His expression pitying, the officer crouched next to Mr. Lazarus again. He pressed his fingers to the same place on Mr. Lazarus’ throat, waited a few breathless moments, and then shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
This time, Helena was the one who wailed.
Everything was something of a mess after that. Frankly, Helena missed most of it. She was too busy crying against Rudolf’s chest. At some point, she gave someone a statement – she vaguely remembered that part – and someone said something about Mr. Lazarus probably falling down the stairs. Eventually, Rudolf took her home to his apartment.
Eventually, when Helena was all cried out and merely miserable, Rudolf said “I’m sorry about your friend.”
Listlessly, Helena nodded against his chest.
“Is there anything that I can do to make you feel better?”
Helena’s mind darted to her soup – now stone cold in its pot. It was probably all gross by now with a skin and everything – and then away again. Getting petty revenge on Rudolf didn’t seem like so much fun now. Even thinking about the dinner that she had made now made her sad.
But there was one thing that might make her feel better. Saltwater baths had always been a secret vice of her. A nice, long soak in a cold saltwater had always cheered her up. It had also been her method of celebrating victory and plotting her advancement, either personally or professionally.
And it had been days since her last one. Helena hadn’t want to overstep her boundaries or get on Dolf’s nerves. She hadn’t want to be improper or a bad guest. But since he had offered…
“A bath?” asked Helena hopefully. “A cold one? With saltwater?”
“Okay,” said Rudolf. “I can do that. Wait a sec.”
Leaving Helena slumped on his couch, Rudolf went first into the kitchen to collect the sea salt and then into the bathroom. A moment later, Helena heard the sound of water running.
Alone for the first time since they had found Mr. Lazarus’ body, Helena allowed herself to think the thought that she had been avoiding.
Was it my fault? Helena wondered. Am I responsible for his death?
She hoped not.
Staring sightlessly at the grey carpet, Helena tried to remember if the hellhounds had used the stairs or the elevators when they left. She couldn’t remember.
A knock on wood pulled Helena’s attention away from her thoughts. Looking up, she saw Rudolf standing in the living room’s doorway.
“Rudolf?” asked Helena. “Do you remember how those men left? Did they go down the stairs?”
“No,” he said after a moment’s thought. “They didn’t. They took the elevators.”
Helena’s breath caught in her throat. Hope fluttered in her chest like a trapped bird.
“Are you sure?” she asked with some difficulty.
“Positive.”
Relieved, Helena blew out a heavy breath.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” said Rudolf. “Now go take your bath before it gets, er, warm.”
For him, Helena managed a wan smile.
“Thanks,” she said again, this time as she pushed herself to her feet.
Slipping past Rudolf, so close that she could feel the heat radiating from his skin, Helena went into the bathroom.
Earlier, when she had imagined how this evening was going to go, Helena had imagined her delicious dinner going off without a hitch, gloating to Rudolf, and celebrating her victory with a nice, cold saltwater bath, maybe while eating a bowl of strawberry ice cream.
Now, she sat in the bath and stewed.
They said that Mr. Lazarus had fallen down the stairs and broken his neck. Helena definitely remembered that part. But Mr. Lazarus hadn’t ever taken the stairs. He’d lived in a ground floor apartment, and the time that he had come up to Rudolf’s apartment, he had insisted that they take the elevator. He hadn’t been well enough to take the stairs. The only thing that Mr. Lazarus had done in the stairwell was to have vaguely ominous personal conversations; warnings, if Helena remember rightly.
Warnings about what, though, Helena didn’t know.
I wish I hadn’t been so polite, Helena thought, angry at herself. I ought to have just asked. And I should have pushed harder. He was my friend.
He was her first friend, the only one that she had made on her own merits without the benefits of either money or family connections. And now he was dead.
Angry, Helena slapped the water, the ripples in it making the fine layer of scales along her arms and legs shimmer. It was really pretty. And she had scales!
It was unfortunate that she felt too badly to enjoy either of those things.
Disquieted, Helena sat in the bathtub with her thoughts until the water was tepid. Then she rose, using her toes to pull the tub’s plug before she pulled the shower’s curtain closed. Turning on the water, Helena took a warm shower, soaping her skin then attending to her hair. And as she did, she imagined that she was washing away all the stresses, strains, and sorrows of the day.
It helped. A little bit. And her scales went away, so that was something.
Soothed, Helena shut off the water and got out. She dried her skin and then her hair, wrapping her towel around it.
Then a new stress raised its ugly head.
She had nothing to change into, and she definitely didn’t want to change back into her clothes. Bad things had happened while she was wearing them. They definitely needed to be washed.
Before I leave, Helena reminded herself.
Except maybe she didn’t have time for that. Maybe she should just leave them behind. That might be good too; better even.
Fishing a second towel out from beneath the counter, Helena wrapped it around her nude form.
Well, I guess it’s my turn to make a mad dash to the bedroom, thought Helena, and she tried to grin. But even that made her sad.
As much as she liked Rudolf, and as kind as her absent cousin had been, it was time to move on.
Taking a deep breath, Helena yanked open the bathroom door, bravely striding into the apartment’s hallway only to be greeted by a delicious scent.
