by Laura Taylor
“The wolves have humans working for them, you know,” Aliya said knowledgably. “I read that one of their lackeys turned informant a few years back. Whole families are brainwashed into helping them.”
Actually, according to what Miller had read, the shifters tried to minimise contact with humans. After all, the more people who knew their secrets, the more likely it was that they’d be leaked. It had never been proven, but he suspected that the ‘informant’ had been a plant, sent to feed them false information.
“I think it would be wise to keep them under observation,” Miller concluded, “but we’ve done all we can for the moment.” ‘Observation’ in this context meant the family would have their phones tapped, their mail monitored, their internet connection hacked. And the instant he sent his report back to headquarters, ‘Helen Coombs’ would have her full history checked, including her supposed migration from America.
“The forest runs right up to the back of this property,” Aliya pointed out. “The girl’s got to end up there one way or another, even if she doesn’t come through here.”
Miller glanced back at the house. The owner was still watching them from the doorway. He decided to test out a theory. It was one he’d been working on for a year or two, and discussing it with seasoned operatives tended to get him nowhere. It would be interesting to see what a newbie had to say about it. “What would you think of the idea that there are two packs in England, not just one?” he asked, as they climbed back into the car. “There’s a certain amount of evidence that the second one is further west. What’s to say she couldn’t end up there?”
To his disappointment, Aliya snorted. “There’s no second pack. The idea is just a clever decoy, designed to make us waste more time searching for them.”
“But according to the database, there are two distinct patterns of behaviour from the shifters,” Miller persisted. “One group is reclusive to a fault, but the other pulls stunts like ‘solving’ that kidnapping story. At the very least, there’s got to be two different sub-cultures within the group-”
“I’ve read all the official documents,” Aliya interrupted, sounding a touch defensive now. “All the senior operatives agree there’s only one pack. The rest of it is just tricks to throw us off target. I read a report from Jacob himself that said as much. And I’m absolutely sure the woman we just saw isn’t one of those animals,” she went on confidently. “Too sweet and polite. The wolves themselves are vicious killers. Antisocial, brutal and uncultured. They’d never stand around and chat like she did.”
Miller made a non-committal sound and started the motor. It seemed Aliya, like most of their operatives, had been brainwashed by the ‘official’ propaganda. It was becoming more and more difficult to find people willing to think outside the square, to question the Noturatii’s official modes of operation, and he was of the firm opinion that their organisation was weaker because of it.
Miller himself had read a vast array of reports, dating back years, if not decades, into the Noturatii’s interactions with the shifters. And in many cases, their official view point on the shifters’ behaviour was correct – in confrontations, the wolves fought viciously, using the full advantages of both animal and human forms, and were to be treated with a shoot first, ask questions later policy. But there were also a dozen or so other stories he’d read. He’d had to read between the lines, the reports having been coloured by bias of course, but in each one, a distinct and worrying pattern had emerged. Far from being aggressive beasts bent on death and mayhem, each of the dozen reports had stated that until the Noturatii had attacked them first, the shifters had only been trying to run away.
Helen – or Rintur-Ul as she was known to the Grey Watch – watched the Noturatii leave, fighting to keep the polite smile on her face until they were out of sight. And then the wholesome housewife image vanished, dark curses on her lips as she strode into the house.
Genna, their newest recruit, a twenty-one-year-old who had yet to be converted, was still in the kitchen, doing her best to murder the dough she’d been making for bread. Rintur paused mid-stride, almost giving in to the impulse to go and rescue the poor stuff from the pounding it was receiving, before deciding she had more important matters to attend to.
Genna was typical of much of the younger generation, born with a sense of entitlement and slow to pick up responsibilities. They couldn’t afford to be too choosy though, with less and less women prepared to forgo the luxuries of modern life, despite the perks of being a wolf. An intensive training course was their way of dealing with undesirable personality traits, whereas in the past, the women who joined them had been given time and space to discover the joys of the natural world at their own pace. Such were the demands that modern society placed upon them.
But try as she might, Genna was not a natural cook. As it was, she had burnt the eggs, set fire to the salmon, and her bread had turned out as a solid, inedible brick. And this latest crisis was not likely to help her attempts to adjust to the Watch’s way of life.
Rintur pulled out her cell phone and dialled Sempre-Ul, praying that she’d answer. Rintur had been a wolf for just over fifteen years, but Sempre, their alpha, had been converted when she was barely twelve years old. Now in her forties, she knew things about their magic that made Rintur’s skin crawl.
“We’ve just had a visit from the Noturatii,” she said, as soon as Sempre picked up the phone.
Genna regarded the dough with a frown. It was sticky, clinging to her fingers and the kitchen counter, white flour sprayed about like a miniature snow storm, and no matter what she did, she couldn’t seem to make it turn into the neat, round ball that Rintur’s had become.
She picked up the lump and dumped it into the bread pan, doing her best to pat it down to fit inside. Damn cooking. She’d signed up to be a wolf, for Pete’s sake. No one had told her she’d have to learn to cook! Wolves ate their food raw, after all. But Rintur had lectured her on the need to be self-sufficient. The Grey Watch kept a supply of the basic staples – flour, eggs, herbs and spices – but running down to the shops for groceries if they ran out of something wasn’t an option, so here she was, battling it out with a wet, sticky dough monster that would no doubt turn out just as hard and inedible as her last three attempts.
