Nadia's Children

by Steven E Wedel

  There was one other thing, too, that was on his mind.

  “You are a priestess, but you are the woman of the one inside. The one called Chris?” Skandar asked. “Orsel’s priestesses are allowed to marry now?”

  Cerdwyn laughed at him, but it was not a cruel or mocking laughter and he did not feel strung by it, though he did not understand it. At last she stopped herself and answered his questions.

  “The goddess is no longer identified as Orsel,” Cerdwyn said. “She is bigger than the bear. She is all things. The bear, the deer, the fish, the trees, the rivers and the oceans. Your people, like most people of your time, focused too narrowly on the deity. You understood there was something there greater than you and you associated the goddess with the most powerful animal you knew. In this case, the bear.” She saw his confusion and perhaps his defensiveness and she waved it away.

  “Yes,” she said. “I could marry if I chose to do so. However, I am not married to Chris. We are partners now, as you and Nadia were. That may or may not last. It is not for me to say. Chris needs me right now, though. He may not admit it, but he does. He and Shara were married. The young one called Joey is their son.”

  “But the Mother is with the other one now,” Fenris argued. “The dark-haired one who calls himself Thomas.”

  “Yes. Fenris convinced her that he had killed Chris. Thomas was helping Shara search for Joey, who had been kidnapped by a woman angry that she was not the Mother. Thomas also helped Shara avoid Fenris most of the time. They became lovers and she became pregnant with Morrigan before she learned that Chris was still alive. Chris and the other woman then stole Joey, who was still a boy and had been rescued by Shara, and they hid from everyone in a swamp for almost eight years until I found them about a week ago.”

  Skandar shook his head in amazement again. “Life was much simpler in the old times.”

  “Yes,” Cerdwyn said, “I’m sure it was. Now, we should return to our friends and tell them we must focus our efforts to the north.”

  They stood up and started toward a side door of the hotel. Cerdwyn took a plastic card key from a pocket of her jeans and slid it through the scanner while Skandar watched. She opened the door and was about to step inside when he put a hand on her arm and stopped her. She held the door open and faced him, her eyes asking the question.

  “What does the goddess tell you about the Alpha?” he asked.

  “What do you feel?” Cerdwyn returned the question to him.

  He shook his head. “My mind fills with a dark cloud when I try to think of her and the future.”

  “Yes. We must rescue her from the influence of Holle. She is the source of the cloud,” Cerdwyn said.

  Thomas

  Thomas lay awake in the darkness, staring at the ceiling, listening to Shara’s breathing in the bed beside him. She was restless in her sleep and he couldn’t help but wonder if she was having the same dream that had awakened him. Carefully, he slipped from under the light bed covers, pulled on a pair of jeans and went to sit on the balcony overlooking the mostly empty street and closed restaurants. It was about 3 a.m.

  Oklahoma. Always, it seemed, he came back to Oklahoma. An hour’s drive from where he sat, he knew, he could be at Katherine’s grave. He wondered, was it love he still felt for her? Or was it pity? Guilt? Was it wrong to still carry those feelings now that he had Shara? What were the chances that he, a single man, would have fathered the Alpha almost a century earlier, and then actually did so with Morrigan? The prophecy said nothing of a father. It could have been anyone.

  But it was me.

  It was no wonder Katherine was on his mind after the dream.

  Thomas felt something, some stirring inside him, a pull. He looked to the north and had to fight the urge to get up and begin moving in that direction.

  The dream.

  He’d seen Morrigan in the dream. She was standing on a natural stone table in a deep, shaded clearing of some forest. Pine trees towered over her, and around the table people were kneeling, their heads down in respect. Respect? No … Reverence. They did not look at her. In the dream, Thomas thought he had recognized some of those bowed heads, but in waking he couldn’t be so sure. Morrigan stood on the table and mist or fog coiled around her as she raised her arms above her head and spoke.

  I am Morrigan!

  I am Alpha!

  I am Nadia reborn!

  Come, and be with me!

