Ghost Wolf

by Michele Hauf

  “The land has been owned by the Marx family since the eighteenth century,” Kelyn said. “Burnham wasn’t even a town back then. But the property has been handed down on paper through the years. Last name listed as owner was a Denton Marx, but I don’t think that’s a current resident. Denton Marx has no online presence.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” Beck said. “I just fumbled online for the first time last year to look up info on starting up a garage.”

  “Yeah, well, as far as I know, whoever is living in the house now doesn’t have a job, and may hunt for a living. Probably sells pelts and meat to the locals. I flew over his property and took a look.”

  “And?” Beck asked. The fact that he was seated between the brothers and neither had tried to rearrange his face was a miracle. Guess he’d won his way into the family’s respect.

  “There was a deer carcass hanging from a tree. Must have been a fresh kill. Saw a snowmobile that looked like something from another time, and a big shed that I assumed must be where he keeps his weapons and probably a freezer full of game. Some stretched rabbit furs outside the shed, as well. Either he’s a pro, or he’s so off the grid he lives off the land and is a complete ghost regarding an online presence.”

  “Sounds like a pro who is obviously looking for bigger game,” Trouble said. “Uh, I have to ask... It’s about your father, man.”

  Beck rolled the shot glass between his palms. “Yeah?”

  “Was he in werewolf form when he was shot?”

  “No, we were both in wolf shape. It was our usual weekend run in the forest. I chased the hunter off, otherwise my guess is he would have stuck around to claim his kill.”

  “So he didn’t see him shift to human form after, uh...?”

  “No. My father didn’t shift until I’d gotten him to my mother’s house. He uh...” Beck swallowed. “He lived that long after taking the bullet.”

  “Sorry, man,” Kelyn offered.

  “Yet that hunter used a silver bullet,” Trouble said, “so he must have known what he was hunting. Does he think if he takes down a werewolf, it’ll stay that shape so he can stuff it and mount it as a prize?”

  “Dude.” Kelyn shook his head. “That image gives me the heebie-jeebies. And I’m not even wolf.”

  “Yeah, well, all you gotta worry about,” Trouble said, “is getting pinned like a bug by the wings, little brother.”

  “That is so wrong,” Beck said. He managed a smile, and the brothers chuckled. “So what do we do?”

  Trouble tilted back a swallow then asked, “Can you control the ghost wolf?”

  “It’s getting harder every time I shift. I don’t trust myself.”

  “Maybe we can use the ghost wolf to draw out the hunter, then we move in for the coup de grâce.”

  “The what?” Kelyn asked.

  “Hey, it’s French. Grandpa taught me.” Trouble stood and slammed a couple ten-dollar bills on the bar. “Let’s talk about this tomorrow, eh? I’ve got a date.”

  Beck gazed down the man’s attire.

  “What?” Trouble tugged up the waistband of his skirt. “You never seen a guy in a kilt before?”

  “Looks like a skirt to me.”

  Pain reverberated through Beck’s jaw as Trouble’s fist retracted. The wolf smirked and walked off.

  Kelyn chuckled.

  Not like he hadn’t expected the pain, eh?

  Chapter 26

  Beck pumped lightly on the brakes as his truck slid toward the stop sign on an icy road. It had rained overnight, freezing the world to a gleaming sheen. He didn’t have chains on his tires, but the automatic brake system was reliable. He slid to a stop, then slowly rolled through the intersection toward Daisy’s street.

  He’d been thinking a lot since leaving his mother’s house. Should he sacrifice his werewolf to stop the ghost wolf from killing? It was an extreme sacrifice. But killing someone would be an unthinkable crime.

  And to give up his firstborn? No doing. Especially if that child was also Daisy’s.

  Could the faery really have such knowledge? If she did, then Daisy also had a big decision to make. And Beck thought they could better decide together.

  Parking before the three-story brick warehouse, he grabbed his coat, ran up the inner stairs and knocked on Daisy’s door.

  “Shoot,” he muttered. “Should have brought flowers.”

