Both women’s faces blossomed into silent smiles, and one with luxuriously long and thick black hair said, “Look at her eyes! How curious.”
I blinked my surprise, suddenly self-conscious and uncertain how to respond.
Luckily the other, her hair bobbed short and blond, spoke instead. “Like the hoods.” She fixed me with a diagnosing study. “But I don’t sense—”
“No, wait.” Something shifted in the air around us, and the shewolves grinned. “How odd.”
Yan needled around my side. “I don’t suppose you ladies would be willing to speak on what you’re experiencing?”
The blonde wolf’s smile soured. “I’m sorry... You are?”
The vampire stuck his hand out. “Yanus Sousa, born of the Varanasi Creche and of the Rajani bloodline, currently resident vampire employed at Schloss Wolfsretter.”
None of these facts seemed to meet with lupine approval, as they both eyeballed the proffered hand for a few moments before turning their attention back on me.
“Is your name really Gerwalta?” the blonde asked. “Like, honestly? It’s not just a pet name you picked up?”
“A pet name?” My face curdled. “Not unless someone really hated me. Which my mother does, so...”
The blanket of awkward I’d just thrown out settled, dampening the conversation. Luckily, it was at this point that Ann-Marie returned, wearing a black knit poncho and blue jeans. “Ladies, I wonder if we might borrow the room for a few minutes?”
Both the women ceased staring at me and turned to the children, still engrossed in the pleasures of the young girl’s quick-change routine.
Ann-Marie settled on the couch, inviting me, and I’d presume, Yan, to take up the nearby chairs. “Before anything else, I have to ask what brought you to us?”
How to answer it in a way that wouldn’t put the wolves on the defensive? “Are you familiar with the hood stories about the Betrayer?”
Ann-Marie grinned. “You mean Little Red Riding Hood?”
I grimaced. “Kinda, but not exactly the Grimm Brothers version.”
The shewolf exhaled and fell back into the couch. “Why don’t you tell us the hood version of the story, then?”
“Well, it’s not a version. It’s the actual story. Back in the 1600s, a hood of the House of Red became the mate of a werewolf from the Triberg pack. This pack’s ancestors. It’s the biggest crime a hood can commit.”
“No huntsman and his axe, then?” Ann-Marie’s eyebrow arched.
I curled in on myself. “The story we’re told as children is that they were hunted down by the Red Matron, chopped into pieces, and roasted on silver spits over a fire on Feuernacht as punishment, but I don’t think that’s true.” I knew it wasn’t, but I wasn’t about to cast out all my secrets. “I’m hoping your version of the story gives an alternative picture.”
And his name. Please, I just want to know his name.
“Let me see if I understand.” Ann-Marie smoothed out the bottom of her black poncho over the tops of her legs. “She both chopped her own daughter into pieces and roasted her over a fire, you say? If you’ll pardon the pun, it seems a bit of overkill, doesn’t it? But the hoods are given to violence. I should have guessed their version would end with blood and torment.”
Yan perked up. “Blood?”
Ann-Marie ignored him. “My ancestors would be appalled to know how the hoods have corrupted their story.”
My head sped again, though I tried to pull back the anticipation. “Are you saying that this story has been passed down in your pack?”
“Do tell.” Yan inched forward in his seat. “And please, emphasize any parts that include blood.”
Ann-Marie took to her feet, and I was suddenly aware of how the gaze of the only wolf who remained behind, Lukas, rose with her.
“Geri,” the young woman held out her hand, as though she and I were schoolgirl friends. “Might I interest you in a walk, just the two of us? I don’t believe you’ve ever visited these packlands before. They really are quite beautiful, and I’d be honored to show you.”
My instincts screamed at me to say no. An unfamiliar, young wolf with an unusual sway over the pack wants to get you alone. It cannot be for any good reason. My head jerked in Yan’s direction, though if I expected to find any counsel in his eyes, he left me wanting. He watched with an invisible tub of popcorn. Hoping that being alone with Ann-Marie would let me be more open about the reasons I’d come, I swallowed my fears, reached up, and accepted the shewolf’s hand.