  All Nadia’s children,

  Wolf and bear,

  Be with me now!

  She was not his little girl in the dream. Her stature was still that of a child, yes, but she had changed. She was powerful, more mature, authoritative.

  “What has Holle done to her?” Thomas wondered aloud.

  “She is turning her into the Alpha of the Pack.”

  Thomas turned his head, a little surprised that Shara had awakened and gotten so close without him realizing it. She stood behind him, her thick black hair disheveled, her long T-shirt falling to mid-thigh, her legs bare. He pushed away from the balcony rail and sat in one of the metal chairs, motioning for Shara to join him. She sat facing him and pulled her knees up to her chin. It was a youthful, endearing way for her to sit, and usually he would have enjoyed it more, especially in her current state of dress. But the look on her face, he knew, mirrored his own.

  “You dreamed about Morrigan, too?” he asked.

  Shara nodded. “She’s calling us. Calling her Pack. My time is over.”

  Thomas studied her. “What do you mean, your time is over?”

  “The sacrifice,” she said.

  “What sacrifice?”

  “In the dream, they tied me to the table and … and Morrigan came at me with a knife. I think she meant to kill me. I woke up.”

  “She …” Thomas shook his head. “My dream did not go so far, Shara. She stood on the table, yes, and she called for wolves and bears to come to her, but that’s all there was.”

  “In mine, she killed me. She said there couldn’t be any more offspring of my womb. Or something like that. I don’t remember the exact words. But she was going to kill me.” Shara looked away for a second. “My own daughter.”

  “Maybe your own mind added that part. Your subconscious,” Thomas suggested.

  “Maybe,” Shara agreed without conviction.

  “We’ll ask the others at breakfast,” he said. “See if they had the dream and, if they did, where did it end.” She nodded, then picked at the ragged remnants of dark burgundy polish on a toenail.

  “Do you feel it?” Shara asked.

  He knew what she meant, but he said it, anyway. “What’s that?”

  “The pull. The call to move. North, I think, and a little to the east. I feel it, like the moon calls to the ocean tides. Something is almost dragging the core of my body in that direction right now. I feel restless just sitting here.”

  “Aye, I feel it,” he agreed. “That’s where she is, then?”

  “I suppose. I figured they’d leave Ulrik’s house when we escaped, but I thought they’d hide for a while. Instead, they put her up there like a lighthouse.”

  “Many will answer. Many will go to her.”

  “I know. But will they do what she wants? What Holle tells her she’s supposed to do? Surely they won’t. All the crazies are with Fenris, right?”

  Thomas shrugged his bare shoulders. “The more I learn about Holle, the more I see why Fenris opposed Ulrik.”

  “You don’t want an Alpha, either?” she asked, looking up at him again.

  “One like Holle? One who does what Holle advises? No,” Thomas said.

  “Fenris will kill her. He’ll try to kill our daughter.”

  Thomas was silent. This was the plan Cerdwyn and Skandar had put forth after dinner: Join forces with Fenris against Holle. Thomas saw the logic in it. They shared the same goal of preventing a shapeshifter filled with hate from becoming the leader of the Pack. Fenris had dozens of loyal followers who shared his belief, according to Kelley
. If it came to a fight, the handful gathered in this hotel had no chance against those who would obey the Old Ones and the Alpha they controlled.

  “He killed my mom and dad,” Shara said, her voice hard, emotionless. “He told me he’d killed Chris. He wanted to kill Joey. I don’t like this plan. I can’t trust him. I feel like no one is listening to me. I feel worthless.”

  “No, Shara, no,” he soothed, reaching to her, taking her hand in his and holding it tightly. “Your opinion was heard and discussed. It was your words that kept them from calling Fenris tonight.”

  “They’ll call in the morning,” she argued. “When Cerdwyn suggested we sleep on it, she said it to give me time to get used to it. Everyone else had made up their minds about it. The Mother of the Pack means nothing now.”

  “That’s not true, Shara. You are still the Mother.”

