Bad Blood

by L. A. Banks

  He kept her pinned beneath him for a moment, both of them breathing hard and laughing.

  “We’re invisible, you know . . . even right out here—as long as the shadow of this tree doesn’t move.”

  “That was incredible!” She was laughing, crying, panting, and holding him tightly. “Hunter, it was—”

  “The sexiest thing a woman has ever done with me in my entire life,” he said, and then kissed her hard. “Wait until we’re in the mountains . . . the hawk shadows, the eagles—breathtaking. The streams, shadows of fish in the lakes . . . you can feel the spirit of moving water . . . the towering strength of the great cliffs. Oh . . . baby . . . you just don’t know . . .”

  He’d kissed her hard while tugging at her sweater. She felt the hard press of his erection and felt a fire ignite within her.

  She lifted her head when a car careened into the driveway. “We have to get up, this is so—”

  “They can’t see us, Sasha,” he murmured against her throat, practically dry-humping her in the snow.

  She looked at him, looked at the highway, looked at the cars in the lot.

  “They really can’t,” he said, his nuzzles growing in aggression.

  He leaned in for another kiss, but she flat-palmed him with a smile.

  “I guess I believe you, but as long as I can see them, then that’s a problem.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “SHE NEVER CALLED,” Xavier Holland said, coming into the oblong-shaped room of the cabin and sitting down on the dirt floor next to his friend. He gathered the Indian blankets tighter around his nude form as the thick, stone-heated air weighed on his skin and oppressed his lungs.

  “We will sweat and come to an answer sent by the Great Spirit and the ancestors. She is learning about the other realms that exist and about the way of the wolf in her own time. Do not worry.”

  Familiar with the sweat lodge divination process, Xavier Holland waited. Firelight danced, sending leaping shadows against the mural-decorated, mud-packed walls. Medicine wheels and dream catchers adorned with eagle feathers framed them. The dim interior light cast a golden-red glow to their skins as they sat around the center fire waiting for a vision.

  His dear friend knew what was at stake, understood what was happening . . . had predicted this outcome even before Rod had been born. Smoldering sage, regret, and tobacco smoke caused Xavier’s eyes to water as his friend of over a quarter century scooped up sacred water from a wide-mouthed urn using a polished turtle’s shell, and splashed the glowing rocks that were heated by burning logs. Instantly a sizzling, sputtering sound like the hissing of an angry rattlesnake echoed through the small, private sweat lodge. Smoke billowed up through a conical opening in the roof.

  “She will come.” Silver Hawk’s gaze searched the doctor’s face. The sureness of his tone made both men stare at the circle that had been drawn in the middle of the floor.

  “You had a vision?”

  The elder Ute shaman nodded. “She will come home to herself. That which we had hoped for as old men will come to pass. The time is near . . . very, very near. Soon she will learn the politics of the Federation of Clans and the other ruling bodies that make up the grand Council. You will not have to teach her this. She is with my grandson. Two wolves are at play; one midnight, one silver— this is your Sasha. My grandson’s eyes are different. I must make her an amber ward. Of all the females, she is the only one blind to his blood taint and would shadow dance with him.”

  “She was not natural born. The others might not accept her.” Xavier’s gaze searched the shaman’s.

  Old fear seized him. Xavier tried to keep a calm exterior before his serene, meditative friend, but his insides roiled with the rise of harsh memories. In his mind, Sasha was still that young, angry adolescent who had been abused in the one place he thought might be her haven: school. He had gotten a phone call that no parent wanted to get. “Dr. Holland, we need you to come to the school. We’re afraid there’s been an incident.” He had rushed down to the school, his heart in his throat. When he had stepped into the infirmary, he saw Sasha sitting on one of the beds, a soft gray blanket draped over her hunched shoulders, her face dirty, scraped, and her lip bloody. She had other bruises and scrapes on her arms and legs, and her blue, white, and gray uniform had been dirty and torn. She had been drugged by some girls as part of a vicious prank and left to be molested under the bleachers by members of the lacrosse team who’d been complicit with the scheme. He had stared into her huge, questioning, tear-filled gray eyes and had felt fury . . . and fear.

