Shades of the Wolf

by Karen Whiddon

  “There had been a few of the guys, including me and your David, who’d skirted the edge of danger working to help some of the locals, most particularly the children,” he continued. “Our superiors had reprimanded us once, turning a blind eye after that.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Of course. But dangerous.”

  “Yet you and David still did it,” she marveled.

  “It was impossible not to. The locals were starving. We smuggled rations to the women, brought the children trinkets and treats sent from home and did our best to ease the damage.”

  She waited, aware there were often two sides to every story.

  “The Taliban sympathizers hated this. That’s how I was killed.”

  Though she detected a tinge of shame in his voice, she saw none in his expression.

  “They watched and the next time we snuck out to deliver goodies, they’d set up a trap.”

  Bracing herself, she nodded. When he didn’t speak again, she sighed. “Let me guess. The suicide bomb you’d mentioned before?”

  “Yes. Took out at least two of us, and some women and children too.” Rugged features expressionless, he stared off into the distance, as if remembering the sound of the gunfire and explosions, the screaming and shouting. All the pain.

  His next words confirmed this. “Anabel, they didn’t even care that they’d killed themselves or their own people.”

  Aching, she wished she knew a way to comfort him. “I’m sorry,” she said, aware her words couldn’t possibly be adequate. Then, because he was a ghost and she really wanted to know, she went ahead and asked. “What was it like to die?”

  Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t at first respond. When he raised his head to look at her, all emotion had been erased from his handsome face. “A sharp flash of pain. And then...nothing.”

  “Nothing?” She frowned. “I was hoping for something more inspiring. Like you could say you found yourself in a tunnel, moving toward a bright light, all that. You know?”

  “I do know.”

  Was he laughing at her? She squinted at him, not sure. “And?” she finally prodded. “Are you going to tell me what it’s like?”

  “It was liberating,” he said. “Once I’d shed that ruined body, joy filled me. I went to another place. Another plane. I knew I’d come home.”

  Nothing but contentment and happiness filled his voice now. “But because of the violent manner of my death, my spirit went into shock. It was all too traumatic, and they took me to a healing place.”

  “A healing place?”

  He waved his ghostly hand, about to say more, and then didn’t. “That’s all I can tell you.”

  “But...why are you here? Why didn’t you move on?”

  “Because somehow I heard my sister’s cries. Her prayers for help. So instead of moving forward as I should have, I was allowed to remain tethered to earth.”

  “I’m not sure I understand. You’re a ghost.”

  “Yes.” He smiled, and the beauty of him struck her deep inside her heart. “I was permitted to come back as an ethereal being in the hopes of saving my sister. She’s being tortured, and while death would be a release from the pain, it’s not her time to die. Still, I fear he will kill her. And if he doesn’t, her suffering is terrible. We’ve got to get her out of there.”

  “We’ll figure out a way,” she promised, reacting to the sheer desperation in his voice.

  Apparently overcome, he turned away. For a moment, his ghostly form flickered and vanished, before solidifying once more.

  “Thank you.” When he met her gaze, his hazel eyes glowed with determination. “Meanwhile, have I answered all your questions?”

  She thought of her dead husband, the man she’d mourned for so long. “Since you said David was still alive when you died, I take it he wasn’t with you that night?”

  “I don’t actually know. If he was there, I don’t remember him. But I’m guessing he was killed doing something similar.”

  Miraculously, this helped ease her heart more than anything she’d heard or read about the troops in Afghanistan. “He died helping women and children,” she whispered, marveling again that war hadn’t changed her husband’s generous heart.

  “Most likely.” Tyler shrugged. “Though I wasn’t there, so I can’t know for sure.”

  “I do. I know inside me.” Turning, she headed toward her bathroom. “I’ll be out in a little while. You can wait in the kitchen, if you’d like.”

  His wry grimace made her smile. “Sure. I’ll go in there and inhale the aroma of the coffee brewing. I used to enjoy my first cup in the morning.” With that, he drifted away, his broad shoulders and narrow waist drawing her eye until she could no longer see him.

  Shutting the door, she couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. He’d died a noble death too. Had he no one to mourn him? She realized she’d never asked about his family. Surely he must have had parents, maybe even other siblings, someone to mark his passing. She’d ask him later.

  She knew only of the one sister, Dena, who’d surely mourned her brother. So much so that she’d cried out to his spirit in her pain and terror. Their tie had been so great that he’d come back from wherever he’d been to try to save her from a fate worse than death.

  Again, a noble man. One with a generous spirit, like David.

  She glanced at herself in the mirror and paused. A woman of purpose stared back at her, brown eyes blazing, expression resolute and determined. And resilient. Somehow, after all she’d been through, she realized she’d emerged stronger for it.

  Fine. Decision made, she turned the shower on and, as soon as the water got hot, stepped inside. If she had magic power inside her, she’d learn how to use it to locate Tyler’s sister. As for doing battle with the warlock person, well, she’d have to deal with that when it happened.