In her belly, Helena’s stomach rumbled, and her steps faltered. Casting a quick look towards the living room, Helena found Rudolf sitting on the couch.
He was staring at Helena, a startled and then a stunned expression on his face. He blinked, and then he blinked again.
Rudolf raked his eyes over every inch of her, seemingly appreciating the curves of her bare legs as much as the curves of her towel-clad breasts.
It made Helena blush hotly.
Then he smiled at her, a small, shy curve of his lips that made Helena’s heart beat faster.
“So,” he said. “How was your day?”
Stunned, Helena stared at him.
And then she laughed. It was impossible not to laugh! His question was just so incongruous!
In his seat on the couch, Rudolf looked well pleased with himself.
“I have to change,” said Helena. “I’ll be right back.”
Turning on the ball of her foot, Helena hurried down the hallway to Rudolf’s room and her closet. Quickly, she pulled on underwear and then her blue silk pajamas, before returning to the living room.
While she had been in the shower, Rudolf had apparently warmed her soup and toasted garlic bread for them. While she had been changing, he had filled two bowls with her soup and put the toasted garlic bread out on a plate between their two bowls.
“I assumed that you got the soup for us? It’s very good.”
“I made it for us,” said Helena, and then scowled at his frankly disbelieving expression. Tartly, she added “Mr. Lazarus helped.”
That – the reminder of her friend and his sudden demise – saddened her.
“That was very kind of him,” said Rudolf, his eyes now fixed on Helena’s hands.
It took her a moment to realize what he was about.
“And I didn’t hurt myself!” said Helen
a triumphantly. Shaking back her long sleeves, she held her hands up for inspection. “See?”
“I see. And I’m glad,” said Rudolf.
Helena grinned triumphantly.
“There was supposed to be chicken,” said Helena, as she moved to join Rudolf on the couch. “But that got burned when, er –”
There was no polite way to say it.
“That pack of hellhounds tried to kidnap you?” offered Rudolf.
“Yes,” agreed Helena, after swallowing a mouthful of soup. It was very good. “That.”
“Why did they try to kidnap you?” When Helena hesitated, unsure of what to say or how to frame it without saying too much, he added “They broke into Declan’s place looking for you. They totally trashed the place from what I saw before the police took over.”
Startled, Helena turned to look at him more directly.
“They did?” she asked.
“Mhmm,” hummed Dolf, around a bite of bread. “Why? Why would they do that, Helena?”
“Probably because Grandfather paid them to do it,” said Helena. Calmly, she hoped. “Two of them tried to stop me from leaving home too.”
Rudolf ran a hand through his hair, mussing it. Helena found the disarrayed charming.
“Why didn’t you say anything about it?”
“Well, I took precautions. I didn’t expect them to follow me here.”
“You used your own driver’s license and credit cards to rent that car!”
“Well, how else was I supposed to get a vehicle? Mine was too flashy! Anyway, I thought all that information was protected.” Stricken, Helena asked “Is that how they found me here?”
“No,” said Rudolf. “They didn’t need it. They’re hellhounds.”
“So?”
“So hellhounds traditionally hunt their quarry to the ends of the earth and beyond it,” said Rudolf. “They literally sniffed you out. Don’t ask me how. It’s not the sort of thing that my kind of shifter can do.”
A memory stirred, its impression faint due to the tension of the moment in which it was made, and Helena said “Oh yeah, I think one of them mentioned something like that. I just thought that they were trying to be cool. And, you know, scare me?”
“They probably were,” agreed Rudolf. “But it’s still true. And that’s what makes it really scary – because that’s genuinely what hellhounds do. It’s why they make such amazing trackers, bounty hunters, and seekers.”
“And private investigators,” added Helena.
“Yeah, and that too, if that’s what they’re calling themselves,” said Rudolf. “But why didn’t you shift? If you’d shifted, they probably would have backed off. It wouldn’t have been worth it. A full grown dragon could probably scarf down a dozen hellhounds for breakfast.”
“I can’t. Shift, I mean,” admitted Helena, now deeply embarrassed. What kind of shifter couldn’t shift? No kind, that’s what.
“But Declan said – I thought you were a lightning dragon?”
“My mother was, and so are all the other Tarletons,” said Helena. “But I didn’t inherit that from her. I’m not any sort of dragon, not really. I’ve just got a few dragonish qualities.”
A complicated expression flickered across Rudolf’s face, one that Helena couldn’t identify save for the thread of pity that pulled through it. It was there and gone so quickly that if she hadn’t seen that same pity directed her way every day since she had been sent to live with her grandparents, Helena might not have seen it at all. But she had, and she glared at him, furious that he dared.
“Don’t look at me like that,” said Helena sharply. Sparks crackled beneath her skin, making her fingertips tingle. “It’s not a big deal.”
That was a blatant lie, but she wouldn’t let him or anyone else feel sorry for her! She didn’t want anyone’s pity! And she especially didn’t want his!
“It’s just that you had scales earlier,” said Rudolf, who now looked deeply uncomfortable. It wasn’t any better. Honestly, it made Helena nearly as angry as his pity had.