  What did one tell a child who had been hurt by the world, simply because they’d sensed her difference? How did one create a place of safety and teach that child right from wrong when the most privileged had so horribly broken the rules? What would he tell her now as an adult? Her top commanders, men of privilege and power, had again broken the rules and destroyed their once-firm covenant of honor. What in God’s name would he tell his Sasha?

  Trying to quell the demons in his mind, his only comfort then, like now, was when Sasha had told him she’d prevailed. The athletes who had attempted to rape her under the bleachers had been sent to the hospital. Wherever she was now, albeit on the run, she would survive. He had to hold on to that hope and he clung to that as though it were a mental life raft—Sasha was a survivor.

  The only reason she hadn’t killed anyone in the group that had attacked her as a kid was because there’d been the date rape drug in her system that had made her sluggish. Even with that, she was too strong for them to hold her down and have their way. But once she finally backed the arrogant young aggressors up and found out that one of their girlfriends had slipped something into her drink at lunch, there was no stopping her. The main culprit behind the scheme, a senator’s daughter, required reconstructive dental surgery—but given the circumstances the authorities didn’t expel Sasha. Doing so would have opened a whole can of worms. Instead they ostracized her and that had been another kind of hell for her.

  It just wore on his soul that, even in the shadow wolf clans, his Sasha would again be the newcomer . . . considered different, just like before . . . and he’d have to put his arms around her and explain how and why she’d become that way.

  The thing that chilled him was that this time, he’d finally have to tell her the truth. The full truth.

  “My grandson has broader understanding than the others. This is why he leads. His difference has taught him much humility for those considered outcasts. In that regard, he is like Chief Ouray, who, as you know, spoke many tribal languages of our people, and also your English and Spanish. The Great Chief could cross boundaries and bring bands and tribes together. Hunter will do this with the shadow clans.”

  Xavier Holland looked into the fire. He didn’t want to show disrespect by reminding his friend that Chief Ouray’s wife had almost been lynched by settlers who wanted revenge on him, and that, ultimately, the treaties the U.S. Government made with him were betrayed.

  “Diplomacy will prevail.” Silver Hawk lifted a long, tobacco-stuffed pipe and drew on it slowly, causing the eagle feathers attached to it to sway. He’d spoken as though listening to the doctor’s innermost thoughts, and yet his composure remained serene. “We must reveal the truth soon, before the children come to believe less of us.”

  Xavier nodded, but his thoughts were far away. “You have not told Hunter how his father died yet, then?”

  There was a long pause, a stillness in the room that made the smoke’s movement seem that of an uncoiling serpent.

  “Have you told Sasha how her parents truly died?” Xavier’s friend asked, no hint of judgment in his tone, just a question.

  “No,” Xavier Holland said after another long pause. “And there’s another complication. I have two additional men to bring in. Right now, they’re at risk.”

  Again the elder shaman nodded. “We have shadow wolf clans in Europe, Asia, and North America keeping the demon doors guarded. We can send messengers to assist your
stranded men with money, identification, food . . . to bring them through the old route home.”

  “The old Native American passages, across the Bering Strait?”

  “Yes, my friend. The route that bonded us to where my people are your people. We have all walked from the mother continent where the father sky made mother earth conceive humankind.”

  Intense heat combined with stress made the doctor rub his palms down his face. “I have to get word to Woods and Fisher so they don’t attack those you send to help them, don’t think they’re being set up. Right now, they could be anywhere over there.”

  “Our wolf clans are excellent trackers and will find your men. They cannot overpower the wolves that will find them, and in due time, through demonstration, your stranded men will come to trust their guides.”

  “Across Asia, through Russia, in Siberian temperatures, across to Alaska?”

