by Lyn Benedict
He trailed behind her, studying the rising moonlight, the quiet surroundings, Miami only a golden glow in the distance. The ’Glades were miles and miles of isolation and secrets, a veil laid over the state.
Scrubby pines dropped needles with every breeze and littered the walkways between campsites, rained gently on their heads. Small brown lizards rustled across their path, and somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted. Wright’s steps slowed almost to a halt, and Sylvie paused inquisitively, the briefcase bumping against her calf. She cringed, but with her luck, if she’d left them in the truck, she’d find them gone when she came back. She didn’t want to hunt them twice.
“It’s really alive down here. Chicago, we get birds and rats, squirrels, but here . . . I feel like I’m going to step on something at any moment.” Wright shot another glance upward, where something gave a creaky cry, and added, “Or have something fall on my head.”
“Anole, I think,” she said. “It’s the tropics. And we’re on the edge of the ’Glades here. I’m surprised we didn’t see gators on our way out.”
“Alligators,” he said, a small boy’s delight in his voice. “Think we’ll see any?”
“We get these cases dealt with, and I’ll take you sightseeing,” Sylvie said. “First things first.”
Tatya’s RV was a grey blur against the thick grey-green backdrop of the pines, hard to see in the low light.
Sylvie led the way up the walk, briefcase bumping her knee, casting wary glances at the sky and cursing traffic. They’d taken longer getting here than she wanted, and some nights were better than others for a visit. It was off-season for the campsite; they didn’t offer electrical hookup, and more and more people were opting for the air-conditioning, hotels, and Wi-Fi. The isolation might also have something to do with the way Tatya and Marisol guarded their privacy.
Sudden crashing through the underbrush made her spin, briefcase coming up to fend off the attack, but it was too late.
Wright yelped; the big black wolf engulfed his hand in her jaws. Foamy saliva flecked her teeth, speckling his skin, luminous in the dark. It wasn’t a maiming bite, not yet. Sylvie dropped the briefcase and pulled her gun.
“Bite down, and I’ll give you a headache you’ll never forget, Mari.” She rested the muzzle of the gun on the bitch’s broad skull.
Wright tentatively tugged; Marisol snarled, and Sylvie said, “Goddammit, Wright, have some patience! Stop struggling. Tatya! I know you’re watching.”
“You brought a wolf to our door,” Tatya said, fading out of the shadows. Wright twitched, despite his efforts to remain still, obedient to Sylvie’s commands. Sylvie couldn’t blame him for the flinch. Tatya made her twitchy, too.
“Mari,” Tatya said. The wolf released Wright; he yanked his hand to his chest. It was bloody, shallow punctures, still oozing, but whole. She’d seen lots worse—she’d seen men torn apart by savage jaws—and judging by his relief, so had he.
“Chill, Tatya. He’s not a werewolf.”
Wright’s brows skied upward in incredulity.
“Easy, Wright. Just breathe.”
“I’ll get right on that when I’m done with the freaked-out part!” Wright snapped.
“Relax. That whole bite-and-become thing? Just a myth.” She turned back to Tatya, said, “Not a wolf, just a client. My client.” Anyone else and she would have coupled her disclaimer with a shrug and a smile, but it was better not to show teeth around Tatya. Not unless you meant it.
Tatya’s eyes never left Wright, and he shivered, stepped back beneath the weight of it.
In the usual run of things, Sylvie enjoyed watching the show. Tatya was a tiny scrap of a woman, five-three tops, dark-skinned, and as sweet-faced as a model. The kind of woman men usually lined up to protect. Until they saw her eyes. Disquietingly light-colored at the best of times, during the full moon they were black-rimmed and gold, as reflective and unyielding as metal.
Sylvie had met her when Tatya had come seeking a new life for her and her girlfriend, a life away from the rest of her pack. “I’m tired of being pushed down all the time,” Tatya had said, Mari a silent, wary presence behind her with two black eyes and a bitten-up arm. Some cases were worth taking, even pro bono.
“What do you want, Shadows?” Tatya asked. Mari leaned up against her hip, her muzzle of a height with Tatya’s heart.
“I need some information,” Sylvie said. “A name. I need a witch who’s familiar with necromancy. A good one.”
