Silver Collar

by Gill McKnight

  Synopsis

  Luc Garoul is outlawed and out of control. The Garouls have set their best hunters after her before she self-destructs and takes the whole pack with her. But will they reach her in time? A more sinister predator has Luc in her crosshairs—a hunter as cunning and unforgiving as her prey.

  Twenty years ago, Emily Johnston’s father drowned in the Silverthread River, and no one in the town of Lost Creek believes it was an accident. For years, Emily has been spying on the Garouls. She has some ideas of her own as to what they really are. Now her chance has come. A lone Garoul has crossed her path, and Emily is determined to avenge her father. Emily is a strong and skilled hunter. And she has a silver collar.

  Fourth in the Garoul series.

  Silver Collar

  Brought to you by

  eBooks from Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com

  eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

  Please respect the rights of the author and do not file share.

  Silver Collar

  © 2012 By Gill McKnight. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-815-5

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Edition: December 2012

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editor: Cindy Cresap

  Production Design: Susan Ramundo

  Cover Design By Sheri (GraphicArtist2020@hotmail.com)

  By the Author

  Falling Star

  Green Eyed Monster

  Erosistible

  Cool Side of the Pillow

  The Garoul Series:

  Goldenseal

  Ambereye

  Indigo Moon

  Silver Collar

  Acknowledgments

  With love and gratitude to Cate, Cindy K, Jove, and Jo, without whose help and enthusiasm this book would have been done in half the time.

  And to my Eds—Cindy, of the infinite deadlines, and Stacia, the immovable object, always wonderful people to work with. Thank you.

  Dedication

  For Louis, with love, Mum x.

  Chapter One

  Luc Garoul squatted under the crab apple tree and watched the lights in the single story farmhouse go out one by one. First the kitchen light, then the living room. She waited until only a yellow oblong of light from a bedroom window poured out onto the yard. With a sigh, she settled in for a little longer. She needed the adults to be sound asleep.

  Her stomach gurgled with hunger. She inserted a claw into her wet, bubbling nostril and examined the mucus she withdrew. It was clotted green and streaked with blood. Not good. Her head felt thick and her left ear buzzed with fluid gathering on her eardrum.

  She poked at the gutted carcass beside her. She hated domestic cat meat; it was stringy and foul tasting. She had slit this one open out of boredom. Good thing she hadn’t gorged on it despite her hunger; its kidneys were rancid. Surprising, as it was a young cat, no more than a kitten really. She flicked the little bell on its collar making it tinkle and hoped it was a much-loved pet.

  The bedroom light went out. Luc blinked in the darkness, her perfect night vision adjusting at once to the pitch-dark. Heavy cloud blanked out the stars and the sky hung low and foreboding over the fields. This farm grew wheat, hay, and sunflowers. No animal husbandry at all. That was very disappointing. She was on the run, hunted and famished, and she begrudged the farmer his lack of livestock. It would have been so much easier to pick off a calf or pig than go to all this trouble. Her ears flattened and she growled in discontent. She didn’t have time to sit around waiting as her hunger and bitterness grew. She stood and stretched out her cramped muscles. It had been a long wait.

  Her keen hearing picked out the dogs prowling back and forth in their run. There were two of them, young and unsure, whimpering in agitation. Earlier, when they were out with the farmer, she had slipped into their run and urinated on their bedding. Now they were cowed by her predator’s scent and could do no more than whine in misery all night.

  Luc trod through the family vegetable garden. Her huge paws flattened the leafy heads of beet and potato. She knew which window she wanted. She had been watching it all evening. The pink curtains were pulled tight. A picture of a pony was stuck to the glass pane beside a spangled wind chime. She needed that window to open just a crack. Enough to let her claws slide under the sill and force it all the way up. She lifted the collar and tinkled the little bell.

  Meow. She mimicked a cat to perfection. Meow.

  She sank to her haunches under the window and waited. A second later, a bedside lamp suffused the room with a soft pink glow. Luc smacked her lips in satisfaction.

  “Tinker? Is that you?” a little girl’s sleep-filled voice called out. “Tinker?”

  Luc shrunk into the shadows and listened as small, clumsy fingers fumbled with the window latch.

  “Tinker? You’re a naughty kitty. You know you’re not allowed out after dark.”

