Nadia's Children

by Steven E Wedel

  Fenris was gone, swarmed by the bear and three wolves who were still tearing at him in fury for what he had done. More wolves were spilling into the depression from the other side, stopping, transforming, staring in horror.

  Thomas made himself look at the stone table. The altar to an ancient bear goddess.

  Morrigan’s body lay across Shara’s knees.

  The knife stood straight and still from Shara’s breast.

  Then Chris was beside her, cradling her head in his hands.

  “I’m coming. She’s my wife now.” Thomas pushed himself up, wobbled for a moment, then fell over.

  I’ve lost too much blood.

  He moaned once, a low, pitiful sound, then his world turned black.

  Shara

  She couldn’t breathe.

  Fire burned through her body.

  There was something heavy on her legs.

  Her vision was full of green treetops and bright blue sky. It hurt her brain to look at the brightness above her.

  Shara looked toward the lower part of her body to see what was on her legs. The handle of the silver dagger stuck up from her chest, an obscene, hateful thing that was the core of the burning in her veins. Beyond it, though, she saw Morrigan slumped lifeless on the stone slab.

  “Morrigan,” Shara tried to call, but her voice was a hoarse whisper.

  Hands were under her head, cradling her, and a familiar voice spoke to her.

  “Shara? Shara, I’m here.”

  A face loomed large and a little unfocused above her own. Thomas? No, this face was lighter.

  “It’s Chris,” the face said.

  “Chris.” Shara tried to smile at him.

  “I was wrong again.”

  “Don’t talk,” he urged. “Don’t talk. We’ll get you out of here.”

  “No.” She tensed suddenly as the pain increased. She gasped, struggling for breath. “This is the end. I know how Ulrik felt. The silver … It gets into your blood. It burns so much.”

  “Shara…” He choked on the name. “Shara, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. For everything.”

  She shook her head and opened her mouth to tell him there was nothing to be sorry for, but the words never came.

  Skandar

  Skandar pressed his torn shirt against the wound in Thomas McGrath’s shoulder. The dark-haired man was slowly coming around. Already the blood was ceasing to flow as his lycanthropic body went about the business of healing itself. Cerdwyn knelt beside him and gently removed the bloody shirt. She looked to Skandar and smiled, then placed her hand over the wound. She bowed her head for a moment, whispering, then pulled the hand away and patted Skandar’s arm.

  “He will recover,” she said. “At least in body.” Her gaze traveled down the hill to the clearing around the stone table where shapeshifters in human, wolf, and a few in bear form milled about, not sure what to do now.

  Skandar watched with her. He had witnessed the death of the other Old Ones, though he had not taken part in it. He had not shot a single bullet from the modern weapon he had been given. Merin, Joey, and Jennifer, however, had put several silver-tipped bullets into the bodies of those who had pulled down and torn Fenris to pieces.

  Cerdwyn moved away from him and Skandar watched as she bent over Cheryl and helped tie a strip of cloth over the small blonde woman’s bicep.

  At the bottom of the slope, Joey sat in stunned silence beside the body of Chris Woodman, staring at his father’s mangled corpse. Chris’s belly had been slashed open by sharp teeth, his entrails pulled out. His throat had been bitten nearly through, leaving his head hanging by a band of flesh.

  The battle on the hill had been too intense. Nobody had been able to reach Shara’s first husband to help him. He was dragged away from the stone altar and torn apart a few feet from Shara’s own body.

  Jenny sat near Joey, a little apart, out of respect, perhaps. The back of her shirt was slashed to ribbons, still shining wet and red.

  Skandar studied the boy, Joey, the first born of a werewolf mother. He was so young. He wondered what the boy’s destiny was. Would this break him? His mother and father both killed before his eyes. In his own boyhood, Skandar knew, such an act would most likely harden a youth, turn him mean and strong. Joey had fought well and bravely, but Skandar did not know him well enough to guess his future.

  No one had escaped injury. Merin and Janice were both dead, the older man accidentally hit by a silver bullet during the melee. Janice had been pulled apart by two wolves before Jenny had shot both of them.

