Wolf's Lie

by Laura Taylor

  But then she’d dropped an innocent question about his family, of whether or not his parents approved of his career as a journalist, and time seemed to grind to a halt as the question settled like snow on a frosty morning.

  “I’m sorry,” Lee said, realising her mistake. “We said before that we wouldn’t talk about family...”

  “My parents died when I was nineteen,” Alistair told her, a snippet of information that was a part of his official cover story as Drew Flemington, freelance journalist, and which also happened to be true.

  “Oh,” Lee said, suddenly avoiding his gaze. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have -”

  “It’s okay,” Alistair assured her quickly. “It was a long time ago.” He swirled the last of the beer in his glass, then downed it quickly. “I was halfway through my journalism degree. They went out to celebrate their twenty-first wedding anniversary and never came home. Their car was hit by a truck. Neither of them survived.” That was the bare bones of the story, again, the truth in this case. As someone who spent the majority of his time lying to people, Alistair knew that lies were easier to remember if they were based on truth. But as far as his family was concerned, the full truth was something he never spoke of, and hadn’t done since Baron had found him on the edge of a cliff. He’d been preparing to jump, and Baron had talked him down and then spent the next four hours coaxing the story out of him bit by bit. A truck had crossed onto the wrong side of the road and slammed head-on into his parents’ car. Both of them had died instantly, but the sheer force of the impact meant that there hadn’t been much left afterwards. His mother had eventually been extracted from the wreck in pieces, grotesque to think about, but at least it had given him something to bury. His father hadn’t even made it that far, body parts scraped off the road, rather than picked up.

  But despite the black despair he’d descended into, Baron had recognised the potential in him, and now, Alistair was one of the rare shifters who was free to maintain something of an everyday life in the real world. He’d finished his journalism degree, at Baron’s request, then set about building a reputation for himself and developing a wide array of contacts.

  “You miss them,” Lee said softly, and Alistair looked up with a start.

  “I’m sorry. I was just... My mind was wandering.”

  “It’s okay. I shouldn’t have asked. Do you enjoy being a journalist?” It wasn’t the smoothest change of topic ever, but he appreciated her attempt at tact, even if she had nothing to be apologising for.

  “I love it,” Alistair said honestly. “You get to meet so many interesting people. I’ve had dinner with politicians and homeless people. I’ve interviewed business owners and chronic gamblers. I’ve met horse trainers, criminals, police officers, prostitutes... you name it. And the interesting thing I’ve learned along the way,” he said, leaning towards her in a conspiratorial way, “is that everyone has a deeper side to themselves beneath the surface. The worst criminals are still capable of caring about their families. Some of them feel overwhelmingly guilty about what they’ve done, but they don’t know any other way. But then you’ve got the other side as well, the ‘good’ people who are cheating on their partners, or robbing their employers behind their backs. I stopped believing in good and evil a long time ago, because even the most pious person can be a selfish shit at times, and the most evil villain can surprise you by doing something kind. So how is it possible to measure whether a person is truly good or evil? Is it only about what they’ve done in their life, or about what they’re capable of doing? I don’t know, and I’d willingly challenge anyone who thinks they have all the answers.”

  Lee was watching him intently, questions dancing in her eyes, an expression on her face as though she were trying to calculate the mysteries of the universe. “You are so different from anyone else I’ve met,” she said earnestly. “You think about so many unusual things. You don’t just accept the world as it appears to be. That’s so different from the way I was raised.” She sat back suddenly, seeming to be genuinely upset about the idea. “Perhaps I’ll get another drink,” she said abruptly, standing up. “Do you want one?”

  “Just a coke,” Alistair said, smoothly accepting her sudden withdrawal. “I have to drive home later.” There was no point pushing her just at the moment. Let her get her mind around things while she got her drink, then pick up the conversation later.

  She took her time over it, spending a few minutes talking to the bartender, before returning with a coke for Alistair and something pink and fizzy in a tall glass for herself. Another experiment, he surmised, having watched her taste first a glass of white wine, then a white Russian. But she was taking it slowly; three drinks in as many hours weren’t likely to do her too much harm, even if she wasn’t used to alcohol.

  “So, tell me about where you live,” Lee said, when she returned to the table. “I don’t mean your address,” she clarified quickly. “I mean, do you live in a house, or in a flat? Alone or with someone? Do you have any pets? Do you like to cook when you’re at home?”

  “I live in a house,” Alistair lied smoothly. “It’s a little way outside of town. I have two roommates. One of them has a girlfriend, and he’s constantly bringing her over and then they take over the living room and watch shitty movies, and I told him if he keeps it up I’m going to start charging her rent.” Lee smiled, letting her guard down a fraction. “I can slap a steak and a pile of vegetables on a plate, but I’m not what you’d call a skilled cook. But that’s fine, because the other roommate loves cooking, so he does most of it for the rest of us.” More lies, intermingled with threads of the truth. Then he slyly reached out and took Lee’s hand, getting her off guard by stroking his thumb over the back of it once, twice... “So… what was it that had you spooked before you went to get the drinks?”