  The door opened and Daisy jumped into his arms, wrapping her legs about his waist and kissing him hard. Dropping his coat on the floor, Beck walked inside with the faery wolf clinging to him.

  She smelled like motor oil again, which meant she must have been working on her sculpture. And beneath the industrial top notes, he sniffed out her softness in a hint of chocolate on her skin and a dash of sweetness in her hair. Beck kissed from her mouth to her nose, and to her ear, which made her squirm in his arms.

  “You always smell like candy.”

  “You like sweets.”

  “That I do. Are you working?” he asked.

  “Thinking.” She nodded toward the work space. “Firing up the welding torch always helps me think.”

  “I bet I can guess your thoughts.”

  She dropped down from his hold and kissed his chin. “You probably can.”

  “I thought I’d come over and we’d think together.”

  “That’s awesome. I can use the extra brain. All right if I shower off the smell of work?”

  “Only if I can join you.”

  After Beck toed off his boots, she led him into the bathroom where they stripped and headed under the steaming shower.

  Slicking his hands over her skin, he mapped his desire across her breasts, down her belly and between her legs. She cooed and nudged up on her tiptoes to give him access. He liked the sounds she made when he pleasured her. Coos, moans and outrights gasps that insisted he either go faster or slower, or just that speed. Her pink hair slicked against his chest. She clung to his biceps and rocked her hips while he stroked her to climax.

  As her body shuddered against his, he realized he wanted to hold her forever, feeling her pleasure, knowing her joy. And it didn’t matter if he was a wolf or human. Her pleasure would always be the same. As would his.

  Wouldn’t it?

  If he were not wolf, he could never bond with Daisy. Perhaps they could bond as werewolves and then he could sacrifice his wolf? What results would come of joining together in the deepest, most meaningful way possible for their breed, and then to walk away from the very nature with which he’d been born?

  A hand about his cock twisted firmly. Beck gasped. She jacked him off, and he tilted up her face to kiss her wet lips. The shower spattered their faces, his shoulders, her hand sliding up and down his erection. She went faster, firmer, luring him to an edge he only wanted to jump off if she led him.

  He gripped her hand, not stopping her, only following her lead. And he erupted, crying out a throaty surrender that felt so easy, too easy.

  Far easier than surrendering his very being.

  * * *

  Still wet from the shower, Daisy’s hair dripped onto Beck’s shoulders. He sat on the bed against the pillows. She had straddled him and was rocking her hips, taking him deep inside her, in and out, back and forth. He’d slipped away to heaven, or that place called Above. It was all he could do to grip her derriere and guide her, but she didn’t need the help. She knew what she was doing.

  “I’m choosing wolf,” she said. “No question about it.”

  Beck’s eyes flashed open. “What? Oh, Daisy...”

  “If I choose wolf, then we can be together as wolves. Assuming you don’t sacrifice your wolf to get rid of the ghost wolf.”

  “I was thinking of doing just...that.”

  She stopped moving, his cock embedded within her. Pressing her hands aside his cheeks, Daisy studied her lover’s arctic eyes. “But if you’re no longer wolf...”

  “I could still like you. Would you still like me?” He nudged her upward with a thrust of hi
s hips.

  Daisy rocked slowly now, aware he was close to climax and wanting to get him there, but this conversation was making her think. Too much. “I would. I...”

  What would her father think of her loving a mere human? And why did she have to think about her family at a time like this?

  Increasing her motions, Daisy squeezed her inner muscles about Beck’s erection.

  “If you were faery,” he said, his eyes closed as he rode the pleasure, “a match with a human wouldn’t be so odd, would it?”

  She shook her head. Faeries in the mortal realm tended to hook up with humans simply because their kind were few and far between, and the appeal of something different, the mortal, was there.

  “I don’t care what you are,” she said. “I just want you, Beck.”

  Did she? Was she being honest with herself? Why this heavy conversation right now?

  Right. Because they’d both intended to discuss this. And it needed to be discussed. Just...

