by Lynn Red
And on top of that, all my old stuff was still there, stacked neatly in boxes beside my shower. Which was now a full, tiled, glass-door shower. This is a guy who gets me. I might love the new hotness but damn if I can’t get attached to some old junky tools. It was hard – really hard – to keep my cool. I couldn’t believe this stuff. It was all brand new, all properly assembled, and all... from Jake. Absently, I placed a hand on the letter in my pocket.
“You must have some bills from all this new shit,” Dane said dismissively. “Guess you must make decent money off this stupid junk.” He prodded a half-finished commission, a model of a little kid sitting on a bench in half-size, with the toe of his boot. “How much does something like this cost?”
The one he was prodding was about two grand in materials and six in labor. But I’d done it for cost plus a thousand. I was a sucker for the cute old woman who wanted it. The statue was of one of her grandkids, she was giving it to him as a keepsake and I couldn’t bear to turn her away with charging too much.
“I probably don’t charge as much as I should,” I said, noticing my voice was a little hollow in my throat. “I could probably get ten for that.”
“And how long would it take?”
I shrugged. “I work on a lot of them at once, I just finish when I finish. If I sat down and just went at it, probably a couple of weeks if I was really on top of things.”
He laughed. Of course he did. Every single cruel chuckle, every obnoxious warble of his voice made me hate him more. If I needed any more convincing that I was doing the right thing, by the end of our first session, all questions were gone.
To his credit, Dane sat mostly still for the majority of our first few hours, long enough for me to get a good part of the clay model done. Luckily I only had to do a little bit of reconfiguring on the face. Somehow that arm had stuck where I’d glued it. Small blessings count for a lot when you don’t have any big ones.
By the early evening, he was getting antsy. He kept getting up for a drink or for a snack, or to grab at me, or make some ugly joke about my life, or his mother, or Jake. He was just the distilled essence of obnoxious male posturing. If this plan was going to work on anything, it was going to work on him.
About the time the sun went down, I couldn’t take anymore. “If you want, you can just leave me here and I’ll work for a while longer. If I’m gonna get this thing done in time, I’ll need to work some late nights.”
“Don’t you need me to model... or whatever? I mean, seems like you’d need me here to be awesome so you could see how awesome to make the statue.”
“Er,” I had to bite my tongue for about the thousandth time. “I think I have enough awesome. It’s all modeled, which is really all I need you for. See? I’ll call when I’m done?”
He was already up and heading towards the door. “Call a cab,” he said, throwing a few twenties on the floor. “I want this thing done. I’m gonna make my brother look like such a damn idiot when this is all said and done. Stay all night if you have to, sleep here, it doesn’t matter.”
Something wasn’t right. Dane was not at all the trusting type.
“Why aren’t you making me come with you? I asked. Aren’t you afraid your brother might try something?”
He snickered at that, just like he had at everything else. “Not even Jake is that stupid,” he said. “He’s well aware that if he tries anything funny – such as playing rescue – I won’t hesitate for a moment to take my right revenge. I’ll kill him and I’ll kill you. Insults aren’t things wolves bear lightly.”
I’d never heard him that serious, or that grave. Dane was normally so obnoxiously flippant that it was hard to take anything he said with any kind of seriousness at all. But that? I had a feeling it wasn’t the first time he’d killed someone over a slight.
“You wouldn’t do that,” I said, “would you?”
“Oh yeah,” was his answer. “Just try me. He wouldn’t be the first, and neither of you would be particularly memorable. Let me make sure this is clear, dear Delilah,” he said mockingly, “you don’t mean a damn thing to me. I want you because I like the way you look, and because I want to hurt my brother. He doesn’t mean anything to me either – he’s just a bump in the road on my way to power. Get it?”
I had no idea how to respond. Never in my life had I been so soundly put in my place, not even by shitty boyfriends or, I dunno, cops who pulled me over and gave me a ticket and a longwinded moral lecture.
“I, uh,” I stammered, and then trailed off.
