The Secrets of Blood and Bone

by Rebecca Alexander

  Jack squeezed her hands together. “You know it was more than that!”

  “You drank my blood. I let you. We did that to save Sadie’s life. You and me.” He abruptly dropped to one knee in front of her, and put one hand over both of hers. “I feel—no, I know—we’re stronger and better together. I’ve done this before, Jack. I’ve looked into someone’s eyes and known that we’re meant to be a couple.”

  “Then Marianne left you.”

  He shook her hands, clasped in his. “We grew apart. On some level, we still love each other, just not as partners. But you—I’m in love with you, Jack.”

  Is it as easy as that? Can you just follow your heart, and fall into his arms like a girl in a trashy romance? Jack pulled her hands out of his, and found they were trembling. Staring at his long face, she wondered what she was supposed to do. One part of her just wanted to rest against him, block out the world for a moment. Another part wanted more, an alien, new part of her that craved his skin under her hands, his mouth on hers—she shook her head at the random thought.

  “I don’t know—” She was stammering again. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “You don’t have to say anything.” He sounded disappointed, as if he had expected his declaration to open some magic door in Jack.

  Something he had said earlier registered. “You mentioned a woman?”

  “That’s over. I think it was just sex.”

  It was like a blow to her chest from a sledgehammer. She whispered, more to herself than to him. “You slept with her?” It hurt, it left a massive ache inside her.

  “Yes, I did.” He was still there, kneeling in front of her as if waiting for something.

  When it came, it built up like a storm, first just a prickle in the air, then a wave of pressure and rage inside. “How could you come here and talk to me?” She jumped to her feet, making him stagger back before standing. “How dare you? Did you really think boasting about your other women would make me fall into your arms?”

  “No, Jack, listen—”

  “I’ve heard everything I need to know,” she said, snapping the words out. Inside she knew this anger was a cloud to hide behind, because her real feelings were much more painful. For a moment she wondered, for the thousandth time, what it would be like to just be a normal woman with a normal man, making choices and decisions that weren’t complicated by so much that was unknown.

  “Felix!” The shout from the doorway was followed by Sadie, in her absurd penguin pajamas and fluffy slippers. “You came!”

  He stepped away from Jack, letting Sadie fly into his arms. Their easy affection was like pouring petrol onto a fire for Jack. Unable to speak for fury, she turned her back on them and stalked out of the room and upstairs.

  By the time she had dressed and started back down, Maggie had come down and was talking to Felix in the kitchen. As Jack stood at the top of the stairs, she watched Sadie turn onto the bottom tread, pulling herself painfully up each step with an effort.

  “Are you OK?”

  “Just really tired.” Sadie’s voice was weak, a little gasp.

  Jack ran down to support her. “Come on, we’ll do it together. Go back to bed for a few minutes, and I’ll get you some stinky potion.” That made Sadie smile briefly, soon lost in the effort of walking upstairs.

  “Are you…OK?” Sadie said, clutching at the banister while she caught her breath halfway up. “You look like you’ve been crying.”

  “I always cry when I get angry.”

  Sadie managed a little cough of laughter. “What did he do this time?”

  “Slept with someone else.”

  Sadie clung to Jack’s arm and pulled herself up another couple of stairs. Close to the top, she looked at Jack with an expression that made her think she understood. “Well, that must hurt,” she said. “Although, it’s not like you and him…you know. You didn’t exactly encourage him. You even sent him away.”

  Jack helped her into the newly painted front bedroom, the noise causing the bird in the back room to shuffle papers around. Sadie lay on the bed and Jack covered her up with the duvet. “I know, but—”

  It didn’t feel right burdening Sadie, but somehow she felt as though in sexual and emotional confidence, Sadie was the elder.

  “He stares at you all the time,” the girl said, her voice sleepy. “When you aren’t looking, his eyes follow you around. He even made friends with your dog to get closer to you.” She opened her blue eyes, staring at Jack from a paper-white face. “And you jump a mile every time someone says his name. Just say it, get it over with.”

  “I can’t. I’m a borrowed timer, I’m—” The word “wrong” stuck in her throat.

