Etched in Bone

by Anne Bishop

  Well, damn. “Let me see that transcript again.” If she were a man, he’d definitely want her as one of his patrol officers. “What about the sheriff? Will he have a problem with a female deputy?”

  “Virgil will have more of a problem with her being human, but Tolya thinks they need a human to help keep the peace.”

  “Does Virgil have any training in law enforcement?”

  “He was a dominant enforcer. He knows how to kill.”

  Struck by a tone in Simon’s voice, Burke studied the Wolf. Had Virgil lost family members when the Humans First and Last movement killed so many of the Wolfgard? Wasn’t a question he could ask, but he had the feeling Virgil Wolfgard had never had the tolerance for humans that Simon did.

  Suddenly he could see the value of having a human female police officer to balance a male Wolf’s aggressive reaction when it came to humans disturbing the peace.

  “When do you need to know?” Burke asked.

  “Can you test her tomorrow? If she qualifies, she can go with the others who are leaving on the train the day after.”

  “I’ll meet her here and take her to the firing range. We’ll go on from there.”

  “Barbara Ellen will need a roommate besides Buddy. The Jana could live with her.”

  “About Buddy.” Michael Debany had been rattled after receiving the news about his sister’s living arrangements, and Burke kept a close eye on officers who were rattled for any reason.

  Simon opened a desk drawer, removed a piece of paper, and handed it to him. “Vlad asked. Tolya replied. We told Debany.”

  Burke read the message and laughed. Well, that explained why Debany had looked a bit sheepish these past few days whenever anyone asked about his sister.

  “Once the Jana arrives in Bennett, Barbara Ellen will have a roommate with a gun. She will be safe from unwanted males, so Officer Debany doesn’t need to worry anymore.”

  It sounded like an attempt to reassure, and it made him curious. “Would you want Meg to have a roommate with a gun?”

  Simon looked puzzled. “Why would Meg need one? She has me when she’s home and Nathan is the watch Wolf when she’s in the Liaison’s Office. And if someone defeated the Wolves, they would have to deal with Vlad and Henry and Tess and the girls at the lake.”

  The slightest change in Wolfgard’s eyes, in his stance, made Burke realize Simon had been wearing the persona of the bookstore owner for these interviews—and had, for the most part, maintained that persona while talking to him about Jana Paniccia. Until now.

  “We’ll keep Meg safe,” Simon said. “And Theral.”

  Burke stiffened. “Has Jack Fillmore tried to see her?”

  “Some humans were sniffing around where they shouldn’t have been. They were driven off before they caused trouble. We don’t have the scent of that Jack Fillmore, so I can’t say if he was one of them. But Theral doesn’t need a roommate with a gun. Not in the Courtyard.”

  Message received. “I heard that Katherine Debany will be working for Elliot Wolfgard.”

  “Yes. She starts tomorrow. Miss Twyla will also work there in the mornings, helping with the files.” Simon smiled, showing a canine that was a little too long to be human. “They both looked at the files this morning. Elliot said he’s never heard a human say so much by just saying tsk.”

  “A skill some women perfect.” Burke pushed out of the chair. “We’ll see you and Ms. Paniccia tomorrow morning.”

  He went downstairs and spent a few minutes looking at the books on the display table, finally selecting a thriller by a terra indigene author and a story by a human author that was set in a frontier town from a hundred years ago. He had a feeling that living in Bennett was going to be somewhere between the two.

  He paid for the books, then returned to the Chestnut Street station to inform Lieutenant Montgomery that he and his team would be helping to review the qualifications of a young woman who was going to wear a badge, carry a gun . . . and ride a horse.

  • • •

  Late that night, an odd silence followed the Elders’ path as they moved through the Courtyard unseen.

