The Wolf's Bounty

by K. T. Harding

  He pinned her chest against the post to free both his hands. He jammed his flat fingers down the loose back of her pants to clamp her ass in his iron grip. He hauled her off her feet and crushed her quivering pussy against the rock solid lump in his pants.

  He dragged his hard prick back and forth against her delicate flesh. He heaved her legs apart until she wound them around his waist. She would take whatever he threw at her. She wanted it more than anything she ever wanted in her life. She never knew she could want a man this much.

  In the blink of an eye, he dropped her. She barely had time to get her feet planted on the Earth before he stripped his hands away from her and charged across the yard into the rain. He vanished through the kitchen door and left her standing there staring at nothing.

  His handprints ate into her skin. His mouth left its imprint on her lips, and she still tasted his pungent saliva where his tongue left it inside her mouth. Did that just happen? Did he just touch her like that and pick her up and kiss her?

  How could he walk away from her like that? How could he do this to her? Did he not care about her after all? Maybe she did something to repulse him. Maybe when he kissed her he found out he really didn’t like her after all. He couldn’t like her when she wasn’t a real woman like Angela.

  A chill on her stomach woke her from her stunned shock. She buttoned up her pants and straightened her shirt before she went inside. She dried the damp off her clothes and hair in front of Mrs. Mitchell’s fire, but she didn’t stay to talk to Dax while he polished the coach harness in the warm glow.

  She started toward her room when she met Bishop coming down the stairs. “Are you coming up to the lab? I want to show you something.”

  She hesitated. “Look, Bishop….”

  He held up his hand. “Don’t say it. It was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done that. Let’s just forget it ever happened.”

  Forget it ever happened? She couldn’t forget it ever happened if she lived a million years.

  He didn’t notice her hesitation. He turned around and started up the stairs again. “Come on. I want you to see this before we go out tonight.”

  She hung back when he vanished around the winding staircase. Did she really want to go out to Hinterland with him again? Did she really want to continue this disastrous apprenticeship? How could she face him with this tension hanging over her head?

  She glanced down the hall toward her room. She ought to go in there, pack up her stuff, and go back to the farm. This apprenticeship didn’t turn out the way she expected, and now this.

  Even as that thought crossed her mind, she already knew she wouldn’t do that. She couldn’t bring herself to turn her back on another opportunity to go back to Hinterland. She committed herself to this life without realizing it. She was part of it and it was part of her, no matter what happened between her and Knox dear.

  She smirked to herself. She would never call him that again, but she could cheer herself up anytime she wanted just thinking it. She had a button she could push. He might be in charge, but she still retained some power over him.

  She tucked that little gem in her back pocket and headed up the stairs. A new sense of rightness in this situation infused her being. She wouldn’t back down on Hinterland. She and….she wouldn’t call him Knox dear again, not even in her thoughts.

  She and Bishop would deal with whatever this thing was between them. If worse came to the worst, she could retreat into being just his apprentice. He could forget it ever happened, even if she couldn’t.

  Chapter 18

  Raleigh found Bishop in his office. He stood with his back to the door, and his helmet obscured his face the way it did the first time Raleigh laid eyes on him.

  She took a tentative step into the room, but she held back from approaching him when he looked like this. She still couldn’t imagine a living person underneath that bug mask.

  She stared at him so hard she didn’t see his desk chair in the way. She bumped her knee against it, and he spun around to face her with his grotesque visage. A garbled sound came out of it, but she couldn’t make out any words.

  They stared at each other for a long moment. Then he pawed his buckles loose and tugged the helmet off. His hair hung lanky and damp around his face to give him a wild look. “What are you hanging around back there for? Come over here. I’ve been waiting to show you this.”

  She took another step and glanced down at the helmet in his hands. “What is that thing?”

  He waved it. “This? It’s a microscope.”

  She frowned. “A what?”

  He set it on the work table in front of her. The lens and the blinking lights and wires peered at her with their inscrutable eyes. He pointed to the lens. “As you can see, this is just a powerful magnifying glass. It helps me examine specimens up close.”

  “Then why do you need it attached to this contraption?”

  He held up his index finger, and a confidential glint flashed in his eye. “Ah-ha! That’s the rub. This contraption, as you call it, magnifies things thousands of times. This…” He pointed to the other eye of the mask where the lights and wires made it so ugly. “This is a machine that compounds whatever I’m looking at. It analyzes the specimen’s chemistry. It runs chromatic schemologies on it. It gives me a complete chemical breakdown of the specimen’s constituent elements….”

  Raleigh stared at him with her mouth open. “I don’t understand a word you just said.”

  He waved his hand. “Forget about that. Take a look at this.”

  He bent over the work table and pulled a rack of test tubes toward him. Smoke and vapor billowed from their tops. “Are you making another one of your transforming potions?”

  “No, no, nothing like that.” He wrenched one of the test tubes free and held it up. Raleigh noticed a scrap of something bathed in a pale blue liquid. “This is a sample I took from Soto’s tent.”

  Raleigh bent close and squinted. “I can’t see it. What is it?”

