by L. A. Banks
“You’re right, your hunches are accurate, Sasha. You need to know so you can beat them. They wanted to break your affiliation to any group but the military. On the project then, just as now, there were behavioral scientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and they wanted to create the ultimate fighting machine—a person with no sense of family or past, who only received a sense of community from the squad, which was designed like a pack so your natural instincts would be subject to the rules of the pack. But after years of debate I asked them to give me one subject as a control to the test . . . to see what would happen if that subject had a deep bond with someone in authority on the project. I begged them for you, because my heart was breaking.”
She simply stared at him. “All those people in my life worked for the project?”
He nodded.
“Even my neighbor . . . Mrs. Baker?”
“Special Agent Baker.”
“And Max knew.” She stared at the only person she’d ever trusted, watching her world turn to demon dust.
“No, not all of it . . . don’t lay this at his feet. He’s only three years older than you. This was the business of sick men while you both were babies.”
“But he knew some of it.” She looked out of the window at the snowcapped mountains and blue, blue sky. The urge to run made her muscles twitch.
“Some. So very little it’s negligible.”
“I’m not going back, except to rip the general’s throat out.”
“Two things,” Xavier Holland said carefully. “We have a leak in the department. I don’t know who, but we do. Someone has always stayed one step ahead of me after I did the sample switch. If they ever truly found out that your DNA is different, I’d tell them that it was the natural absorption and mutation process. That you had adapted to naturally heal yourself, just like sickle cell was a natural defense against malaria . . . Your blood changed. But be clear, if you go directly after the general, they’ll hunt you down like an animal. I didn’t love you this hard and go through all these machinations to let them have you.”
He let out a slow breath when she didn’t answer. “So, if we have a leak and this thing goes higher than the general, that also means the technology to do this type of science is being brokered on the black market. You can escape, but how many genetic mistakes will they make and lives will they ruin before they achieve the goal of creating the ultimate killing machines? And what will that do to the natural hunters of this demon plague if the virus proliferates? That’s my second question. Shadow wolves are nearly extinct. Let a lab screw up, Sasha, or some terrorist release a biohazard on a populace not caring about the results, and what do you think will happen?”
“So what am I supposed to do? Sit around like some pawn and let them continue to control my life?” Incredulous, she headed for the door.
“No. You’re supposed to get to the root of this poison in our system, bring all of the bastards down, and blow this operation up—from the inside out. You’re supposed to work with every source, resource, and natural advantage you have at your disposal. You’re supposed to play them, like they played you, gathering data, thwarting them without them knowing you did it, recording their conversations like they did yours—building an ironclad internal affairs case, while fighting this scourge on the outside. You’re supposed to let Max work the outside while you work the inside, sharing resources and stopping this shit from spreading. Something was creating infected werewolves in record numbers on this side of the demon dimensions, as well as brokering the technology we foolishly developed in a lab, and then all of a sudden it went underground like it’s waiting for something—why, who, we don’t know.”
Xavier Holland talked with his hands, and all calm evaporated from him as his pained gaze sought her forgiveness and understanding. “Sasha, you’re supposed to keep Woods and Fisher hidden and working to feed you leads. The brass doesn’t know they’re not dead. Right now, for all intents and purposes, they’re ghosts.”
“And I’m supposed to just keep on going like a machine, forget how my whole life has been manipulated? Is that it? I’m supposed to be okay with all of this?”
“No. You’re not supposed to forget,” he said, his voice becoming gentle. “You’re supposed to be outraged and hurt and angry, but not to be stupid and give up, baby. No. That, you’re not supposed to do. You’re supposed to get mad, but damn sure even. I’m an old man—soon new scientists will take my place . . . and they’ll keep coming, updating the work, and screwing over lives until you can core the apple.”
Winded from his impassioned speech, he walked over to the door and flung it open. “You can hate me for my part in this until the end of time. I can’t blame you. But if you give up on yourself and let them take you down easy, that, above all things, would kill me, because I love you.”
