A couple of feet from the others Nowen was brought to a halt. The man behind her nudged her again with the gun. “On your knees. All of you.” Slowly she sank to her knees in the rough grass. Everett and Sage did the same. She bounced her gaze from the grey-haired man to the girl and back again, frantically thinking of some way to escape. “Where’s Zee?” the man behind her said.
“Coming.” This from one of the gunmen next to Everett.
“Hopefully before the storm breaks.”
The sky was a heavy black, and while lightning split the clouds and thunder boomed no rain had fallen. Rain could be a blessing. It could provide a distraction for us to get away. Nowen had no real idea of how that could work but she was desperate now, and anything that might help was grasped and considered. Abruptly she realized that the gunmen were tensing, and then she heard the sound of someone moving through the high grass behind her.
Zee. Whoever that is. Nowen searched the faces of her pack mates for any clue as to who was coming. Both Everett and Sage looked more confused startled? than anything else. Footsteps halted directly behind her. Nowen tensed in anticipation of...what?
There was a moment of absolute silence. It seemed even the storm was holding its breath. “Nowen.” The voice of Zee was young, and female, and familiar? cold. “Does this all ring a bell? Or was that day in the junkyard just another day for you?”
Nowen dug through her mind. She knew that voice, but finding the memory of it was difficult. Things in the past were not that important to the wolf. Or to her.
Zee seemed to be waiting for a response from her. She had none to give. When Zee spoke again her anger at Nowen’s silence was evident. “Nothing to say. I’m not surprised. You leave death behind you wherever you go, and you don’t even care.” There was a pause, filled only by the strained breathing of the woman behind her. Then Zee spoke again. “Who’s the girl? Is she your get?”
Nowen looked at Sage. The girl was trying to remain still and withdrawn, but tears glimmered in her dark eyes. Those eyes were locked on Nowen’s face, pleading for her to do something. Don’t look at me like that. I don’t know what to do.
Zee shoved Nowen’s shoulder. “Answer me. Is she yours? Did you make her, or did the traitor?” Traitor? She glanced at Everett, but his single copper eye was focused on the woman behind her.
“I’m getting tired of this silent treatment, Nowen. Cal.” At Zee’s words the guard to the left of Sage grabbed the girl’s hair and yanked her head back. He brought his free hand across her face and Sage cried out at the blow. Only the grip on her hair kept her from falling over, and as Cal dragged her upright Nowen could see blood spilling from the girl’s mouth.
Everett grunted. Nowen glanced to see his struggle to get to his feet ended by the savage slam of a rifle stock into his side. He fell forward to the ground and she wrenched her gaze back to Sage. The girl was crying, tears and blood dripping from her face. Cal still held her by the hair, and his free hand was raised in preparation for another strike.
Zee’s voice sank into her like a snake’s poison. “I could make alllll kinds of threats now. I could threaten to have your friends beaten bloody. I could threaten to put their eyes out -the traitor’s halfway there already - or I could threaten to let my men rape that pretty little girl while you watch. To be honest, I find threats boring and counter-productive. It comes down to this: answer my questions or I’ll hurt your friends.”
Nowen never moved her eyes from Sage’s face. “I’ll answer your questions.” she said.
“Good. First - is she your get? You made her a vukodlak?”
“Yes.”
“Is she bound to you?”
Nowen frowned. “I don’t understand the question.”
“That answers that. Is she the first one you’ve ever made?”
“Yes.”
There was silence from Zee for a moment. “Interesting. Can she change without any problems? Does she change completely?”
“Yes, and yes.”
“Very interesting.” Zee’s voice grew lower and Nowen got the impression she was talking to herself. “The girl should be sufficient. I don’t care what he wants.” Something tickled the back of Nowen’s mind. The darkness of the storm-ridden sky and the quiet tones of Zee’s words were combining in her head, and for some reason the image of a brown ponytail streaked with purple and green came to her. I know her. How?