  “The oldest walking route. Our wolves know this well and will cover much ground. We have dog-sled teams and nomads who live off the land as in times of old. But my advice is to keep them in Canada, Yukon Territory, and let it seem as though they’d died during their last mission. This would be the fox’s advice. Let them remain as ghosts for those who have tried to kill them.”

  Both men sat quietly for a long while, their aged, nude bodies sweat-slicked beneath elaborately woven blankets.

  “You should prepare those who seek Sasha’s return. A fox’s wisdom is needed there as well. It is in her nature to gnaw off her own paw if trapped, rather than submit to being domesticated. Thus, give her the shadow wolf’s mission so that she does not feel trapped; bring a wise treaty between what your world wants her to do and what our world needs her to do . . . and what her inner wolf will ultimately demand that she do.”

  The doctor nodded, sweat running off the bridge of his nose as he looked at his serene friend. In his world, however, treaties were always violated. Yet, just like in the past, he had few alternatives but to strike a deal with the general and hope that it held. Sitting next to his old friend and counselor, he reflected knowing that the Ute people, like so many others, had been in this position, too, with dire results. Sadly, history was repeating itself.

  Currently, it was a matter of blind faith. That was all either of them had to lean on. Silver Hawk had led him right thus far. So had his quiet entreaties to heaven above.

  Staring at Silver Hawk’s long, snow-white braids that were wrapped in silver and leather bands and the way his ruddy, lined face seemed as ancient as the mountains, Xavier Holland marveled at the spiritual gifts that modern science still couldn’t fully comprehend. Despite the abuse, the theft of fifteen million acres of Ute lands in Colorado alone, and a violent relocation to Utah for most of that tribe under a history of pure slaughter, genocide, the people still had a serenity that went beyond what anyone could fathom. He wondered what was more evil—men who stole land and broke treaties, wiping out entire groups of people, or the demon species they now hunted?

  Like him, his long-dead friend Dr. Zang Chen had understood the blend of mystical, spiritual, to the scientific . . . just as his bayou people understood roots and the other side long before computers and scientific instrumentation could measure alpha and beta brain waves. Respect for the environment, and respect for what was naturally occurring in nature—that was the bedrock of all original peoples. Harmony, coexistence, not conquest and conquer. How would they survive going up against the resources of the general?

  The general didn’t understand. There were different dimensions of reality, places where different intelligences existed, places yet to be explored. Then there were demon doors . . . places that every human culture since the dawn of time instinctively, rightfully, had set up barriers against. All of it, and the choice about what to explore and what to leave as one found it, was a matter of respect.

  Xavier Holland studied his friend. Silver Hawk’s head was held high, his dark, liquid brown eyes gazing at a point beyond his sight into the vast unfathomable realm where seers go. Xavier Holland conferred the utmost respect to the process of divining the truth.

  It was said that it took an honest man to draw an honest answer from the cast bones. If that were so, and he believed it to be, then going to the one person as vested in the outcome of Sasha’s well-being as he was, was the only way he could seek the truth.

  Xavier Holland stood after a long, silent while. More than an hour had passed though it seemed like just a few minutes.

  “She will come home before the storm does. The storm is a good omen from the Great Spirit. It will slow down men who do not understand the Great Sky.”

  Xavier Holland nodded and quietly withdrew from the sacred circle, leaving the heavy-lidded Silver Hawk in private contemplation. But first a preemptive strike was in order. Something that would make the general need Sasha.

  Thoughts crowded the doctor’s mind as he walked the length of his friend’s small home, and entered his room. He picked his unmarked cell phone up off the dresser, sat down on a hard chair in the sparsely furnished, utilitarian room, and stared at the second hand on his watch.

  With his thumb he punched in the code-red emergency number that would put him through to the general. It would also ensure he’d be traced. That part wasn’t important. He wouldn’t be on the telephone long enough for that.