CHAPTER 10
SHE’D BEGUN RUNNING to escape, running to clear her head, running to feel clean, running to get the muck and mire of filthy politics and dirty deals off her. Running to release Rod’s soul from her heart, running to keep the sobs at bay. No matter what, the man hadn’t deserved to die like that. No matter what, her parents shouldn’t have been slaughtered by a botched experiment. No matter what, Woods and Fisher shouldn’t be stranded and exiled. No matter what, she should never have been born.
Shadows chased her, taunted her, eluded her, until she found a lonely plateau to sink down upon and sob. There was no lie in Doc’s eyes, no fraud in his tone. She understood why he’d done what he did . . . but, damn, who were these people? What gave them the right? She cried so hard that she began to dry-heave.
She lay in the snow, breathing hard, slowly calming, and closed her eyes. For a long while she allowed the passing clouds to blanket her with shadows, thinking of all the laughs she had had with Rod and the guys over pitchers of beer, playing video games, training . . . and more private moments that seemed so far away now. Childhood memories, good and bad, slipped through her mind, made hazy and color-muted by time and selective memory.
Now the only thing that was real was any time spent with Holland. She wondered how people like the general slept at night. What might she have been if she were a regular kid, not just an experiment? What if she’d been raised in a real family . . . But then again, what was that? A real family.
She thought about Woodsy and Fisher. Out there somewhere, alone. They had watched the Butler they all knew die, had watched their own government blow the whole squad away. She was all they had left and, damn it, they were still a pack. She had to find her men. They were the only family, save Doc and Hunter, that she had now.
Sasha sat up and wiped her nose with the back of her hand, face numb. Just as importantly, she had to find out who was pulling the strings. She looked off in the distance toward the mountains and thought of Max’s proposal to join forces. There was no going back to the way things were before, now that she knew. Walking away from the challenge also wasn’t an option—she’d never be able to let it go.
This horror couldn’t be allowed to get out of a lab.
“SHE’LL COME BACK, son,” Silver Hawk said quietly, gathering a blanket around him as he sat on the ground beside Max.
They both stared at the sky while sharing the snow-covered plateau.
“Maybe I should go find her—storm’s coming.”
Silver Hawk shook his head. “No. This pain is deep. This pain is personal. Let it purge on its own . . . like snake bite, she has to draw the poison out. The storm will not come for several days.”
“I should have told her what little bit I knew . . . maybe—”
“It was not your secret to tell.”
Silver Hawk lit his pipe and drew a long drag off it, releasing the smoke with his eyes closed. “I will say this, however. I’m glad we had these years to be close.”
“What are you saying?” Max could feel his pulse kick up a notch.
Silver Hawk took another labored drag from his pipe. “I am saying that the Great Spirit has both blessed me
with a grandson I can be proud of, and after all these years, has given him a beautiful life-mate who lights his eyes, makes him pure wolf . . . this girl who is family of my good doctor friend. I can die in peace save for one thing.”
“Pop, cut it out,” Max said, teasing him with the private pet name that he’d used for him as a kid, heart racing. He didn’t have it in him to admit that Sasha hadn’t committed yet to be his life-mate. The thought still stung. “You’re not dying. You’re already over a hundred and fifty and still going strong.”
“True, but I grow weary of this plane . . . I want to go to the shadow caves where the wall drawings dance at night. I miss your grandmother, my mate. I see her in visions and remember her beauty. There’s not much left for me to do now. You are a gifted seer, one day the truth visions will come to you, if they haven’t already. The clan is going to dust; the ways of the wolf are no more. New things replace what we’ve done for centuries in the old way. I must rest.”
