Circle of Wolves

by Jacqueline Roth

  “You will be present, yes. Your presence will tell them the first thing they need to know about you. The first thing those in our little piece of the world need to understand about you. That I trust you and that Kira trusts you.” Alexi patted Evan on the shoulder. “There will be no one there who cannot transform. There will be no one there to whom you would be a danger.”

  “Even the intended prey?” The words left Evan’ lips bitterly. His stomach was in knots at the idea that Alexi or anyone would expect him to be part of this hunt. That he would even consider participating in the taking of a life. He couldn’t do it. He would refuse to help Alexi. There was no other way. He couldn’t do such a thing and he certainly couldn’t watch a young girl do it.

  “Well, if you kill the fox before Katerina, she will be deeply disappointed. It would be very bad form. Horrible manners.” Alexi frowned considering this. Evan would not be in control of his faculties, there was a possibility he could cause a problem. No. Between them, he and Kira had contained Valeri, they could contain Evan. He’d only ever gotten into trouble when he tried it on his own.

  “Fox?” Evan’s eyes widened and his bewilderment was more than apparent.

  “Well, we could use a rabbit if we can’t trap a fox but it looks much better if she captures a carnivore. Especially considering her place in the family.”

  “I thought…” Evan flushed.

  Alexi’s smile turned soft. “I know what you thought. That day may come for her. I don’t know. I hope it doesn’t but if she ever does take a human life it will be deserved. It will also not keep any of us up nights. Her included. So don’t let the thought disturb your sleep. As hard as this sounds, Evan, they are humans. We aren’t. Our survival comes first.”

  “I’m human, Alexi.” Evan watched the big man walk to the door and pause, looking back at him.

  “No you’re not. Someday you’re going to have to accept that. They have.” Alexi’s eyes held his.

  “Who?”

  “Your so-called friends. They know what you are and what you are not. They know you’re not human. After all, that’s why the sent you on this little mission, isn’t it?” Alexi’s brown eyes were harder than Evan had seen them since the first moment they met.

  “You’re wrong. My friends don’t think of me that way.” Evan thought of Seth, of Marcus, of Ari and his master. “To them I am as human now as before I was bitten.”

  “I hope you’re right. I just wouldn’t bet my life or future on that.” He started to close the door and paused. “How would they see me, Evan? As human? As animal? As neither? How would they see Kira?”

  He left Evan no time to reply as he shut the door. A fortunate occurrence as Evan truly had no reply.

  He was still staring at the door when he heard a soft rustling sound like pieces of bark or paper being rubbed together. He hung his head and listened to the soft hum in three part harmony that filled his brain. It was soothing and yet altogether demanding. He knew what he’d see when he turned. Standing, backlit, on the window sill was a small childlike creature with dirt-brown hair and mud-brown skin. The amber eyes stared back thoughtfully and a small smile curled the tiny lips. Turning his head slightly Evan saw the second voice’s owner sitting cross-legged in the center of his bed. The hair was the fiery gold of autumn leaves. With the light falling on its skin, he could see the mottled green undertones that allowed the gnome to blend with its environment.

  “Hello,” he spoke softly to them. Though he knew more than anyone else the power of these creatures, he couldn’t help but respond to the child’s form they took. “Where are you Damek?” He’d heard the third voice in his head but could not see the owner. A giggle gave away the hiding place and he leaned down to lift the skirt on the bed. Two bright green eyes glowed out at him and Evan hauled the wiggling creature from the darkness. Leaning back against the edge of the bed he sat and let the smallest of his elementals curl up on his lap. Keita’s face was suddenly even with his as she lay belly down on the bed to rest her cheek against his shoulder. Adem, the brown-haired gnome leapt down from the window sill and hopped into the armchair, twirling it about to face the bed.

  “We’ve missed you, Master Evan,” Damek’s new, leaf green hair was springy and curled. He sat playing with the buttons on Evan’s shirt.

