“Thank you,” Shara said. “I hope we can talk soon. I want to know about you.”
“And I hope to talk to you as well,” Skandar said. “I can tell you much about Holle and others. And Nadia.”
“Nadia?” Shara asked. “The witch? The one who started all this?” She stared hard at him, but he was still a total blank.
“She was my lover,” he answered.
“Are you two coming?” Cheryl called.
Shara pulled her eyes off Skandar and looked at the woman. She nodded, then looked back to the Old One. “Yes, I want to talk to you.”
* * *
The door bearing the number 442 opened before anyone knocked on it. Shara felt her stomach lurch, but wasn’t sure if it was relief … or something else. Standing in the doorway was a tall, willowy woman in a yellow summer dress. She had flowing blonde hair with wisps of gray in it and gray eyes that were filled with warm light. She looked at them all, then opened her arms to Cheryl and they hugged tightly for a moment.
“Cerdwyn,” Cheryl said. “It’s so good to see you. There were times I wasn’t sure I ever would again.”
“You are a brave woman,” the other answered, her voice soft and musical. “Come in. All of you. Please, come in.”
Inside, the first thing Shara saw was yet another beautiful woman. This one was a tall, green-eyed redhead who could have been a movie star. She wondered for a moment about Chris trading up since their split. Cerdwyn and Cheryl made introductions and Shara learned the readhead’s name was Kelley.
“Where’s Chris and Joey?” Shara asked when everyone’s name had been called.
Kelley answered. “Joey is downstairs in the café. Chris is in the other room. He asked if you’d come in and talk to him privately for a minute.”
Everyone was looking at her. Shara slipped from the crowd to the closed white door, knocked quickly, then pushed it open, stepped inside and closed it behind her.
Chris stood a few feet away, between the foot of a bed and a cabinet holding a television and some drawers. Shara immediately realized there was something different about him. His face was more rugged than before, maybe a little thinner than when they’d lived together as a couple in Montana. And he was obviously as nervous about this meeting as she was. She realized her back was pressed against the door and forced herself to take a step forward, toward him.
“You’re still beautiful,” he said.
Shara laughed. It was the last thing she’d expected to hear from him. “You have a supermodel out there,” she said. “And that Cerdwyn isn’t ugly, either.”
Chris smiled, but it was an uneasy smile. Then he shrugged, and Shara knew that he was with at least one of them.
“Which one?” she asked. “Kelley? I’m not jealous. I have no right to be.”
“No,” Chris said. “I mean no, it isn’t Kelley.”
“Cerdwyn seems nice. And Cheryl trusts her. What happened to Kiona?”
“We had some differences over Joey. That was at the same time Cerdwyn found us and told us about you and …” He shrugged again. “She says you have a daughter now.”
“Yes.” Shara stepped forward, hesitantly. “Listen, Chris, Thomas will be up in a minute. He got all weird about seeing you. I want you to know that I really thought you were dead. Fenris tracked us to a motel. He showed me your torn, bloody shirt and gave me your wedding band. I knew it was yours. I could smell you on the shirt, and I know that ring. I knew there was no way he could have gotten them without getting you. I thought you were dead.”
The tears surprised her almost as much as Chris stepping forward and wrapping his arms around her. He held her tightly and his body shook with sobs, too. Shara worked her arms around him and they hugged for a short while, then instinctively loosened their hold.
“I know,” Chris said. “I’ve had a long time to think about it. I can’t blame you. I don’t blame you.”
“I loved you. I always loved you,” she said. “It feels like I still do. But …”
“I know. I feel the same way. Things have changed, though. And, as Cerdwyn told me, werewolves are never monogamous for very long.”
“I would have been with you all your life if they’d left us alone,” Shara promised.
“I believe you. But, a lot of things have changed. We had several good years together. We have a great son. We can be friends with special memories.”