“So what? Sometimes I have scales.”
“Humans do not sometimes have scales,” said Rudolf. “They never have scales. You’re definitely capable of shifting into something, Helena.”
“I think I’d know if I was,” said Helena tartly.
She’d wasted so many hours as a child trying to turn into a dragon, either to please her clan or to fly away from it. If she could have shifted, then she would have shifted by now. Helena was sure of it.
“Maybe you just need to relax,” suggested Dolf. “When I shift – either into my wolf form or from my wolf form to my human one – it’s like relaxing into a hot springs. It also helps to know what other form you’re aiming for. When I thought I was supposed to be a grey wolf, I couldn’t transform at all either.”
“I am supposed to be a dragon! A lightning dragon!”
“You had two parents, didn’t you? What was your father?”
“I… don’t know,” admitted Helena, stunned.
If her father had been anything other than a musician, her grandparents had never railed on it. And Helena couldn’t remember much about her parents – or that period of her life when she lived with them – anyway. She’d always just assumed…
“So how do you know that you’re meant to be a lightning dragon?” challenged Rudolf. “Maybe you’re meant to be whatever he was.”
It was a thought, and it was certainly a thought that Helena had never had before now. Uncomfortable with it, Helena went on the attack.
“But how could you not know what kind of shifter you are?” she demanded. A thought occurred to her and she added, much less belligerently, “Unless you weren’t born a shifter?”
“No, I was born a shifter,” said Rudolf. “But I never met my parents. I was just… left at a firehouse shortly after I was born. Then there was foster care. I got adopted by a pack of grey wolves for awhile, but that didn’t take. Or last, I suppose. Either way, I was homeless for a bit, before I could get back in the system. Then I joined the army.”
“Back in the system?” echoed Helena, now genuinely angry on his behalf. “It’s not supposed to work that way! They can’t just give you back!”
She didn’t know much about foster care, but she knew that much about adoption, at least. Adoption was standing up before your gods and everybody and promising to be responsible for a child, to be a family for the rest of your lives, ‘til death do you part.
Helena didn’t like her grandparents, and she hadn’t enjoyed living with them. Nor had she ever known how she had ended up going to them after her parents’ deaths rather than her mother’s twin or anyone from her father’s side of the family. But regardless of all the areas in which her grandparents had fallen down as guardians, they had certainly taken their responsibilities as her guardians seriously.
They had taken her in as their daughter’s daughter, raised her to the best of their ability, and given her free room and board in their home during the holidays. She had attended the best boarding schools available, gone on trendy summer enrichment experiences with her peers, and taken part in a great many youth summits, all with their encouragement and on their dime.
They had often been controlling, and they hadn’t been kind. Helena wasn’t certain that they had even been capable of loving her, but they hadn’t ever tried to give her back either. They had done their best by her, even if their best had also occasionally involved attempting to rob her blind or Sever her from the possibility of ever finding true love.
“It was probably better for both of us that way,” said Rudolf uncomfortably. “Grey wolves are… clannish. There’s usually only room for other grey wolves in their packs, preferably ones that they’re related to. They might have made room for me if I was a grey wolf too, but since I’m not, and we weren’t related anyway…”
There, Dolf trailed off. He shrugged helplessly.
“If you aren’t a grey wolf, then what are you?” inquired Helena, remembering h
er original point of interest. He had been so uncomfortable with the subject! Usually, the only thing that seemed to make Rudolf Shaw genuinely uncomfortable was her.
“A dire wolf,” he snapped defiantly, as if daring her to make something of it.
Helena accepted that challenge.
Chapter 14 – Dolf
At the news that he was a dire wolf, Helena’s pretty face lit up. She looked like Christmas had come early that year. In that moment, her excitement making her enchanting.
And also bewildering; no one’s face had ever been that excited to hear that he was a dire wolf before. Gil had made a few jokes about Ragnarok, but that was a best case scenario and certainly not the norm.
“Dire wolf?” echoed Helena, her excitement obvious. “As in the mega fauna? Native to North America and died out thousands of years ago? That kind of dire wolf?”
It might have been more dignified to say that he shifted his weight uncomfortably, but the truth was that he squirmed.
“Yes,” said Dolf warily. “Why?”
Two little words, and Helena was off and running, her words tumbling over each other in her excitement.
It wasn’t exactly news to Dolf that Helena was smarter than him. He’d suspected it, of course, but the trip to the science center had cemented it in his mind: Helena was a brain.
And there was nothing wrong with that! Dolf had always had a thing for librarians, although Helena’s look was certainly growing on him. And he especially liked her when wet.
It was just that, at moments like this, it was a little hard to follow her, much less truly understand what she was going on about right now. But it was obvious that she liked his other form, and that made Dolf feel good.
No one had ever just out and out liked him as a dire wolf. And it wasn’t like this was one top predator admiring another. She couldn’t even shift into a dragon! Truly, Helena was a strange – if endearing – sort of woman.
Looking at her flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes as she talked at him, Dolf wondered if Helena would mind very much if he kissed her again. Because right then, she was looking entirely kissable.
The Wyvern's Defender Dire Wolf Page 13
