by Mindy Klasky
Mr. Hold snarled and flexed his paws.
“Yield!” Dad said again. “In the name of the Eastern Empire I charge you, Kenneth Hold. Yield your ground and let this boy rise.” He flexed his wrists, raising Deathrose a single inch.
Mr. Hold raised his head and howled to the rafters. The sound echoed in the attic, rippling through Davey’s bones and the wooden railing of the crib that felt like it was breaking his back.
Dad didn’t say anything then. He only tightened his fingers on Deathrose. As his knuckles stood out, the sword caught fire—flickering with purple flames that rolled off the metal without melting it.
Snarling, the wolf stepped back. He lifted first one paw, then the other. He turned his head to the left. He thrashed his tail back and forth. But in the end, he gave Davey room to stand.
Dad forced himself between Davey and the wolf. Mr. Hold backed up more, one step and another and another, until his hind paws almost touched the stairs. Dad nodded then, twisting just enough to touch Deathrose’s point to the bottom of the Collar that still gripped Davey’s hand.
The iron necklace slipped toward the ground.
Before it could hit, Mr. Hold leaped forward, snatching the links between his teeth. At the same time, Dad closed his hands on Davey’s shoulders. Somehow, Deathrose had disappeared; Dad must have pushed the sword into the ether. And then, before Davey could look for Con or say anything to Mr. Hold, Dad was pulling him through the ether.
There were ways to make the trip easy. Dad could have protected Davey’s mind, cushioning him like a crystal wrapped in a sock. He could have held Davey’s body inside a magic cape, safe and secure against the ether’s cold.
But Dad didn’t care about making the trip easy.
They emerged in Dad’s study. Davey shivered like he’d just come in from the North Pole. His head felt like someone was pounding the inside with marbles, shot after shot, in time with his heart. His chest ached, like it did when he and Con challenged each other to see who could hold his breath the longest.
Dad’s office door was closed. The desk was empty, not a piece of paper or a pen in sight. Afternoon sun streamed through the windows, which seemed strange, because Davey thought hours must have passed since he and Con had run inside from the fire. Hours or days or weeks.
He stared at his hand. It should be black, burned to ash by the Collar. Or maybe white, frozen solid. He flexed his fingers, and they moved normally, like he hadn’t been ruined by magic. “How—” he started to ask, but Dad cut him off, shouting.
“What the hell were you thinking?”
“We just—”
“You could have started a war back there!”
“We thought it would be fun—”
“Maybe it was fun for Connor to take the Collar. He’s a shifter. It’s a prank for him. But it’s a blatant act of war for any other imperial—any supernatural creature in the entire Eastern Empire—to steal the shifters’ sigil!”
Davey couldn’t think of anything to say. Dad paced to the door and back.
“Ken Hold can demand you be brought before the Night Court.” Dad turned on his heel. Crossed back to the door. Back to his desk. “Is that what you want?” Another lap. “A vampire judge deciding whether you stay with your mother and me, or if you get locked up in prison?”
Davey shook his head. Of course he didn’t want that. It was all a mistake. An accident.
Except for one thing.
Davey had known the Collar was special. That’s why he and Con had built their fort in the first place, to have a secret place to bring the stolen necklace. That’s why he’d sneaked the matches instead of telling Dad he wanted to practice building a fire. That’s why he’d stood watch outside Mr. Hold’s office, because he’d known the Collar was magic, that it belonged to the shifters, and only the shifters.
Dad stopped his pacing, standing in front of his desk. Davey swallowed hard but forced himself to meet his father’s eyes. “I was wrong,” he said. “I shouldn’t have taken the Collar.”
Dad didn’t react.
Davey bit his lip. He didn’t want to say anything else. But if he was going to grow up to be a warder, he had to do hard things. He had to ask questions he didn’t want to ask. He swallowed and forced himself to say, “Are you going to hit me now?”
“Hit you?” Dad’s howl was louder than Mr. Hold’s.