“Good,” he said. “I like your mouth better when it’s closed. Don’t make me regret this. By the way, that stands after he’s gone, too. You disappoint me, just once? I’ll replace you in a second. If you think I won’t, just try me.”
Something told me that he was not, in fact, posturing. For once. But no amount of mean spirited threats was going to break my resolve. I looked at him, studying his face. I knew he had pain there, hidden behind the cocky, smug exterior. I knew he was hurting deep down inside, but I also knew that he would just as soon die as he would come out and say anything about it.
Swallowing hard, I felt myself nodding. “Okay,” I said, my voice a hollow echo in my own skull. “I won’t... I won’t disappoint you.”
“Good,” Dane said, grinning mockingly again. “And now, what I want from you is for you to sit your pretty ass down, and finish my statue. I’m so damn glad I had this idea. It’s absolutely perfect. Can you imagine the look on Jake’s face? Ha! His own statue, fixed up and looking a thousand times better.”
I couldn’t believe that he’d gone from threatening my life to joking in the space of about three breaths. And I wasn’t sure whether or not he actually believed that he had come up with the statue idea or not, but... hey, I wasn’t going to argue. If he believed it, then everyone else would too.
And really? That’s all we needed. We just needed enough belief to convince the pack that maybe – just maybe – having this psychopath as the voice of their next generation? Not the best idea.
The motorcycle’s engine throbbed outside my studio, thumping so loudly that the glass in my fancy new shower was rattling against the hinges.
“Oh, shower!” I remembered, immediately washing my mind of Dane Somerset. I fished the envelope out of my pocket and smelled it.
It was him, all right. Whatever it was about him that smelled like fresh cut wood and earth and... well, and just the smell of man. It sent a trill through my soul that left my body aching for him, begging in all those places, all those tingling ladyparts going right along with the choir.
Opening the letter, the scent of him filled my nose. It was brief, as I figured he wasn’t much of a poet, but just the look of his handwriting, the knowledge that he’d done this, that made me feel a little more at peace.
“Dear Delilah,” the letter read, “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I feel like an idiot.”
“That’s one way to start a love letter,” I said to my empty office, laughing.
“I’m so wrapped up in you that I can’t think about anything else. I went running through the woods last night to try and keep my mind at something approaching rest, and I tripped over a root. I know that doesn’t sound very exciting, but for a wolf whose been running the woods for the last thirty years? That’s not normal.”
The thought of Jake in his huge, silver, lupine form dashing through the woods and then catching a root with his toe and face-planting square in the dirt was more amusing than I’d like to admit. That brought a smile to my face.
“You can make me grin just by writing things. I can see you, Jake,” I said his name like speaking it would make him appear. “You make me feel things I’ve never felt. Without you, I don’t know where I’d be.”
“Without you, I don’t know where I’d be,” the letter read. The heartbeat quickened in my chest. “I have to go. I hope you enjoy the new toys. Use them to make the most absurd, preposterous statue of a man you’ve ever made. The more ridicul
ous, the better. And if he hurts you, or scares you, or you feel alone, just look outside. Look at the moon. I’m doing the same thing.
“I love you, Delilah. Those words feel almost as good to write as they do to say. It won’t be long. See you Saturday.”
I held the paper to my chest, imagining that his voice spoke the words that his pen had formed. My skin burned hot for him, my lips trembling as tears welled up in the corners of my eyes. I hurried to cram the letter into the space between the two middle drawers.
“It’s going to work,” I said. “It’s going to work because it has to work. The bad guys never win. Not really. They can get ahead now and then, but when it comes down to it, the bad guys never, ever win.”
I have never in my life worked so hard, or for so long on a statue.
Wednesday night faded into Thursday morning. The amount of caffeine in my bloodstream was probably approaching critical mass by the time I finally cratered, more for the sake of my aching hands than because I needed to sleep.