  “You have another bare spot,” Keita tsked reaching out a four-fingered hand and touching the worn area on his shirt. The cotton fibers responded to the touch and began to grow and weave themselves together.

  To call Keita “she” was a mistake. The gnomes, his elementals, had no gender. Like the plant life they protected, they reproduced from sprouting and cuttings left to grow in special soils. Still, Keita had always seemed female to him while the others had seemed male. They tolerated this good naturedly seeing it as a quirk of “their human”.

  “I’ve missed you as well,” Evan responded.

  “You haven’t called us.” Adem’s voice was stern. Though the youngest of the gnomes bound to Evan, he often seemed to have some loose form of control over the others. That would change soon as he reached the age of renewal and entered the soil, only to sprout up refreshed and renewed. The gnomes were immortal but their energies needed resting periods. It was one of the problems with being an earth mage. You could conceivably find yourself without an elemental if they all went to ground at the same time. He’d been lucky with the four who were bound to him, they had been of varying ages and he had never had more than one in re-germination at any one time. Keita had been his first to go to ground twelve years ago and Damek had been reborn just five years ago. Currently Ilan was resting but the darkening of Adem’s hair showed he soon would have to rest as well.

  “I know I haven’t and I’m sorry you have missed me. But I must do what I think is correct and that has been to work without you and without the magic for a while.” Evan’s voice held a sharp rebuke reminding the ageless creature that it was he who would decide when the magic was used. A mage who let his elemental dictate terms was a mage who would be burned out, mad or force others to break the bonds.

  Adem, whose size made him look like a twelve-year-old child, pouted slightly, Evan gave him a reassuring smile. “Thank you for the visit. How is Ilan?”

  “He rests,” Keita said softly rubbing her cool cheek against his almost as a kitten nuzzling its owner. She was smaller than Adem but larger than Damek. “It will be half a moon more before he is ready to return.”

  “You will be home by then, won’t you?” Damek asked him, the large emerald eyes peering up with worry. “We will reclaim Ilan won’t we? You are happy with him?”

  They too had picked up his use of pronouns. “Yes, we will reclaim Ilan. He is part of our family and we would not do without him anymore than I would do without you, Keita or Adem.”

  The oldest gnome seemed a bit reassured. “We did wonder when you didn’t return or even call to us,” he said softly. “We thought perhaps you’d decided to release Ilan. He would not have been happy about that. Ilan loves serving you, Master.”

  “No more fretting,” Evan hoisted the small creature in his lap up into the air as it giggled. Damek was the size of a small five-year-old and weighed considerably less. The gnome giggled again and stretched out its hands wide. Small showers of flower petals rained down on them all from the ceiling.

  Keita bounded off the bed and spun in circles. The edges of the small green tunic she wore flared out as she twirled. Ivy began to grow up the wood-paneled walls and bright colored flowers blazed in all directions. Evan stood, releasing Damek, who began to skip in circles with Keita. Where their tiny feet touched the wood flooring burst to life and small saplings grew instantly to the ceiling. Adem smiled at Evan and shook his head and muttered, “Young ones.” Then he waved his small hand and the newfound forest was covered by a canopy of green leaves and rings of daisies and dandelions sprang up from lush grass carpet. The room had been transformed into a small woodland glade.

  “Enough,” Evan chuckled. “
Though it is beautiful, our hosts would not be pleased with the changes.”

  Adem stood up and clapped his hands. As if watching a time-lapse film run in reverse, Evan saw all the growth sink back into the floor and paneling. The petals withered and were absorbed by the hardwood slats. Adem turned to face Evan with the smaller gnomes at his side. “Is there nothing we can do for you Master?”

  Evan felt a wave of homesickness. “Yes, you can take a message. Let those at home know I am well and that things here are progressing. Watch Ilan’s resting place. Make sure he is not disturbed and let me know if something happens out of schedule.”

  Adem nodded and bowed slightly. The three creatures raised their hands together in a wave then snapped their fingers and were gone. Evan felt as if they had taken a piece of him with them. A piece he hadn’t realized he was missing until now.