Davey nodded toward his father’s waist, toward the leather belt that held up his pants. He’d heard stories from other boys in his warder classes. In his mundane ones, too. “Mr. Hutchinson makes Zach say how many times he should get hit when he’s bad. When he forgets to feed the dog, or when he leaves the garage door open.”
“Sweet Hecate,” Dad said, whirling around the desk and throwing himself into his chair. “I’m not going to hit you,” he said, after he’d taken three deep breaths. “But I’m going to tell you this: You’re my oldest son, David. You’re the one I should be able to trust with magic. I’m disappointed in you. You let me down today, and I don’t know how long it will take for me to trust you again.”
Davey’s belly froze into a block of ice. He wondered if he could change places with Zach Hutchinson and live the life of a mundane boy, even if that meant getting hit with his father’s belt.
Because one thing was absolutely clear. If Dad couldn’t trust him, Davey would never, ever get to be a warder.
6
Present Day
* * *
David had been inside Seymour House dozens of times before. He had plenty of specific memories of the wolf shifters’ home. He could have anchored an astral thread and reached into the brick townhouse’s kitchen directly.
But Connor had sounded desperate. And no warder on earth was foolish enough to transport directly into an unknown conflict, against unidentified enemies who might outnumber him with unbeatable odds. So David concentrated on the street corner half a block from the wolf shifters’ communal home in DC’s Petworth neighborhood. Better to walk a few hundred yards than be taken down before he was ready to fight.
A whiff of jasmine distracted him as he studied the brick townhouse. With a conscious effort, he pushed away his awareness of Jane Madison. He’d done all he could with the witch for tonight. He’d believed her when she said she wasn’t going to work any more spells—at least right then. He’d be better served by concentrating on Connor, on whatever had scared the shifter—whatever was threatening the Collar—enough to summon him on the night of the full moon.
Wet leaves plastered the house’s front steps. Cast iron chairs rested on the porch, rust stains circling their feet. No lights were visible inside, on either of the two floors.
The place looked like every other home on the street, sleeping quietly on a mid-September night. But Connor wouldn’t have called him for nothing. David made his cautious way toward the front door, remembering to step over the creaking second step on his way to the porch.
Listening outside the house, he took a moment to strip his tie loose and tuck the length of silk into his breast pocket. Connor would never attack him, even in wolf form. Thirty years of friendship guaranteed that. But there was no reason to give anyone—anything—else a noose to cinch tight.
Warder powers didn’t extend to the canid sense of smell Connor took for granted. David lacked lupine hearing as well. But he had one clear advantage his shifter friend could not command.
Reaching into the ether, he envisioned his fingers closing around Rosefire, the sword his father had given him the day he began warder training. As a cadet, David had barely been able to lift the thing. As a man, he took comfort in the blade’s solid weight and the leather-wrapped grip that had molded to his fingers long ago.
He pulled the sword into the physical plane and raised his left hand to knock. Before his knuckles made contact, the door jerked open. Connor stood inside, still in human form. He beckoned with one pale hand, moonlight glinting off his black-framed eyeglasses.
David’s attention was stolen by a massive whit
e wolf who paced in front of the brick fireplace. Her tongue lolled as she panted, and her golden eyes followed Connor’s every move.
“All right,” Connor growled at the beast as he closed the door behind David. The she-wolf only whined. “He’s here. Get back upstairs so the neighbors don’t see you.”
The white beast lowered her muzzle to her paws. This time her whine was softer.
“Go, Tala,” Connor said wearily, pointing toward the townhouse stairs.
David had never seen Connor’s mate in her wolf form. As a human, she was tall and blonde, a Norwegian Amazon inclined to wear plaid shirts over short skirts, with leggings that would have made him look twice if he’d been willing to wrestle Connor for the privilege. She was as smart as her librarian glasses made her look, and he’d never seen her back down from a debate.
But she was in wolf form now, and her alpha had issued a direct command. She slunk up the stairs, belly low, tail flat.
As she left, David’s nostrils flared at the acrid tang of human sweat in the room’s close air, strong enough to sense even without a shifter’s gifts.