“Cal, you and the rest take those two back to the trailer.” Zee’s voice drew Nowen out of her memories.
Everett and Sage were pulled to their feet. Nowen could only watch as they were led away at gunpoint, moving past her in a single, stumbling line. Sage gave her a despairing look and then she was gone. Pain radiated up Nowen’s arms and she realized that she had been unconsciously trying to change shape.
The man called Cal stopped near Nowen. “What about you, Zee. And her?”
“I’ll be right behind. I need to interrogate the prisoner a little more. These questions are on a need-to-know basis.”
Cal smiled. “And I don’t need to know. See you back at the trailer. Take care with this one.” He moved past, and in a moment it was just Nowen, Zee, and the rumble of thunder.
Nowen waited for what would happen next. More questions? A beating? She won’t kill me, not when she’s evidently been looking everywhere for me. She looked up at the sky. A cool drop of water landed on her nose. Rain. Good. Wait for the next big lightning flash and then take Zee down.
“You saved my life, Nowen.” The words were almost melancholy now. Again the tantalizing memory of who Zee was danced in her mind, staying just out of grasp. “You saved me, and then you abandoned me. Did you care that you left me all alone, surrounded by dead-heads, with only a bloody truck to help me survive? I have a feeling you didn’t care. And probably still don’t care.”
A small camper. An overrun refugee camp, and howling, shrieking Revs everywhere.
“I don’t hate you for leaving me. Well, I don’t hate you much. In the very short time we were together you amply demonstrated your lack of compassion. It’s what came after. You changed into a wolf, and nothing made any sense. I went a little crazy after that. I could handle dead people walking around better than I could handle a person becoming an animal.” Zee laughed, a harsh bark that contained no humor.
Running through a burned-out building, a young woman with purple-and-green streaked hair next to her. Gunshots.
“And then, as if seeing you do that and going a little crazy wasn’t bad enough, just knowing about you made things worse. Well, for a while, but then things got a little better.” Zee paused. Nowen felt the soft touch of the woman’s hand across her head. “Oh, the things I’ve seen and done. What I’ve eagerly been a part of. It turns out that to survive I’ll do anything.” The hand fell away from Nowen’s head. “And that I do hate you for. Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if I wouldn’t be happier dead.”
There was a sense of Zee moving away from her. “He wants you alive. We can’t always get what we want, though, can we? For his purposes the girl will be sufficient, I think. And if not - so what?” Another pause, and in the empty silence the rain began to fall. “Do you ever think of Lennon?”
Scattered puzzle pieces came together in Nowen’s mind. She knew, she knew, and as she unthinkingly began to rise the name fell from her mouth.
“Zoe?!”
The world exploded around Nowen. Fire burned along the side of her head and black stars bloomed before her eyes. She was falling, and it seemed she fell forever. Thunder rumbled in her skull and then scraped at her cheek as she hit the earth. Her eyes wouldn’t open but she could still see the lightning, blue-white glares that scorched her brain. Rain covered her face, each drop landing like a cold hammer blow. She turned away, looking for her wolf, but the wolf was gone, and then the ground was gone, and the rain was gone, and then it was all gone.
Book Two
Chapter Thirteen
She stands before the door which is outline
d in light. The dark and bloodstained hallway stretches behind her. There is no need to look back; the black-as-night wolf stands next to her. She runs her hand over the thick fur and reaches for the doorknob. The door swings open on a blindingly white light in a clear blue sky.
She blinks against the bright sun and wishes again that she knew where her damn sunglasses had disappeared to. A car horn honks behind her and she realizes the street light is green. She hits the gas and squeals her old car through a right turn, raising a hand in a penitent wave. Another angry honk is her answer. She’s blushing, she realizes, and chides herself - yet again - for worrying what other people think of her.
Twenty minutes later she is hopelessly lost. She pulls into a gas station parking lot and fumbles for her hastily-drawn map. This is a decidedly bad-looking part of town and her stomach churns with nervousness. The ragged piece of paper on which she wrote her sister’s sob-choked directions trembles in her hand.