  The hinges squeaked as the window opened. Luc reached out. She knew what to do. A single fore claw to pierce the throat and rip apart the vocal cords. The rest of her claws would hook her muted victim under the chin, up into her mouth cavity. Then Luc would drag the child out by her face.

  Her father should have kept livestock.

  The air thrummed. It rasped around her like a harsh breath. Luc fell to the ground, instinct throwing her onto her belly. Wooden splinters blasted over her. Inches above her head, an arrow shaft sat embedded in the house’s cedar siding.

  Luc lurched forward in a hunched run. She zigzagged past the vegetable garden into the cover of the orchard. She didn’t need to look back to see the arrow barb glinting in the pink bedroom light. She knew it was there, and she knew it was silver. She heard the sting of it whistling toward her. Now all she could do was run. Run from the arrow, run from the hunter on the other end of the crossbow—

  Luc jerked awake, her legs scrabbling in the dirt, running at full force even as the dream disintegrated around her. She blinked and finally stilled. Her heart pounded in a sickening, irregular rhythm. She was flat on her back. Overhead, stars shone with sharp-edged indifference. The night was frigid and unforgiving, at its blackest with dawn a long way off.

  She was in human form, naked, and shaking with cold and shock. Pine needles prickled her back and matted in her hair. Her chest heaved, and she coughed up thick wads of phlegm. She was ill and frightened, and the dream had terrified her.

  Luc’s coughing eased and she sucked in chill mountain air. It was too dark to move on, and anyway, there was no point while she was in her human skin. Nauseous and shivering, she curled up into a miserable ball and hoped sleep would soon reclaim her. She didn’t care if she never woke up. Let the forest have her bones.

  *

  The hinges squeaked as the window opened.

  “Tinker? Is that you?” the child said. Luc lunged. She dragged the little girl out onto the grass, and saw it was Mouse—

  Luc bolted upright, shaking violently. She had killed her daughter! Wild-eyed, she glanced about her. Sweat trickled down her chest. Another nightmare.

  Daylight crept across the pewter sky, and birds began to chorus as the nocturnal world melted away. Luc sat stock-still and listened.
She heard her heart thump, and the drum of steady rainfall. The patter of rain on leaves was lulling, but the relentless chill in her bones gave her no peace. Luc stood up stiffly, exhausted and unsure what to do next. She had to keep moving. She had to find food and keep warm. Nightmares plagued her, destroying her sleep. She could find no rest. Her dream felt ominous, and it rattled her. What did it mean? Was Mouse safe? She had done the best she could for her, but it was hard to walk away and leave her at Little Dip. They had not been as close as Luc would have liked, but then, she had engineered it that way. Her sister, Ren, had raised the child. Good ol’ capable Ren, as solid as a tree stump. The cub might die of boredom, but at least she’d be well fed.

  Luc gazed at the rising sun with its weak, watery halo. The Garouls would come after her soon. She had to head north as fast as possible. Her only ally was the rain; at least it would help dull her scent.

  She sank onto her hands and knees and willed the change. She had a better chance of escape if she was wolven. Did she have enough strength to force it? It was a no-win situation. It took all her reserves to mutate to Were form, but the odds of survival against this virus were better as a beast. Luna only knew how long she could maintain the stronger physique. The downside was that her Were body burned up fuel, and she had little enough of that left. She needed a kill, and soon. She needed to feed.

  Her dream still disorientated her. Why had she killed Mouse? Did it signify an ending? Luc wished she understood these things and forcibly pushed the dream away. Thinking about Mouse made her heartsick. She didn’t need that on top of everything else. Her life was collapsing around her leaving her hollowed out and rudderless. North was the only compass point, the only bolt-hole left. A bone cracked in her hand, and her vertebrae popped one at a time. She fell belly first onto the pine needles, twisting with the pain as raindrops spotted her back. The change was agonizing, slow, and ragged. Not clean, and certainly not pretty. She used to glory in it, powering through her transformation in mere minutes. Now she felt flayed alive. Her bones creaked and cracked, muscles bunched and heaved and ground their way into wolven form. As a werewolf, she felt underpowered and weaker than she did in human shape, but her Were body would be better able to keep the virus in check. The unfortunate side effect of this was that her appetite grew alongside her physique, and she was ravenous. She hoped she had the strength to kill.