“You’re talking in riddles to avoid talking to me straight.” Max forced himself to smile, but it slid away from his face as his grandfather’s composure remained somber. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
Silver Hawk closed his eyes and released a stream of smoke into the pristine mountain air. “It’s human, weak, I would have said years ago. But now my friend Xavier has shown me frightening strength. To expose one’s throat is to accept death, to expose one’s heart is to accept annihilation at the hands of another.”
“Whatever you have to tell me, you’ll still be my grandfather.”
Strained silence made the whipping winds seem to howl a forlorn call. The vastness of the Uncompahgre, where each leaf and twig it contained was as carefully created and individual as a fingerprint, proved to Max that the Great Spirit cared for everything woven into the intricate design of life—even him. His grandfather had taught him that. Everything was part of the tapestry, part of the grand design. He wasn’t sure what was troubling the old man, but he knew his grandfather spoke profound truth when he talked of exposing one’s heart as the closest thing to annihilation one could get. Sasha had made him know that to be true; he’d never felt so vulnerable in his life.
“When I look at Sasha, I think of your grandmother, how she made me feel,” Silver Hawk said after a long while. “Thinking of her makes me think of your mother. I should have understood how she felt about your father, and never begrudged her that happiness.”
“Because he wasn’t full shadow,” Max said quietly, understanding how deep-seated the old clan prejudices were. “But that was a long time ago, and you never held it against me . . . you defended me, in fact. We grow.”
“Yes, even in old age, we grow. But I was younger and angrier, then. I hadn’t had a child in my arms to make me know complete selflessness. Your mother, I never raised. I was a warrior, protecting our lands and our ways . . . your grandmother’s duty was to raise her and protect her, and to initiate her in the ways of the female shadows. I doted on your mother, but I missed all the joys and nuances of actually raising my daughter. That was a time when we didn’t know better—we were male. Don’t make that mistake.”
Relief wafted through Max. If his grandfather was going to give him a lesson about being a good mate, then that was all the old man had to say. The theatrical buildup was completely unnerving, especially all the talk about getting old and dying.
“I’ll be a part of my kids’ lives, if I’m blessed to have any,” Max said with a half-smile. “Is that what all of this is about—you want me to hurry up and make you some great-grandchildren before you supposedly die?” Max chuckled when his grandfather puffed his pipe harder.
“Would that be so much to ask?” Silver Hawk looked at him with a sideways glance, his expression peevish.
Max stared at the horizon and tried to suppress a grin.
His grandfather looked at him straight on and set his pipe down slowly. “Her scent will change, son.”
“I know, I know, yeah, all right.”
“You’ve—”
“We don’t have to talk about this. Doc seemed real upset, maybe we should—”
“You need to know,” his grandfather said flatly. “She will feel like the consistency of honey—thick. Not slippery.”
Max looked away at the horizon, jaw pulsing. “We really don’t have to have this conversation, Pop. In fact, I don’t even know why we are. I just met her.”
“She will not be able to hold back her wolf . . . it will show in her mouth . . . her teeth. Her eyes . . . her hair will lengthen through your fingers. But her scent will drag you across the mountains.”
“Okay, okay, I get it.”
“Did that happen?”
“No.” Max stood and paced.
His grandfather looked up at him. “By next full moon. She’s close . . . because Fox Shadow became foolish and jealous of you in her presence and your wolf was uncontrollable. I am glad she makes you happy . . . last night your howl bounced off the mountains and I was glad. If you are not ready for a family, you should take forest medicine. I have remedies.” The old man chuckled softly and drew on his pipe as Max looked away. “It has been a long time since I have gone to the forest for such herbs and berries, but some things a man always remembers. Forget the sheep bellies . . . or now it is man-made plastic—I don’t know—latex . . . what is it called? Condoms.” He shook his head. “They don’t work on a full moon. You will not be in your right mind. This I know.”
Max walked away from his grandfather. “Can we change the subject?”
“I will also make her an amulet from our clan. The other she-shadows shunned her in complete offense because she is new, not purebred, and so near her time . . . and yet, she has completely stolen your attention.”
