Desert Wolf

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

A shower would have been nice. Her skin and clothes were saturated with Grant’s scent. She smelled like sex. Like him. The fact that he was a few inches away from her at the moment didn’t help her concentration much, either. When Grant wasn’t looking, she gave him furtive glances.

  The guy looked like himself again…all bronze and brawn. His shirt, open in front due to the missing buttons, showed off his shape. Fair highlights in his auburn hair glinted in the moonlight each time the truck swept around a curve.

  Paxton rubbed her eyes and withheld a sigh, believing she had imagined the changes she had seen in Grant at the bunkhouse. However, his anxiety, so like a living thing, permeated the cab.

  Uncomfortable with the silence, she spoke. “Those ranchers wouldn’t actually shoot a person for trespassing, would they?”

  Grant’s attention remained on the road. “This idiot has been stealing their animals.”

  “He dares to come back for more?”

  “Seems so.”

  “What does he do with the cattle?” she asked.

  “He kills everything he steals.”

  Paxton sat back on the seat. “Why would he do that?”

  Ignoring Grant’s reluctance to answer this line of questioning, Paxton pressed on.

  “What did Shirleen mean when she suggested this guy might want to chew on other things for a change?”

  Grant’s gaze, drifting to her, felt like a tractor beam. Paxton made herself stay put.

  “Might as well cough up some real answers,” she said. “I’m nothing if not persistent, and I’m not going anywhere, it seems, except into the heartland of a bunch of secrets you don’t think I have any right to know.”

  Paxton met his eyes defiantly.

  “You have every right to those secrets,” he said. “It’s just that, as I said before, the timing sucks. Bad timing means it’s unlikely that you will believe anything I say. Until you experience some stuff for yourself, you will remain in the dark.”

  “That’s rather cryptic and pretty damn ominous, Grant.”

  “Yes, well, the world, it turns out, holds many more secrets than anyone would assume. Most people wouldn’t be ready for a close look at those secrets.”

  “As far as cryptic goes, you’re getting worse by the minute,” Paxton argued.

  “I get that.”

  “Yet here I am, in this car, on my way to Desperado, and you won’t trust me with a close look at whatever it is you’re hiding.”

  “What if you didn’t like what you saw?” he asked.

  “I believe that’s entirely up to me.”

  “All right. Let’s test the concept of sharing, shall we? How about if I start by telling you we believe the guy we’re searching for out here isn’t human.”

  “In my book, no one who kills animals for sport can be considered human.”

  Grant glanced away briefly before looking at her again. “That’s not what I mean.”

  “Okay. What do you mean?”

  “Not human, as in this guy is from another species altogether. One you’re not yet familiar with.”

  Paxton shook her head. “This is nowhere near Roswell, New Mexico, and you’re suggesting this guy is an alien?”

  She was ready to either laugh or jump out of this truck if Grant answered that question positively. It would definitely make her think twice about secretly desiring him on a level that could very well make her do something stupid. Again.

  He was curiously tight-lipped now.

  “You are going to have to explain. Especially now,” Paxton insisted.

  Without letting his gaze linger longer, Grant spoke in a voice that took on the aspect of a deep rumble.

  “The truth is that we aren’t sure what this guy is,” he said.

  “What he is?”

  “Signs suggest he might be a werewolf.”

  Paxton turned on the seat and answered with a not-so-hearty laugh that didn’t make her feel any better about what Grant had just told her. In fact, the grim expression on his handsome face let her know that he was deadly serious.

  Hell, if Grant believed in werewolves, he had to be out of his mind.

  *

  “You wanted in on our secrets,” Grant said, noting the way Paxton stared at him.

  She had no immediate response to that remark, so he went on.

  “Of course, this sucker might not turn out to be a Were. In that case, however, he’d have to be something dreadfully similar.”

  “Like a bear?” Paxton quipped.

