Tarnished

by Rhiannon Held

  Dare gave a canine snort when he was done and shook himself all over. He looked like a typical gray wolf on a National Geographic special, only larger. His scars showed as a white band across his back, the fur coarser than that surrounding it.

  Susan let out the breath she’d been holding. That had been amazing. Magical, in a way. Though they were some kind of supernatural creature, so that did make sense. She’d have to ask John to do it for her so she could watch again.

  She held out a hand. “Can I pet—is that rude?”

  “If you’d hug someone in human, petting’s fine in wolf.” Silver knelt in front of Dare and scratched behind his ears and into his ruff. He stayed aloof for a moment, but then he got into it, shaking his head back and forth like Silver was roughhousing with a regular dog. Susan let her hand drop. She certainly wouldn’t hug Dare as a human.

  Dare licked Silver’s face. She sputtered and covered it with her arm, freeing him. He came to stand more solemnly before Susan. He turned in a wide circle, showing her all angles. He ended with his head by her hand, and bumped it up so her hand was on his ears. He looked resigned, if a canine could look resigned, so Susan didn’t so much pet as assure herself he was real. The guard hairs were coarser than those of some dog breeds, but his ears were warm and soft. Silver made a grumbling noise under her breath, and Susan removed her hand again. Fair enough.

  “Woof!” Edmond fell onto his hands and crawled for Dare. When he reached the Were, he used Dare’s flank as he would a piece of furniture and pulled himself up, tiny fingers clenched around handfuls of fur. Dare yipped. Susan stepped around to pull Edmond away, but he had such a tight grip, picking him up seemed likely to end with Dare missing two patches of fur.

  Dare woofed at Susan and she let go of Edmond. The boy burbled with satisfaction at the game. When she reached again, Dare shook his head, a motion that looked strange performed by a canine, but unmistakable nonetheless. Dare let Edmond cruise along his side until he got within range of Dare’s muzzle, which Dare used to gently knock the boy over. Edmond shrieked with delight and Dare nosed him, rolling him around.

  Susan twisted her fingers together. Intellectually, she knew that since this wolf was a thinking person, there was even less chance he would hurt Edmond than a friendly, socialized dog would, but it was still hard to watch her son with a predator.

  Silver placed her hand on Susan’s arm and Susan jumped. She’d forgotten about the other woman. “Please, let him,” Silver said in a low voice.

  Susan gave Silver an incredulous look. Would Dare’s self-esteem be hurt if Susan thought him too scary to play with her child? He seemed like a big boy. Susan figured Dare could deal with it, but she did follow Silver when she tilted her head away.

  Silver pulled Susan into the kitchen and out the side door into her fenced patch of yard. The careful landscaping that had come with the house was in the same state as indoors, the shapes and colors of the bushes disguised by the green legginess of the weeds springing up between. She never seemed to find time to garden, but she didn’t make enough to hire a service as her parents did for their impeccable yard.

  Susan left the door open to make sure she still had a view of her son and Dare, then crossed her arms, partially for warmth. The temperature hovered on the edge of too cold to be out without a coat, but she didn’t want to bother going back in. “What was that about?” she asked with a bit of a snap. “I know Dare’s not going to hurt him, but you have to admit I don’t actually know you two that well, less than I do the rest of the pack.”

  Silver ducked her head in apology, escaping white hairs puffing over her face and catching light in the cloudy brightness. “I know. It’s just— I’ve been trying to help Dare heal that too, but I haven’t been making much progress. He needs to be able to see a cub without flinching from him or her.”

  “Heal what?” Susan checked through the door again. Dare had collapsed, and was letting Edmond ruffle his fur every which way. “He has a problem with kids?” He didn’t seem to at the moment. His behavior was practically paternal, if one could say that about a canine.

  Silver followed Susan’s gaze for a moment and then looked away. “He misses his daughter so much sometimes, it makes me bleed inside to watch him.”

  Susan froze, not quite sure what to say. Dare had a daughter? Had she died? What did you say to that? I’m sorry?

