wild animal smell of Jenny and suddenly wishing they could just run together as wolves for a while and not worry about what was happening elsewhere in the world. Soon, Jenny slept, and shortly after, Kelley joined her.

  Skandar

  Yuma, Arizona, was hot. Most of the people, Skandar noted, were the dark-skinned, black-haired kind he and Fenris had met, though usually avoided, in Mexico. Many wore the pale, wide-brimmed hats his former companion had called “ridiculous cowboy hats.” Skandar was fascinated by their appearance and the language they spoke, but Fenris had kept their dealings short, and Alex Draper had little interest in talking to them, either.

  “Damn illegals,” he muttered after bumping into a woman holding a child’s hand at the bus terminal. He pushed through the crowd and Skandar followed.

  “You know the customs?” Skandar asked as they made their way onto the street.

  “Customs? What do you mean, customs? We’re still in America, no matter what these wetbacks think.”

  “Wetbacks?”

  “You’ll see,” Draper promised. “Mexicans, they swim across and take American jobs, send American money back to their families so they can get north and sneak across.”

  “That is wrong?”

  “Of course it’s wrong. They ain’t here legally, so they ain’t paying taxes. Use our hospitals, our roads, everything, and don’t pay for any of it.”

  “What are taxes?” Skandar asked.

  “For God’s sake, let’s save that for some other time. Right now we have to lay low until it gets dark, then we’ll cross the river. I’ve got about twenty bucks left,” Draper said, changing the subject. “Let’s find something to eat and just hang out until dark. After this meal, we have to eat as wolves. When’s your cycle, by the way?”

  “Eight days from today I will be the wolf again,” Skandar said. He remembered how disappointed he’d been the first time he’d had a “cycle” like the younger shapeshifters, thinking his time as a human had been only a brief joke played on him by the goddess.

  “This’ll work out pretty well, then. I’ve got ten days to mine. Mine lasts five days,” Draper said. “How long do you go?”

  “I remain a wolf for only four days,” Skandar answered.

  “You like tacos? We can get a lot of food pretty cheap at one of these taco places,” Draper said, pointing across the street to a building with a large plate glass window. Skandar nodded and they cr
ossed the street. The food wasn’t very good, but they ate their fill and Draper had a few dollars left over. They refilled their sodas and wandered out into the early evening. Draper led the way and they walked slowly to the edge of town, where a high chain link fence separated them from the river.

  “We get caught here, they’ll probably think we’re helping smuggle in drugs or wetbacks,” Draper said. “Nobody tries to sneak back into Mexico.”

  “It is a poor country,” Skandar said, comparing the villages he’d seen there with the towns he and Fenris had passed through in America.

  “It’s their own fault.”

  “You are not a …” Skandar groped for the words. “Compassionate man. You do not care for others. Is that why Fenris took you in? I think you are probably a bad person.”

  Draper stopped and gaped at him for a minute. “What the fuck?” he finally said. “I’m all you’ve got, Old One. Take it or leave it.”

  “You have told me enough about crossing this river. My instincts will guide me from there. I could leave you. Would you face Fenris alone? Or this one called Ulrik?”

  Draper was unable to hide the flicker of fear that passed over his face. “Fine,” he said. “Maybe I need you, too. I don’t want to be skinned alive, and God knows what Ulrik might do to me.”

  “Why do you not like other people?” Skandar asked the question, but was not looking at the other man. Instead, he was watching a family – a man, his wife, and two daughters – as they waded across the shallow river toward the fence.

  Draper’s voice was subdued when he answered. “Nobody ever liked me, so why should I like them? When I was a kid they were always beating the crap out of me. Then I got bigger than most of the other kids, but it wasn’t good. I had a beard in the eighth grade, for Christ’s sake. Girls didn’t want anything to do with me. They called me Muley because I was big and strong but dumb. Luther McGrath found me in Missouri and made me a werewolf in 1901. After the Cross girl died in Oklahoma, we all kind of split up, and things went back to how they were, except now I couldn’t hold much of a job because of my cycle. Bosses don’t want to give you a week off to become a werewolf every month.”

  “And so you hate everyone? That made you attractive to Fenris. I am surprised you are still alive. Surprised he didn’t use you for some task, then kill you, like he did with Lucas,” Skandar said.

  “I guess my time had come when I let that girl drive away.”

  They watched the family climb over the fence about twenty yards away from where they sat. The father came over first, then helped his wife. Together they spoke rapidly and furtively to the teenage girls, both looking over their shoulders as they did.

  “They’re looking for the border patrol,” Draper said. “I’ve heard some of the fences here have some kind of sensor that tells the cops when somebody’s climbing over.”

  The family made it over and slipped away into the night. “Your life has not been so bad,” Skandar commented. “I was unable to become a man for many centuries. I saw … No, I will not talk of it. You choose your fate, Alex Draper. You can choose to do evil or good.”

  Draper snorted. “Isn’t good and evil all relative?”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Relative? It means, like, your perspective. What’s good to me might be evil to you.”

  “I see,” Skandar said. “No, I do not believe that. If you willingly harm people for no reason, it is always evil.”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Draper agreed. “You ready to go?”

  They crossed a bridge, barely getting a glance from a bored looking woman in a uniform on the U.S. side and an even more bored looking man on the Mexican side. Once across, Draper led Skandar off the road and they set out south, following the Old One’s internal compass toward the Alpha.