  She stopped moving again and bowed her head to Beck’s. He hummed deep in his throat and cupped her breasts. “This is good,” he said. “Like this. I don’t need to come. Just being inside you is right. I could live here, surrounded by you, your beauty and warmth. Your pinkness.”

  She giggled and kissed his neck. “You’re too good to me.”

  “I want you to feel my love. My like. My want and need for you. It’s only growing stronger. I like your independence. I like that you’re not afraid to be yourself. You are proudly weird.”

  “I’ll take that. Let’s bond,” she said suddenly, without thinking through the implications. “Tomorrow night. Let’s go out by your place and do it.”

  “Daisy, you know that means we intend to mate forever?”

  She nodded. “Do you want me?”

  “Hell yes. But...”

  “Don’t say anything about family or if it’s right or who we’ll annoy if we do it. Let’s just do this for us. And then whatever comes afterward we’ll handle together. Bonded.”

  “I love you.”

  She kissed him. And it was a forever kind of kiss that wrapped about his heart and squeezed just firmly enough so that he knew the world and his future would be right. With Daisy Blu.

  * * *

  Beck wandered out of the grocery store, a ten-pack of paper towels hoisted over a shoulder and a heavy tub of kitty litter in the other hand. He set both in his pickup truck box.

  He glanced to the man fishing about in his open car trunk, parked next to him and nodded. The guy sported a Vandyke beard to match his brown hair, which was pulled back with a leather tie. A leather coat hung on his thin frame, not a modern style but more fitted. It looked old. But not retro old, more like antiquated. Like something from a different century. Must be one of those role-playing sorts.

  When the man’s eyes met Beck’s, something inside Beck thudded. He clenched his fingers into fists. He recognized him, but...how?

  Inside, his muscles stretched along his bones. His heartbeats thundered. And his wolf growled.

  And then he guessed. He had not seen the hunter in the restaurant parking lot when Daisy and her brother had called him to track him down. The only moment he’d been close enough to mark the hunter’s face was when he’d been wolfed out in the snowy field and had pushed the snowmobile down the ravine.

  “It’s him,” he muttered under his breath.

  Stretching his neck and fighting against the wolf that demanded release, Beck stepped around the back of his truck and toward the hunter. “Going out hunting?” he asked, because the man wore a bowie knife strapped at his thigh, above knee-high boots that also looked like something from time past. The knife reeked of animal blood.

  Standing but four feet from the man, Beck winced. He forced his hands into his front jeans pockets and yet clenched his fists. Beyond the animal blood he scented the human. He was human, not some unknown breed. But Beck cautioned himself: werewolf hunters often were human.

  “Later,” the man replied gruffly. He briefly glanced at Beck. His attention was on sorting the contents in his trunk to fit in the bags of groceries. “You a hunter?”

  “Not wolves.”

  The man jutted up his head and arrowed his gaze on Beck, his eyes dark and hollow. “What makes you think I hunt wolves?”

  While he spoke English, he possessed a strange accent. Sounded like one of those pompous guys Beck had seen in costume dramas on TV.

  “I, uh...was just talking about myself, man,” he said. “Everyone in town is a hunter. You hunt deer?”

  “Everything,” the man said quickly. “Including wolves. I have one more kill, and then I’m finished with this town.”

  “What’s wrong with Burnham?”

  “It’s not my home,” the man said bluntly. Satisfied with how he’d arranged the contents, he closed the trunk.

  “So a wolf will be your final kill?” Beck asked.

  The man nodded. “Indeed.”

  “Wolves won’t go near humans unless provoked. There’s no reason to kill them beyond sport.”

  “There are many reasons.”

  “Why don’t you enlighten me?”

  The man drew his gaze up and down Beck. His hand glanced near the bowie knife, but he didn’t touch the weapon.

  “You one of those pro-wolf groupies I’ve heard about on the fancy television? Your DNR says I have a right to hunt wolves, so I hunt wolves. End of story. Why the long face? You have a pet wolf? Did I kill your pet?”