  They prowled around the denning place where the Wolf and Grizzly and other terra indigene lived. Where the howling not-Wolf lived. They spent time learning the scents of the humans who did not leave proper markers around the patch of turned earth but were present often enough that their scent rubbed off on the ground and on the plants. Then they moved on to the buildings across from the Courtyard, identifying the dens of the humans the Elementals had told them belonged to the not-Wolf’s pack. Standing on their hind legs, they had looked in the upstairs windows of one den with mingled male and female scents. Was the female in season? That was interesting, but the male suddenly sat up as if he could sense their presence. A hunter in the human pack?

  They returned to the Courtyard before the human became too uneasy and sounded an alarm. Even so, they heard a door open, saw the male come out to the open part of the den and look around. He would not see them. Could not see them since they were in their true form. But he’d known something was out there in the dark, watching him—watching his mate. Not many humans sensed their presence. That made this human different from others of his kind. Different, a hunter, but not seen as a threat by the smaller shifters. That was interesting too.

  They circled the building that was the not-Wolf’s other den—the place where they had found the tasties hidden inside a tough shell. The female pushed at the door, curious about what they might find in the den this time. Then they heard a human stirring upstairs, caught the scent of metal and oil when the door above them opened—a scent they associated with a human weapon.

  Another hunter in the human pack?

  So easy to grab the male from his high perch and crush him in their jaws, tear open the soft belly with their claws.

  Then a Wolf howled. Had the first human hunter sounded an alarm after all?

  It was a single voice, but it would be enough to wake the pack. Both packs.

  Disappointed that they hadn’t found the tasties, they still felt pleased by the reaction of both kinds of hunters to a potential threat. Retreating to the spot in the Courtyard that they had chosen for their resting place, they considered what they had learned—and decided it was time to let the Wolf and Grizzly know they were here.

  Dear Douglas,

  I hope this finds you well. Brittania survived the recent storms, which only gave our island a glancing blow on their way to Cel-Romano. The savage retaliation against the Cel-Romano Alliance of Nations for the deaths of so many shifters and the attempt to seize some of the wild country and bring it under human control has caused plenty of sleepless nights for everyone here in Brittania—especially government officials and those of us in law enforcement. It has made me grateful that I was able to spend a little time in the Lakeside Courtyard when I visited you in Juin. Having some knowledge of how to work with the Others has been a tremendous help.

  Everything we’ve heard about Cel-Romano is just scraps of information coming from people who live in fishing and farming settlements in the wild country and have traded goods with Brittania for generations. And their information comes from rumors from border villages that were spared the full force of the attacks.

  According to the rumors, every factory that built the weapons that were used against the shifters was destroyed. In that, the Others were merciless, and in some cases, an entire city was laid to waste. There is rumored to be a wealth of salvage in those places—metals, tires, tools, even money; it’s also rumored that few who go in to grab whatever they can carry survive the predators who have staked out those broken cities as their hunting grounds. Salvagers who enter as healthy men come out dying of some kind of plague, if they come out at all.

  Many villages and towns were left untouched. There is limited fuel for motor vehicles because fuel depots are now surrounded by wild cou
ntry, and only humans who have dealt fairly with the Others in the past have any chance of being allowed access to the fuel.

  Cel-Romano used to be the largest area of unbroken human-controlled land in the world, encompassing all the land around the Mediterran Sea as well as the land around the western and southern shores of the Black Sea. Now each nation is divided from the rest by broad veins of wild country. It’s said the land doesn’t look different—there are still roads and human farms and villages—but it feels different. Dangerous. The people who live on the farms and in the villages claim they are safe enough during the day, but strangers trying to cross that land rarely survive. And no one is safe in the dark.

  Electronic communication in Cel-Romano is limited or nonexistent. In fact, smaller villages are more likely to have working telephones than what’s left of the industrial cities. But service is erratic since many of the telephone lines running through the new veins of wild country were torn down and can’t be repaired.

  That is the information that has reached us. Best guess from what I can piece together? Veins of the wild country will continue to spread throughout Cel-Romano, isolating people on smaller and smaller pieces of land. Some communities will survive, may even thrive, while other places will wither until they, and the people who lived there, are nothing more than a memory or cautionary tale.