No one, but no one, Rintur had emphasised, was allowed to be a burden on the pack. So if Genna wanted to live with them, she had to learn a lot of home crafts from scratch. Making candles from tallow. Repairing her own clothes. Cooking.
Bleh.
She covered the pan with a tea towel and made a cursory attempt at scraping the wet dough from her hands. She was about to head for the sink and lots of soapy water to clean up, but then thought better of it. Rintur would want to check the dough first, and if she hadn’t done it well enough, she would make her fix it. So no point cleaning up until she’d got the all clear.
She headed for the study, where she’d heard Rintur go after she’d come in from outside.
The woman was on the phone, her back to Genna, so she waited, trying to be patient. Or rather, she was simply in no hurry to rush off to her next assignment. Feriur was upstairs waiting to give her a lesson in sewing, and if there was one thing Genna found even more boring than cooking, it was that.
“It’s that damned Il Trosa again,” Rintur was saying, her tone shrill and tense. “Every time they pull one of these stunts, we get the blame. There was some woman they kidnapped. The Noturatii got onto it and now they’re stirring up trouble again.” She paused, hand on her hip, staring out the window. “Of course it was Il Trosa,” she went on a moment later. “There was a news report a few days ago… Oh, for fuck’s sake, watching the news on television does not make me a heretic!”
Oh yes, Genna remembered. That was the other down side of this new arrangement she’d sign on to. No technology. No radio, no internet, no television.
“A woman was snatched by a man in a white van in London,” Rintur went on. “White Ford Transit van, weird events and Noturat
ii types showing up here equals Il Trosa doing some fool thing and drawing way too much attention to themselves. We’ve both been around long enough to know how it works.”
Another pause. “If they’d just sit down and shut up, stop poking the beast, then the Noturatii wouldn’t even know we were here. We avoid them, hide in the forest, keep our heads down – like we’ve done for centuries – and then they come knocking on our door because Baron and his mob of mongrels can’t keep it together for five minutes. But not much we can do about that now. Can you send Sven? We’ll have to convert her tonight.” Rintur turned around at that point and saw Genna watching her. She looked alarmed for a moment, then shrugged it off, returning to her previously resolute expression. “We’ll head for the camp as soon as it’s done. All right. Bye.”
She hung up. “Change of plans, Genna. Sempre is sending a male to convert you. We’ll have to finish your training in the wild.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Den was a mess of activity. After the announcement that Dee was to officially join Il Trosa, Caroline had told her this morning that there was to be a celebration in her honour.
Dee had offered to help several times, but when everyone had simply told her to go and relax, she’d found herself at a loose end. So, around midday, she headed for the library, deciding to do what Silas had suggested and look through some of the history books for stories, myths, anything that might be linked to his odd behaviour towards her.
She’d found the story of Faeydir-Ul and her human conspirator, and read the story with rapt attention. Then she’d picked up a variety of historical accounts, shifters in ancient Greece and Rome, those revered by the druids, and finally she’d come across a number of prophecies of warriors who would return from the dead. Did Silas think she was one of those? But in this particular book, every prophecy she read about involved a male shifter, not a female. So no luck there. She had just reached the section on mystical powers that shifters might possess when she felt an irritated nudge at the back of her mind.
What? she asked the wolf. You’ll have a run later.
An image of a clock appeared in her mind, and Dee glanced at the wall, shocked to see it was 3 p.m. already! Had she been reading for that long?
Another image in her mind, of Faeydir running outside in the forest, and Dee nodded. “Absolutely,” she said out loud. “Sorry. I got a little carried away there.”
She opened the library door, feeling apprehensive about bothering Mark for a trip outside. She still didn’t know what he thought of being on babysitting duty, and his moods seemed to swing unpredictably from easy-going to intense and brooding.
After checking the house with no luck, she learned from Caleb that Mark was out in his workshop, and he agreed to escort her there. It was a short, thirty metre walk from the front door, but Caroline had made it clear that the rule of ‘no going outside alone’ would be broken if she was to set so much as a single foot outside the door unaccompanied.
“Visitor for you,” Caleb called through the workshop door when they arrived, then he gave Dee a smile and disappeared back the way he’d come. She went inside, seeing Mark sitting in the far corner working at a sawhorse, but rather than wondering what he was making, her attention was immediately captured by the fact that he didn’t have a shirt on. Firm muscles stood out on his arms as he shaped the wood, and lean legs were encased in distracting denim.
“Oh, hey. Come on in,” he said, when he saw who had arrived. He stood up quickly, brushing woodchips off his jeans, and reached for his shirt.
“Sorry for interrupting you,” Dee said, telling herself not to stare as he slid into the t-shirt. “But Faeydir really needs to go for a run.”
“It’s okay,” Mark said quickly. “I need a break anyway.” He set his tools neatly on a bench, doing a cursory clean-up in the process. Dee glanced around the room as he did so, curious about what he was doing out here, and her eyes opened wide at what she saw. “Wow.”