  * * *

  As Tyler drifted into the colorful kitchen, he took in the green cabinets, orange walls and colorful paintings. More of Anabel’s personality. How strange that it happened that the woman he’d sought help from had been married to one of the guys in his former unit. He was pretty sure it wasn’t a fluke. One thing life after death had taught him was that there were very few real coincidences. Things happened for a purpose, and while he might temporarily be blinded to what that might be, he knew to keep an eye out.

  While he and Dena were growing up with a drug-addicted father, his mother had shielded them as best she could. Older by ten years, Tyler had tried to be the man in the family, but as a kid, he hadn’t fully realized that his father might kill him rather than hurt him. His mother had, always stepping in front of the blows, taking the brunt of his father’s drug-fueled wrath.

  Desperately wanting to defend his mother, despite her strict orders not to intervene, Tyler had helped in every way he could besides beating the man to a bloody pulp, which he fully planned to do once he was older and stronger. In the meantime, he’d taken care of his mother when her bruises and broken bones incapacitated her. He’d cooked and done laundry and watched after his baby sister. He’d learned to change her diapers and mix her formula, sleeping on the floor by her crib in case his doped-up father got any stupid ideas. When his mother had found out about this, she’d put a stop to it, promising Tyler she’d make sure nothing happened to the baby.

  And she had. She’d always made sure to be in the way of her husband’s fists and vitriolic bile. Despite her petite stature, she’d displayed enormous courage, though Tyler had never understood why she wouldn’t leave. All she’d say when he asked was that he was too young to understand. Eventually, he’d figured out that his father had sworn to hunt her down and kill her and his children should she ever try to run.

  Finally, their father had disappeared. Tyler had heard the man now lived on the streets, a slave to his own demons.
Periodically, he’d show up at the house, but only to take money, which he used to buy more drugs.

  Tyler had never understood why his mother gave the man anything at all.

  As soon as he’d graduated from high school, Tyler had enlisted in the army. For him, the military was not only an escape, but a chance to make something of himself, to make sure he didn’t end up like his father.

  Their father had overdosed when Dena was seventeen. Tyler had been stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. He’d been granted leave and had hurried home to help out.

  He hadn’t been sure what to expect. A celebration, perhaps? Instead he found his mother insensible with grief and his baby sister angry at the woman who’d raised them.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Dena had asked. “He spent his life making her miserable, and all she can do is cry.”

  “I don’t understand either,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulders. “But I do know Mom needs us. Let her grieve, and be there for her, the way she always was for us.”

  “She should have left him” had been Dena’s response. Since Tyler tended to agree, he didn’t reply.

  After the funeral, he’d gone back to base and kept in touch with his sister. He’d celebrated with her long-distance when she got a job at the junior college. Sure, it was in the cafeteria, but she’d had plans, she told him. She wanted to take some classes, with an eye on earning her degree. He’d been proud.

  What Dena hadn’t told him was that their mother had started using the very same drugs that had killed their father. Heroin, mostly. Sometimes meth. Their mom had died right after Tyler was sent to Afghanistan, though he hadn’t learned about it for two weeks. He’d raged and grieved and worried that his sister might follow this horrible family pattern. Dena had assured him that she wouldn’t. He’d believed her. Neither of them had wanted anything to do with that lifestyle.

  After that, he and his sister had been on their own. And then Tyler had gone and gotten himself killed. And Dena had gotten into a bigger mess than he ever would have thought possible. If he didn’t get her out, she was going to die too young, just as he had. Even though it wasn’t her time to go.

  Anabel had to help him save her. She had to. He would accept nothing else, even if it cost him his own movement into eternity.

  Being a ghost felt more like being alive than he’d expected. Sure, he couldn’t eat or drink, didn’t have to eliminate bodily waste or sleep, but he felt all the same human emotions he’d experienced when he was alive.

  Including desire. That one had surprised the hell out of him. Every time he got close to Anabel, his entire body tightened in places that shouldn’t have been possible for a ghost. At first, he’d tried to keep telling himself that it was due to her beauty and the power that radiated from her.

  But after the first night, when he’d found himself watching her sleep, aching with the kind of physical need he couldn’t possibly satisfy without a flesh-and-blood body, he’d known it was more. Much, much more.

  He wanted her. Desired her. In all the ways a man wanted a woman. Except he wasn’t a man. He was a ghost.

  This had to be his own personal form of hell. Because there was absolutely nothing he could do to ease the craving.

  When Anabel finally emerged from her morning preparations, showered and dressed in a pair of faded black jeans that hugged her curves, with her dark hair in a jaunty ponytail, he couldn’t make himself stop staring. She was the sexiest woman he’d ever seen, bar none. Again, that lust stabbed through what once had been his body.

  “You look...glowing,” he said. He really sucked at compliments.

  “Thank you. I guess.” Her smile made her aura illuminate even brighter, making a glowing halo around her head.

  For whatever reason, he felt the need to elaborate. “I don’t just mean your aura, though yours is spectacular. But your human form is beautiful.”

  Her smile widened, making her whiskey eyes sparkle. “Wow. Thanks. You kind of made my day.”

  He found himself smiling back. Maybe he wasn’t so bad at this complimenting thing after all.