  She snorted in disgust. “I have not conceived in over seven years, Thomas. No more children. I’m … I’m a tube of toothpaste that has been squeezed dry and now Holle wants to throw me away. Wants our daughter to do it.”

  Thomas had no answer. Shara’s barren womb had not gone unnoticed, but he’d attributed it to Morrigan’s strange and violent birth, along with the dead twin brother Faolan. He had long ago decided that Morrigan had ended her mother’s ability to bear more children. He said as much to Shara now.

  “What about regeneration?” she snapped back. “I’ve thought about how … how Morrigan might have damaged me when she … ate through Faolan’s umbilical cord. But we regenerate, Thomas. Werewolves regenerate. And I haven’t. Not there. Cut my arm open on a kitchen knife and yes, the wound will close and heal as fast as yours. Shoot me with lead bullets and I expect I’d recover as fast as I ever did. But my womb? What made me special? What made me the Mother? It’s ruined.”

  “You are still Morrigan’s mother,” Thomas argued. “And you are my wife. You will always be special to me.”

  At last she squeezed his hand back and smiled at him.

  “And your son is back,” Thomas added, though it was a subject he wasn’t completely comfortable with. “A fine looking young man he is, too. I always think of him as the lad I picked up in the grocery store while you shopped in Montana. Do you remember? It was the first time we met, though I’d been watching you for years.”

  “I remember,” Shara said. She pulled her chair closer to his and rested her head against his shoulder. Her hair tickled his chest but smelled good against his cheek. “You scared the crap out of me that day.”

  “It was my intent. The lad was too valuable.” He realized his mistake as soon as he said it.

  “And now he’s nothing, too. Nothing in the eyes of the Pack, I mean,” she said.

  “He is still a werewolf that came into this world as he is. I must think he has a special destiny, even if he is not the Alpha himself.”

  “Maybe,” Shara said. “I’m glad he’s back, though. I missed him a lot.”

  “Aye, that you did. I know it,” Thomas said, stroking her wavy black hair.

  “I always regretted not going after him.”

  “Aye, but it was such a crazy time with the Old Ones showing up and Ulrik being wounded. His father took good care of him.”

  “Will you and Chris get along, do you think?”

  “It has been a long time since that day he faced me with a gun. I can never forget his face as he realized you carried my child.” Thomas paused, remembering Chris’s rage, knowing the anger was justified, and feeling helpless against it. “I do not hold it against him. I hope the passage of time has given him some understanding of how things came to be.”

  “I still can’t believe he lived with Kiona for so long. Who could live with that bitch for almost eight years?” Shara shook her head, making her hair brush over Thomas’s skin.

  “The world is filled with mysteries,” Thomas said.

  They sat quietly for a while. Shara became so still that Thomas thought she had drifted back to sleep. Then she spoke again. “How will you vote when they ask about joining Fenris?”

  “I will vote with you,” he answered.

  “If I was out of the equation, how would you vote?”

  “You are not,” he argued.

  “Fine. If you didn’t know he killed my parents. If you didn’t know my feelings about him. Just based on anything else you know about him and about the situation, how would you vote?” She raised her head off his shoulder and faced him. Her dark eyes were solemn and penetrating, dredging his soul for the truth. Thomas couldn’t face them.

  “I would vote to join him,” he admitted.

  Without a word, Shara lowered her head again and nestled against his shoulder once more. “Can we keep him from hurting Morrigan?”

  “God help him if he touches my daughter,” Thomas vowed.

  Fenris

  Fenris stood in the prow of his chartered ship and watched the horizon. He had awakened in a foul mood and those with him avoided him, knowing the dangers of crossing him when he preferred to be alone. Even Kiona had remained in the cabin they shared, and before leaving her Fenris had noted that she, too, seemed to be in a dour mood.

  Probably she had experienced the same dream. It was something he would have to ask her. He should call everyone together and ask them if they had seen the young bitch. Ask if they had heard her words. Ask if they currently felt the northeastward pull in their guts the way he felt.