  Beck lunged for the man’s throat, gripping his neck. “You killed my—”

  A sudden shooting pain in his shin stopped his angry tirade. Beck released the hunter, who had just kicked him with his steel-toed boot. In those few seconds of pain, his wolf battled for reign, yet his wereself managed to grasp sanity.

  Watch what you say.

  “Get the hell away from me, you insolent,” the hunter hissed. “You shall be glad when I finally kill that monster ghost wolf that’s been stalking innocents. And then I can finally save her.”

  “Save who?”

  “Not your concern. You got a bone to pick with me?” the hunter asked, his eyes carving into Beck’s soul faster than the knife at his thigh could manage.

  Beck shook his head. It wasn’t going down like this. Not in a public place where anyone could witness his rage play out. Where he risked releasing the wolf and giving this hunter the challenge he craved.

  Forcing himself to take a step backward, Beck shook his head. “No bones,” he said. He got in the truck, fired up the engine and backed out of the parking space.

  The hunter stood at the side of his car, watching as Beck drove away. Eyes keen and all-seeing. He’d seen something in Beck. But he couldn’t have seen the truth.

  Maybe.

  If the man knew werewolves existed, there was no telling what skills he possessed to detect and hunt them. And yet something about the man disturbed Beck. Who was he trying to save? And how could killing a werewolf serve him that save?

  “I have to take care of this,” he said to himself. “Before he kills again. And someone I know.”

  * * *

  “That’s a lot of kitty litter for a guy who I know doesn’t own a cat.”

  Beck unlocked the front door to his house. Daisy had arrived two minutes earlier and had decided a wait would be worth it. It was. They strode in and kicked off their boots, and Beck set the big yellow litter tub in the coat closet.

  “Maybe I have a pet?” he said with a devious glint in his eyes.

  “Right. A wolf with a pet cat. I don’t believe it. Unless you have a girlfriend I don’t know about.”

  “A familiar?” Beck pulled her in for a kiss that erased any thoughts she might have regarding Beck and a cat-shifting girlfriend. “Sunday and Dean made it work.”

  “Yeah, well...” She made a show of sniffing near his neck. “If I smell cat on you, I’m going to get jealous.”

  “Deal.”

  “I have nightmares about cats. Just so
you know.”

  “Why?”

  “Blade has owned a pitiful hairless cat for ages. Got him when I was a teen. You don’t know terror until you’ve woken in the night with a naked creature that looks like a rat staring at you from your chest.”

  “Is that so? I vow to protect you from bald cats.”

  “And mushrooms, don’t forget that.”

  “Right. Anything else I should add to my security detail?”

  “The color chartreuse puts fear in me, too,” she said seriously.

  “Noted.” Beck gestured to the closet. “The litter is for getting unstuck in the snow. Did I know you were stopping by?”

  “No. Just thought...”

  The feeling that she wasn’t welcome suddenly washed over her. He did have his crazy don’t-touch-me-or-I’ll-wolf-out moments, but she didn’t sense any tension in him. And they had discussed getting together tonight. To bond. He must have forgotten that conversation.

  Yikes. She wouldn’t bring it up unless he did. She didn’t want to jump the gun. “If you have plans...?”

  “I don’t have plans. And even if I did, I’d cancel them if that means I get to spend time with you. You eat?”

  “I had some leftover pizza that Trouble dropped off.” She hoisted up the thermos she’d brought along. “I did bring hot chocolate.”

  Beck swept her into his arms and carried her into the living room. “I knew there was a reason for liking you. You’ve fed me your love brew, and now I’m completely and utterly head over heels.”

  He sat on the couch with her on his lap, and Daisy poured some steaming hot chocolate into the thermos cup for him.

  “That is so good,” he said after a sip. “I’m yours. Completely. Do as you wish with me.” He spread out his arms across the back of the couch, opening himself to her. “Wait.” He sat up abruptly, took the cup from Daisy and set it on the wood coffee table. “We were going to do something special tonight.”

  “I thought you might have forgotten.”

  “I’ve had so much on my mind lately, Daisy. I’m sorry. I spoke to the hunter earlier when I saw him in the parking lot outside the Piggly Wiggly.”