  Lee had been expecting the question; Drew was too astute to have missed her sudden muted panic. But at the same time, she’d been hoping to avoid it by distracting him with small talk – not because he wouldn’t notice the diversion, but because he might be generous enough to simply let her get away with it. After all, this was a casual Saturday night conversation, not a formal interview for his work.

  The question of good and evil had never been a complex one for her. Kidnapping children and training them to kill each other, torturing animals, murdering politicians and businessmen... she had long ago resigned herself to the knowledge that not only was she the epitome of evil, but so was the organisation she worked for. It had been an uneventful realisation, and one that had never caused her to ask too many questions. Such was the life of a Satva Khuli, and she had never expected another. But now...

  “My father has done some terrible things,” she said, staring at the table. “And sometimes I didn’t do anything to stop him, and other times I helped him do them. What is there in my life to redeem me? You seem to think I couldn’t possibly be all evil. But I...” But she had been sent here to kill people, and up until very recently, she hadn’t stopped to think twice about doing so.

  “You’re not all evil,” Drew told her, seeming startled by the very idea. “That wasn’t meant to be a comment about your life in particular. I don’t know nearly enough about you to start judging you one way or the other. My point was simply that people are very rarely who they seem to be on the surface.”

  “That part is certainly true,” Lee agreed with him. “And I meant what I said; you think about unusual things. And I like that.” Then she decided to go out on a limb. “I’ve been thinking about what you asked me last time, about whether I approve of my father’s business.”

  Drew shook his head. “You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to.”

  “It’s okay. It gave me a lot to think about.” Today, sitting in her favourite tree all day, she’d spent far more time pondering idle questions than thinking about how to make it undetected past that wall. “And I still don’t have a real answer. My childhood was very strict. Everything I did was controlled by my father. I wa
s trained to carry on his business, to understand his work, with no question that I would ever want to do anything else. I’ve travelled to many different countries and met so many different people, but at the same time, there are so many things I’ve never been allowed to do. To drink alcohol.” She fiddled with the glass in front of her, well on its way to being only half-full. “To go on dates with a boyfriend. I have dated men,” she clarified, not wanting to give Drew the wrong impression. She was no blushing virgin. “But they were arranged by my father, with men he felt were ‘suitable’.” That was one way to describe the men she had been sent to seduce. Suitable, not to be potential husbands, but to be killed, blackmailed, or bribed in various ways. “I live in the house that he tells me to live in, and talk to the people he tells me to talk to, and travel to the countries he tells me to travel to. I think that maybe, before I could decide if I approve of what he does, I would have to learn to choose things for myself and see how they turn out. Then maybe I could see the reasons why he does the things he does. Or maybe disagree with those reasons.”

  “You’re already choosing things,” Drew said, in that disarmingly straight-forward way he had. “You’re drinking alcohol. And chatting to strange men in pubs. Small things, maybe, but don’t discount that. And okay, so you still have to attend his business meetings, but what else would you like to do while you’re in England?”

  What did she want to do? The question had never occurred to her before. “I would like to... to take a walk beside a river and just look at the trees. I would like to go to a play. I’ve never been to a play before,” she said, excitement and sorrow warring inside her. She could say she wanted to do it as much as she liked; she knew full well she was never going to. “I want to...” She wanted to ask the shifters questions about who they were, and why they were, and what being a wolf felt like. “I want to understand how other people see the world, and to know what’s important to them, and why they fight for the things they fight for.” She looked up into his startling blue eyes and felt her world tilt. “I would like to fall in love,” she said, without really thinking about it.

  Drew smiled, an expression so warm and open and heartening that she almost wanted to cry. “Oh, you would, would you?” he mused, an incorrigible sparkle in his eyes.

  She’d said it as an idle wish, only now realising how it must have sounded when she was sitting at a cosy table sharing a drink with a handsome man.

  But perhaps...

  Drew reached out and took her hand, his fingers stroking hers seductively. “Perhaps I could help you with that?” He lifted her hand and kissed the back of it, his eyes never leaving hers. “Perhaps you could tell me more about what you would like... somewhere more private?”

  Despite her rather selective experiences with the world, Lee knew a seduction routine when she saw one, and for a brief moment, she was tempted to accept his offer. Being merely ‘Lee’ was changing her, making her more curious, making her dare to break the rules that had governed her life for so long. Perhaps she could take Drew upstairs to her room, and...

  But no. Because she wasn’t just Lee. She was also Li Khuli. And for a Satva Khuli, nothing could ever be so simple. The vast majority of men she’d slept with, she’d killed soon afterwards. The few she hadn’t killed had been spared only because they were pawns in other plots. One was a married politician who had subsequently been blackmailed over his involvement with her. From another she had stolen files from his computer while he slept. For Li Khuli, sex and violence were inextricably linked, and there was a good chance she might inadvertently kill Drew if she dared to delve into a more intimate relationship.

  “I don’t... um...” She fumbled for words, breaking their eye contact, carefully extracting her hand from his grip.

  “I’m sorry,” Drew said, his face flushing pink. “I tend to make assumptions, and... English woman are... well, no, I mean, not all of them, but... Maybe I misunderstood. I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” she said finally, though Drew had pretty much covered that territory with his fumbling apology. “I like you. Very much. And you’re very charming. But my life can be complicated, and I think it would be better if...”