Shara nodded and wiped at her eyes. She laughed a little. “You used to be so hot-headed about some things. Anything to do with werewolves and you’d get all mad.”
“Like I said, a lot has changed,” he said. He held his right arm toward her and Shara watched in amazement as hair writhed from his pores and the hand and arm thickened and became wolf-like.
“You …?”
“Kiona doesn’t give choices,” Chris said. “She thought it would be best, so she bit me. It was just a few days after we took Joey.”
“I’m sorry,” Shara said.
Chris shook his head. “Don’t be. It’s better than I expected.”
“We should go join the others. Thomas will be up soon.”
“He already is. Joey and Jenny came in with him. Do you remember Jenny Brown? The girl Joey bit just before everything happened?” Shara nodded and Chris went on. “She’s here. She killed one of Fenris’s top men, I guess, then stole a car. Kelley went after her, then they came here. Kelley has been a secret agent for Cerdwyn for years. But, you’ll find out all about that. I guess we’ll be having a council to match the one Frodo had with Elrond.”
Shara laughed a real laugh now. “Still reading your fantasy and drawing monsters?” she asked, then opened the door before Chris could answer.
“Mom!” Shara barely saw him coming before a boy taller than her had her in an iron grip, hugging the breath out of her while others in the room laughed happily. “I can’t believe it’s you. I thought I’d never see you again.”
“Joey,” Shara said, her voice almost a gasp. “You’ve grown.”
He finally let her go and stepped away. Shara breathed deeply, reaching out with one hand and holding on to one of his arms. The arm was thick and hard with muscle, tanned and manly. Her little boy had grown up and she had missed it. She looked him in the face and saw that he still had the light hair he’d inherited from his father, and her own brown eyes. His face was still young, marked with a little teenage acne, and beaming at her.
“My God,” Shara whispered. “I’ve missed you so much.” Now she threw herself at him and Joey caught her and held her in his strong young arms while Shara cried openly. “I’m so sorry, Joey. I’m so sorry. I never wanted to lose you.”
“It’s okay, Mom,” he said. He hugged her again, then pushed her away. This time Shara saw him glance furtively to the side. She looked and saw the teenage girl sitting on a sofa, pretending not to see them. Jenny Brown had grown up to be a beautiful young woman. Shara looked back at Joey and smiled, then ducked in quickly and kissed him once on the cheek.
“It’s so good to have you back,” she said, then slipped away from him and went to Thomas, hugging him and staying close as she turned to face the others.
“So,” she began. “We all have stories to tell and plans to make. I have one of my children back with me, but I want them both. We have to figure out how we’re going to get Morrigan away from Holle, and we have to decide what to do about Fenris and his gang. But first some of us want showers, maybe a nap, and food.”
“A-fucking-men,” Draper muttered.
“And we have to decide what to do about this one,” Shara said. She looked at her watch. “It’s just after two. Let’s meet back here at five, eat dinner somewhere, then get started.”
Fenris
“I used to ask Ulrik why you were such a threat,” Kiona said.
“What did he say?” Fenris stood beside her in the prow of the ship. The wind whipped their hair around their faces, mixing his milky white with her raven black. The sea was calm and the ship was making good ti
me. On the horizon, the shadowy silhouette of land had just been spotted a quarter of an hour before.
“He said you had named yourself after the great wolf of the Northmen because you believe in chaos and destruction.” She turned her head to look at him and Fenris couldn’t help but laugh a little. Her black eyes sparkled back at him, reflecting the same sunlight that made the waves glisten, but hiding even more secrets than the ocean.
“He is right about the name. Chaos and destruction? Well, perhaps to his way of thinking. He is so enslaved to the idea of this ridiculous prophecy. I had to set myself up in opposition to it. What is it he wants? One ruler over all shapeshifters? A code of law we must abide by? Do you want that?”
“No,” Kiona admitted.
“And yet you want to badly to be the Mother of this new Romulus,” Fenris chided.