  He let his gaze drink her up, his entire body burning. Funny how he still felt as if he had a body, even though he didn’t. Even when she turned away, completely unaware of his desire, he tracked her with his gaze.

  Focus, he reminded himself. He’d come back for a reason—to save Dena, not ache for a woman he could never have.

  Pouring herself a cup of coffee, she added cream and sugar before taking a deep sip. “Ah,” she sighed. “That’s good.”

  “Torturing me now?”

  For an instant, she looked stricken, and then she shrugged. “Not my intention at all. But I apologize nonetheless.”

  He gave a quick dip of his head to show the apology had been accepted. “What’s on the agenda for today?”

  “I’m going up to the college where your sister works. I want to talk to some of her friends.”

  “Sounds good.” Action, finally. He approved. “What about?”

  She gave him a long look, clearly debating what she had to say. “I need to find out about her boyfriend.”

  “I can save you some time on that. Dena didn’t have one,” he answered, confident.

  One eyebrow raised, she nodded. “Okay, then I need to find out about anyone she might have dated or slept with.”

  “No need.” He shook his head. “Between work and school, she didn’t have time. She would have told me if there was anyone special.”

  Making an exasperated sound, she grimaced. “Tyler, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but I’m pretty sure your sister isn’t a saint. This man who has her had to have met her somehow. I’m going to try and gather information to see if we can figure out who he is.”

  Chapter 5

  Tyler started to speak, then thought better of it. No doubt she was right. Not only was she pretty and socially active, but Dena was a healthy twenty-five-year-old. He shouldn’t be acting like the overprotective big brother, not now. Not only had he managed to get himself killed and leave her without any family, but clearly he hadn’t succeeded in teaching her to be careful.

  Unless, as Anabel said, the man who’d grabbed her had been someone she’d trusted.

  “You’re right,” he admitted. “But you have to consider that it could be a teacher, or a janitor, or even one of her coworkers.”

  “Or some guy she’d dated,” Anabel pointed out. “There are a lot of crazies masquerading as normal in the dating scene, let me tell you.”

  He cocked his head. “You’ve been dating?”

  “I tried. Once or twice—that was it. Just a month ago. I thought it might help me to, you know, get over David. After that, I gave up and deleted my profile from all the dating sites.”

  Jealousy stabbed him, completely unwarranted.

  “Good for you for trying,” he said, aware of the lie and feeling like a fool. “I think after eighteen months, Dave would approve of you getting back out there.”

  “No,” she said softly, her expression shutting down. “He wouldn’t. David was my mate. You were Pack. You know what that means. He’s the only one I will ever love.”

  Slowly, he nodded. “I do, though I’m not sure I believe in that particular myth.”

  “Myth?”

  “Yes. I honestly don’t know anyone who actually met their mate.”

  She pointed to her chest. “Now you do. Me.”

  Ignoring the emotions swirling inside him, he eyed her. “How did you know? I mean, we all have people we’re attracted to, even people we love. What made you think Dave was actually your mate?”

  “I didn’t just think it. I knew, the instant he kissed me.”

  He thought of what he’d learned from Juliet. “And Kane McGraw? Did you also know he was your mate?”
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  At his words, her eyes filled with tears. “I had a breakdown, Tyler. I wasn’t myself.” Holding herself stiffly, she turned away from him.

  Clearly, he’d gone too far. He’d realized it the instant he finished speaking. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just wanted to point out to you that it was possible for you to find love again.”

  Like with me. More foolishness, as he was nothing but a shade of a man. He waited for Anabel to shoot him down.

  But she didn’t respond. Instead she hurried away. A minute later, he heard the sound of her bedroom door closing.

  * * *

  Though initially she’d been hurt by Tyler’s words, the more she considered them, the more Anabel understood his thought process. Of course he’d doubt her conviction once he learned she’d erroneously dubbed a second man her true mate. As if she’d ever been unsure about David, or he about her.

  No, she’d been lonely, stumbling around close to the end of a ledge, and when she learned Kane McGraw had come back to town, she’d sought a way to end the dark cloud of loneliness. Back in school, she’d always had a crush on Kane, even dated him a few times despite his being several years older than her, and with the twisted logic of depression, she’d managed to convince herself that the impossible was real.

  When he rejected her, saying he loved another, it had been the final shove and she’d gone under. Her bewildered pain and her burning desire for vengeance had blinded her to the truth and to the light. In a moment of weakness, she’d let the darkness in and had nearly caused a good woman to lose her life. Worse, she’d later learned that Lilly Gideon, the woman Kane loved, had spent fifteen years imprisoned by her own father and his religious cult. She shuddered to think she’d nearly sent Lilly back to that awful life.

  After that, she’d lain low. Gradually recovering, aware no one in town would ever look at her the same way again.

  She’d made several clumsy attempts to make it up to Lilly McGraw, until finally the other woman had hugged her and told her to stop, that she forgave her. For that, Anabel had been grateful.

  Now, for the first time in a long while, Anabel had hope. Never once had she imagined she’d be given the chance to atone by saving Dena Rogers.