“Are there any good necromancers?” Tatya asked.
“I’ll settle for reasonably sane,” Sylvie said.
“Always wanting something. You never just come to dinner, Sylvie. Why’s that?”
“I like my meals a little less . . . fresh.” She heard Wright gasp quietly behind her, but sense kept him silent beyond that telltale quickened breath.
Tatya grinned with very strong teeth. “Raw foods are healthy living. You’re soft, Shadows, soft.”
“Don’t start thinking that,” Sylvie said. “You just remember who took on a wolf pack for you and won.”
Tatya lifted a dismissive shoulder but brought the subject back to where Sylvie wanted it, which was acceptance enough. Their posturing should be done for now. “What do you want a witch for? Thought you had that bloodless Cassavetes girl on your team.”
“Little misunderstanding,” Sylvie said.
“That why she’s locked herself up in her palace by the sea? How little was this . . . misunderstanding? If I help you, will she take offense? Want a wolf-skin rug for her little brat?”
“Little enough not to concern you,” Sylvie said. “I swear by moonlight.”
Tatya sighed, rolled her head on her shoulders. “Don’t know why we make time for you. It’s always work, always bad news.”
Beside her, Marisol growled, a long, rolling, guttural agreement.
Sylvie said, “I don’t speak dog, Mari. You got something to say? Say it so I can understand.”
Marisol’s fur rippled in a breeze centered only on her, flowing and fading until there was a woman crouching there, bare skin striped by the moonlight and cloud shadow. Wright made a short, choked-off groan; Sylvie jerked around to see him gaping at Marisol. Still Wright; she’d half expected the Magicus Mundi circumstances to pull out Demalion again. Found herself disappointed that it hadn’t. Foolish. Tatya might be a friend of sorts, but Sylvie’s attention was best kept focused.
Wolves tended to trust instinct over reason. Sometimes that meant instant trust. Sometimes it meant bloodshed and screaming.
Marisol’s growl continued, no more musical in a human throat. “Look away, man, or I’ll have your sac twixt my teeth next.”
“Client, Marisol,” Sylvie said. “I decide what becomes of him. Not you.”
Marisol’s and Tatya’s gazes riveted on hers, and Sylvie thought, Oh yeah, that might have been construed as a direct challenge. Hell with it. She’d helped them when they couldn’t help themselves. They’d back down first. She met their gazes, squared her shoulders, and let them see her gun.
Tatya laughed ruefully. “You’d have made such a fine bitch that I wonder why you were born human.”
“Family trees branch,” Sylvie said. “Might as well wonder why you weren’t born with only one skin. ’Sides, two alpha bitches of the same kind don’t make easy friends. This is better, I think.”
“And men don’t make good company,” Marisol said.
Tatya sighed, but her expression asked Sylvie’s patience.
Sylvie turned, told Wright, “Why don’t you go sit in the truck. Get some AC going. And hey, there’s a first-aid kit under the passenger’s seat.” She tossed him the keys.
He fielded them awkwardly between his damaged hand and the other, and paused. “You’ll be okay—”
“I’m not the one bleeding,” she said. “Go on. I’ll be just a minute.”
Once he had gone, his retreating footsteps loud in the fraught silence, she said, “Mari, I get that you’re a man-
eater, but keep it up, and you’ll be courting Animal Control.”
“He’s a wolf,” Marisol said, stuck on repeat. “You brought a breeding dog to our doorstep. He’ll let the others know.”
“He’s not a werewolf,” Sylvie said.
“He . . . has two souls,” Tatya said. Her eyes were focused on the dark shape of Sylvie’s distant truck; she raised her head and scented the air, nostrils flaring. “He smells like cat.”
That made a certain sense, considering Demalion’s non-human lineage. “Cat’s not a wolf,” she said.
Tatya shrugged, liquid and graceful, rather than concede the point.
Mari shivered in her skin, tugged at Tatya’s restraining hand until she was released. “Why bring him here?”
“The better to keep an eye on him,” Sylvie said. “C’mon, I helped you escape your pack, remember? Had sympathy for the girls who didn’t want to be bred? I wouldn’t jeopardize that. I don’t like wasting effort.”
