Goldenseal

by Gill McKnight

  Instead she simply pinned him down and watched through the veil of water as his blue eyes bulged with shock, and then disbelief, that this was finally his time to die. Drowned in the unforgiving Silverthread, in the valley he had dared to covet.

  She watched as anger, denial, and panic flashed through him. She watched impassively as his face wavered, and fluxed, twisting back into human form. In his death throes, the body beneath her mutated back into a middle-aged, drowning man.

  Still she held him under, and he in turn held her. Breath spent, lungs engorged with the cold waters of the Silverthread. He finally lay still under her hands.

  “Oh my God,” Amy cried out.

  Rising in a cascade of blood and water, Leone dragged him out into the faster current. One last glance at his body assured her he did not look like the victim of an animal attack. She had been careful with her claws and teeth. He would be just another unfortunate victim of drowning. It wouldn’t be the first time a newcomer to the area had misjudged the treacherous waters of the Silverthread. Knowing the safe swim holes was the luxury of the locals. Virgil had never been a local.

  She let his body go and watched it drift downstream. The Garouls would see to it that the river took it all the way out of their valley and far into the public fishing areas to the east. In a day or two Lost Creek’s ex-librarian and his terrible accident would be front-page news in the Wallowa newspapers.

  Standing in the rushing waters, Leone raised her head and howled a stark guttural cry into the morning sky. Within moments it was answered from every corner of the valley. The threat was gone. The hunt over.

  She waded painfully to the bank, victorious, protector of her mate and her pack. She bared her teeth and snarled with brazen glory.

  Amy backed away from her, eyes like saucers, full of fear. Leone didn’t want her mate to fear her. She wanted Amy to welcome her. She snapped a warning, but Amy still retreated. She snapped again out of frustration. Her mate should greet her, exalt her—she was the victor! A roar broke from her throat and Amy turned and fled.

  In two bounds Leone had caught and covered her, bringing her to the ground. She lay over her, belly down, and clamped Amy’s nape in her maw to hold her still, to stop her wriggling. She purred loudly, excited at this new game. Their position was a mating one. Amy’s scent thrilled her.

  Amy screamed, trying to twist away. Leone’s weight was unbearable, and her heavy bleeding was seeping through the back of Amy’s jacket. Sharp teeth were clamped onto her neck. Her spine felt as brittle as summer straw between those strong jaws. One snap and she would die; one graze and she would be like Connie.

  The panting in her ear was loud and excited. Her body would shatter if Leone tried to touch her sexually. She sensed Leone was slipping further into her beast side. There was no control here. This was what Connie and Marie had worried about all those years ago.

  “Don’t bite me, Leone. Don’t bite me.” She scrabbled on the ground, trying to crawl away, trying to struggle free, trying to—

  The revolver went off in her pocket.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Have you heard from Amy?” Leone asked Connie.

  “Yesterday. She’s nearly done in Vancouver. She might come back for the final editorial meeting,” Connie said. “Or she might just do a conference call from Canada.”

  “You know Amy would come back if you said the word.”

  “Leone. I love Amy, but I want her to return because it’s the right thing for her to do. Not because I’ve asked her to,” Connie chided her gently. “I think you’re the one who needs to talk to her about coming home, more than me.”

  Leone’s shoulders sagged. “She hates me. She won’t even answer the phone when I call.”

  “She’s busy doing your job, and she liaises with Marie now, not you. I know Amy, and she needs to think things through. It’s been a hard few weeks for her, Leone. The least you can do is give her time.”

  Leone rose from the couch stiffly. She knew Connie was right, but her anxiety at Amy’s absence grew by the day. If Amy never returned to Little Dip, Leone would be stark-staring mad in a matter of months. Now that she’d had Amy back in her life, even if it was for only a few weeks, to be separated from her again drove her to distraction. If Amy didn’t have the same commitment to her, Leone didn’t know what she would do.