The nap – if you can consider sleeping for five and a half hours a nap – was restless. I tossed and turned, aware that I was moaning in my sleep. My dreams were vivid and complex, which is how they always are when my mind is trying to sort something out.
When I finally forced myself to get off the couch and take a shower, it was wonderful. The overhead rain showerhead pelted my exhausted body with all sorts of streams of water. It had about fourteen different configurations. I was in that shower for about an hour and a half, I think, before the water finally went cold.
“Solar power doesn’t last that long.” That lovable son of a bitch had put in a hot water heater. Just as I was getting over that, the bell on my office door rang – a sound that I had heard just often enough to remember I had one, but not to remember what it sounded like.
“That beautiful son of a bitch sent me lunch,” I accidentally announced to the guy who delivered my Thai food. He smiled at me in a kind of crooked way and said, “Hot and sour soup, an order of chicken Pad Thai – you must like heat! This thing is so hot that smelling it makes my eyes water.”
I just smiled and nodded, taking the food. I was too stunned for anything else, although I’m sure the guy thought I was about the weirdest thing he’d seen that day. Bristly, puffy and confused from lack of sleep and then when I answer the door I just start cursing?
Actually, that’s not much different than normal, I thought with a laugh.
I’m laughing again. I’m laughing at nothing. For most people, that’s the sign of an impending nervous breakdown. But for me? I do it so often that not laughing at nothing, while alone with myself in an empty office, is the sign that something is gravely wrong.
I laughed and I laughed, cackling away harmlessly until the laughing started to choke me a little, until the memories of Jake and how sweet he was hit me a completely different way. This time, the tears didn’t just well up in the corners of my eyes, they flowed freely.
What if the plan didn’t work? What if all of this was just giving me – or him, or both of us – false hope? What if I went to that ceremony and Dane just chopped Jake’s head right off? What the hell then?
I’m not too proud to say that I had a good cry cry that I’d needed to have for a lot longer than I care to admit. I’m also not too proud to admit that I left it all right there. As soon as I was done, that was it. My nerves were steel. I was back to myself, I was ready to rock.
So to speak.
By Saturday morning, I was running on about ten hours of total sleep in three and a half days, but I’ll be damned if that wasn’t the gaudiest, most ridiculous statue I ever carved in my life.
I picked up the phone on Jeannie’s desk – and I was so numb with exhaustion that I didn’t even remember to think about her and feel bad – and called the company that always delivers my stuff.
“Hell-yo?” the guy who ran their phones – Dave – asked.
“Hey Dave, Delilah Coltrane. I have an emergency delivery. And it’s a long way off.”
“Oh yeah?” I heard his pen click. “When you need it where it’s going? Sometime next week?”
“Six hours,” I said, chewing on my lip, hoping he wouldn’t say no.
“No way in hell,” he said. “Truck’s taken. Doug’s got it in Moultrey.”
“Dave,” I said, “I hate to do this, but if you can get this statue to this address by seven tonight, it’s going to be worth your trouble.”
“Worth it? How? I don’t have a truck, I—”
“How does a ten thousand dollar delivery charge sound?”
I couldn’t believe I was saying what I was saying. But I did. Jake would understand.
“It sounds like I need to find a truck. Be there in an hour.”
As the line went dead, I swear I heard an excited woop! from the other end. My heart wasn’t going to take much more, I knew, but it had to last just a little longer.
-19-
“I guess things always happen for a reason, but this one’s real hard to figure out.”
-Delilah
“Whatever that thing’s for, Delilah,” Dave said as I signed the ticket, “I hope these people like it. I didn’t know you’d gotten into the gold statue making game.”
“I haven’t,” I said, not yet. “Send the bill to my office, like always. This is one that I promise I won’t let sit around. I owe you big for this.”
“Yeah, you do,” Doug said, adjusting his coveralls and the bill of his ratty as all hell Yankees cap. “I missed about six hours of sitting on my couch and watching Judge Judy reruns and all I got was... oh right, ten grand.” He smirked. “Somehow I think I’ll live.”