Marisol growled again, and Sylvie said, “Either use the vocal cords or lose ’em, Mari. Actually, either get dressed or go fur. You’re making me itch just watching the mosquitoes going for you.”
Marisol let out a breath, and fur rippled over her flesh again, so easy at the full moon. She ghosted into the night, only the faintest of clicks as her claws touched gravel and bark. Tatya’s skin went fluid for a moment in sympathy.
“Hey,” Sylvie said, “she all right?”
“She feels stronger in fur,” Tatya said. “As do I.”
“Just be careful. Feral dogs get euthanized. Feral wolves? Get shot.”
“Worry about yourself,” Tatya snapped.
Whoops, Sylvie thought. Implied the alpha of this tiny pack wasn’t doing her job. “No offense meant, Tatya. Just concern. You have a name for me?”
“One name—that’s all you want?” she said, with unappealing skepticism. “No little since I’m here or by the way, Tatya . . .”
“Well, since you ask . . .” She and Tatya traded quick, tight grins. Sylvie unfolded the picture of the missing woman. “She disappeared north of here in the ’Glades. You seen her?”
“Pictures,” Tatya said. She shrugged. “I do best with scent.”
“Yeah, I know. Just take a look. If you find any dead women, let me know, and if you find one, don’t . . . go to town on it.” She tried not to think about it often, but Tatya and Marisol were as much a part of the food chain in the Everglades as the alligators and the raccoons. Without Sylvie asking for the information, Tatya would be inclined to eat a body she found. As long as it wasn’t too old. Half her digestion was human, after all.
“No snacking. But that’ll cost you.”
“You find her, I’ll pay.”
Tatya sniffed the air again.
“Something interesting?” Sylvie asked, a little wary. The night was warm; there was an alligator hole nearby—she had never had a run-in with one, didn’t want to start now.
“I thought your client made the stink, but it’s . . .” Tatya sniffed again, raised her upper lip, and sneezed. “What’s in the briefcase, Shadows?”
Sylvie glanced at the briefcase, a dark shadow on the gravel walk, dropped when Wright had been bitten. “I’ve gotten hold of some nasty stuff and need to dispose of it, hence the witch.”
Tatya showed all her teeth. “How nasty? Perhaps I could take it off your hands. If it’s sufficiently nasty, I know a pack leader that deserves it.”
“Sorry. This stays with me.”
Hot snuffling behind Sylvie heralded Mari’s return. She crooned gently, a windup to a moon greeting. The hairs on Sylvie’s neck rose in pure physical response, atavistic response to a predator’s presence. She shifted her weight, made it casual, a normal fidgety movement that just happened to allow her to keep both of them, woman and wolf, in plain sight.
“How ’bout a name, and I’ll get out of your fur.”
“It’s worth something to you. Make it worth something to us.”
Sylvie said, “What’s the going rate for a piece of info I could find out myself if I had more time?”
“For the info, call it a hundred bucks. For the rush? Call it five hundred.”
“Robbery,” Sylvie said. “What do you need cash for anyway? You eat what you catch; there’s no power here for cable TV. . . .” She reached in her pocket even as she griped. She knew what it was for. Their nest egg, should the northern pack decide the truce was over. The Ocala pack was rough-and-tumble, uncivilized, and tied to their territory. Tatya and Marisol preferred the wilds as their home, but push come to shove, they would take a condo in downtown Miami and be grateful for it. And civilization cost money.
Tatya took the folded bills without comment, tucked them under a flat, heavy stone. “Odalys,” she said. “She has a new-age shop down at the edge of Calle Ocho. She’s supposed to be good at dealing with bad, dead things. Sort of like you.”
She shucked out of her loose tunic dress, giving Sylvie a view of tight muscles flexing, before a second wolf rubbed her muzzle against Mari’s. Then with a quick, sharp howl, they trotted off into the dark. Drug runners, small alligators, rapists—a bad night to be out and about when the wolves were on the prowl.
* * *
WHEN SHE RETURNED TO THE TRUCK, ITS FINISH REFLECTING THE moonlight in white glosses, she found Wright, first-aid kit unopened in his lap, watching the bite on his hand and wrist bleed. His jeans were wet with it, black in the low illumination of the moon, scarlet beneath the hood light when she opened the door. She swore, reached for his pulse, even though she knew—had seen, dammit—that the wound was relatively minor.