  Of the entire company, Jenny and Cerdwyn had fared the best. Jenny had been bitten once on the right arm, but it was only a flesh wound. Cerdwyn had two bites, one in the calf that had been partially blocked by her jeans and boot, and another on her side, just below her rib cage, but it, too, was superficial.

  The smell of blood, gunpowder, and wild animal filled the air.

  The Alpha is dead.

  Skandar looked at his own hands. He had lost two fingers on his left hand, but that wasn’t why he stared at them.

  The Alpha is dead, but the curse hasn’t come back.

  Beneath him, Thomas opened his eyes at last and looked up at him. His face was a twisted mask of pain. “Dead?” he asked.

  Skandar nodded.

  Thomas squeezed his eyes shut again.

  “Come,” Skandar urged, taking the man by the other arm. He rose and helped Thomas to his feet. The Irishman swayed unsteadily.

  “He’ll have a hard time standing for a while,” Cerdwyn said, coming back to them. “He’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “He would say good-bye to his wife and child,” Skandar said.

  Cerdwyn nodded. “I’ll come with you.”

  Carefully, one step at a time, they made their way down the gentle, grassy slope. When they came to where Joey sat, they paused.

  Cerdwyn called, “Joey? Joey! Come with us.”

  The boy looked up with dull eyes and stared at them for a moment.

  “Come on,” Cerdwyn urged. “We don’t have all day. All that gunfire is sure to have the park rangers snooping around pretty soon. Come to your mother.”

  Joey’s blank face crumpled suddenly and he began to cry with deep, racking sobs. Jenny edged forward and tried to comfort him, but he rolled away from her and lay on his stomach, his arms over his head.

  “Leave the boy,” Skandar said. Is he broken? Or will his tears temper the steel and make him strong? “We will go.”

  “Jennifer, your shirt will get in the way of your healing,” Cerdwyn advised. The girl looked at her blankly for a moment, then pulled the ragged wet garment over her head and tossed it aside.

  Supporting Thomas between them, Skandar and Cerdwyn approached the altar. Nearly everyone in the depression had taken on human shapes now. They parted as the three approached, then closed rank behind them. The trio limped to the table and stood over the two bodies there.

  Tears had dried on Shara’s face. She wore a peaceful expression in death. Skandar wished he had been able to know her better.

  “Put Morrigan beside her mother,” Cerdwyn ordered.

  Several people moved forward. Two men took the child’s body and lifted it to the altar while three others cut Shara’s bindings and moved her to the side enough to make room for her daughter. The only visible wound on the Alpha child was a small hole in her right shoulder. A trickle of blood was already drying around the wound.

  Skandar looked away from the bodies and scanned those around him. He did not see any faces he recognized.

  Perhaps I am the last of the Old Ones now.

  Suddenly McGrath fought free from the support of Skandar and Cerdwyn and threw himself at the table. He wrenched the knife from Shara’s breast, screaming a curse as he turned the blade toward himself.

  Skandar slapped at the man’s clenched fists with his own wounded hand while Cerdwyn yelled for him to stop. The knife clattered away. Thomas was too weak to fight. He fell to his knees and pressed his head ag
ainst the stone while he cried.

  “I was not there for her,” he sobbed. “I did nothing. Nothing. I could have saved her but I could not shoot my own child.”

  Cerdwyn took control of the gathering.

  “It is over,” she called. Sensing her power, the others pressed close to hear what she said. “The Mother came and now she is gone. The Alpha came and now she is gone, too. But we remain. In time, perhaps the goddess will give us another Mother and another Alpha. Perhaps not. Perhaps her purpose in all this was simply to end the curse for the Old Ones. It is too soon to say.”

  She paused and her audience shifted and murmured, but remained mostly quiet. Skandar watched them, still looking for someone he knew, someone from his own village. There was no one.

  “The bodies must be buried or taken out of here if you wish it. We must act quickly, before the authorities begin investigating any possible reports of automatic gunfire or increased predator activity.”