  Silver saved her by continuing a second later. “I’m telling you this because I think you’re more likely to hurt him by accident, not knowing it’s there, than to use it against him. But if you do, you’ll answer to me.”

  The savage way Silver said it reminded Susan all over again that these people weren’t as human as they usually looked. And Silver was one of the nice ones. Susan held up her hands. She had no wish to hurt Dare or piss off Silver.

  “His wife was accidentally killed in a territorial dispute. His wife’s pack disagreed with how he chose to deal with the situation, and so they forced him out, and barred him from his daughter. He hasn’t seen her in over a decade.”

  “How he chose to deal with the situation?” Susan winced. That sounded like code for something that was much more what she would have expected for a werewolf, rather than this romping with children stuff.

  “We all make mistakes.” Anger grew in Silver’s expression, and Susan took a step back. “How would you like it? Knowing your son was alive and whole but you could never see him again? Ever?”

  Susan threw a guilty look back to the house. She honestly didn’t know. Go mad, maybe. Even thinking about the hypothetical made her whole body tighten with fierce rage.

  Silver took a deep breath and rubbed her palm down her thigh, calming herself. “But there’s nothing to be done about it. Lady knows we all wish it was different. He needs to learn to deal with cubs and heal that catch in his voice.”

  Susan stuffed her hands into her pockets. Now she especially didn’t know what to say. Everyone’s voice broke from emotion sometimes. She didn’t understand the significance Silver’s tone had given the phrase. “He sounded okay to me,” she said tentatively. It was probably a Were thing. She had caught hints that their senses were better, so maybe a subtle break in his voice was clear as day to them.

  “Not literally.” Silver crouched, hand out like it was resting on something. It seemed strange, but Susan found that if she turned so she could see no farther than Silver in her peripheral vision, it looked natural enough. “Humans might call it a soul. When we die, Death takes our voices back to the Lady. That was his punishment: he has no voice of his own, so he must collect them for the Lady, and borrow them for a while. Our voice, it’s … us.” She made a fist and held it against her core.

  Something about Silver’s words in that moment, air chill and clear, clouds blanketing the sky, and background shush of traffic surrounding them, resounded with a simple spirituality equal to any she’d ever heard in a church. Susan shivered. She didn’t think much about the God of her childhood, but she knew she didn’t believe in any other. But something deep in her believed in Silver’s belief. She felt slightly shaken. She’d seen the edges of how different the Were really were, but some part of her must not have quite understood it until now.

  Susan wanted to stretch the moment—there was so much still to understand—but it was almost like recognizing it started its death. The insistent sound of Dare’s ringtone from inside finished it off.

  10

  Andrew moved out of sight of the doorway to shift back before the call went to voice mail. When he saw JOHN on the screen, he had a momentary impulse to let it anyway. Was he checking on his girlfriend already? But it could as easily be something important about Sacramento. Andrew clamped the phone against his shoulder as he pulled on his underwear. He could hear Susan returning and he knew humans and their nudity taboos. “Hello?”

  “Dare.” John’s tone was curt. “I found Sacramento’s trail down in Fife.”

  “What—”

  “That’s south of Seattle, just be
fore you hit Tacoma.”

  Andrew tried unsuccessfully to break in to explain that he was trying to ask why John was telling him this, not where Fife was. Though he didn’t know that either. Seattle had far too many associated cities he’d never heard of when he lived back East.

  “It should take you about an hour to get down here, then you can help me track him.” John finally paused, but Andrew was too taken aback to jump in immediately.

  “Help you? What changed your mind?”

  John made a frustrated noise. “You were desperate for a shot at him, weren’t you? You’re right, this is your trouble, so you might as well be here to help deal with it.”

  Andrew looked over at Silver, who raised her eyebrows and looked as confused by the reversal as he felt. Susan sat her son in front of his toys and knelt with him. She frowned at the phone, probably frustrated by hearing only half the conversation.

  Andrew scrubbed at his face. “I’m sorry to have brought the trouble on you, Seattle, it wasn’t what I intended.”

