Leader Of The Pack

by Karen McInerney

  Well, it was too late now.

  After his rather regal exit from the tent—he was downright majestic, with those broad, powerful shoulders and iridescent golden eyes—he gave me a little nudge with his nose and indicated I should follow him into the scrubby oaks. Which I did, reveling in the crispness of the world—even in the dim light, every blade of grass was sharply drawn, and I could see the reflection of the waxing moon on the oak leaves’ shining surfaces. If I wasn’t careful, I might lose myself staring at the bark of a tree … or the play of the moonlight on Tom’s shining coat as he leapt nimbly over a stray boulder.

  I followed Tom away from the tents and farmhouses, away from civilization. As we padded over last season’s dead leaves, I found myself sniffing to detect what animals had passed by—already I sensed a pair of armadillos digging for grubs, a feral pig on the hunt for acorns, and a female werewolf who had recently used Nair. I was aware of the wolves padding silently through the underbrush around me. In fact, there were so many of us that I wondered exactly how this “hunt” was supposed to go. With the concentration of werewolves in the area, I’d be amazed if there was any game within a five-mile radius.

  We climbed a gentle hill, weaving through chunks of moonlit granite and clumps of bluegrass, cresting in a big, hilltop clearing ringed by werewolves. In the center were two werewolves I recognized, even though I’d never seen them in wolf form before. Wolfgang was on the left, looking powerful and massive, the tips of his blond fur gleaming in the moonlight; beside him, sleek and black, was Elena, her long nose—as usual—high in the air.

  I expected we’d just park on the fringes where we came in, but instead found myself following Tom as he circled around the group, finally stopping at a spot on the far side of where we’d come in. It wasn’t until a breeze brought us the mixed bouquet of the alpha couple that I realized why he’d chosen this spot; we were now downwind of the dynamic duo.

  Despite the hundreds of werewolves converging on the hilltop, the night was soundless, save for the whisper of the wind and the droning chirp of crickets.

  Tom waited attentively, as did the rest of the werewolves. It was hard to believe that the rather eerie group of silent wolves had been wearing jeans and swilling longnecks not twenty minutes ago. What were they waiting for? I wondered, suddenly aware of exactly how much I had missed by being raised among average humans. Well, maybe not average—my mother the psychic witch was hardly what you’d consider run-of-the-mill—but you know what I mean.

  The crickets were growing increasingly annoying, and I was ready to start yipping just to break up the monotony when it finally began.

  Wolfgang tipped his head back and let out a low, throaty howl; a moment later, Elena joined in, soprano to his bass, making a counterpoint to the melody that sent chills down my spine. When the long notes died away into the silent night, the rest of the pack picked up the refrain, their voices mingling in an eerie howl so compelling that I found that I had joined in without realizing it.

  The back-and-forth continued a few times—there were almost words in the howls, though I couldn’t quite grasp them—before stopping as suddenly as it began. Then a small space opened in the circle of wolves, and Elena and Wolfgang leaped through it. The circle rejoined for a moment; then, as I stood watching, the ring of wolves melted away, disappearing into the trees.

  I glanced at Tom, who indicated with a flick of his ears that I should follow. Which I did, wondering exactly what the whole point of this undertaking was. We’d met on a hilltop and exchanged some howls. Were we now officially on the hunt? Or just heading to another hill somewhere?

  I took a deep breath and followed the big blond wolf, nose flared, scanning the landscape with all my senses. The game, as I had suspected, was long gone; I could smell a hawk roosting in a tree, and hear the flap of an owl as it swooped down through the branches. The woods were alive, and not just with the stealthy padding of werewolves, which was pretty much everywhere. The night world vibrated around us, and despite my concern for my father—and my extremely conflicted feelings about the huge blond werewolf in whose footsteps I was padding—I felt myself sliding into a primal role I had spent most of my life trying to hold at bay.

  Predator.

  I had hunted on my own before, of course. During the four times of year when the change was unavoidable, I rented a small cabin in the wilds of the hill country, shed my human skin, and did what wolves have always done.