  “Because you drank blood. Well, it didn’t turn you into a monster, did it?” Her voice faded, as if she were falling asleep.

  “I’ll get that potion,” Jack said, and walked toward the door.

  “Boys are tricky,” Sadie said, and Jack wondered if she was even awake.

  They might well be, but as Jack’s sole emotional experience had been a crush on a mechanic at the garage near the cottage in Devon when she was fourteen, she wasn’t qualified to comment.

  —

  Jack stepped into the kitchen to find Maggie making toast. Jack reached around her to get the decoction for Sadie. When she met Maggie’s eye the older woman smiled back, as if in sympathy. Felix stood at the sink, holding a mug, ignoring her.

  “Sadie’s not too well,” Jack announced to them all. “I’m keeping her in bed this morning.”

  She poured a generous dose into a glass, and turned to the door.

  “Jack.” The word seemed to have been squeezed out of Felix. “I’m sorry if I upset you. But I do need to talk to you about the blood, the symbols.”

  “I need to talk to you, too. About Sadie. She’s struggling.”

  “In what way?”

  She finished the dose, and debated having a second. She held up the glass. “This way. The potion, the circles, it’s not enough. Sometimes she seems better, but today she’s really bad. We need to find out more about the magic.”

  Maggie took the glass out of her hand. “We are. Felix has been working on it.”

  “Well, we know we can help Sadie with just a few drops of blood.” The new energy in her system seemed to hum around her veins. “Why aren’t we looking into that?”

  Felix answered. “Because there may be serious side effects to taking blood.”

  She zipped up her coat, left warming by the fire. “Serious. So, have I turned into a bloodsucking serial killer?”

  “Of course not. But something turned Elizabeth Báthory into one.” He paused, then said: “It’s not as if you aren’t different. We have to talk about it.”

  “Not now.” She turned to Maggie. “Can you look after Sadie for me this morning? I’ve got an address for a wolf research place out by the forest. I’m going to check it out.”

  “Are you taking Ches?”

  Jack paused, looking down at the dog lolling at Felix’s feet. “Not this time.”

  —

  The Dannick Environmental Research Project was down a private road, with a barred and locked gate. It led to a lane dug into the hillside, with tire tracks leading into dark forest, overhung with trees and bushes. Mist had saturated the leaves, which showered Jack as she vaulted onto the top of the gate and jumped down. The trail ran downhill into a muddy patch, then up over uneven ground through a stand of pine trees. They were edged by a fence maybe fifteen feet high, with razor wire along the top. Signs warned trespassers of an electric fence, although Jack was fairly sure they were empty threats. She loped along the lane, enjoying the chance to stretch her legs and use up the adrenaline the anger had generated in her system. A man in a baseball cap was standing with his back to her outside a large timber building, cleaning something.

  “Hello?” Jack tried to remember to smile, appear friendly. It was made more difficult when she saw he was polishing a large hunting rifle.

 
“What?” He swung around, scowling for a moment. “This is private property.”

  “I know, I did ask permission to speak to you from Sir Henry,” she lied. “Jackdaw Hammond? Maybe someone forgot to pass on the message?” Jack smiled again, looking the man over. Midthirties, heavy build, blond-haired with a little bit of stubble. Blue eyes, starting to open from the squint that accompanied the scowl. She widened her smile.

  “Well, I haven’t been told to expect anyone, and this is private property.” His eyes were now inspecting her body in a way that she found made her a little uncomfortable. A small part of her almost liked it.

  “I’m interested in wolf conservation, and Sir Henry tells me you have a small pack here?” Hours on the Internet and phone with the local council had managed to provide her with that snippet of information, and no more.

  “We are a research facility, yes.” He put the rifle down, leaning it against the fence. It was just as high as the cabin, it looked designed to keep people out, not the animals in.

  “I just had a few questions.”

  He reached into a pocket to draw out a mobile phone. “No messages from the boss,” he said. He shrugged. “But then I don’t always get a good signal here.”

  She watched him collect up handfuls of cable ties, a plastic box, and finally the rifle.