  Take care, Douglas. I hope Lakeside is one of the places in your part of the world that continues to survive and thrive. I’ll stay in touch as best I can.

  —Shady

  CHAPTER 6

  Thaisday, Messis 9

  Meg put her carry sack in the back of the BOW, then stepped back and smiled at Simon. “I want to walk to work.”

  “But I need to get to the office early today.”

  “Which is why you need to drive the BOW.” Okay, that wasn’t quite true. Even in human form, Simon could easily walk to the Market Square and get to Howling Good Reads in plenty of time for his early meetings. But he couldn’t get there on time if he kept to her walking pace. “I want to look at the garden and see what vegetables we can pick, and I just want to move this morning.”

  He sighed, a sound that held so much disappointment that Meg almost relented. She enjoyed going into work with Simon, liked the companionship. But she didn’t want to go to the Liaison’s Office early—and she didn’t want anyone with her as she approached the Market Square, just in case whatever had triggered her distress yesterday was still there. The job fair was over, so she should be fine, but Simon would be unhappy if she had another panic attack, and she didn’t want him distracted from helping the remaining people who were waiting for a decision about whether they were going to Bennett.

  “I’ll be fine, Simon.” When he continued to stand beside the BOW, she added, “I’ll let you know as soon as I reach the office.”

  What would Merri Lee or Ruth do to convince a male to go along with her plan?

  Meg walked up to Simon, went up on her toes, and licked his cheek. Okay, Merri or Ruth would have given him a human kiss, but judging by the surprised and pleased look in his eyes, he didn’t care about that.

  He ran a hand over her short black hair and gave her a light scritch behind her ear. Then he got into the BOW and drove away.

  Feeling independent and competent and free, Meg left the Green Complex and walked on the grass to reach the big kitchen garden. Along with the Green Complex’s residents, she and her human friends had been harvesting vegetables for the past few weeks. They’d picked a bit of this and that during Sumor, but now it seemed there were all kinds of vegetables that needed to be picked every day—and whether it was true or not, it felt like she was picking zucchini every day. The peppers were growing and almost ready, and there would be fresh corn soon. It was fun to come out here and see what was flowering and what was getting ripe and . . .

  What was that?

  White and red. And a patch of brown over there. And . . .

  A couple of days ago, she had startled a young rabbit grazing near the garden. She hadn’t meant to; she just hadn’t seen it. But when it moved, it had dragged a hind leg. Had it been hit by a car? The complexes weren’t built that close to the city’s streets, but animals did cross the streets looking for food. Julia Hawkgard told her dead prey was often found on the grass beside Parkside Avenue—animals that had been moving from the park to the Courtyard or the Courtyard to the park. But Parkside Avenue was on the other side of the Courtyard. An injured rabbit wouldn’t cross all that land.

  Meg approached cautiously, her stomach already doing little flips.

  White bone stripped of muscle but still connected with ligaments—and still attached to a furred foot. The patch of brown turned out to be a hunk of fur. And the red . . . Was that the bunny’s backbone?

  Meg backed up and screamed when she hit something.

  Big hands held her up. Henry’s voice rumbled above her head. “It’s just a rabbit, Meg.”

  “Someone ate the bunny.”

  “No one in the Green Complex. Not all the hunters who look for food in the Courtyard are terra indigene.”

  “Do you think Simon . . . ?” He ate bunnies. So did Sam. So did all her neighbors except maybe Tess and Vlad, and she wasn’t sure they hadn’t. Even she had eaten rabbit a few times. But it had been cooked. And nothing on her plate had looked like that.

  “None of your friends ate the rabbit,” Henry said.

  “How do you know?”

  “They wouldn’t have left bones and scraps where you or the female pack would find them.” He put his arm around her shoulders and led her away from the garden.