  Most of the time I had limited myself to tracking down jackrabbits, or spooking armadillos from their dens. The bloodlust had descended on me once or twice, when I disturbed a buck or doe, and I had run at least one of them to ground, slightly scared by the ferocity that had bubbled up in me. Although that same ferocity had come in handy once or twice when dealing with would-be car burglars.

  But now, something about the night brought all that rushing back. I was no longer Sophie Garou, auditor. I was part of a larger organism, the breathing, living creatures that swarmed through the woods all around me, eyes shimmering gold in the faint light.

  I dropped my nose to the ground, deciphering the tangle of scents crisscrossing the ground beneath me. A jackrabbit, a pair of squirrels. Nothing recent. My senses attuned to the night, the cedar trees dark and dense, the new leaves of the mesquite trees silvery in the moon’s light.

  Tom had just rounded a fallen oak when I caught a flash of movement, near to the ground. I glanced at Tom, but then my ears picked up the skitter of dead leaves, and my eyes followed it, searching for the source.

  The temptation was too great. And after all, I told myself, this was a hunt, right?

  I veered off the trail toward the small dark form, breathing in deeply. A rabbit—always fun to chase. I picked up the pace, following the flashing white tail through the trees. Nothing existed suddenly but the animal racing in front of me—it was one of those big jackrabbits, with ears the size of banana leaves, and I could smell the adrenaline pulsing through its furry body. I dropped low to the ground, loping after it as it dashed through the trees. The gap was closing; I could almost taste the rabbit’s scent, and saliva flooded my mouth in anticipation of the salty tang of its blood.

  As I rounded a cedar, two paces from my prey, ready to pounce, the rabbit vanished.

  I skidded to a halt, sniffing for my vanished prey, but all I found was a big hole in the ground.

  I padded around the gap in the earth, thrusting an experimental paw down it, but it was too deep. Unless I spent the next hour digging, I was out of luck.

  With the rabbit no longer in range, the predatory instinct faded, and I looked up and around, trying to orient myself. I couldn’t smell the werewolves as strongly—they must have gone in a different direction—but the scent of ashes wafted to me on the wind. The rabbit must have led me back toward the compound.

  And Luc Garou.

  I sniffed again. I had lost Tom when I’d gone down my rabbit trail; there was no trace of his scent. Should I try to find him? I wondered. If I went back to hang with the other werewolves, the conversational opportunities would be somewhat limited by our nonhuman form, so I wasn’t sure how beneficial that would be. If anything, it would greatly increase the likelihood of my running smack into Elena and being outed.

  My father, on the other hand, was merely a few hundred yards away. And even if I couldn’t spring Luc Garou from the garden cottage, it wouldn’t hurt to scope out the area—just in case the whole trial thing didn’t work out and I ended up having to break in and try to gnaw through his shackles. The night breeze brought another whiff of ashes with it; the bonfire was definitely off to my right. After a final check to make sure I was alone, I padded toward it, all my senses on high alert.

  Within minutes, I had found a trail back to the compound and was heading to the small building that housed my father.

  I paused next to a bush about twenty yards away, using my nose and ears to get the lay of the land. I could make out the faint odor of my father—and since he evidently h
adn’t had access to running water, odor was definitely the mot juste. What I didn’t smell, though, were the guards. Had they left him unwatched during the hunt?

  I padded closer to the house, alert for any movement. Aside from the rustle of the breeze through the grasses, though, the place was dead.

  So dead, in fact, that for a moment I was afraid they’d moved Luc Garou elsewhere. Or perhaps dispensed a bit of vigilante justice prior to the trial date. But then a particularly strong breeze brought a clear whiff of his pungent bouquet, and my fears were assuaged.

  I studied the door, a flimsy wooden thing with a shiny brass lock. It wouldn’t be hard to get in; there was no security system, and it wouldn’t take much to break a window.

  I hesitated a few yards from the door. Did I dare take the time to retrieve my clothes?