  He held out his helmet. “Take a look.”

  She eyed the device and pulled back. “I am not putting that thing on. No way!”

  He shoved it toward her. “Oh, come on. It’s not dangerous. It will only allow you to see the specimen clearly.”

  She shook her head. “You do it.”

  He tossed the helmet on the desk. It rolled sideways like some kind of decapitated head. “I already did. It’s a tiny carved figurine.”

  “What’s so interesting about that?”

  “It’s carved out of the tusk of a twen, and not just any old twen, either. It’s a juvenile twen—a baby.”

  Raleigh blinked at the test tube. “How do you know that?”

  “I told you. The microscope detects the chemical composition of the sample and matches it to a database of samples already taken. It tells you what the sample is made of. This proves Soto had the twen in his tent, or at least that he took a souvenir from handling one.”

  “I don’t know what a database is, but that makes no sense. Why would Soto keep such a blatant proof of his illegal activities lying around his tent?”

  “First of all, there’s one thing you have to learn about Hinterland. Hinterland does not have the same laws we have up here. In Hinterland, Soto’s activities are not illegal, only highly unusual and extremely lucrative. Not many people have the money or the backbone to take the risks he does, and he earns a hefty profit from taking them.”

  “So what’s second?”

  “Second, he didn’t leave the proof lying around his tent. I suppose we surprised him showing up and asking questions the way we did. He fled and set his bodyguard on duty in case we came back. He must have dropped the figurine in his haste to get away.”

  “And you picked it up.”

  “Besides, he didn’t leave it out where I could find it easily. I had to rifle his possessions to find it.”

  Raleigh jumped. “When did you do that? You told me you went back to his tent and that’s when you got into the fight with the
laenteglos.”

  “I went back to his tent and rifled his possessions. The laenteglos found me there, and that’s when I got into the fight with him.”

  Raleigh peered into the test tube. “I wish I could see it better. I can’t even see what shape it is.”

  “You won’t be able to see it if you don’t put on the helmet.”

  She looked back and forth between the object and the helmet. Put that thing on? She would rather stick her head in a bear trap. What if she couldn’t get the thing off again? What if she was stuck walking around like a human fly for the rest of her life?

  The question of seeing the figurine nagged her mind, though. No matter what she did, she couldn’t overcome her natural curiosity. She had to see it. Didn’t she sign up for this crazy job because she was curious? As long as a trail of clues led her forward to some mysterious goal out of sight, she had to keep picking them up and following them.

  She frowned at the helmet, but she dared not touch it. “How do I put this thing on?”

  He picked it up for her. He took hold of the bottom edges and pried them apart. “I’ll help you. Once you see the figurine, you’ll understand.”

  She didn’t want to do it, but she stood still while he slotted the helmet over her head. It fit close around her skull and smashed her hair against her cheeks and neck. It stifled her breath, but right away, she saw light coming through both eye pieces.

  The lens magnified Bishop’s face a hundred times. It made him look so distorted and comic she couldn’t help but giggle. He buckled the straps behind her head. Then he pushed something on the side near her ear, and the helmet buzzed all over.

  A blue blinking light flashed on near her other eye. Then a trail of flashing red lights raced across her field of vision, one behind the other. She couldn’t understand what she was seeing until a round window blinked open in front of her.

  At first, she could see nothing but a colorful blur. Bishop poked and prodded the helmet on all sides. He fiddled with some kind of knob near her chin, and the window cleared. She found herself gazing at a perfect image of the strangest creature she ever beheld. A blurry field of flashing color surrounded it, but its borders stood out crisp and distinct in the window.

  It looked something like a walrus and something like a monkey. Two tusks protruded from its upper lip to stab downward toward its rotund body. Raleigh noticed right away the position of its eyes halfway down its face. Its giant forehead arched back from its face to give it a cute, cuddly look. It looked like a child’s toy.

  One big flipper extended from the base of its body, but instead of side flippers, it had makeshift hands of two curved tentacles and a clumsy thumb. A ridge of spikes ran down its head to its back and tail.

  She tried to say, “What is it?” but the helmet swallowed all sound. This must be the twen Bishop told her about. It looked sort of like a walrus, and that tail suggested a sea-dwelling creature.

  He did something else to the helmet, and the window changed. It didn’t change size, but the image magnified a thousand-fold. Raleigh found herself staring at the figurine’s neck where its fat head joined its body. Tucked into the rolls of fat, she studied a curious design etched into the surface. She would have thought the twen was wearing a necklace, but that was impossible. How could it be? It was a wild animal.

  A round decoration sat in the crook of the creature’s throat. A polygonal design sat inscribed in a circle, and more figures too small to see perched in the spaces between its many points.

  All of a sudden, Bishop’s voice touched her ear in clear tones. “Do you see it?”

  She nodded, but she couldn’t make her voice work.

  He adjusted the helmet again, and the image magnified still more. It focused in tight on the myriad inscriptions embedded in those spaces. At close range, she saw a hammer, a sextant, a pair of scissors, and a fishing pole with a hook at the end of its line. She didn’t recognize the other objects, but she could no longer deny the truth. Someone etched these pictures into the twen’s chest for a purpose—but what?