  Her lips were as bloodless as her face. Grant had expected that kind of reaction and guessed the time had come for revealing a few more things. If the beast out there showed up at Desperado, Grant wasn’t sure how they could keep its existence hidden from Paxton. Sooner or later, she had to have more details about her species.

  “This guy is unusual,” he said. “Maybe he’s not an idiot all of the time, because I’ve heard him speak.”

  She said tentatively, “Then you’ve seen him up close?”

  Grant shook his head. “Never up close. I heard him speak to my mind.”

  Paxton’s hands were on the dashboard as if she was bracing herself for more bad news. “So you came up with an alternative to alien and made him the next best thing? A werewolf?”

  Her voice reflected her disbelief and also a few new suspicions about his state of mind.

  “You’re thinking I’m crazy,” Grant said.

  “Don’t you think what you’ve said warrants that?” she fired back.

  “As a matter of fact, I do not, unless you have an explanation for the reason that mark on your arm matches mine.”

  That was harsher than he had meant to be in breaking the news to Paxton about her hidden heritage, but it was too late to stop now. He had been driving slowly, with Ben and Shirleen in the back of the truck, and yet they would reach Desperado in a few more minutes. Time was short for any kind of believable explanation.

  Paxton’s voice was hushed. “What does the mark on my arm have to do with you imagining the guy you’re after is a werewolf? Come on, Grant. I can’t wait to hear what you’ll say next.”

  “It has plenty to do with what I’m trying to tell you. You see, if the guy we’re chasing is a Were, and using his abilities is how he has been avoiding capture, it’s almost certain he will have a mark like ours, too.”

  Paxton’s tone tightened. “Maybe you’d like to start making sense?”

  Grant reached out to touch her arm. “Only full-blooded werewolves have this mark. We’re all born with the same one.”

  Paxton’s hand again covered her upper arm, as if doing so might make the mark disappear. Her face had gone paler, and Grant wasn’t sure how that was possible.

  “It’s called a moon mark,” he explained, hoping she would listen to him. “The marks resemble the leftover scar of an old wolf bite for a reason. That reason harks back to the first bite a wolf gave to a susceptible human being centuries ago. A human whose genes carried a defect allowing a specific wolf virus to infect them.”

  She said in a clipped tone, “I’ve never even seen a wolf up close.”

  “You not only saw a wolf up close, you inherited some of its traits.”

  Her hand moved to the door handle as if she’d use it to escape what she had to assume was a conversation comprised of madness.

  Grant lowered his voice. “The only bear around here is the fact that you bear that white ring on your arm. You bear it because you are one of us, and a child of the moon.”

  “Get real, Grant,” she snapped, though it was no more than a whisper. “You believe you’re a…”

  “Yes. And so are you.”

  Completely speechless, Paxton stared at him with her lips slightly parted for an argument she couldn’t quite access.

  “We’re all werewolves here, Paxton. That’s why your father left Desperado to me. He knew Desperado was the perfect place for werewolves to find solace in a world where people would hunt us down for sport if that world became priv
y to the fact that Homo sapiens aren’t the only species on the planet.”

  All Paxton said was, “You’re actually serious.”

  “Completely,” he confirmed.

  “You’re a werewolf.”

  Grant nodded.

  “And Shirleen? How about the guy with her? Both of them are werewolves, too?”

  “They’re part of this pack, yes.”

  “Pack?”

  “A tight-knit group of…”

  “Don’t tell me. Werewolves?” she said.

  Grant waited for her to go on, sensing she had more to say. Paxton wasn’t taking this well, but who would? Who, outside of select insiders, could possibly have believed what he was asking her to believe?

  “Don’t you suppose I’d know if I was something like that?” she countered adamantly. “I mean, truly, Grant. This is absurd.”

  “I understand how it sounds, Paxton. And I know you have a hundred questions, which we will eventually get to. Until then, the quick fix to the question you just posed is to say that you obviously weren’t told about your background or your family’s special inheritance for a reason, and that omission was terribly lax on everyone’s part. Unheard-of, actually, if you want the truth. Hell, you’re worrying about the kind of inheritance that’s written on paper, when there’s been something so much more pressing in need of your attention.”