  Fenris

  “What the hell is going on around here?” Fenris demanded. “A little girl kills Walter Hess, then just drives away. Alex Draper walks away from me and I can’t do a damn thing about it. Then that idiot Old One follows him, and now Kelley Stone is missing? Somebody better tell me something.” His voice rose until he was shouting the last line.

  Almost two dozen werewolves were crowded into Fenris’s living room. It was everyone he had living on his property at the moment, which meant his entire ranch was unguarded and vulnerable, but he’d wanted them all together for this. He could tell by their blank, fearful expressions that none of them had explanations for what was going on. Finally, a man with a sharply cut beard sitting near the television cleared his throat.

  “What?” Fenris demanded. “Speak up, Michael.”

  “It doesn’t really explain anything, but I can tell you that Hess was really bothering Jenny. He was always looking at her and trying to touch her and whispering things that made her mad. I asked her about it once and she told me he wanted to have sex with her.”

  “Did you help her kill him?”

  “Of course not,” Michael answered.

  “Then shut up. I’ve already heard about what Hess was doing. I would have punished him for it. Somebody helped that little girl kill Hess. I want to know who it was. Was it Kelley? Is that why she’s gone now? Or has Ulrik sent somebody who was able to grab her in the grocery store?”

  Blank stares.

  “You’re all pathetic,” Fenris raged. “I have found the Mother. I know where the Alpha is. I know where Ulrik is hiding them. And you are what I have to lead into battle.” A murmur went through the crowd. Fenris gave them a moment, then said, “Yes, I have found them. Our chances of getting in and assassinating the Mother and her whelp aren’t good. We’ll have to attack in force. We have to summon everyone loyal to our cause. Everyone who would not be a slave to Ulrik and his puppet Alpha.”

  “Where are they?” several voices asked at once.

  “You’ll know when the time is right,” Fenris said. “With people I thought I could trust disappearing right and left, I’m not about to tell anyone anything. With that said, I hope I don’t need to remind anyone here what will happen to you if I find out you’re withholding information I want.” He paused and listened to the silence. “Fine. I’ll be arranging our transportation. I expect you will all be going. Tomorrow I’ll give you new assignments to begin preparing for the journey. Go back to your posts. Gary, you stay.”

  Most of the gathered assembly filed out of the living room, dispersing to stations around the sprawling northern California ranch. Gary Andersen remained seated in a recliner in one corner of the living room. With all his other trusts dead or missing, Fenris hoped to strengthen a bond with a fellow Swede, even if the younger man’s Sweden was vastly different than the one Fenris had known.

  “Come to the kitchen with me,” Fenris said, beckoning. They went into the other room and he took a bottle of vodka from the refrigerator and poured two glasses. He handed one to the other man. “We are fellow countrymen,” Fenris said. “Bränvin. To Sweden.” He drank.

  Gary Andersen drank, too. He was obviously nervous about having been singled out, but was trying hard not to show it. He had long blond hair and a trim build. Fenris knew the man had a sharp mind behind his faded-looking blue eyes, and he was a skilled martial artist. He’d watched Gary practicing katas and working with his staff in the yard on several occasions. He came to Fenris alone, and though he got along with everyone, he’d developed no close friendships. He was the model of a lone wolf, and a lone wolf would not want to see a leader come to power in the Pack.

  “I need a new lieutenant,” Fenris said, licking the potato-based alcohol from his lips. “Someone I can trust. I was foolish trusting a mercenary like Hess, I suppose. I expected Kelley to balance his brutishness, but apparently I misjudged both of them. That doesn’t happen often. I am usually a very good judge of character.”

  “And now you have chosen me?” Gary asked. “Why?”

  “I have watched you. You do as I ask. You treat others fairly. You are not the selfish animal Hess often was. I am done trusting women to
hold any position of authority for me.”

  “Failing you, even involuntarily, means being skinned and having my pelt stretched for everyone to see,” Gary mused. “That’s a lot of stress.”

  “Then don’t fail me.”

  “My decision has been made for me?”

  “No,” Fenris said. “I don’t want you if you’re not going to be devoted to our cause. Time is short. Another betrayal would be disastrous.”

  “You believe Kelley has betrayed you?”

  “I don’t know,” Fenris said. “I honestly don’t. I have to assume the worst, and the worst is that she is now in the hands of our enemies, either with or without her consent.”

  Gary nodded and sipped his drink. “So, what do I have to do first?”

  “We need a ship. One that is big enough to accommodate everyone we’ll be taking with us to this battle.”

  “How many?”

  Fenris sighed and drank. “We have to move fast. We can’t wait on too many. The problem with a confederacy is that the hatred of central authority leaves the individual parts too autonomous. Ironic, isn’t it? We have to unite under one leader to fight off the thing that would enslave us, but the whole time we don’t want to follow a leader. We’ll plan on one hundred and hope that many answer and arrive before we leave.”

  “Are we chartering the ship or buying it?”

  “Do you know how to sail a ship that large?”

  “No.”

  “Nor do I,” Fenris said. “I don’t know of anyone else who does, either. Charter, but not an American ship. We need a legitimate ship with a captain and crew that will sail where they’re told and not ask questions about animals on board or the places we make port. But we need it quickly.”

  “Mexican?”

  “Perhaps. See what you can find.”