  “What about the prophecy?” a male voice called from the crowd. “We are supposed to take control of the human population.” The man pushed his way forward to stand before Cerdwyn. “They are supposed to be sheep to us.”

  “No,” Cerdwyn answered. “That was Holle’s teaching, based, no doubt, on ages of hate and resentment. The goddess does not want us to be rulers of men.”

  “There is no goddess,” the man challenged.

  “Believe what you want,” Cerdwyn told him. “Anyone who tries to promote the teachings of Holle will be hunted down and destroyed.”

  The man looked around him, as if expecting support, but there was none. He turned away and pushed back through the crowd.

  “Thomas?” Cerdwyn asked, going to the man and putting her hands on his shoulders. Silent, but still weeping, Thomas looked up at her. “What shall we do with your wife and daughter? Taking them out of the forest would be difficult. Can we bury them here?”

  Thomas didn’t answer at first.

  “It has become a sacred place,” Skandar offered. “Their spirits will be at peace in his place.”

  Slowly, Thomas nodded.

  * * *

  By the time the graves were dug, Thomas had recovered enough that he was able to stand on his own. Skandar stayed near him, watching the sad, dejected man as the bodies of his wife and daughter were moved from the stone table to the holes made with sticks, stones, bare hands, and the fast, powerful paws of strong wolves. Those who had answered the call of the Alpha remained, waiting. Above them, at the rim of the depression, more graves had been dug for those who had been killed trying to rescue the Mother and Alpha. They would be sentinels to this holy place now.

  When the bodies were lowered into the holes, Skandar thought Thomas would lose his composure and begin weeping again, but he didn’t. The man stood silent and resolute, watching the proceedings.

  Cerdwyn stepped up to the graves and lifted her arms. “Mother, we offer Shara Wellington and Morrigan McGrath into your keeping. Bless those they have left behind, those who loved them, and guide us all to do your will and remain close to you.” She nodded to those around her and they began throwing dirt back into the graves.

  Skandar watched as Thomas stepped forward to take one final look at the faces of his women. Then he turned and walked away. Skandar nodded to Cerdwyn, then followed Thomas.

  Chris, Merin, and Janice were also being placed into their graves at the top of the hill. Joey was calmer now, and helping to lower his father’s body into the earth. Thomas didn’t stop to watch, but moved on and Skandar went with him. They walked until they came back to the stream where the two bodies had been stuck in a curve. Those were gone now. Thomas sat down beside the flowing water, bent forward and washed his face and bare chest, carefully dabbing water over his wounded shoulder. Skandar sat beside him.

  “You have lost a woman and child before,” Skandar said. “Cerdwyn told me your history.”

  “Yes,” Thomas agreed. “I am cursed.”

  “It may seem so,” Skandar acknowledged. “Or blessed. Who else among us has fathered a child after Nadia put her curse on us? You have done so twice.”

  “And they’re all dead,” Thomas said sadly, watching a hand he let dangle in the water. “All dead.”

  “All my people are dead, too,” Skandar said. “Nadia was my woman. We had to keep it secret because she was the oracle of her village. When she brought the curse on us, she used the body of our child to make her magic. I know your pain, Thomas McGrath. It is much to bear, but it is yours to bear.”

  Thomas grunted. “I would rather not bear it. You stopped me from joining them.” He pulled his hand from the water and waved it back in the direction they’d come.

  “There is strength in you. It may be needed,” Skandar said. “We have much in common. I would like for you to travel with me for a while. Show me this modern world.”

  “No. I don’t think so,” Thomas said.

  “Why not?”

  “I just don’t want to.”

  “You would rather be alone in your grief. I understand that. But you feel too much pity with your grief. The Old Ones, I think, are all gone. I am alone. You are alone. We will be alone together.”

  “You don’t give up easily, Old One.”

  “No. I have had lifetimes to learn patience. I will follow you, whether you agree to travel with me or not.”

  For the first time since the battle, Thomas almost smiled. He nodded. “Maybe it would be good to visit my homeland,” he said. “I wish I could have taken Shara and Morrigan.”