“Yeah, even though they never wanted me.” Max shook his head and chuckled, peering over the edge of the plateau. “Women.”
“Not true, they wanted you more than you know . . . but were afraid, had been told stories by well-meaning parents. I was like them once. Those parents.”
“No you weren’t, Pop. You were never like them.”
“I was, and your father died because of it,” Silver Hawk said, standing. He walked to the edge of the place where they’d rested, and stared down the steep plateau wall into a ravine. “I have lived a long time and I am ready to release the stone from my heart. Maybe that is why I chose to avoid this part of our talk by thinking of your future with the new she-shadow. This deep shadow of my soul I never wanted to think on again.”
“You’re back to scaring me, Pop,” Max said, gently drawing the old man away from the edge of the plateau. He looked over the side of the endless drop. There wasn’t a shadow for a thousand feet, and Silver Hawk wasn’t a young pup.
“I was proud back then,” his grandfather admitted, lifting his chin, his profile regal. “We come from a line of great hunters. Our exploits have been told in legends and painted on the rocks around the world. And my daughter, my heart, the replica of my life-mate . . . she chose a lover who was a beta male, mixed blood.” He closed his eyes and let the wind lacerate his face. “What I never told you was that when I saw her left in the snow, pregnant, savaged, her body torn limb from limb because she fought valiantly . . . and he couldn’t defend her but was alive and cowering in the shadows . . .”
Silver Hawk walked off a bit. “It should have been his body ripped to shreds. You should have been born without worry of the taint. You should have never experienced the life of hardship you did. My heart was left buried in that snow. My heart was torn out each time they shunned my grandson. My heart breaks now as I tell you that the human side of me, the side that is weak, picked up the shotgun and shot your father at point-blank range—and I refused to let you take his name. The clan didn’t impose that sanction, I did. You deserved more than that—you are better than that. But I had no right. Let me go to the hunting grounds of the ancestors . . . you will leave me, so there is no more reason to live.”
Stunned, Max held his g
randfather’s sleeve, knowing that in this fragile moment the old man was not above pitching himself over the edge of the cliff. Wetness stung his face in freezing streams, but his face burned, his ears burned. His grandfather’s image was blurry . . . his life’s story was blurry. All this time he’d been told that his father had died heroically trying to protect his mother, and was mauled to death. There had been two beasts hunting and pillaging in tandem. One slaughtered his parents, the other took off, and the pack gave chase and many more died.
His grandfather had shot his dad at point-blank range on the battlefield?
Being the son of a coward was worse than being tainted by a werewolf. Max began walking, pulling his grandfather away from the plateau’s edge, his eyes distant and blind. He could feel the elderly man struggling to be turned loose, but that wasn’t something he was willing to do until they were far away from the edge.
“This is my choice!” his grandfather shouted.
Max just stared at him for a moment. “And I don’t get a choice this time around, either?” He released his grandfather’s arm and watched the old man huff a bit before settling down. “I’m not leaving you, Pop.”
“How can you forgive me? We are warriors. I stole from you and betrayed your trust.”
Max shook his head and swallowed hard. “You reacted in battle . . . if it were my daughter . . .” He looked away as images of his mother’s desecrated body stabbed into his mind and made him shut his eyes. “If it were Sasha . . . I’d kill the man who was supposed to be guarding her, but didn’t. If he hid and allowed her to be ripped to shreds while carrying my baby, I would kill him.”
His grandfather’s gaze burned with fury from the memory, but there was deep compassion in his eyes along with tears.
“Silver Shadow,” Max said, calling his grandfather by his pack hunting name. “It was not your human side that was weak, but your wolf side that was strong. You did not steal my father from me; you kept me from being stolen by shame. You did not betray me, you protected me. The taint of a coward is worse in our world than the taint of a beast. You raised me without that horror. So, don’t die yet. You have to live to see your great-grandchildren.”