EIGHT
Winter came earlier at higher elevations. Despite the fact that it was only mid-October, we’d not had to climb far up the mountain to find snow beneath our feet. Wolves preferred forested region (insofar as the packs that lived where it ever snowed at all) in part because the tree tops offered refuge against the accumulation of the white stuff. What did float between branches and firs to the ground was protected from the sunlight, reducing the chance the surface would melt in the day, only to refreeze after sunset. A space up ahead where the timberline met the cleared land came into view, but it seemed so odd that the wolves would build their residences so in the open, a fact I remarked upon as we walked.
Ann-Marie smiled. “A bold move on our part, perhaps? Who would ever think a pack living so in the open would have so much to hide? But that’s not the story you came to hear, is it?”
“Does it have anything to do with why you all fractured off from the wolves who settled in the Oberstdorf Forest?”
“Indeed. The schism resulted from a difference of opinion. Curiously, Geri, do you know why your clan fractured and went to America?”
Honestly, I’d never given the thought a moment’s consideration. “Probably the same reason a lot of Europeans were moving around that time: the hope of a better life. There were already wolves and hoods in America, of course. The Orange Clan, the first lupines...They’re still around, but not as many. Mostly in the plains states and southwest.”
“I’ve read about this, native peoples pushed out of their lands. Why should supes be immune from such cultural shifts?”
She mused in silence for a moment, though I didn’t know if it was because she needed to digest the thought or she was hoping I’d say something. But the question was rhetorical, wasn’t it?
Finally, Ann-Marie continued. “I know why you’re here, Gerwalta Kline, daughter of the Red Matron. There’s a reason you came to us for stories and not the Oberstdorf Forest.”
I drew to a stop to fix her in my gaze, but without pausing, Ann-Marie pulled me onward.
“Let’s keep pace. I should try to get back home sooner rather than later. I know it makes Lukas nervous when I’m out here alone.”
Because she was young? A woman? Alone with a hood?
As if she’d heard my internal question, her face broke out into a drunken smile. “He wants me to be his mate, made a formal offer a week ago. I think he’s afraid if he isn’t with me every second, he’ll miss me giving my answer.”
“And do you know your answer?” I asked.
Her head bobbed. “But if I told him right away, what fun would that be? Ah, yes, we’re almost there.”
I trudged on. Up the mountain slope, tall pines dusted with snow created a verdant crystalline view that disguised a measure of both breadth and width. As far as I could see, there was nothing ahead to arrive to, other than more trees. “I wasn’t aware we had a destination.”
Ann-Marie grinned, her eyes scanning the treetops. “Anytime one moves forward, it is always with a destination, whether or not they are aware of it.”
“You’re very philosophical for a wolf.”
The statement crossed my lips before I’d had a chance to bit my tongue. Instead, I bit my lip, waiting for a rebuke that I was totally owed. Instead, Ann-Marie let out a single laugh.
“I’m sorry,” I scrambled. “I didn’t mean to—"
Her hand rose, cutting me off. “No need. You were raised a hood, I was raised a wolf. We both
have been forced to believe that the other should fit a certain mold, and it confuses us when we meet with experiences that make us question who the other is, for it also makes us question who we are. Besides,” she turned a warm grin my direction, “I could also say that I’ve never met so kind a hood.”
Even the indirect insinuation left a mark, one I couldn’t slight the shewolf for. Through stories I’d heard from Tobias, and after the Matron Council’s rejection of the slayer refugees, I had begun to see my own people with an outsider’s eye.
Feeling a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold, I pulled my jacket tighter about me. “You didn’t think I was too kind when Yan and I arrived earlier. Your pack looked like it was out for blood.”
“That was not about you being a hood.” Ann-Marie drew to a stop, as did, it seemed, the falling snow, the wind through the trees, and the rotation of the earth. “That was about an unknown wolf venturing into our packlands.”