  She started to argue, then gave up in frustration.

  “You haven’t shape-shifted yet,” Grant continued. “That’s ground zero for belief in all of this. Holding your wolf back for so long is highly unusual for someone your age.”

  “I’m only twenty-six.”

  Grant nodded. “Most she-wolves transition at or around the age of sixteen. Earlier, if puberty hits before that.”

  She muttered, “She-wolf. That’s rich.”

  The conversation was far from over. Actually, it had just started, and wasn’t sitting well with Paxton. But they had reached the gate leading to Desperado, and two of his packmates stood beside the entrance.

  “I suppose those guys are werewolves, too?” Paxton’s tone dripped sarcasm, with a little fear thrown in.

  “As a matter of fact…” Grant started to say, but his remark was cut off when the two Weres guarding Desperado’s front gate whirled toward something Grant couldn’t see from the cab of the truck, and Ben and Shirleen jumped out of the back.

  “Damn it.” He opened the door, understanding the sudden directional shift, and muttered, “I’m hoping this guy is a werewolf, rather than some other rendition of the word beast,” sensing Paxton’s frozen reaction to those words.

  *

  Paxton sat without moving, fairly sure she had lost the ability to control her limbs. Several choice cuss words passed her lips when Grant left her to join the party at the gates. Not just any party. One for werewolves. A pack of werewolves. And according to Grant, she was one of them.

  Yeah. Right.

  She had made love to a madman and was trapped in his truck. If the other people in Grant’s little circle of friends also believed themselves to be Weres—as Grant had called them—she was in the middle of nowhere at the moment with a pack of crazies.

  Her next move?

  As she saw it, she could either play along and wait for Grant to take her back to the ranch, or borrow the blue truck and get the hell out of there before the craziness spread to her.

  Keys dangled in the ignition.

  Through the windshield, she saw that the two new guys by the gate were gesturing. Those guys looked like people. There was nothing furry about them. Everyone had turned in the direction they were alluding to with a series of hand gestures, possibly trying to pinpoint the location of some creature straight off the pages of mythology books. According to Grant, the grand-master madman, all of the people present believed they actually were furry on the inside.

  Shuddering at the thought, Paxton slid sideways a few inches at a time until she was behind the wheel. Turning the truck around to face the city wasn’t going to be easy, and maybe even impossible with Grant so close. Her only real option was to go forward and hope she could locate another way out of Desperado in the dark.

  She saw with some relief that the road into the old town was lit by small globes of light supplementing the light of a receding, nearly full moon. The outline of the open gates stood out, easy to see, as well as at least twenty feet of dirt road beyond them.

  Five people stood to the side of the gates, not far from the truck. They were ignoring her for the moment, their attention elsewhere. Would she be able to start the engine without those people stopping her from stepping on the gas?

  Have to try.

  She leaned forward. The keys felt warm to the touch.

  She wasn’t up for playing at being a goddamn werewolf, no matter how hard Grant tried to convince her.

  Now or never…

  Foot hovering over the gas pedal, Paxton turned the key in the ignition, thanking God the truck was an automatic. Grant turned his head to look at her with a puzzled expression on his devastatingly handsome face. The others with him glanced her way.

  Heart in her throat, hands shaking big-time on the steering wheel, Paxton hit the gas. The truck lurched forward, tires spinning and tossing up clods of dirt and dust. It was a powerful machine and well tuned. She was through the gate and heading for Desperado in seconds, distancing herself from the strangers and their oddball beliefs.

  Chapter 17

  Staying on the road was easier than Paxton had imagined. The last time she had come this way was on the back of her pony. That time, she also had been trying to distance herself from bad news.