  Circle of Wolves

  Chapter Nine

  News From Home

  “So you’ve decided?” Stanislav Gregoravitch watched his daughter’s face.

  “I have.” Her voice was not as clear and resolved as he had hoped.

  “You don’t seem sure, my dear. What causes you to hesitate?” He motioned for her to join him on the small settee.

  She sat next to her father and leaned into his shoulder. She loved him dearly and was well aware that he adored her. She was daddy’s little girl, the only daughter born to this powerful man. This had never mattered to Alexi. As the oldest, his position in the family was always perfectly clear. Nico had barely noticed until recently as he was pampered and catered to by his older sister and his mother. His father seemed a harsh man who frightened him more than a bit. If he called Kira to him, that was fine with Nico. Until recent days.

  “There is still a bit of time, my dear. If you are not sure about this person, about what he is asking of us…” He left the sentence unfinished.

  “It’s not that. I have no hesitancy in telling you that Evan Forester is an honorable man deserving of this small favor he’s asking. And it is small, Father. He asks nothing great of us, only that we put our support behind his Alpha, this Grand Master mage. The more I understand of him and of what it is he truly asks of us, the less I am worried about it.” She laid her cheek against the rough tweed of the man’s jacket.

  “And what exactly is it he is asking?”

  “Simply that between now and the next meeting of their Master mages, that we agree to meet with his Master and to negotiate. Even the settlement he seems to want is reasonable. In fact it is almost laughable in its naïveté and downright ignorance.” She smiled faintly and shook her head. “They want us to agree not to attack humans unless it is in self-defense. As if we would attack them at any other time.”

  “You know their attitudes toward us, my daughter. They think us little more than animals. I admit I’m amazed they seem to have accepted this Forester into their midst. But this is not typical for them.” As he spoke, the bitterness in his voice reached her. No it wasn’t typical and she knew it. The mages, the gifted humans, hunted the Weres. The idiots made no distinctions between semiraht and the gehennat. The semiraht were those Weres whose bonds to the animals into whose form they could shift made them part of this world. The others, the gehennat, came from the old homeland and had been known to feed on the weaker humans. The semiraht had never done this. But neither had they ever sought to ingratiate themselves with the humans. So to the mages the Weres of this world were no different from the gehennat shifters—the sanvi, the psyvi and the other demons who slipped through the portals between worlds simply to prey upon the humans.

  Pushing her frustration aside, she refocused on the issue at hand. “I know. I’m more concerned about what such agreements will mean for the curse wolf. They cannot control themselves, how can they keep to such a promise?” Her brow pulled tight, creasing her forehead. “But I think the best hope for them is this negotiation. Maybe we can force the mages to agree to a bit of compassion for them.” She gave a slight shake of her head and the dark red curls bounced. “No, Father. I’m certain that meeting with them and trying to work with them, particularly this man who has accepted a curse wolf into his apprenticeship and his very home, is the right thing to do.”

  “So long as we are sure we do not sacrifice too much of ourselves to protect the curse wolf.” He lifted his hand to stop her interruption. She was the only living soul from whom he would brook interruption but not on this. “If you are certain of Forester and his request, what troubles you my dear?” He looped his arm around his darling little girl and hugged her near. He could smell the fear and worry on her skin. And he could smell something else far more troubling.

  “We do. Us. Our family, small and large. I worry that we will be unable or unwilling to do this.”

  Her father laid his cheek against the top of her head. “Do you worry about your brothers or myself?”

  “I don’t worry about you, Father. If you commit yourself you will follow through. I don’t worry about Alexi. He likes Evan. He has accepted him in ways I haven’t seen for a long time.” Her voice was soft and her eyes clouded with the mist of memory. The omission of Nico spoke volumes.

  “As long as, say almost twenty years?” He knew the answer to his question but wanted to hear her say it for her own sake.