  “Just leave me out of it in the future,” John snapped, and ended the call.

  His back was starting to protest, so Andrew stepped over to Susan’s couch to brace himself while pulling on his jeans. John must have reconsidered once his initial protectiveness of Susan had worn off. It really was the best thing for his pack to keep the trouble localized to Andrew. Understandable, but a lot to mentally adjust to so suddenly.

  Silver set a palm against his back. “You’re not healed.”

  “I’m tracking him, not fighting. Besides, John is helping.” Andrew stepped away from Silver’s touch and unclenched his fingers from the couch. It had a slipcover to protect against baby messes, but that wouldn’t prevent a Were from gouging finger marks in the foam. They both knew the fighting would come when he caught up to Sacramento. The political fallout wouldn’t be good, but now John was stepping back, it would be worse to run like a coward from the fight Sacramento was picking.

  “So John suddenly asked you to take care of Sacramento instead of him?” Susan pushed to her feet, careful to avoid tripping over Edmond’s scattered toys, plush and plastic alike. “Why?”

  “With him. Because it’s my responsibility.” Andrew lifted his shirt and held it for a while. “He sees that now he’s thinking clearly.” John’s last comment kept intruding on his thoughts. Leave him out of it in the future. Was that a withdrawal of his support in Andrew’s bid to challenge for Roanoke? Worse, a withdrawal of his invitation to stay on Seattle territory until then?

  He looked over at Silver. Maybe he’d interpreted John’s last comment wrong. But he saw the same sinking feeling in her face that lurked in his stomach. Leaving him out of it was a clear enough request.

  If John wanted to disinvite them and the trouble they attracted from his territory, they had nowhere to go. They’d have to stay on the move, maybe go out to Arizona ahead of the Convocation and find a hotel in the somewhat neutral territory. But even that would be politically difficult, because it would smack of trying to mark the territory as theirs before anyone else arrived.

  But at the end of the hunt, John didn’t owe him anything. Anything he’d done had been out of kindness and deference to Silver’s former place in his pack. That didn’t make the possibility of being forced to leave any easier, though. Dammit.

  One problem at a time, he reminded himself. First, tracking Sacramento. “I’ll most likely have to track in wolf,” he told Silver. Her expression tightened with frustration, but she didn’t disagree. “My car’s back at the pack house, so if Susan would drop us off, you can stay with them.”

  “Of course,” Susan said. “I’ll stay at the house too.” She picked up her son’s coat and hesitated with a quick glance at Andrew’s back. “Good luck.”

  11

  Silver held off her own reaction to her cousin’s change of voice until they were traveling again. Back to Seattle’s home so Dare could track and deal with his enemy, and then Seattle might ask them to leave his territory. Had Silver given Susan enough knowledge to work with once they were gone?

  Death stretched himself deliciously, black fur ruffling up and falling flat again. “Forget her, what about you? Where will you go?” He used the voice of the monster that had chased Silver for so long, the monster she and Dare had finally killed together. She heard herself make a small hurt noise, the fear rising easily to the surface, even now. Dare squeezed her knee and she summoned a smile to reassure him. They wouldn’t run forever. Soon, things would be resolved, one way or the other.

  “And yet both of you give up so easily in this battle.” Death snapped his teeth at a fly, returning to his more habitual voice. “You have another option, one you’ve already thought of.”

  “If it comes to it, why not hold Susan with us?” Silver asked out loud. She had thought of it almost immediately. She didn’t like it—Susan was a friend, and that kind of thing worked only if you didn’t consider the feelings of the person being used for leverage. But better she voice it than leave it hanging over them both.

  Dare growled. “No.” His wild self bristled.

  Susan looked away from her concentration on their path ahead. “What?” Clearly she couldn’t guess, as Dare had, the next step Silver had left unspoken.

  “I spent so long on the move before, and now we’ll have nowhere to stay if Seattle asks us to leave.” Silver frowned at her knees, smoothing her palms over them. “Why not stand and fight this time?” Yes, she’d wanted to leave the pack’s pity behind. But remembering her time spent always on the run after the monster took her pack, the choice seemed less clear.