  “The dead never leave us,” Skandar said. He reached over and touched Thomas’s chest, over his heart. “They are always with us.”

  Kelley

  Kelley Stone stood in Fenris’s bedroom and faced the large print of Ernest Wallcousin’s Hundingsbane’s Return to Valhal painting. She had seen it before, but paid it little heed. The painting depicted the Norse hero Helgi leaving the open arms of his lover Sigrun. Fenris had the print mounted in a heavy gilded frame. Kelley felt around on the frame, trying to decide if it was hinged or would have to be taken off the wall. It was hinged. She pulled it open and took a deep breath before spinning the dial on the safe.

  There had been much speculation and fear among his friends as to the fate of Skandar. Would the death of the Alpha return him to his wolf form? If it did, would he go mad? Could anybody remain sane after regaining his human shape for such a short time after so many millennia as a wolf? Nothing happened the night after the battle. When his time came upon him, his friends watched him closely, wondering if the man would return. He did.

  Skandar and Thomas McGrath returned to New England with Cerdwyn. Kelley heard they’d stayed with the priestess for a while, then moved on, exploring, comforting one another. She suspected it would be good for both of them. She hoped the new friendship would cure some of the melancholia in both men.

  Kelley dialed up the last number of the combination, then dropped her hand to her side. She did not know what to expect. What would she find inside? Fenris wasn’t one to do things for no reason. What had he left for her? An exploding booby trap as repayment for her betrayal? She wouldn’t put it past him, and yet, there at the end, she thought he might have been different.

  He had killed the Alpha. His goal all along had been to maintain the status quo, and he’d managed that, though it had cost him his life.

  And Shara? Poor Shara. Kelley couldn’t help but feel sorry for the dark-haired woman who had gone through so much, made more complicated by her own flaws and weaknesses. Shara might, Kelley thought, be alive now if she’d joined them instead of trying to win Morrigan back by herself. Maybe not. But chances would have improved. Now she was dead.

  The Mother is dead.

  And with Shara’s death, the chances of another Alpha seemed to fade significantly. True, Thomas believed his previous lover would have carried their child to term if she hadn’t been caught and killed by a werewolf hunter, but there was really no way to be sure of that. Only Shara h
ad conceived and given birth, and now she is dead.

  Kelley opened the safe door. Nothing blew up in her face.

  Of Fenris’s followers, very few had survived. Despite their firepower, they had been disorganized, outnumbered, and overpowered. Most of them had been killed in the Superior National Forest and their bodies would remain there. Gary Andersen still lived. Kelley had spoken to him on the phone. He wasn’t returning to California, he said, preferring to go home to Sweden for a long period of solitude.

  Other than herself, the house was empty. Jenny and Joey were on the beach below the cliff, but Kelley had asked them to give her time alone with whatever Fenris had left hidden away in his private bedroom.

  Joey and Jenny. Kelley considered the possibilities. Joey was special. No, he wasn’t the Alpha as they had believed for so long, but he was still the first werewolf born from the womb. He had infected Jenny himself. What if …? Kelley smiled. What if they became a mated pair? Would Jenny’s womb be as barren as every living werewolf female, or could she take Shara’s place?

  And what about Joey himself? He had been in a deep depression following the battle. He seldom ate and had lost weight. When his time came, he turned into a wolf and lay on his bed. When his cycle ended, he became a young man and remained on his bed, naked among the hair he’d shed. He had only recently resumed eating a little and leaving the house, thanks to the constant attention of Jenny.

  Inside the safe, she found a thick envelope and a wooden box. Kelley pulled them out and went to a table to sit down and examine them. She emptied the contents of the envelope first. There was a spreadsheet she recognized as something she had created, containing contact information and some biographical details about every known shapeshifter. She set it aside, thinking that many of those names could be deleted now.

  The next sheaf of papers was also familiar: Fenris’s financial information, complete with account numbers and passwords. She put those aside. The last paper was folded. She opened it and read, her hand coming up to cover her mouth as she did.