  Now, as then, she was running away, seeking solace in the old ghost town. She had loved her father and Desperado…at least, that’s the way she remembered things looking back. Now, she was getting away from a man who tried to tell her she was a werewolf.

  Desperado’s outline appeared a short distance ahead. Paxton’s heart was heavy. Part of her had been left there years ago, along with more questions than Grant could possibly have answers for.

  She drove at a crawl through the town’s main street, surprised to see that the place wasn’t empty. Every curse word she had ever heard slipped from her lips in a long stream of syllables as Paxton processed the idea that the people gathered here weren’t ghostly apparitions, but quite possibly more of Grant’s werewolf cult.

  The old town called to her as she passed through, in the way it always had. History and age had been kind to the buildings, and Grant had mentioned making repairs.

  She had loved this place once and considered it her personal property. She had been familiar with each empty store and alleyway, and by the looks of things, not much had changed. As fate would have it, Desperado was never to be her personal property, because the town now belonged to someone else.

  Shirking the desire to stop and look around, Paxton wished she had arrived in different circumstances that would have allowed her to lay her hands on the old boards of the saloon. Strolling through the mining office and general store would have been like walking into the past. All of that was out of the question now that she was a fugitive for stealing Grant’s truck.

  The truck garnered stares as she rolled by the people on the street. Grant had been expected here. Seeing someone else at the wheel was a surprise for the onlookers.

  “See ya,” she whispered, passing the old hotel, unable to resist a quick peek at the place.

  No one stepped into her path or tried to hail her as she passed them. She’d have to pick up some speed soon. If Grant was in the kind of shape his body, with all that muscle, indicated, he might possibly be able to catch up with her before she left Desperado behind.

  She could add car theft to her list of accomplishments. But werewolf… Really?

  Arms aching from her tight grip on the wheel, she tried to rationalize that the mark on her arm had been caused by childhood inoculations. Tetanus? Smallpox vaccinations? Maybe she and Grant had experienced the
same kind of birth trauma, and the mark was indicative of that.

  Who knew why or how such things happened?

  Moon mark. Did she really care if birthmarks had a name?

  Yes. Damn it. All right. The similarity of those marks was one mystery too many.

  Desperado was behind her now and merely a series of dotted lights in the rearview mirror. There were no little light globes on this side of town. Darkness enveloped the truck. An alley of skeletal trees hampered what moonlight there was.

  Paxton could no longer see past the headlights, but if memory served, somewhere out here was the electrified fence marking the town’s boundary. With people in town tonight, that fence would be turned off. The truck was probably strong enough to barrel through a bunch of wire without too much damage.

  No one had chased her down. Grant hadn’t shown up. It could be that he was letting her go without a fuss, glad to be rid of Andrew Hall’s daughter and her endless queries. Possibly he was as sorry for what had happened in that bunkhouse as she was.

  Oh, yes, she was sorry.

  Sorry she had liked what they had done on that table. She was regretful over how badly she had instantly wanted more of the same, and that with everything that had happened since then, how suspicious she was of the way her body quaked each time Grant’s name crossed her mind.

  Thoughts about Grant dissipated suddenly, overpowered by a loud crashing sound. Paxton applied the brakes, nearly missing the tree that had fallen across the narrow, single-track road. Falling trees weren’t a rarity in the desert, given the parched state of their roots, but this was a holdup she didn’t need.

  The truck idled as she sat there, staring out, considering her options in light of this latest hindrance. Going around the tree was bound to be a terrible idea for the truck, given the tough landscape’s giant ruts and chasms, invisible in the dark. Without the truck, she’d have to walk, by herself, with no flashlight. Since there was no way she’d make it to the city, miles away, in any case, she’d have to go back to the old ghost town and face the consequences of running off with the truck. Maybe Grant would lock her up in Desperado’s jail and throw away the key.

  Something else that crossed her mind stopped her from getting out of the vehicle to see if she could budge the damn tree. The word beast resonated there, along with Grant’s explanation that they did not know for sure what category of beast their trespasser was.