  Finally, he looked back at her and smiled slowly. “If I answered any questions to, say, the press, I would get the sack. But you’re not press, are you? I’m guessing you’re the new witch at Bee Cottage.”

  “How—” She stepped back involuntarily as he walked past, the blue black steel of the rifle just brushing her coat.

  “Well, aren’t you?” He laughed, walking up to the wooden building and unlocking the door.

  “I’m presently restoring the house for its new owner,” she offered, carefully choosing her words.

  “And you have a wolf, a male by the howl.”

  “You can tell that?”

  “Sure. And you have a sick kid.”

  “You can tell all that from a wolf howl?”

  “I have spies…We shop at the same supermarket, the owner knows everybody…Mike Powell, zoologist in charge of the project.” He pushed the cable ties into a pocket and held out his hand. She shook it briefly, and his grin widened. “You ever hunt with your wolf?”

  She smiled again, this time genuinely. “Too many deer and sheep. Down south I did. He knew where and when he could hunt.”

  She followed him into the building, which had a desk at one end and a number of filing cabinets and storage at the other. He opened a heavily reinforced cupboard and locked the gun away.

  “So, he’s a hybrid?” The man turned and stretched an arm past her to shut the cabin door.

  She couldn’t see there was any danger in telling him details, and then he might volunteer some information of his own. “Yes.”

  “Dangerous. Dog-wolves can be very unpredictable. And illegal.”

  “He’s great. Friendly to me and mine, anyway. He’s a good guard dog.” She looked around at pictures on a board, with names underneath. Chulyin, K’eyush, Eska, Pakkak, Shila, Maguyuk and Desna. They varied in color from almost white to dark gray, but were clearly pure wolves, with slightly heavier faces than Ches and the wary look of the truly wild animal faced with a man taking pictures. Something about their posture was odd. Their pelts looked perfect, thick and clean, but their legs were shaven just above the paw, but only on the left. They were all in a defensive position, but most were cowed, as if they were intimidated by the man with the camera.

  He paused at a coffeemaker and raised an eyebrow at her. “Coffee?”

  “Please,” she said, studying the pictures. One heavy, dark animal had the most aggressive posture. “So, I would guess that Desna is the lead male?”

  “We gave them traditional Inuit husky names. Desna means leader, so yes. Can you pick out the lead bitch?”

  She studied the pictures, but couldn’t see many clues. The other wall had pictures of the wolves interacting, and it was easier to see that one light-haired female was treated with more respect and deference by the others. “That one.” She studied the single pictures and read the name. “Chulyin?”

  “Good call. You know your wolves.” He handed her the drink, no polite inquiries about milk or sugar, so she sipped the searing black coffee. It was as bitter as it was hot.

  “So, you have just the seven?”

  “At the moment. We did hope we’d get a litter this year, but no luck. We’re hoping to double the size of the enclosure, give them more scope for hunting and some privacy. But the cost of fencing an area with steep hillsides and solid rock is so high Sir Henry’s trying to find a way to get the price down. Maybe we’ll create a new enclosure on flatter land.”

  “Hmm.” She blew the steam off the coffee, looking around. There were various charts around the place. “So, what exactly are you trying to find out about them?”

  “I think that’s one of those things I’m not supposed to say to a reporter—or the local witch.”

  “I thought you might, as one wolf lover to another, like to talk about them.”

  He hesitated, looking into his coffee for a moment. “There’s something perfectly…savage about wolves. And yet they were the first animal domesticated by humans. We’re interested in their primal instincts, the features that made them such good hunters back in prehistory.”

  “Savage? I thought they were hardly ever in conflict with people unless threatened or ill.” She put the coffee down on a clear patch of the disordered desk.

  He half smiled, then put his coffee next to hers. He rolled up his sleeve to reveal a purple scar on his left arm. It trailed unevenly from the inside of his wrist, spiraling around to the outside of his elbow. Several round scars suggested puncture wounds.

  “Chulyin did this when I inadvertently threatened the pack. I dropped some equipment, went to catch it, she saw it as aggression.” He ran a finger down the scar, and grimaced. “Luckily, she missed an artery, but I still bled badly.”