There is a gentle tapping at her window. She looks up and is startled by the dirty old man looking back at her. He smiles at her, showing missing and blackened teeth, and asks if she needs help. She rolls the window down just a bit and shows him her hastily-drawn map. He nods and smiles and points at the street in front of the gas station. She recognizes the street name and wants to slap herself for being so clueless. The old man smiles again and totters away. She heads for her destination.
With growing unease she pulls her car into a weedy and neglected rail yard. Big metal containers and junked cars and piles of trash are everywhere, and the faint glimmer of train tracks show through the high grass. There is no sign of her sister. She keeps her doors locked and beeps her horn. She tells herself not to get her hopes up that anything has changed with her sister.
As if summoned by her thoughts her sister steps out from behind a dumpster and waves at her. She motions for her sister to come over to the car. The other woman looks around nervously and shakes her head as she fades back behind the battered dumpster. She rests her hands on the steering wheel and wants to leave, just leave and get out of this city and go back north, north to Wyoming and home. With a sigh she turns off the car and steps out.
The evening is coming fast, the sky still clear but shading through orange and gold and violet as night approaches. She grips her purse with both hands, not surprised to find they are damp with sweat. She walks toward the dumpster, and even though the highway is not far away and traffic speeds along with a constant hum there is a curious silence here. The night birds and insects are still, and only the swish of grass against her jeans disturbs the quiet.
She clears her throat. Her sister steps out from behind the dumpster and holds a hand out to her. “Harper.” Her sister says her name like an answered prayer. She moves into the wide-flung arms and they hug. Her sister is murmuring into her ear, apologizing for bringing her out here, asking if she brought the money.
She steps back from her sister and rummages in her worn purse. She pulls out a wad of crumpled bills and her sister snatches it away eagerly, thumbing through the paper slips before looking up at her with fear in her eyes. It’s not enough, her sister says, it’s not enough I owe so much you must have more and now she can see the withdrawal tremors that shake her sister’s wasted body.
She moves away from the other woman as she explains that the money is all she has to spare and that she won’t help her sister slowly kill herself with drugs any more. Her sister is maddened, shouting at her to give her the rest of the money she needs it now she needs it NOW! The other woman lunges at her and hooks a hand on her purse, drawing her in close. She yanks back and her sister screams and then there is a flash of metal in her sister’s hand and she wonders how her sister got her car keys and then the metal is driving into her stomach and she realizes it’s a knife.
She lets go of the purse and places her hands on her stomach. Warm liquid is seeping through her shirt. Her sister is throwing the contents of the purse on the ground. She turns away and starts walking toward her car. Her keys, she remembers, are in her jeans pocket and she slides a blood-slicked hand into the pocket and wraps a finger around the metal key ring.
There is a searing pain in her back and she cries out. Her sister is screaming in her ear that she needs more money why isn’t there more money and she falls forward, the grass racing up to meet her. She lands flat on her stomach and her sister crouches on top of her, plunging the knife into her back again and again. She doesn’t even have the breath to cry anymore.
Something growls from the darkness of the rail yard. She looks up with the last bit of her strength and sees something big and dark and sharp-toothed leaping at her. She is torn between not wanting to die and wishing for an end to the pain, and as the monster comes close she drops her head back to the grass and waits.
There is the sense of heaviness moving over her. The weight of her sister on her back is gone. Her sister is screaming, not angry accusations now but sounds of deep pain and fear. She hears things crack and tear, hears the sound of wet chewing, hears her sister whisper brokenly for help. She keeps her eyes closed and concentrates on nothing at all. There is a welcoming darkness stealing over her mind and she turns toward it with something close to eagerness, seeking a place far away where nothing hurts.
Something hurts. She is being turned over onto her back. Her eyelid is pried open but she cannot see anything. A man is speaking. He is telling her that he does this out of desperation, that she must try to have the strength and the will to survive what is coming. He laughs at this, a private joke, and says that she must first survive the next few hours. She can’t answer him; even as he talks to her she is moving far away and by now she’s not even sure who she is.