  Bishop touched the helmet, and the window went dark. He unbuckled the straps and lifted it off her head. Raleigh stared at his face in front of her. “What does it all mean?”

  He put the helmet aside. “I don’t know, but I think we can safely assume Soto has the twen in his possession. This figurine obviously means a lot to whoever made it.”

  “How could they make it? Whoever carved those figures must have had a microscope just as powerful as this one.”

  “Or one a whole lot more powerful,” he countered.

  She brushed her sweaty hair off her forehead. “How is that possible? Didn’t you invent this?”

  “This? No, I didn’t invent it.”

  “Then where did you get it?”

  “Hinterland, of course. These microscopes are everywhere down there. Anybody could have carved that figurine—I mean, not anybody, but somebody. Lots of people have microscopes.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  He rifled through some loose papers on his work table. He brought out a single sheet of paper with an enlarged sketch of the twen’s necklace. To one side, similar enlarged renditions of the shapes and tools lined the page’s margins. “We have to track down the source of these symbols. Whatever they mean, they’ll lead us to the twen.” He peered out the window. “It will be dark soon. We’ll go down then.”

  Chapter 19

  Raleigh froze. “After dark? You want to go to Hinterland after dark?”

  Bishop nodded. “The people we’re looking for work at night. There’s no point going until after the sun goes down.”

  “What about Dax? Will you send him home after he drops us off the way you did last time?”

  He glanced toward the door and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Don’t tell him. I don’t want him going this time. I want him sleeping in his bed where he won’t know we’re gone. We’ll walk instead of taking the coach.”

  “That could take hours.”

  He nodded. “We’ll be gone for a few days this time. I’ll leave instructions with Mrs. Mitchell to look after the house.”

  A chill ran up Raleigh’s spine. “Days? Are you serious?”

  He raised his eyes to her face. “Can you handle it?”

  She stared into his glinting black eyes. This was the man who just kissed her in the barn a few moments before. This was the man who fought and bled with her, not only in the forest, but in the market.

  Whatever else she did, she could trust him. There might not ever be anything between them but a solid professional relationship, but she could count on him to back her against any danger. She never doubted that.

  She squared her shoulders. “I can handle it.”

  His face cracked open in a bright smile. He dodged toward her, and his eyes slanted down toward her mouth, but he stopped himself just in time. He wiped the smile off his face and retreated to his place. “I knew you could.”

  Raleigh regarded him another long moment. He almost kissed her. She hadn’t imagined it, and he sure as shootin’ hadn’t forgotten all about what happened in the barn. He still wanted her. He managed to get control of himself and walk away before anything happened out there, but the same driving tension still haunted the space between their bodies.

  Was he thinking the same thing when he looked at her? Was he thinking he could trust her when the hammer came down? Was he thinking they would face whatever came their way with their backs sealed together? Neither of them had to worry about what might sneak up behind them. The other one was there to guard their rear.

  He let out a shaky breath. “Listen to me, Raleigh. I’m gonna show you something right now I’ve never shown any of my other apprentices. I’m charging you to keep this secret from everyone, especially Dax and Mrs. Mitchell. They don’t know I keep this in the house. If Dax found out, he couldn’t resist the temptation to get it out and play with it.”

  Raleigh gulped. “All right. What is it?”


  He walked away without answering. He went into another room she’d never seen before. It was another standard bedroom like her own room downstairs. Bishop crossed to the other wall and lifted down a large painting of a lord dressed in golden robes. Dozens of diamond rings dripped off his fingers, and gold chains draped around his neck.

  Bishop set the painting aside to reveal a simple brass doorknob embedded in the wall behind it. He turned the knob once, and a click sounded behind the wall. Bishop drew back out of the way, and he guided Raleigh all the way back against the bed.

  In front of Raleigh’s eyes, the whole wall dislodged from the building to swing outward. It whispered across the carpet until it stood at an odd angle to the rest of the room.

  Behind that door, rack upon rack covered the shelves of a hidden alcove. Strange objects covered the shelves and hooks and clasps in the chamber, but Raleigh had no idea what any of those objects were.

  Bishop approached the shelves and surveyed the contents. He lifted down a small metal cube and turned it over in his hand. He slipped it into his pocket and grasped a large black suitcase standing on the floor at his feet. He set it aside and went back to perusing the alcove.

  Raleigh remained rooted to the spot. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t make sense of anything she was seeing. Bishop selected more than a dozen objects from the shelves. He stowed them around his person and set more aside.

  When he finished, he slid the wall back into place. The knob locked, and he rehung the picture to hide everything. He brought all his stuff over in front of Raleigh

  Raleigh blinked at him. “What was all that?”

  He took the metal cube out of his pocket and held it out to her. “That’s my weapons cache. I’ve got just about everything in there.”

  She studied the cube. “Is that a weapon, too?”

  He nodded. “Once we get to Hinterland, I’ll show you how to use it.”