When I’d used my ability to detect the wolves, I hadn’t realized the feeling went both ways. But it wasn’t like I was about to come out and admit that. Ann-Marie was going above and beyond to be hospitable, but who knew what she’d do if she knew I could summon her kind. “What unknown wolf?”
“You don’t need to hide your secret from me. In fact, you can’t. I perceived you the moment you drove up our access road. The others did not, of course, but that’s to be expected.”
“But I am not of your pack.”
Asenaic or no, I was still certain the other laws of lupine nature applied. Wolves had a tremendous sense of smell. Their vision was pretty keen as well, though it paled in comparison to a vampire’s. Where the “super” of “supernatural” really came into play, however, was in their ability to communicate while in their animal forms. Not quite psychic, Cody had once explained when I’d asked about it. But we have a sense of each other, both in terms of what we’re trying to say and where we are. If another member of the pack is inside my house, I know it before I walk in the front door.
But the skill wasn’t omnipresent. Like a closed-circuit system, that power only extended to members of a pack. Or so I thought...
“True, you are not,” Ann-Marie admitted. “Nor are you of my pack, and how could you be? But I think a hood mother would not name her child Gerwalta casually. It would have made you a pariah among your people. The Grand Matron is exceptionally brave, I think, to do this. But it doesn’t matter. Even if your name were Philomena or Tsa-Tsa, I would suspect you were of my bloodline. Let’s keep walking. We’re just about there.”
Walk? How could she walk with that kind of bomb thrown at my feet?
“Your bloodline?” My head shook without consideration that it may seem insulting. “That can’t be. I’m a hood.”
“Who also has a wolf ancestor.”
My mouth felt like someone had stuck an overly starched, dry washcloth in it. “Are you descended from Gerwalta Faust?”
The young woman blushed, took me by the hand and coaxed me onward in body, but away in mind. “Oh, dear, no. But my ancestor was the brother to the Guardian’s mate. Just a few more steps, now, Geri. Come now, it’s just over in that glade there. You’d never know it, but until a century ago, there was a hunting lodge here, one with a splendid summer garden. It’s all gone now, of course. But the marker remains. My pack thinks the forest itself protected them, growing around it.”
“Ann-Marie, please.” I seized back my hand. “I don’t want to be rude, and I sure don’t want to come off sounding like a hood, but I demand you to tell me what you’re talking about. Who is the Guardian? Where are we walking? How did you know we have a common ancestor? Have the wolves known this whole time that Gerwalta Faust’s baby lived?”
In short, why was I lied to all my life, while others knew?
The shewolf looked as though she had a secret threatening to bust through at any moment. She pointed to a place behind me, over my right shoulder.
“Read it.”
I spun.
At first, I’d thought I’d been put on. What lay before me was just another tree, even if deformed, like some superhuman force had bent it to his will, compelling the trunk to bulge and bubble about four feet off the ground. But as I let my eyes relax, words began to take shape. The plaque may have once gleamed, but now its silver was exposed, tarnished. My fingers danced over it as my powers reached out, calling to the silver that lay in the pine’s embrace, asking it to shake off its age and weathering. Where a moment before the letters could barely be perceived, they now shone out, reflected in the ambient light of the forest.
The Old German script proved so embellished and elaborate, it was a barrier to understanding. Perhaps Ann-Marie sensed the trouble I was having; a moment later the shewolf was at my side, her finger bouncing along with each elucidation while still keeping sufficient distance so as not to be burned by the element which was a poison to her kind.
“Here lieth the body of A. Baron, born 16 April 1662, aged twenty-five years, died 12 November 1687, and wife, born 3 December 1666, died 12 November 1687, aged twenty-two years. May they be together in death as they were so briefly in life.”
Impossible. “This is Gerwalta Faust’s grave?”
“Pah! Gerwalta Faust!” Ann-Marie chuffed. “This is the grave of Gerwalta Baron. She and your ancestor didn’t have some casual fling. They were desperately in love, enough to rebel against both their traditions to be together. And when the hoods attempted to punish the entire pack for that perceived sin, it was Gerwalta who negotiated the peace, and kept them from being destroyed. This is why we call her the Guardian.”