  “But you got out all right?” Jack watched him pull his sleeve down again. “No problem with the others?”

  “I go in armed with last-resort equipment. Tranquilizer darts, pepper spray, cattle prod, that sort of thing. But if I hadn’t…” He shook his head. “Pure aggression. They would have eaten me alive.”

  Jack stared at him, trying to understand what made her doubt his account. Maybe his twitched half smile…

  “Anyway, we do legitimate research, we are registered with all the authorities and are compliant with the dangerous animal legislation.”

  “So that makes it OK to experiment on captive wild animals?” Jack kept her voice as unemotional as she could, but some of her distaste must have shown on her face, because his eyes narrowed and the smile faded. “There is legislation related to keeping wild animals.”

  “Legislation that you are not compliant with, I suspect, with your hybrid,” he said, folding his arms and leaning against the door frame. “And Sir Henry never gave permission to come up here, did he? What do you really want?”

  “I was just curious. I heard them howling.”

  “I wondered why they were so agitated and howling so often. They probably think your wolf mutt is a threat, with a rival pack.”

  She tried another smile. “I just share your fascination with them. As you say, they are perfect wild animals, even my ‘wolf mutt.’ ”

  He started to cross the ten or twelve feet between them, placing his boots almost silently on the wooden floor as if stalking her. He walked around her, and leaned in as she froze, her heart hammering in her chest. He sniffed her hair, her face, just as Ches would have, then leaned away, smiling.

  “What are you, really?” he murmured. “You don’t smell like a witch.”

  She stared at the side of his face, as he inhaled deeply around her neck. There was something about him, some attraction that made no sense. “What do—” she choked, her mouth dry. “What do I
smell like?”

  “Like someone who is very good at understanding animals.” His face was inches away from hers now, his eyes staring at her eyebrows, nose, chin, working his way around to her mouth. His was full-lipped, slightly open. “Someone,” he breathed, the coffee scent reaching her, “who speaks wolf.” He leaned too close.

  She lifted her hands, flat on the front of his fleece, to shove him away. Some impulse stalled her, a flash of imagination of Felix with the other woman. Instead of pushing him, a force inside made her grip handfuls of his jacket, drag him closer and kiss him hard enough to crush her lower lip on one of his teeth. She tasted blood and touched her tongue to the split in her lip. A part of her reveled in the pain and the response from him. He kissed her back, a wave of heat and reaction rolling over her. She gathered her strength, and released the sprung tension in her forearms, pitching him back.

  He staggered against the chair. For a second, she thought he would be angry, then she saw he was laughing.

  “On your terms, just like Chulyin.”

  “Can I see the wolves?”

  “Maybe.” He pushed himself upright from the chair back; this time the smile on his face seemed genuine. “You should come round one evening. I could show you a bit of the real wild.” His expression suggested, to Jack’s inexperienced eyes anyway, that she had caught his attention. A little bit of the rage she held for Felix made her bold.

  “And see the wolves?”

  “I’ll take you to see the wolves. If you dare.”

  She stopped at the door, looked over her shoulder at him. “Oh, I dare.”

  —

  She walked down the track, light rain starting to mist over the trees, and didn’t look back despite the hackles on her neck bristling. Part of her had been shocked by what he did, what she did. She had felt his erection pressing into her hip, and wondered why she wasn’t surprised at the time. A thirty-one-year-old virgin, she had always thought that her brain had grown up but her body hadn’t, just elongated into a gaunt version of the eleven-year-old she had been when the magic was cast to save her life. But now…she swung off the narrow path and put her hand on the top of the gate she had vaulted on the way in. She stopped, feeling the wet wood more intensely than before. The thick weave of Powell’s fleece had left an imprint in her memory, the warmth of his body creeping through it, the sensation of his lips crawling over hers, his teeth, his breath, the taste of blood between them. Maybe that was what was so exciting, the promise of him. She knew there would be no niceties of emotion with him, just—sex. She was sick of tiptoeing around Felix, even if it was for his own safety.