  “He had an injured leg,” Meg said when they reached the Courtyard’s main road and started walking toward the Market Square.

  “That made him easy prey.” They walked in silence for a minute before Henry said, “Why did Simon leave you behind?”

  “I wanted to walk to work. Wanted the extra time to approach the Market Square.” Meg sighed. “If I’d gone with Simon, I wouldn’t have seen the bunny, the . . . backbone.” Seeing the leg bones hadn’t been so bad, but the image of the backbone would stay with her.

  “All meat hopped or ran or flew before it became meat,” Henry said. “That is the way of things.”

  She nodded. That was the way of things. But the raw truth was a little harder to accept.

  • • •

  Shit, fuck, damn, Simon thought when Henry told him about Meg’s discovery. “Better tell whoever is cooking at Meat-n-Greens today not to put rabbit on the menu board.”

  “I already did,” Henry said. “But that one looked like it was eaten where it was caught.”

  When she saw an injured bunny, Meg’s feelings would have gone all gooey. A Wolf, seeing the same thing, would have grabbed the quick meal and taken it to the Wolfgard Complex for the pups or eaten it himself.

  “I will go back and dispose of the bones and scraps,” Henry said. “You should find something to distract our Meg so she doesn’t spend the day thinking about the rabbit.”

  “There’s not . . .” Simon looked at the box that had been picked up at the train station early that morning. “I might have something to distract her.” Of course, he hadn’t done more than glance at the books Jesse Walker had sent for his review and had no idea if they were exciting mystery-thrillers with lots of chasing or scary stories. Well, if the books scared Meg and she kicked him because of bad dreams, he couldn’t snarl at anyone but himself.

  Simon picked up the box and left the office, pausing long enough to tell Vlad he was going to the Liaison’s Office.

  The back door of the Liaison’s Office was locked. He’d expected that. What he hadn’t expected was to hear a footstep on the stairs above him and see Greg O’Sullivan looking down at him, a hand on the service weapon the ITF agent carried.

  “Mr. Wolfgard.” O’Sullivan’s hand moved away from the weapon. He came d
own the stairs, his steps quick and light. “Didn’t know it was you.”

  Simon watched the agent. Nadine Fallacaro and Eve Denby both said the second room above the office was similar to a hotel room, with the perk of a small fridge to hold cold drinks or snacks. O’Sullivan had been happy to become the tenant, saying it was more secure than a regular hotel room, and he could leave personal items there when he needed to travel back to Hubbney and report to Governor Hannigan. “Were you expecting someone else?”

  “No, but I’d heard that, during the job fair, a few people had been poking around where they didn’t belong—and I thought I heard someone testing the back door late last night. Just wanted to make sure no one was trying to bother Ms. Corbyn.”

  A different kind of watch Wolf, Simon decided as he studied O’Sullivan. Not an unattached male sniffing around his Meg, but a member of the larger pack committed to protecting the territory that sheltered all of them—which meant O’Sullivan needed to be warned about the Courtyard’s guests.

  Simon hadn’t seen them, had been too busy dealing with humans to even sense their presence or catch their scent. But Kowalski had called Blair last night, and after the dominant enforcer had sniffed the ground around Kowalski and Ruthie’s den this morning, Blair told Simon that two of the Elders had returned to Lakeside. That was the reason he had asked Henry to delay going to the Market Square—so that Meg wouldn’t be walking alone. And that was why Henry had been there when Meg found the bunny backbone.

  He wasn’t ready to discuss that with the humans, so he changed the subject. “Katherine Debany is starting her new job at the consulate.”

  “I met her yesterday,” O’Sullivan said. “And Miss Twyla.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Made me feel like I was being scrutinized by two strict but affectionate aunts. I checked all the drawers in the desk I’m using to make sure there wasn’t anything there that might get me into trouble. I have a feeling those two have heard the ‘it isn’t mine’ defense too many times to believe it.”