  Since the alternative was to chat with my estranged father in the buff, I decided it was a risk I was willing to take. Naked with fur was fine, but I didn’t want to turn up in human form looking like I’d just signed up to join a nudist colony. I turned away from the little cottage and headed back into the woods; it was only a matter of minutes before I found the tent where Tom and I had stripped down. I slipped inside, switched back to human form, and tugged on my clothes, including my highly impractical stiletto heels. The downside of my transformation, unfortunately, was that I was at a disadvantage when it came to detecting other werewolves. My sense of smell and hearing might still be better than the average human’s, but I was operating at less than half of my wolf capacity. I had no idea how long the hunt was supposed to last; to be on the safe side, I decided it would be wise to keep the family visit on the short side.

  Thanks to the shoes, the trip back to the cottage took twice as long. I found myself startling every time I stepped on a dead branch, convinced I’d turn the corner and plow right into a pack of annoyed werewolves. But I made it back to the cottage unmolested, and although I was disappointed that they hadn’t left the door unlocked, I was feeling pretty good about the way the evening was shaping up.

  Ideally I’d be able to slip in and out without anyone knowing I’d been there, but a quick circuit of the house’s exterior indicated that wasn’t really an option. So I found a big rock, heaved it at one of the back windows, and took cover behind a large bush as the glass shattered, sounding about as subtle as a plane crash. I was amazed that the entire Houston pack didn’t come bounding up to see what had happened, but after a few werewolf-less minutes, I decided the coast was clear and crept up to the side of the cottage. A volley of French invective met my ears as I reached inside, fumbled for the window’s lock, and eased the frame open.

  When I didn’t answer, my father grew silent. Then, in a hopeful tone that was disturbingly vulnerable, he called, “Armand?”

  “Nope,” I said. “It’s just me.” I pulled the window shut behind me—why, I don’t know, because the glass was rather conspicuously absent—and walked across the small, dilapidated kitchen toward the doorway to the main room.

  “Sophie?” My father looked up as I entered, something like joy—or triumph—lighting his gold eyes. Then his brow furrowed. “What is it that you have done to your hair?”

  Unbelievable. I had risked life and limb to see my father and he was criticizing my hair ? “It’s a disguise,” I said.

  “That color does not suit you at all,” he said with obvious distaste. “Not to mention that smell,” he added. “Like American waffles. And you’re wearing too much perfume.”

  His nose wrinkled delicately. Which, in my opinion, was pretty rich coming from a werewolf who smelled like he hadn’t bathed in a week.

  “You’re not exactly fresh as a daisy yourself,” I said, perhaps a bit tartly. When I explained that Tom had given me an herb to help disguise my scent, Luc’s bushy eyebrows rose.

  “Fenris assisted you?”

  “He’s my friend,” I said. “Remember? He was the one who got me in to see you yesterday.” I glanced nervously at the front door, listening for the sound of oncoming werewolves. “Look. I don’t know how much time we’ve got, so let’s make the most of it.” I hurried over and examined his shackles; they were decidedly gnaw-proof, and the key was nowhere in sight.

  “Right, right. Excellent thinking.” As I searched the room for the key, Luc looked at me expectantly. “Did Georges get in touch with Armand?”

  I sucked in my breath. “Not exactly …”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I haven’t spoken to Georges yet, actually,” I said.

  He shook his head violently, rocking his chair back so that it slammed into the wall behind him. His chains jangled like cowbells on a herd of angry cattle, and for a moment, I was kind of glad he was restrained. “This is insupportable,” he barked. “I asked you to do one simple thing …”

  I cut him off. “I don’t owe you anything.”

  “You owe me your life.”

  Oh, please. Maybe I owed him a sperm, but my life? That was pushing it. “What you’re asking me to do would start a war in central Texas,” I said calmly. “Forgive me if I’m not too excited about that.”

  His gold eyes were fiery. “So you’d rather see me die like a stuck pig than cause an altercation?”