“But my people, we call her the Betrayer. We...”
The words caught in my throat. That word, Betrayer. I’d heard it, spoken it, thought about it all my life, and never really understood. Every hood knew Gerwalta Faust’s story, that she’d committed the biggest crime for one of our kind by becoming the mate of a wolf, but that hadn’t been her betrayal, had it? That was not the act for which she was forever branded in our histories as Die Verräterin.
“She started a civil war.”
“She started a revolution,” Ann-Marie clarified. “She encouraged wolves to stop accepting their suppression and demanded hoods cease their tyranny. The Matron did not seek her death because she’d mated a wolf. Gerwalta died because in her heart, she became one of them. Even now, my indirect connection with the Guardian earns me prestige in our pack. No doubt you picked up on how they defer to me, or how in awe they were when they learned who you are.”
The tears didn’t make sense, but what did anymore? The woman who I’d been raised to revile, with whose namesake I’d been cursed and branded... was someone completely different than I thought. And knowing that, I didn’t know who I was, either.
Embarrassment flushed my cheeks, heated my temple. I leaned into the warped pine, one arm rising to give my forehead a place to settle as my free hand traced the letters of the plaque.
“A. Baron,” I read in time with my ghosting hand. “Ann-Marie, is there any chance you know what his n—”
“Andreas.” Ann-Marie anticipated the question. “Andreas Baron, brother to Stephen, from whose line I am descended. That, by the way, is a secret I am trusting you to keep.”
“A secret?” Confusion warped my features as I turned to the shewolf. “Why would you need to keep that a secret?”
For the first time in our discussion, the kindness in Ann-Marie’s face fled, as did the color. “Because, according to hood history, neither Stephen nor Andreas had surviving descendants. Andreas and Gerwalta’s child roasted on a silver spit over a full moon fire, and Stephen was killed when Gerwalta slayed him on the steps of King Ferdinand’s castle. But you and I are proof that never happened. I am protected here, away from the other packs, with the grandsons and granddaughters of a few wolves who believed my grandmother’s life and lineage was worth protecting. Someone did the same for you. Do not work to undo that too quickly. The day may come for wolf and wolfsretter a
like to know the truth, but that time is not now.”
“But I—”
I didn’t know, and as words became escape artists, my thoughts hid away, making my mouth agape without purpose.
But Ann-Marie was not done. She took my hands in hers. “Wait for it. Don’t try to talk. Just let your mind quiet, and the thing you must know will in turn, make itself known. Deep breaths, Geri. That’s it. Now—” She gave my arms a little shake. “Ask it: the same question that has burned within me since I was a little girl and my father told me the truth.”
I searched my heart, searched my mind, both reeling and racing and driving my thoughts in a million directions. Across the web of confusion, one thread pulled taut, and I grasped it.
I looked to the shewolf, the tremble in my voice flattening. “Why did the matrons lie?”
“I’ve told you my truth.” Ann-Marie leaned forward, squeezing my arm. “Now go find yours.”
NINE
“So anyway, I guess Ann-Marie’s grandmother came from Ireland when she heard the pack would be moving away from Triberg. She said by then, the wolves had lost Andreas Baron’s side of the story, and her grandmother thought it was a good time to be reminded, since they were going to be out of the shadow of Schloss Wolfsretter and all. That’s what caused the pack to divide. The ones who believed her came down here, the rest ended up in the Oberstdorf Forest. By the way, did you know there used to be more wolves in Ireland than people?”
“Actually, I did.” Yan put on the blinker before changing lanes. “I have to wonder how Ann-Marie knew about the graves, though. Or how they ended up here when the Betrayer was executed in Triberg.”
My head quirked to the side. “I didn’t think about that. She thinks—like you heard—that Gerwalta’s mother must have taken the baby and fled. If Andreas and Gerwalta’s bodies were burned, there would be nothing left but charred bones after. Moving bones is much easier than moving corpses.”
Rebellious Hood Page 7