Connor wiped his palms on his stovepipe jeans and started pacing in front of the fireplace. His bearded face was pale above his faded T-shirt with its jagged legend: I am Tyler Durden. His bare feet looked like alabaster in the silvery moonlight.
That was the second pair of bare feet David had seen that night. Once again, he dragged his thoughts from Jane Madison because he was in a cold, dark townhouse now, with an unknown threat lurking somewhere nearby.
David glanced around the room. “Where’s the rest of the pack?”
“Down at…the Den.” That was the farmland Connor owned, a hundred acres on Virginia’s Rappahannock River. The pack ordinarily retreated there during the full moon because they could run in the pine forest without risk of discovery.
David shifted his fingers on Rosefire’s grip as he made a survey of the townhouse living room. “What happened?”
Even with the full beard framing Connor’s lips, David could see how hard his friend worked to find words. Four, nearly five, hours had passed since the full moon had risen. Instinct must be pulling on every muscle in his body, ripping at his human flesh with white-hot pincers. He must be losing control over his inner conversion, organs shifting beneath his skin. This long after moonrise, complete transformation could only be reined in by sheer force of will.
“Salamanders,” the alpha finally said. A spasm tightened his face, and his eyes clenched shut as he denied his agony. “Apolline Fournier,” he managed to whisper.
Of course it was salamanders. It was always salamanders, where the wolves were concerned.
Wolf shifters were tied to the power of the moon, to the silver-lit night. Salamanders found their strength in the sun’s unadulterated fire. The races sparred wherever they shared common ground.
With a snort of disgust, David banished Rosefire to the ether. No need for the blade now—any salamander who’d worked mischief in the wolves’ home was long gone. “Dammit, Con,” he said, suddenly exhausted. “I told you last time. I’m not fighting salamanders anymore.”
Connor’s face twisted. “Their…fault… They—”
“It can’t be worse than your breaking that water main last December, flooding the salamanders’ winter quarters.”
Connor struggled to shake his head. “Ap—” He choked on the salamander queen’s name. It took him three tries before he gave up and just said, “Different.”
“Right,” David agreed in disgust. “And it was different when you exposed her lair near the Capitol, back in March. When you sent the fire department to that stash of fireworks in May. It was different when you reported their midsummer bonfire to DC police! They were on a deserted island, Con! In the middle of the Anacostia River! The salamanders weren’t hurting anyone!”
That last one resulted in Connor being dragged before the Eastern Empire’s night court, with David called as a witness. He’d used personal leave to attend the trial, but Pitt had docked his salary anyway, making up some regulation about embarrassing Hecate’s Court in front of other imperials.
But Pitt’s petty vengeance was nothing compared to the salamander queen’s retribution against the shifters. She’d torched their suburban mansion, leaving behind nothing but a stinking pile of ash.
Faulty wiring, local firefighters said. Bottom-feeding, scum-sucking fire-lizards, Connor insisted to any imperial who would listen.
David had nightmares about his own beloved farmhouse burning to the ground.
Despite his refusal to get involved, David glanced around the room now, searching for evidence of salamander fun and games.
Everything seemed to be in order. The usual assortment of fedoras hung unharmed on the coatrack beside the door. A ball of yarn rested on the coffee table, skewered by a pair of bamboo knitting needles. A coffee mug nestled on the floor near the couch, emblazoned with the words Ceci n’est pas du cafe. Half a dozen books were stacked haphazardly beside the vintage armchair: Urban Beekeeping for Beginners, Taxidermy Tales, Bookbinding for Modern Libraries. A tin of mustache wax crowned the pile.
There wasn’t a scorch mark anywhere in the room. Not a whiff of ash. David shook his head. “What did they do this time?”
Connor’s first reply was lost in a groan as he clutched his belly. Polished fingernails morphed into dark claws, only to be forced back to human form after a long, hissed breath. “Knocked,” he forced between gritted teeth. Another struggle, and this time it took him longer to subdue his emerging paws. “Knocked over hives,” he finally managed.