  The advantage was slipping away from him, he knew. Perhaps it was already gone. Ulrik’s followers had always outnumbered his own, but they had lacked organization because the promised Alpha never came. But now she was here, and she was calling them. He had lost so much time thinking the whelp of a boy was the Alpha, not even knowing that Josef Ulrik was dead and that another child had been born to the Mother.

  Fenris pounded a fist against the railing. How did I miss that? It had probably been Ulrik’s death that had brought about more stringent security measures around his house. He had sent enough potential spies, but they had been turned away, told they would be summoned when it was time.

  And now, it seemed, it was time.

  The ship cut through the waves of the warm Pacific, moving north, back toward his ranch. He wondered if he should just continue north, see where this strange pull at his insides would take him. But it wasn’t completely north. It was pulling eastward, too, back into the mainland of the United States. There would be many gathered around the girl now, with more coming. How many would follow her? Too many. He was sure of that. She would have the Old Ones on her side, and most of the shapeshifters would be in awe of them and would follow them even if they wouldn’t follow the girl.

  And what of Skandar? Where had he gotten off to? He should have been found by now. Fenris pulled his cell phone from his pocket and silently cursed the No Signal message on the screen. A disadvantage of being at sea.

  “You can’t call from here.”

  Fenris turned to look at Kiona. The wind whipped his white hair into his face and he had to pull it away as he watched her come to stand beside him, her own long black hair trailing behind her. Her brown face was set, hard, angry.

  “I know that,” he told her.

  “You had the dream?”

  “I did. The others?”

  “I haven’t asked, but I heard some whispers about it. They’re worried they chose the wrong side in this fight,” she said.

  “Too many mercenaries,” Fenris growled. “They don’t understand what it would mean for them if an Alpha came to power.”

  “I can’t believe that bitch had another kid,” Kiona said. “Am I not worthy? Have I not done enough? But my womb is barren. Children I take to raise as my own are taken from me. And now this child-bitch rises out of nowhere to be the Alpha so soon after Joey…” She gripped the rail hard and stared straight ahead.

  “The Old Ones are gathered around her,” he said. “What will you do?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Your goal has never be
en the same as mine, dear Kiona. The coming of the true Alpha, and her sounding this call, it doesn’t change my goal. But what about yours?”

  Kiona was quiet for a while, her face down now, watching the white spray as the ship plowed through the water. At last she said, “I have no goals, anymore. I feel old now, Fenris. I miss John Redleaf. I feel old and defeated and eaten up with hate that I can’t even control. That dream didn’t help.”

  “John Redleaf,” Fenris mused. “He would have been a valuable ally. There are so few bears left.”

  “His death turned out to be for nothing.”

  “What will you do now?” Fenris pushed the issue. “Will you stay with me? Will you answer the call?”

  She laughed a short, harsh laugh. “Answer the call? The first thing I would do is kill Shara Wellington, and that would set the rest of them on me.”

  “There will be martyrs in this struggle,” Fenris said.

  “Are you suggesting I do that?” She turned to look at him. Fenris glanced back at her, then shook his head.

  “Not yet. Things have changed, and continue to change faster than I can prepare. I have to know who I can trust, gather them around me, and make plans.”

  “The mighty Fenris taking counsel,” Kiona said, smiling. “That is almost as unprecedented as the rise of the Alpha.”

  Fenris only grunted in response. His nose told him someone else was approaching. He turned to see one of the crew walking slowly, nervously toward him. Gary Andersen was a pace behind the dark-skinned man. The ship’s crew didn’t know they were transporting werewolves, but they knew enough to sense there was something odd about the living cargo they carried.

  “What is it?” Fenris demanded.

  “A call for you, senõr,” the wiry little man said. “In the captain’s bridge.”

  Fenris followed the man back to the bridge and picked up the handset. Kiona stood nearby and the captain remained at the wheel, staring ahead. Fenris didn’t like that the captain could listen, but there was nothing to do about it.