  “Yes. It is exactly like that. He is asking Evan to help with Katerina’s hunt.” She let the words fall between them. Her father said nothing at first though she felt his arm tighten around her and his jaw set hard on the top of her head.

  “And you agree with this choice? You would accept him? Your blood tells you this is right?”

  “Yes.” The single word was barely audible and she waited for his reaction.

  “Kira, he’s a curse wolf and a mage. I understand attraction that is powerful but it is not always wise to allow passions to rule your head.” The dark eyes were watching her carefully.

  “It is not passions, Father. It is more. He is cerieshe.”

  Stanislav Gregoravitch was very still for a long time. He mastered his urge to dismiss the idea, to insist that she was fooling herself. But he knew his daughter. She’d stood with a curse wolf once before with no such compulsion. She knew her mind and her heart. If she said this man was cerieshe, then he was. “It is like that then?” His voice was soft but tense. It held not so much anger as deep sadness and disappointment. It was the voice she had never heard in connection with herself, only others.

  “It is,” she whispered. “I wasn’t sure at first but since then… Father, I’m certain. It’s strong, undeniable really.”

  “And does he understand this? Does he recognize it in himself? Will he accept this role?” Her father’s voice remained tight.

  “I believe he knows there is a connection. He knows that it defies what he is used to. As to whether he recognizes it?” She shrugged. “I didn’t think so at first. He didn’t make the declaration. But now I believe he does. Perhaps growing up with humans, coming from a human origin he does not understand what is expected of him. But I have no doubts. I believe Alexi is asking him as we speak, explaining his part in the hunt. You must admit it would come better from another man than from me. Once we have his answer, we will know if he will accept it.” She swallowed hard. Only the fact that she knew the next question that would come and dreaded it let her avoid thinking about the possibility that he would say no. If only their traditions would allow her to ask. But they didn’t. The wolf must never be pressed, only queried.

  “So you have told him everything.” She felt her father’s shoulders rise as he drew a deep breath into his chest. “He knows everything.”

  “No,” she said, her voice barely audible.

  The large man sat up and turned in his seat to look at her. “Kira, you mean to tell me it has been almost a week and you still haven’t told him? You have made this decision for all of us to help him and you haven’t told him everything? Alexi is asking him to help with his daughter’s hunt and this man doesn’t know the whole truth?�
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  “You told me I could do this in my own time, Father.” She kept her eyes on her hands in her lap but her chin rose of its own accord.

  The man was silent and she finally snuck a peek at him under her eyelashes. He was staring down at her. When he spoke his voice held no anger, only a pensive concern for his child. “Kira, this is foolish. You are acknowledging this wolf and you haven’t told him the truth? You of all people, my daughter, I never thought to accuse of unfairness but in this I can think of no other word for what you are doing. You must tell him everything. He deserves to know. Especially if he is to do this thing, to help Alexi, he needs to know.”

  “Alexi has explained parts of it to him. He’s helping Evan to figure out what it means to be a wolf in ways I can’t. It’s not like I’ve left him ignorant.” Her face lifted to meet the man beside her. “Father, how can I explain all these things until he understands what it means to be who he is? I want him to know Alexi as a friend and as a man before I have to tell him the truth.”

  “My darling, I love you and trust you but I must intervene. The hunt will take place in two days’ time. You must have explained to him the true nature of who he is and what it means before he takes his place beside Alexi, beside you, under the light of that moon. No arguments, Kira.”

  She nodded and moved to rise as her heart pounded in her chest. He was right. She’d been unfair to Evan, even high-handed. The choice was his but what choice would it be if she withheld information? No, that was not how she wanted this to begin.

  Her father stopped her by pulling her into a hug. “My dear if he decides to help Alexi with this hunt you will get no argument from me. I’ve been watching him. I’ve heard reports of him. I’ve listened to my children.” He pulled away, looked into her eyes and smiled gently. “I will be at Katerina’s hunt. If he is there, you may present him to me.”