His pulse thrummed beneath her fingers, his skin cool and damp in the swamp air. His blood was sticky under her nails. “Hey!” she snapped, jerking her hand back, rubbing it against her own jeans.
Wright twitched, turned his hand over, and let a rivulet run down his fingers to spatter all over the seat. Great, she thought, just the thing she needed in her cab the next time the police came to harass her: bloodstains.
“I’m bleeding,” he said. Amazement, surprise . . . pleasure.
Her anger vanished, dwindling as quickly as a body falling from a rooftop. Two souls, Tatya had said, and she’d mistaken him for a beast. Two souls in possession of a single scrap of flesh. This was Demalion talking.
“I would have thought you’d had enough of seeing your blood spilled.”
He turned his head to look at her, drawn finally from his exploration of mortality. She fumbled for the first-aid kit, propping it open against his hip, and reached blindly for the roll of gauze, the jumbo tube of antibiotics, the antiseptic wash and pads.
“It hurts,” he said. “Deep down, deeper than the nerves admit. Blood makes the bones ache. Makes them remember what all flesh is born knowing. We will die. We must die. It is our destiny.”
“Not on my watch,” she said.
He laughed, a rich bubble of sound made scratchy by Wright’s throat. Sylvie, heart pounding at the familiarity of it, poured antiseptic on his wounds with a callous lack of concern.
The wild laughter gave way to a yelp; the crazy talk changed to a muttered oath.
“Hurts, does it,” Sylvie said. “You can pull back from it, the blood, the pain. Let Wright own it. It’s his body.” She sponged the dried and seeping blood away, preparing for the bandages. The punctures were many—werewolf teeth were sharp—but they weren’t deep. Marisol really had been holding back.
“That an order, Shadows, or a question?” he asked. His breath stirred her hair, moist warmth touching her skin, warmer than the swamp about them. Another sigh. “He let go, you know. Ceded the body to me. He got too scared, sitting in the dark, alone and bleeding in this strange new world, with a wolf standing on the hood of the truck, watching him with burning eyes. He wanted to not see any of it. I spared him that.”
“We need to talk,” she said. “But not here, not now.”
“Wolves are hunting,” he said, in agreement. The night felt
charged about them, quivering as the predators passed through it. “Wright’s twitchy anyway.”
“His body,” she murmured.
He let out a long sigh, and Wright jerked, swore, and said, “God, where’d you come from?”
“Been here,” she said. She made layers of antibiotic cream and gauze, wound it about the long bones in his palm, covering up the blood.
“Ghost time, huh,” he said.
“Yup,” Sylvie said. Down to monosyllables. “Hand. Here. All done.”
“Thanks,” he said.
His courtesy, ingrained, was a weight on her. Thanking her, when she’d been the one to lead him into the wolves’ den.
She slapped the first-aid kit back together, pushed it beneath the seat. “Passenger’s seat for you,” she said.
“And the briefcase?”
Sylvie paused in climbing into her seat, unrolled another couple of hundred in fifties, held it out toward him. “They’re coming home with me. You don’t have to. This’ll get you a hotel room. Even with a witch’s name, we won’t manage to see her tonight. And I can’t just leave them lying around.”
It was a con of sorts. A gamble that Wright’s mingled trust-distrust issues would keep him close. Keep Demalion close.
Her fingers trembled. She didn’t want to make the offer, but she thought if she clutched as tight as she wanted, he’d pull away. She wanted to drag him and Demalion home and keep him. She wanted her second chance. Wanted to keep him safe.
Too late for that, her little dark voice growled.
Wright said, “That’s blood money, Sylvie. You might be able to call it a client fee, but I know where it came from.”
“Then you know more than I do,” she said, but tucked the money away.
At his disapproving expression, she said, “Enough attitude. You may doubt my morals; god knows you wouldn’t be the first, but I’m honest enough.”
“Still not going to a hotel,” he said. “You’ve got me on your couch until I’m better.” She turned her face toward the windshield, hid her relieved smile with a sweep of hair, and relaxed. She had him. She had both of them.