Kiona snorted and wiped a long wisp of hair from her face. “You’re a fine one to talk. You served Hitler.”
Fenris laughed again and slid an arm around the Indian woman’s waist. She leaned into him. “Served? That was different. He was only a man.”
“But he was a tyrant who would have ruled the world if he could have.”
“He was going mad when I met him. One man, one normal man, even with all the mechanical power Hitler had, can’t rule the world. But a werewolf, with all the Pack answering to him … That might be different.”
“Why did you fight for Hitler?”
“It was a trade. I protected his castle and he gave me full access to his occult and archeological records. I am not as old as your friend Ulrik. I had to take short cuts to learn as much.”
“Did he ask you for the Gift?”
“Of course.”
“Why didn’t you give it to him?”
Fenris didn’t answer immediately. He thought back to that private meeting in the old castle, the sick dictator with his feverish eyes and comic mustache at first pounding his fist into his open hand, then dropping to his knees and begging for the Gift that would ease his pain and make him more powerful than any world leader should be. He had walked away as the Nazi leader screamed curses and called for his guards to kill the Swede. Fenris had never answered another summons to the man’s fortress.
“If I had given him that, I would have lost my leverage,” he said. “And he might have become the very thing I said I do not want. As a man, he had limits. As a werewolf … Maybe not.”
They stood quietly for a moment and watched the land grow more distinct, take on color and texture. The water breaking around the ship was a bright greenish in color, flecked with foam and sparkling like it carried diamonds.
“I have hated for a long time,” Kiona said. “It makes me feel old.”
“It is a hard emotion to sustain. It eats so much of us,” Fenris agreed. “But the sea makes us feel old, too. It is older than us all. Older than the land, maybe.”
“I never liked traveling by ship,” she admitted.
“Your little brown feet will be back on solid ground before the sun sinks behind us,” he promised, letting his hand slide down her back to her firm buttocks.
“By the pressure of your hand, I suppose you think we should spend some of the time we’re stuck on this ship back in our cabin?”
He laughed at her. “No,” he said. “We are half-animal. Why bother with a cabin?” He pulled her dress up and moved into position behind her. Kiona laughed with him, didn’t argue, but leaned forward over the rail a little, presenting herself to him, and moaned softly as he entered.
They were not finished when a nervous, older Hispanic man approached hesitantly. “Senõr?” he asked. Without breaking his rhythm, Fenris looked at the heavyset man with the pock-marked face. “Telephone for you, senõr.”
“I’ll take it when I’m finished here,” Fenris snarled.
The crewman backed away, his wide eyes still fixed on the couple as they copulated. When they both began to howl, he turned and ran for the cover of the bridge.
Finished, Fenris let Kiona squirm around to face him, though he kept her pressed against the railing of the ship. “You’re all animal,” she said with a smile. He kissed her and she slid an arm around his neck. He was still hard and considered taking her again, but there was the phone to attend to. He made sure Kiona felt that he was capable, then broke the embrace. “Later,” she promised, letting her hand trail away from his face as he left her.
The Mexican captain of the ship wasn’t too afraid of his pale employer to grin with lascivious humor when Fenris entered the bridge and reached for the phone with the blinking button indicating a caller on hold. As he brought the handset to his ear, Fenris looked through the large windows and saw that Kiona had again turned to watch the approach of land.
“Fenris.”
“Hey, it’s Langham,” the male voice said. Andrew Langham had been left in charge of the California home. “I just got a call you may be interested in.”
“Who?” Fenris asked.
“Deitrich Doty. You sent him to keep an eye on your target?”
“Yes,” Fenris said.
“The guy he hired, Santos Padillo, found a wolf running away from the area. He followed her and caught up with her a few miles away. She had quite a story.”
“Get to the point,” Fenris demanded.
“Ulrik is dead. He’s been dead for years. She claims one of the Old Ones is in charge now. Shara is gone, ran off a week or so back with McGrath and a couple of others.” Langham paused for effect.