  “Leone?” Connie interrupted her panicked thoughts. “You need to rest now. Marie told me to make sure you took your medicine and had an afternoon nap. She’ll be back for dinner, and you better look a lot more rested than you do now.”

  “Okay. I was on my way, anyhow.” Slowly, Leone limped to her room. She was unsure what caused the most upset, her painful movements or the fact that Amy had been away from Little Dip for six days, fourteen hours, and twenty-six minutes…or thereabouts. And hadn’t spoken to her once in all that time.

  Leone stretched out on her bed and sipped her medicinal tea. Marie had removed her stitches yesterday, but her flesh still felt delicate and her stomach and chest muscles stiff and sore. She sighed at the ceiling, her heavy heart sinking through her into the mattress below, and down through the floor, all the way to hell.

  Amy had left for Vancouver. The Garouls were in an uproar. The valley had been infiltrated, the family attacked—but the almanac had to go out regardless. Amy had volunteered to follow through and manage the final stages of the print production, with support from Marie.

  However, Marie’s input was limited. Her time was taken up with her invalids. At last Connie seemed to be pulling through. Wolven now, her body had accepted the changes thrust upon it. She would undergo the same training that Paulie and all the other adolescent Garouls had, in order to better understand and survive with her new physiology.

  Paulie had been well enough to leave yesterday. His relieved parents had come and collected him. Leone, too, was on the mend, but she had always been a quick healer.

  And Amy…Amy was an entirely different matter. How would she cope with the secrets she had uncovered? Leone’s mood dulled as Amy’s parting words echoed in her head and added to her torture.

  “I don’t trust you. Time after time you had the opportunity to tell me the truth, but you didn’t. You left me confused and all alone in a fucking nightmare.” She had been ablaze with anger and hurt. It ricocheted off her like electric bolts, singing Leone’s bruised flesh.

  “Did you really think I would be untouched by it all? Did you really think by fucking me you could save the day? How awfully philanthropic of you.” Her eyes burned holes in Leone’s soul, until it shriveled into nothing.

  “You abused me, Leone. You abused my trust, and my body. And worst of all, you abused my love—for the second time. Once again your deceit has destroyed us.” Amy had stood to leave, calm and composed. “I’ll finish this project because I promised Connie and Marie I would. I have to go to Vancouver, and then I have a job lined up in London. I don’t think we’ll see each other again.”

  Counting the knots in the pine above her head, Leone lay wrapped in her misery. Years ago she had wallowed like this in Vancouver, gloomy and moody, like any brokenhearted teenager. But she had never truly seen it from the other side, from Amy’s side.

  She had abandoned Amy. Leone was the child of an Alpha; she had duties and commitments to her clan, as had all Garouls. Her mother had warned her she was too young, moving too fast in her courtship of Amy. Wolven had to pace themselves with humans, and with sexual activity. But Leone hadn’t listened; she had taken what she wanted…Amy. And when her commitments to her pack began, she had to leave the valley to meet them. To do that, she had to leave Amy behind with no real explanation. She knew even at the time that her withdrawal looked like rejection. She had not chosen Amy; she had walked away. Leone really had little choice. Marie and Connie had insisted Amy was too young to have her life hobbled with the Garoul secret. That as teenagers they were both too young to be life mates. They fretted that Leone would end up physically hurting Amy. Leone surrender
ed to the pressure. Part of her knew the timing was wrong.

  Now Leone was the abandoned one. All those years ago Amy had been kept in the dark for her own good, never truly understanding why she had been pushed aside. Because of Leone’s selfish haste to start a relationship, Amy’s first foray into love became a repeat pattern of the indifference and abandonment of her parents. And all because Leone hadn’t been strong enough to follow through on what she knew in her very marrow. Amy was the one for her. Her bloodcall. Her forever mate.

  Leone had made the same mistakes this second time around. She had withheld the truth, but taken love. Believed she was in control while Amy was under mortal threat. Arrogantly deciding what Amy needed to know, and when she needed to know it. And in doing so nearly lost her to Virgil.