  The fur on Dare’s wild self’s ruff smoothed out, and his expression tightened with concern. “Ah, love. I’m sorry. But we were lucky Seattle helped us as much as he did.”

  “Where do I come into this?” Susan glanced back for a longer moment this time, scent gaining a layer of frustration.

  “Silver was pointing out that we could force John’s hand if we kept you with us. But forced support is hardly support at all. It’s not worth it.”

  “As a hostage, you mean. Your reasons against it are so logical,” Susan said, annoyance sliding into her voice, twisted around fear.

  Dare smacked his palm against his thigh to emphasize his point. “And I don’t do that to a member of an ally’s pack. Or another man’s mate, all right?”

  Silver nodded. Yes. That was the right answer, but she felt less burdened by the weight of the choice now the reasons against it had been said out loud.

  “If only John felt the same way,” Susan said. Dare started to speak, but Susan hurried on before he could. “No, I know. It’s not the same situation. One is against your social rules, one isn’t. John’s supposed to put his pack first and all that, but you’ve been doing more than that, haven’t you?”

  Silver and Dare exchanged a glance. He looked surprised, but Silver smiled. It was a rare Were that truly understood you couldn’t just look to your own pack. Maybe it was different for humans, with their mishmash of loyalties to many different groups. They’d have more practice stretching their minds around such complexity.

  “Out of the mouths of humans…” Death said in an echo of her thoughts, his tongue hanging out in a pleased canine grin.

  “It depends on your definition of your pack,” Silver told Susan. “Some might say that the trouble you abandon your neighbor to will arrive for your pack next. Others might say you should think bigger. We’re all Were. Or people, if you like.”

  “Idealism,” Dare muttered on a note of amusement, but Silver could smell agreement buried somewhere, even if he didn’t realize it himself. Susan was more doubtful, but Silver didn’t blame her, given their current situation.

  They didn’t say much when they arrived at the den. Verbalizing her worry once more wouldn’t help him with Sacramento, so Silver only embraced Dare and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Lady’s luck,” she murmured, and he snorted. She knew he didn’t believe, but that wouldn’t bother the Lady
. She watched until he had disappeared down the path.

  Susan headed for the den with the baby and Silver followed. A scent made her stop. It was hard to pinpoint, but one breath held a faint taint of fear, gone again as she inhaled deeply. She glanced at Death, but he looked merely intent. That could be for many reasons, not just his love of trouble.

  Silver ran to catch up to Susan. “Something’s wrong. It could be nothing serious, but you should still take the cub and go back to your home.” She stroked the soft hair on the sleeping cub’s head, then pushed Susan’s shoulder to turn her back.

  “I can’t just leave you alone,” Susan said, sounding unsure as she cradled the child closer to her chest. She swallowed. “Not after what happened last time.”

  The wind shifted. “Lady!” Silver spat, and caught Susan’s arm again. The underling that had herded them into Sacramento’s arms before was herding them now, circling around from their back trail. He’d clearly waited to reveal himself until Dare was too far gone to be called back. How was he here, when Seattle had said Sacramento’s trail was far off? Had her cousin lied?

  Susan resisted Silver’s pull, trying to find the threat for herself. Silver felt the moment when her human eyes caught up with Silver’s nose in the tightening of her muscles. She clutched the baby against her chest. “Shit.”

  “Look weak with me for now,” Silver said, huddling with her bad side against the woman to leave her working hand free. It frustrated her to allow herself to be herded, but she needed to know the situation inside. It was safer for Susan and the cub to be with her than it was for them to face the underling alone.

  Inside, Sacramento waited with Seattle and another man. This new underling was darker in his skin, the fur of his wild self shading from light brown to reddish on its underbelly. Sacramento patted Seattle’s shoulder and smirked like someone watching a doe bound into the ambush set by his pack. The expression pulled at the angry red line of his scar, but he showed no sign of pain. “Welcome, Silver.”