“Dead?” Fenris asked.
“Yeah. Guess who did it.”
“He is dead?”
“Yeah. It was that Chris Woodman guy. Shara’s husband, father of the boy you’re looking for. Wait ‘til you hear – ”
“Josef Ulrik is dead?” Fenris asked again.
“I said he is, didn’t I? This woman, I don’t remember her name, but Santos said she didn’t see it, but she’s lived there for a long time and everyone knew it. She said Woodman shot Ulrik the day him and your squaw rode in to steal the boy from Shara.”
“And it killed him?” No matter how many times he heard it, Fenris had a hard time accepting the news.
“It was silver. Just a flesh wound. It left him paralyzed. He shot himself a few weeks later.”
“Dead.” It sank in finally.
“They burned his body.”
“Umm. It is fitting. He was … he was wrong, but he was a warrior.”
“Uh-huh. What about this business of an Old One?”
“What of it?”
“Are they alive? Have they come back?” Langham asked.
“Yes.”
“And … and they were on Ulrik’s side?”
“Some,” Fenris said, not liking the tone of Langham’s voice. He sounded afraid.
“Well, I don’t think you have to worry about the boy. About Joey,” Langham said.
“Why is that?”
“There’s a girl. Shara and McGrath had a daughter. The Old Ones say she’s the Alpha. There was some kind of initiation right after Shara ran away. Some of the locals were killed and eaten. That’s when Santos’s woman decided to run.”
“A girl? Fathered by a werewolf?”
“You’re as shocked as I was by all this shit,” Langham said.
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. Doty wants to know what to do with the woman. She’s not really trying to get away or anything, he says. He didn’t know if you’d want to question her or not.”
“I do. Tell him to bring her to our landing point. We will make port soon. I will wait for him. Anything else?”
“No, boss, that’s it.”
Fenris hung up. He looked at the ship’s captain and asked dully, “How long until we are docked?”
* * *
“This changes things.”
Fenris sat on the sandy beach, Kiona beside him, a small fire burning between them and the gentle rolling of the ocean.
“Ulrik is dead.”
“You keep saying that,�
�� Kiona said.
“It makes no sense. Who is in command now? Not Shara. She is no leader.”
“Her new man? McGrath?”
Fenris considered it, then shook his head. “I don’t think so. He was a loner. No one would trust him.”
“Maybe no one is in charge now,” Kiona suggested.
“For so many years? No. An Old One? It does not seem likely, though it is possible, I suppose.” Fenris fed sticks into the fire. Ranged around the beach, hidden in the forests of a peninsula just north of the port of Manzinillo, the rest of his party slept or ranged as wolves under the watchful eye of Gary Andersen. They were waiting for his orders. He hadn’t told them about Ulrik’s death and they were anxious to know why they were waiting, not understanding why he sat alone on the beach with Kiona Brokentooth.
“Ulrik was never the target,” Kiona reminded.
Fenris grunted. “True. But he was the challenge. For decades he has been the challenge, him searching for a woman who could be the Mother and me killing anyone who might have that potential. Now I learn he was killed by a human who could barely shoot.”
“He suffered, then killed himself is what you said earlier.”
“You are happy about that.”
“Damn right I am,” Kiona said.
Fenris looked at her thoughtfully. The wind off the sea blew their hair and made the fire hiss and crackle. He shook his head. “Ulrik was a worthy enemy. I wish he had died with dignity and honor.”
“Dead is dead,” Kiona said, tucking her hair behind her ear. She flared her nostrils, then said, “Someone’s coming.”
“Yes.” Fenris turned around to see four wolves approaching them. One was Andersen. He recognized another as Dietrich Doty and guessed the other male to be Santos Padillo. Between them was a smaller female. The group paused a few yards away and changed shape quickly. The wind helped brush the loose wolf hair from their naked human bodies as they came to sit near the fire.
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