David shrugged. The insects would find their way home. “So they got the bees.”
“No!” Connor insisted. “Bees—” His shoulders hunched toward his ears, and his head twisted hard to the right. “Just—” He clamped emerging fangs onto his lower lip in a bootless effort to stop the change. “Di… Diver…. Collar!”
“Sweet Hecate,” David breathed. The bees had been a diversion, allowing the salamanders to strike at the wolves’ core. He didn’t wait for Connor to choke out more. Instead, he pushed past the alpha and ran down the hallway, into the small study on the ground floor. A drafting desk hulked against one wall, anchored by an architect lamp and several rolls of paper. A framed photograph of Fallingwater leaned against the opposite wall. The corner of its frame had shattered against the floor.
The blast marks on the wall said the salamanders who breached the safe behind the photo had valued speed over precision. They hadn’t bothered cracking the safe. They’d just melted its metal door—melted it and clawed inside with imperial hands inured to fire.
David had seen the contents of the lockbox before, when Connor paid off the bear shifter lawyer who’d represented him before the Night Court. The wolf alpha had counted out crisp hundred-dollar bills, peeling them from the pack’s accumulated wealth.
Now, similar stacks of money stood untouched in the safe. There was a diamond brooch that had belonged to Connor’s mother. A strand of pearls. A handgun.
But the most valuable thing Connor had ever possessed was gone. The Washington Pack’s Collar had been stolen.
Connor whined like a hamstrung dog. “Help…” he groaned.
And he ceased being a man.
Fabric ripped across his writhing shoulders. His tortured jeans split along their already-damaged seams. Connor tossed his head, sending his eyeglasses flying onto the desk. David’s own belly twisted as the shift took over his friend’s face, pulling out a muzzle, pushing back his jaw.
David’s Torch cut into his fingers as he clutched it for comfort. He’d read imperial books. He knew a shifter’s transition was a merger of pain and pleasure, that the final release into native form flooded the animal brain with endorphins.
Nevertheless, he looked away as Connor’s body flashed between man and wolf, between bare flesh and furred flanks. He closed his eyes to the contortions, but he had no way to shut his ears to the grinding sound, the slurping. He only l
ooked again when he felt a cold, wet nose against his palm.
He’d seen Connor’s wolf form countless times. He recognized the brindle pelt and amber eyes. He understood the shake of the lupine head, the tilting of pointed ears toward the drafting table. A Blackwing pencil lay there, stark against a creamy sheet of paper. An address was blocked out in Connor’s architectural script. Apolline, the note said. And an address in Kalorama, an exclusive neighborhood in the northwest quadrant of the city.
Connor whined, nosing at the pencil. He must have written the message after calling David, suspecting he couldn’t hold off transition long enough.
“Okay,” David said, automatically setting a steadying hand on the wolf’s strong neck.
Sure, he’d vowed never to get between the wolves and the salamanders again. But the Collar changed things. And Connor was helpless as a wolf; he couldn’t act for himself for nearly twenty-four hours, until the next moon rose.
As a warder, David was bound to uphold order in the Eastern Empire. He was obligated to protect those who could not defend themselves.
He picked up the address and said, “I’ll go.”
The wolf pulled his lips back from razor-sharp canines to sniff at David’s right hand, the one that had held Rosefire. A firm nudge made his intention clear. “No,” David said. “It would be a declaration of war to show up armed.”
Connor whirled to face the savaged safe. When he growled, long and low and fierce, the hair rose on the back of David’s neck, but he repeated, “No. That’s your battle. I’ll tell her to return the Collar, but I won’t give her grounds to charge me with assault. Pitt would see me banned as a warder forever.”
Connor growled again, and David couldn’t be sure if the aggression was directed at Apolline or at him. Maybe even at Pitt. In the end, none of it mattered. He’d deliver the wolf pack’s message. And then he’d return to his own crazed life, to a father who thought he was a failure, to a boss who wanted to destroy him, to a novice witch who somehow managed to own the greatest hoard of magic materials in the history of Washington DC.