  “I thought it might be nice to at least try and prove your innocence before we started calling in the reinforcements.”

  He snorted. “Obviously you are unfamiliar with the Grafs. You are being completely naive, Sophie. This is not about guilt or innocence, chérie. This is about revenge.”

  I gave up on the key—wherever it was, it wasn’t here—and took a deep breath through my nose, wishing my father was a little less pungent as I did an olfactory sweep of the room, sniffing for other werewolves. Even though Luc’s rather assertive animal odor and my Mrs. Butterworth bouquet were enough to mask just about anything—including two-week-old Limburger—it seemed we were still alone. For the moment, anyway. I returned my focus to my father. “Where were you that night, before we had dinner?”

  “What night?”

  “The night Charles died.”

  He shrugged. “I do not remember.”

  “You were late,” I reminded him. “You showed up with a scratch on your face. What was that from?”

  He shifted in his chair. “I caught it on a branch.”

  “So you didn’t catch it on Charles’s claw? Prior to, say, ripping his throat out?”

  “No,” he said, looking affronted. “I told you; I would never resort to such barbaric practices. Why won’t you believe your own father?”

  “You don’t exactly have a stellar track record for me to draw on,” I pointed out.

  “Touché,” he said. “All right, Sophie. I will be honest with you.” He looked up at me from haunted eyes. “I did have an altercation with Grenier before we met that night. I was still angry over his betrayal, and I did not hide that fact. But I did not kill him,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged. “What benefit would it have? Other than satisfying my thirst for revenge, of course—but I was not that parched. Certainly, his betrayal of the Garous, particularly since he was a member of the family—a distant branch, to be sure, but still…”

  “What exactly did he do that was so awful?”

  “He was a spy. He reported our plans to the Grafs; it was almost our undoing at the battle of Colmar.” He thrust out his chest. “Nevertheless, we prevailed.”

  “So you’re not still pissed enough to kill him,” I clarified.

  “Of course not. He is in a new, weaker pack now, and he is not even alpha. What worse punishment could I contrive?”

  Clearly we had different opinions on what constituted punishment, but I let it go.

  “I was angry that he had jeopardized the family, and the cause,” Luc continued. “And I will confess that for a time, I would happily have dispatched him. But I swear to you that I did not kill him.”

  “And the scratch on your face?”

  Luc sighed. “I w
ill admit that he did take one swipe at me, and I failed to duck in time. I had recently imbibed a Pernod, and my reaction time …”

  “He scratched you, but you didn’t retaliate?”

  “Well, perhaps I did respond,” he said sheepishly. “One cannot let an insult such as that simply pass by, you know.”

  “Of course not,” I said, crossing my arms across my chest. “And how exactly does one respond to such an insult?”

  He stared at me frankly from those golden eyes. “Sophie, my darling. Perhaps I dealt him a few light blows, just to make my point. But I did not rip his throat out.”

  “Glad to hear it,” I said, wondering why I needed him to keep telling me that. “The problem is, someone did. And unless we can come up with a reasonable alternative, the werewolf community at large seems quite content to shove a stake in you and call the case closed.”

  “It is an unfortunate coincidence that we were together prior to his demise, but alas, I have no information to help you apprehend the murderer.”

  I resisted the urge to beat my head against the nearest wall. “Let’s go through the whole evening, just in case there’s something we missed. Where did you meet with him?”

  “I ran into him on Second Street

  ,” he said.

  “It wasn’t a planned meeting?”

  “Of course not,” he said.

  “Was he by himself?” I was beginning to feel a bit like a professional interrogator.

  “At that moment, yes. But he had recently been with a woman,” he said. “I could smell her on him.”

  “Werewolf, or human?”

  “A lupin, of course.”

  He said it with a disgusted curl of his upper lip, as if the alternative would be roughly equivalent to engaging in sexual congress with a banana slug. This despite the fact that he and my human mother had obviously once been rather closer than “just friends.” Not for the first time, I found myself questioning why I was bothering to help him.

  “Any idea who it might me?” I asked.