Pain, pain beyond pain, agony unlike anything she has ever felt in her life shreds her leg. She wants to shriek but can’t. All her nerves come alive at once, sparking with black fire. Things are happening, deep inside, down where the very atoms exist she is being unmade. And remade into something different. Her body twists and jerks like a puppet dangled by a cruel child. She feels the dark burning racing toward her brain and she searches frantically for someplace to hide.
It is in her mind. There is something foreign in her mind. A presence, an other, it wraps around her and whispers to her. It speaks of freedom and strength and blood under the full moon. She listens to the whispers until she recognizes the voice as her own. The presence is not a presence - it is just another part of herself and this last betrayal is too much. She wants nothing to do with it, wants nothing more than to leave all of this behind, this pain and fear and the desire to run wild that grows more intoxicating with every breath. In desperation she forms a door in her mind and seals herself, all that she was and is and had hoped to be, behind it. She leaves her empty mind and body behind.
The newly-awakened half of her seeps like black ink through the echoing hallways of her mind until it fills every last echoing space. It settles in, aware that something is missing, aware that there is a disconnect between the old and the new parts of itself, aware that without the restraints of the human the wolf will shape the empty mind in its own image.
But of what import is that to this new consciousness?
And in the depths of the hollow human shell wild amber eyes open.
Nowen opened her eyes.
A pale silver mass floated in her vision. She blinked, her eyelids feeling thick and gummy, and the mass resolved into a swath of moonlit grass. A blade right before her eyes was bent nearly double, a clear drop of water hanging from the tip. She was suddenly aware of a burning thirst that swallowing did not ease.
Her face was wet. She remembered rain falling. Her tongue swept over her lips, bringing what little moisture there was into her mouth.
The tang of copper and salt water slid across her tongue. Blood. Whose blood? My sister’s? That last thought felt right and wrong at the same time. The silvered grass and the dark sky faded away and for a moment Nowen was lying in a twilit rail yard. She raised her head to look for the m
onster that was coming.
Sharp teeth dug into her skull and she screamed. Her hands grasped cool grass and wet earth, not the weeds and gravel she was expecting. The rail yard disappeared and she was once more in the clearing. Her head throbbed fiercely; she closed her eyes and laid her forehead against the earth. Something was wrong. Something was missing; faces Nowen couldn’t name battered at her brain and made the pain in her head worse. One thing at a time. With the ease of long practice she pushed the images away and focused her concentration on the here and now.
She turned her head to the left, damp mud smearing across her cheek, and forced her eyes open. The silver grass was still there, and now she could make out the darker forms of trees a little distance away. A shack that looked on the verge of collapse was just visible from the bottom of her eye. The sounds of night birds and insects were the only things she heard. Alone. Safe. Safe? Why is that important?
Not quite ready to try moving her head again Nowen shifted her consciousness to her body. She was lying flat on the ground, her legs straight out behind her, her right arm stretched out over her head and her left arm thrown out to one side. She tried moving her legs. The signals from her brain seemed to take longer than they should to get there but finally she felt her feet sliding against the slick grass. Her arms were next, and slowly she brought both her hands to shoulder level.
Ok. Here goes. Nowen pushed up with her hands. The pain in her head bloomed like a mushroom cloud and she dry-heaved. The violent motions nearly threw her back to the ground and it was only through some well of pure stubbornness that she kept herself up on her hands.
Her breath wheezed out in tiny, agonized gasps as she pulled her legs forward until she was balanced on her hands and knees. It took all of her meager strength to sit up and back on her bent legs and even this small effort left her on the edge of consciousness, her eyes tightly shut against the pain that sluiced through her body like acid. She raised a trembling hand to the left side of her head, where the pain was the most intense, and ran her fingers lightly through her hair.
Wolf Hunting (A Wolf in the Land of the Dead Book Book 3) Page 12