  She had not understood that the Amy Fortune who had left the valley all those years ago was not the woman who had returned to it. Despite her efforts, for good or bad, she was losing Amy all over again. Her life mate was slipping away.

  Cocooned in her own misery, she drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep, induced by her mother’s medications.

  “How are you feeling today?” Amy asked.

  “A lot better. This is a good day. I’m feeling less itchy in my skin. And you?” Connie said.

  “It’s bloody freezing here. I’ve never been so cold.” They both giggled into the phone.

  “Well, you’ll be back soon. Just add an extra layer. You are coming back?”

  “Actually, I’m at the airport now. I finished early.” Amy took a deep breath to ask the question she needed to know more than anything in the world. Instead, she said, “Connie, I’m looking at the departures board. There’s a flight to London Gatwick later tonight.”

  “Oh?”

  “And there’s one for Portland leaving in the next hour.”

  “And?”

  “Did Jori and Elicia get home all right?” Amy changed direction at the last minute. She had to circle the conversation she wanted to have with Connie.

  “He called last night. He says Elicia is glowing and has a craving for salt, of all things.”

  Amy laughed delightedly. It was wonderful how easily Jori and Elicia had moved on with their lives, preparing a home for their twins. Nesting up for the winter. Why couldn’t she move on like that? In his own way, Jori had just as big a shock as her, yet he had never lost sight of what really mattered. His love for Elicia, and his wish for them to have a future together.

  “How’s Leone?” It was a big question asked in a small voice, and nearly lost in the background babble of Vancouver International.

  “The stitches came out yesterday. Physically she’s doing very well, big, robust beast that she is.” Connie spoke into a wall of silence on the other end of the line. After a moment with no response, she said, “She misses you dreadfully. I think that’s what’s making her ill, much more than you shooting her ever could.”

  Amy broke the silence with quiet sniffles.

  “Amy?” Connie said. “Have you ever heard of half hearts? They’re lovers born for each other, and no one else will ever fit. It’s hard to be a half heart, because you never really know what’s wrong with your life until the other half arrives.”

  “Then what happens?” Amy was curious. She dried her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “Well, when you find the other half of your heart, it’s often hard to accept. Because you’re really admitting you felt incomplete all along. That you were only half of what you could be. Do you know what I’m trying to say, sweetheart?”

  “Yes. But she lied.”

  “You need to talk to her. Ask her why she lied.”

  “I know why she lied.”

  “And can you forgive her?”

  Amy didn’t answer. Instead her gaze fixed on the departure board above her head.

  “Amy?” Connie’s voice echoed over her cell phone. “What are you thinking?”

  “If I took the London flight I could probably upgrade.”

  “Will you do that? Go to London?”

  Amy hesitated. “No.”

  “Does that mean you’ll fly to Portland?”

  “I bought the ticket yesterday.”

  Leone woke into a twilight room. Disoriented at first, she realized she had slept away the entire afternoon into the early winter evening. Her nostrils twitched; a small herb sachet rested on her pillow bedside her head. She pressed it to her nose: lavender, rosemary, and something else, maybe myrtle? It was drawn with a green thread tied in intricate knots. It was like the love charm she’d made for Amy. Her heart lurched at the unexpected thought. I haven’t opened my eyes two minutes and already I’m in hell.

  She sat up and swung her legs out of bed. It was then she saw the green thread around her ankle. Cautiously she touched it. It was the same pattern of knots as the herb sachet. These were love charms.

  Barefoot, she padded to the bedroom door and peeped out. The fire blazed away merrily, haloing a head of blond corkscrew curls. Amy sat curled on the couch, head bent over a book, lost in her own world. The tang of scullcap floated high in the rafters. Leone’s heart soared.

  Amy glanced up and pinned Leone to the spot with a cool, clear stare.

  “Are you going to come in, or just stand there letting all the heat out?” she said.

  Startled, Leone took a step into the room, and then hesitated. “You’re back.”