By then, curiosity was piqued among the wolves, but the tarp over my masterpiece was locked down tight. If anyone wanted a peek, they’d have to tear it, and doing that was strictly forbidden. As it turns out, werewolves are about as superstitious as old women who play gin rummy eight hours a day. And peaking at a marking gift is about the most horrible slight that a wolf can suffer.
Dane, of course, had yet to show up. I rode out in the truck with Doug, which was just fine by me, thank you very much. I hadn’t seen Jake yet either, but that was slightly less surprising. I knew he would be here, but it seemed appropriate somehow that the shamed former alpha not be quite as eager to make an appearance as the conquering warrior.
He’s gotta stick to the plan. Play defeated until Dane’s statue makes its glorious appearance and then I accuse Dane of forcing me. A faked Marking, or a forced one, are almost as offensive as peeking at the gifts.
Either this is going to work, or it won’t, but either way, something interesting is going to happen.
The prospect of an interesting afternoon was no consolation when Dane’s motorcycle, thumped heavily in my ears. He pulled up, alongside five of his closest goons who all had a shockingly similar appearance. Their bikes were significantly smaller, although none were riding bicycles, to their credit.
“Who the hell’s ready for a party?” Dane shouted, as he dismounted. He was obviously expecting some kind of wild ovation, but when none came, he didn’t seem particularly bothered. “You buncha babies! Come on, let’s have some fun! Where’s my brother?”
So the truth comes out, I thought. It always does. This isn’t about me or the pack or anything else. It’s about petty revenge. Figures.
He was loud, big, and... scared?
I saw it momentarily, just for a flash of a second – that tic in his right cheek. The one he had when he started talking about his father and how he had been passed over for the alpha’s spot. There wasn’t a half-second of a chink in the armor, but I’d seen it. Bravado quickly overwhelmed his vulnerability as he started going from table to table, from person to person, slapping them on the back and eating an army’s worth of hors d’oeuvres. Dane was especially fond of little bacon wrapped scallops, which he devoured six or seven plates worth of before I couldn’t watch him anymore.
“I thought the ice sculpture was for
the real marking?” Greta appeared at my elbow, taking my arm in hers and smiling.
“It is,” I said. “This is just something... well, it’s a present for Dane,” I said.
“Jake’s plan?”
I nodded. “Well, kind of a joint venture.”
We shared a moment’s worth of shared glancing. “Where is he, by the way?” she asked me, breaking the silence.
“Been wondering that myself,” I answered, unconsciously biting my lip. I didn’t think he’d abandon everyone, but the truth was, I didn’t know where he was or why he was waiting to make his grand appearance. “I know timing is everything,” I said, “But I want to get this over with.”
From the other side of the party, where he had a cocktail weenie in his mouth, Dane started shouting to me. “Hey! Hey Delilah! You wondering where Jake is?”
“Well, sorta, yeah! I can’t wait to get home with my big, strong mate, and let him do whatever he wants to me! Let’s get this over with!”
My bawdy joke turned my stomach, but all the wolves had a great time laughing at it, that’s for sure. My guts were twisting, wrenching and sour, but I knew that the sooner I could show off that statue and the sooner Dane’s bullshit could be plastered all over God’s green earth, the sooner I could get out of here with the one I was supposed to be with.
And, more importantly, the sooner Jake, Barney and Jeannie would be safe.
“Hey everyone!” Dane was shouting again, hooting at the top of his idiot lungs. “I have a surprise for all of you. My brother, Jake, you know, your weak, limp alpha? He was trying to run and hide. He lost the mating challenge, he lost his spot as alpha, and then he tried to run away to save his scrawny, ugly neck. What do you all think of that?”
There wasn’t much response, so he continued. “What kind of an alpha runs from consequences? Huh?”
Some general grumbling that time, slight irritation moved through the crowd in a wave. “This kind of alpha! I found him slinking around the mansion last night in the shadows, just where he’d have all of you live your lives. Bring him out, Norton!”