  “No, that’s okay,” Drew assured her. “It’s fine, really.”

  “But I would like to see you again,” Lee blurted out. “Before I leave England. Would that be possible?”

  The smile that lit up Drew’s face was positively blinding. “I would like that very much.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The air was cold as John wandered over to the eastern wall of the estate. It was mid-morning, but still too chilly for his liking. Then again, he thought, huffing out a breath onto his icy fingers, he could likely move to the Bahamas and still think it was too cold.

  But he had a goal to achieve today, and he wanted peace and solitude to go about it, so braving the cold was a necessity. For this particular task, he found his bedroom too claustrophobic, and sitting anywhere else in the manor would likely attract unwanted attention; some dull-minded idiot asking him what the hell he was doing and then falling over in surprise when he told them.

  The truth was, over the past few days Andre had been teaching him to meditate. John understood the concept well enough, but actually managing to do it properly had proven harder, so after a number of failed attempts in which he’d got distracted, restless or bored, he’d come out here today, determined to spend a minimum of ten whole minutes sitting still, his mind serenely blank.

  The sitting still wasn’t usually a problem, of course, as John could sit for hours at a time reading a good book. And blanking his mind wasn’t hard if he had something physical to do, such as taking out his anger and frustration on a punching bag, for example. But put the two together and John invariably found himself drowning in dark thoughts, spectres of his past rising to haunt him, gory visions flitting through his mind of all the ways he wanted to kill those who had held him captive for all those years. But thanks to Andre, he was now convinced that stillness and peace should not be mutually exclusive, so he’d come out today to try and conquer his own mind, ten minutes a modest goal, but one that might take him the rest of the day to accomplish.

  There was a wide tree stump not far from the wall and he sat down, crossing his legs beneath him. Taking a deep breath, he opened his senses to the world around him, just as Andre had taught him. Meditation, he’d said, was equally good for reaching out into the world, as for reaching inside oneself. It could heighten the senses, make you aware of sounds and scents that most people didn’t notice. A distant bird call. A subtle change of temperature on the wind. As a wolf, that side of things was even more important. A wolf’s senses were vastly superior to those of a human, but many shifters never quite took the time to learn to use those senses to their full capacity. Listening to his own breathing was also an important step, something to keep his mind occupied even in small ways, so he sat still, focusing on that slow rhythm, letting his eyes rest without focusing as he tuned in to the bird calls, the faint rustle of the leaves… Then, when he felt himself beginning to get restless, he changed things up a bit, focusing his eyes on a pine tree just past the wall, working hard to detect all the minute variations in colour on the bark, even while he kept half his mind on his breathing, in, out, in...

  He couldn’t have said quite when he became aware that he was looking not at a tree, but at a person, expertly disguised to look like just another piece of foliage, but once he’d seen her, she was unmistakable.

  She’d done a superb job of it, he was forced to admit. Her outline was masked by the interwoven branches of the pine tree, her clothing mottled to look exactly like the bark, and she sat so utterly still that John actually doubted himself for a moment, wondering if he was merely imagining a face where none existed...

  Li Khuli sat motionless in the tree, even her breathing at a bare minimum, ghostly exhales as she tried to work out whether the boy had seen her or not. He was meditating, that much was clear,
but from this distance, she couldn’t quite work out whether he was looking blurrily at the entire tree, or specifically at her.

  He stood up suddenly and shifted, a smooth, lightning-fast change that thrilled Li Khuli to her core. She’d seen these creatures shift before, of course, but never one so fast and sleek, the faint crackle of blue electricity like a sparkle of magic on -

  Where the hell were these fanciful thoughts of such nonsense coming from? She should be planning how to kill this boy, how to stop him from revealing her secret, not revelling in his display of power.

  In wolf form, he leapt cleanly over the gate, and Li Khuli had the answer to one of the many questions circling around in her head. One did not need to open the gate if one could jump over it so easily. The padlock, therefore, was only designed to keep intruders out, a deterrent so that wandering tourists didn’t accidentally venture onto private property.

  Once over the gate, the boy shifted again and stood beneath her tree, peering up into the gloom of its branches. “Hello,” he said, when she still didn’t move, and though she’d already suspected he’d spotted her, the greeting left no doubt. Li Khuli lithely detached herself from the trunk of the tree, stretching stiff muscles in a way that was designed to appear like she was merely changing position to see the boy better.

  “Good morning,” she said, rapidly assessing the forest on the other side of the wall, relieved to find it was empty. Just the one target to kill, then. Did this boy know what she was? Did he know what she was capable of? He didn’t look particularly alarmed to have found her.

  He peered up into the tree, head tilted, hands stuffed into his pockets. “You’re here to kill Miller,” he said at length, a statement, not a question, and that told Li Khuli a great deal more about him. He knew of the Khuli, then, knew that one would have been dispatched to hunt down the traitor. But if that was the case, why was he standing there so calmly, not prepared to defend himself, not showing the slightest fear? Who was he, that he could look his own death in the eye with such composure?