  “So it would seem. Unless there’s a spell in here for astral projection.” She held up another Wiccan Wheel spell book. “Who does these? They’re beautiful.”

  Hesitantly, Leone approached. “It’s a Garoul imprint. Connie and I started it. It’s doing really well. There’s been a groundswell in magical interest since the millennium.”

  Amy closed the book and set it aside. Leone was unsure if her connection with it had somehow soured Amy’s joy. She was prepared to blame herself for anything and everything, her misery and self-loathing ran so deeply.

  “How are you feeling?” Amy said.

  “Okay. I got the stitches out. There’ll be scars, but I’m fine.”

  Amy nodded at this, seeming satisfied.

  Before the silence could stretch too far, Leone blurted, “How did things go in Vancouver?”

  “Easy, really.” Amy uncoiled from the couch and stretched. Her top rode up and firelight danced on an inch of creamy belly. “Like clockwork. I’ve already spoken to Marie and Connie. They can fill you in.”

  “Where are they?” Leone realized her mother and Connie were absent.

  “They went over to Connie’s for tonight. They’re going to clean the cabin up a little. Connie says she’s ready to face it.” Amy sighed. “Poor Connie, she loved that cabin, yet she destroyed it and all her beautiful things in it. She must have hated herself so much at the time.”

  “Connie’s adjusting fine now that the initial rage has gone. She’s one strong woman to survive a rogue attack and come through it. Elicia, too.”

  “I’m so angry they had to go through it at all. But then I’m angry about a lot of things these days.”

  “Oh.” Leone felt very uncertain about this information.

  “Marie left soup in the kitchen for supper. I’m going to turn on the stove and heat it. Do you want some?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Amy nodded to the couch. “Sit. I won’t be a minute.”

  Leone squeezed into a corner, sitting bolt upright.

  When Amy returned she noted the stricken look on Leone’s face, her stiff posture and awkward body language. She snuggled into the opposite corner of the couch, drew her knees up to her chin, and stared at Leone’s rigid profile.

  “Why did you lie to me?” she murmured. Leone started, turning her head to meet her squarely.

  “I thought I was protecting you. We didn’t know who had attacked Connie, and we needed her work completed for the almanac. I was to look after you until we found the rogue wolf. Sometimes rogues come sniffing around an established den but they soon clear off. We
thought Connie fell victim to one of those. No one realized it was a concerted attempt to capture our code.”

  “So you offered round-the-clock protection and slept with me. And to make me sleep with you, you pursued me with spells, and charms, and witchcraft?” She indicated the green cord around Leone’s ankle.

  Leone’s face scorched.

  “Okay, so I took the opportunity to try to woo you back. Connie showed me some spells…and I was desperate. I’d do anything to correct my teenage mistake.”

  “It wasn’t a teenage mistake, Leone. Your mother was right. We had to split up. You would have harmed me. I never realized how right she was until you lunged for me after Virgil was…after he was…” She cleared her throat. She still had problems with his death but accepted it was the fate he had consistently, and persistently, brought upon himself. “If the gun hadn’t gone off, you would have really hurt me, whether you intended to or not.”

  “I thought you were leaving me, and the wolf side was never going to let you go. It’s what Marie warned me of when we were young. Now I understand the power she was talking about. Amy, there’s a part of me that will always see you as my mate. I don’t think I can bear losing you again.”

  Amy nodded. She was beginning to understand how this worked for the wolven side of Leone, but there were still questions.

  “How can I be your mate? You didn’t trust me with your great secret. Yet you slept with me and dragged up all that old emotion. Were you ever going to tell me the truth? Or was I always going to be on the outside forever?”

  “I wanted to tell you. I loved you. I wanted to ask you to stay. But I couldn’t until you and the code were safe.” She turned to fully face Amy on the couch. “From the first day you arrived, I wanted to be with you. You can’t deny that. You know that. You saw it.”

  Amy nodded. It had been apparent from very early on that Leone still had feelings for her.