Mark looked up in surprise. “What?”
“This is beautiful.” A set of chairs were lined up against one wall, smooth, dark wood, an oiled finish, each one a work of art. She stepped closer and saw intricate designs etched into the frames, swirls and curves that had a Celtic feel to them. “You made these?”
“Yeah. It makes a bit of money for the Den. Some of us work for the estate itself, house repairs, bookkeeping, or whatever, but most people have some form of job to help pay the bills.”
“This is really beautiful,” she repeated, surprised that Mark didn’t seem to think so.
He came over and ran his hand over the back of one chair. “I’ve made this exact same chair over a hundred times. And that one over there,” he pointed to a slightly different design in the corner, “about eighty times. At the end of the day, it’s just slapping a few bits of wood together and sanding off the edges.”
Dee found his resentfulness odd, given the effort he clearly put into each piece. “Is it just tables and chairs you make?”
“Pretty much.”
“So why do you do it, if you dislike it so much?”
“I liked it when I started. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an engineer. But then I joined the Den, and a full-time university degree doesn’t really fit in with being shot at on a daily basis and having a wolf in your head that needs constant care. So no degree. But I liked building things and designing things. So I learned to do this.”
“And now?”
He shrugged. “It pays the bills.”
“Do you still like designing things?”
“Yeah. But working with wood was never my first choice. I’d prefer to work with metal, but…”
“So design something else. A wardrobe. A bookcase. A computer desk. Whatever you like.”
“I make what people order. And what they order is dining sets.”
“Oh, rubbish,” Dee scoffed. “People order whatever you make them want. And if they’re all ordering dining sets, it means you’re doing a fantastic job of marketing them, but you’re not marketing anything else. There are plenty of younger people who want modern-looking furniture that’s also unique. There are people who make bookcases out of scrap metal, or bed frames out of pallets, or coffee tables out of recycled bricks. There’s no reason why you couldn’t branch out into… Oh heck, I’m so sorry,” she interrupted herself, mortified that she was giving him a lecture on how to run his business. “I’m sorry. I barely know you, and I certainly have no right to be telling you how to do your job. I’m sorry.”
Mark was looking at her with an unreadable expression. “You think I could make a coffee table out of scrap metal? And have someone want to buy it?”
“Well, yeah, I guess so,” she said hesitantly, hoping she hadn’t just made a fool of herself. “There are plenty of pictures on the internet of people who make recycled furniture. And some of it sells for a fair bit of money.”
Mark stared at the chair against the wall. Then over at a pile of off-cuts in the corner. “I’ll have to look into that.”
“It’s just an idea,” Dee said apologetically. “I mean, you don’t have to-”
“No, I actually like that,” he said, sounding not exactly enthusiastic, but certainly more animated than the dull, flat tone he’d had before. “I’ll do some research, see what I can find.”
“Oh. Okay. Good.” And then, “What?” she asked, when she saw him staring at her.
“You are turning out to be quite unexpected,” he said softly. When she laughed and shook her head, he went on. “You’ve had a hell of a lot to cope with coming here, and you’ve dealt with it all with incredible poise. And with Faeydir as well. Even as a shifter, you’ve got more complications than most of us have. I like Faeydir, by the way, just in case she wants to take that as an insult.”
Faeydir was perfectly happy with him and had a persistent feeling of eagerness just at being in his presence. “No, she’s quite okay with that,” she told him.
“And now you’re seeing potential whe
re I see none,” he went on, his speculative look turning a touch warmer. “I’m finding I’m rather glad Baron asked me to be your chaperone.”
Dee could recognise flirting when she saw it. But along with a spike of pleasure at his interest, she also found herself suddenly on the defensive.
It wasn’t that she didn’t find Mark attractive. She most certainly did, but in the sort of way one might admire a rock star or a movie star – from a distance. In a lot of ways, he was too attractive, too athletic, too self-assured, too dangerous – as proven by his willingness to kill a room full of scientists to save her life. Put simply, he was out of her league, and the realisation was disheartening. She was certain that his interest in her would wane once he got the chance to scratch the surface a little more and discovered that she was really quite ordinary.
Dee’s taste in men usually ran more along the lines of book worms and computer nerds – intellectuals who were undoubtedly interesting people, good company but far less threatening than the roguish, athletic men who never seemed to take an interest in her anyway. She was too short, too curvy and not nearly wild enough to attract their attention. Or at least she had been, until she’d become part wolf.
Mark must have noticed her discomfort, as he immediately backed off. “Sorry. I’m a little out of practice at this.”
“You don’t have a girlfriend, then?” The question came out without her really meaning it to, and she immediately regretted it, thinking it was far too personal a question.
“No. I’ve tried things out with a few shifter women in the past, but it never worked out.” He paused, then gave her another contemplative look. “If I may ask… did you have a boyfriend before you came here?”
Dee fought not to blush. “Um… no. My last boyfriend broke up with me a couple of years ago.” After deciding that her career plans were too ‘safe’, that her tendency to plan ahead lacked the spontaneity that made life ‘interesting’.