  “This is Xavier,” he said the moment the call connected with the general’s command post. Not giving them time to respond, he talked quickly, firmly, and without any waver or hesitancy in his voice. “Please let the general know that after Butler, I needed a break, had to clear my mind over the weekend. I’m on vacation in the mountains but there’s a storm approaching. I’m coming home before the weather gets bad. Oh, and I forgot my damned phone and had to buy a cheap one on the road. And the signals up here are weak. You’re dropping out as we speak.”

  “Doctor, sir, please stay on the line and give us your location. The general—”

  “Hello? You’re breaking up. Hello? Listen, I’ve been in communication with Lieutenant Sasha Trudeau. She’s all right, no sign of a Turn. The lieutenant simply went on leave to clear her head and grieve the loss of her friends, her unit. She’s running scared, however, based on what she recently saw at Captain Butler’s, and has taken off to pursue a hot lead, Stateside. She’s on to a trail, here, in North America—Rocky Mountain area. Monday, when she reports in, we need her data . . . Hello? . . . Hello? I’m losing you . . . Hello? Listen, she was on to something big.”

  He ended the call, then simply sat and looked out at the majestic mountains.

  SASHA PULLED INTO a parking spot in the Wal-Mart lot, turned off the car, and looked at Hunter.

  Part of her wanted to throttle him just to get the amused expression off his face, another part of her wanted to climb across the seat and straddle him. He made her crazy, plain and simple. His clothes were half ripped, his pants hanging dangerously askew. The bungee cord that was threaded through his belt loops would keep them up, but there was no keeping his erection behind the shredded flaps of fabric.

  “Okay, here’s the plan,” she said, fighting laughter. “I go in, you stay put. I bring you some jeans and some grub, then we motor.”

  “I’ll be bored,” he said like a disgruntled child. “I’m good, Sasha. They won’t see me.”

  “Put your wolf back in the cave and then I’d consider it, but not while you’re saluting me in the freaking parking lot!”

  He leaned his head on the steering wheel and breathed deeply. “I just need a moment.”

  “Stay,” she said, laughing, then jumped out of the truck.

  Truthfully, she needed a little space, a little normalcy— and what better place to find it than in Wal-Mart?

  Being a shadow wolf was not normal.

  Chasing werewolves for the government was not normal.

  Meeting a man who made you wet from leaping into the shadow of an eighteen-wheeler was not normal!

  God bless the elderly man who’d just said, “Wel
come to Wal-Mart.”

  That was normal.

  Tears stung Sasha’s eyes for some unknown reason. She was sure that she was losing her mind. Out of nowhere a pang of loneliness stabbed her in the chest. What had happened to her guys? Why did Rod have to turn into a beast? Why was she running from her home and career with some unknown shadow wolf guy she’d just slept with? Had she freakin’ gone insane? Had she had a psychotic break with reality?

  She grabbed a cart. She needed to find Doc, figure out what had happened. This shadow wolf thing was creepy, very weird, too seductive . . . what if it was all part of the going-werewolf stage?

  Mentally focusing on the task at hand, she shoved every question to the back of her mind. Survival training kicked in. Right now she and Max needed the essentials. Right now in Delta, Colorado, snow hadn’t hit the ground yet, but as they climbed up into the Uncompahgre area, which was two hundred and fifty-three miles past Delta, there would be drastic weather change. They needed down coats, gloves, hats, long johns, jeans, sweaters, underwear, socks, prepaid cell phones, hiking boots, blankets . . . rope, matches, dried foodstuff, flashlights, bottled water. In ten minutes her cart was full. Damn, what size was the man? Extra large.

  She stared at the men’s jeans for a second and then rubbed her palms down her face. From the corner of her eye she glimpsed the men’s dressing room and then shook her head. Thoroughly embarrassed, she stalked over to a shadowy area and folded her arms over her chest.

  “Fluorescent light is a real bitch,” a deep male voice rumbled.

  “I thought we agreed—”

  “I wanted something to eat . . . they have hot dogs and—”