  Luc rose to her full height of almost eight feet and sniffed the damp air. It was full of possibilities. All she needed was luck…and some easy, careless, half-dead prey. She padded through the undergrowth on her huge clawed feet, crushing everything in her path. Trees swayed and blurred before her. Her ears rang dully, and sweat prickled uncomfortably under her fur. Her tongue lolled from her muzzle, and she used it to wipe her snout clean.

  She’d gone barely half a mile and was already exhausted when she smelled it, faint at first through the dampness of the day and the goo in her nostrils. Then the scent came again, fresher, stronger. She staggered on, lengthening her pace, eager now. A small clearing opened up, and there it was, a skinned rabbit, slick and pink in the fine misty rain. It hung from a wire from a cottonwood limb.

  Trap. Her mind snapped around the word. She raised her snout to the air. It was useless; she could barely smell the raw flesh, never mind any nearby humans. She circled the clearing with leaden feet. She used to be so fast, so clever. She used to be dangerous. Now she was nothing more than a lump of granite thumping through the forest, waiting for the inevitable. If the virus didn’t gut her, the Garouls soon would.

  She hunkered down and thought about the rabbit. Her careful examination detected no booby traps or ambush. The immediate area was clear. So the bait itself had to be poisoned, and that confused her. That was not the Garoul way. She shuffled closer, always alert. Nothing happened. Inches from the rabbit, she gave a cautious sniff. Nothing. No poison that she could smell, but could she trust her blunted senses? Her stomach growled; she hadn’t eaten in two days. Even small game managed to elude her in this weakened state. She sniffed again. She poked out her tongue and pressed the tip against the rabbit’s cold, wet flank. Rainwater moistened the flesh. She licked it clean using the flat of her tongue. Poison? She still couldn’t tell. A low growl reverberated in her throat and she lunged. In a flash, her teeth sank into the stringy meat and tore it away from the wire. She swallowed it in one gulp.

  Luc sank to the ground, resting on her heels, and waited for the cramps to start. She wondered which organs would fail first, the liver or the kidneys? She supposed it depended on what type of poison she had gorged. But nothing happened. An hour passed. Her fur sequined with raindrops and she flicked them from her ears impatiently. Her belly growled, only slightly appeased with the meal. She needed more food, much more if she was to become strong enough. The gray morning shadows changed shape and lengthened, and still nothing happened. There was no poison.

  Luc stood on shaky legs and moved on, surprised to still be alive. Half a mile away, she came across the second rabbit. She went through the same circling routine and found no traps. It confused her. Was she being drawn in? Perhaps the bait was not for her; perhaps the hunter sought other prey, but she didn’t understand his method of hunting. She was certain now that this was not Garoul; this was some other hunter. But what was he up to? Luc shrugged and crunched on splintered rabbit bones. What did she know of mankind? She only knew wolven ways. That was all she had ever needed.

  With more meat in her belly, she felt better. Attuned to the taste and smell of it, it was easier to pick up a third meal when its gamy scent carried in on the sodden breeze. She turned toward it without thinking. She was following blindly but didn’t care. The weak daylight hurt her eyes, her snout poured mucus, and her throat and chest burned. Every muscle in her body hurt. Deep down, she knew she was dying so she might as well quit this world with a full belly. Without care or consideration, she stumbled on toward another clearing and another free meal.

  Chapter Two

  Oh, Silver. Noblest of metals.

  Native of earth yet ruled by Luna.

  Bringer of death immortalized in our hearts.

  Venus on my left side. Saturn to my right.

  Mars before me, Jupiter behind me…

  The translation spun away from her, melting back into a language more ancient than the Minoan empire. Emily sat back and sighed. She was too tired. She had labored all weekend to wrestle these lines from the page, and what the hell were they? A song? A poem? Probably another of their goddamn awful recipes.

  This was the oldest of all her source books and the most relevant. A treasure unearthed from a run-down auction house in Marseilles. She had thought France was as good a place as any to start, but had never imagined a bounty like this falling into her hands. Luck had smiled on her that day. The battered book was easily affordable for her American dollars, if only because it was so vandalized. The botanical plates had been ripped out at some earlier date leaving a stack of loose leaves and torn binding threads. She would have liked to have seen the plates. She’d heard the illustrations in these books were remarkable, but the text with all its serpentine encoding was all she really needed.

  The text borrowed from several ancient languages to hide its true nature. Each runic squiggle was part of a code she hadn’t managed to decipher…yet. It didn’t help that the content alluded to some ancient, pseudo-scientific art. She had interpreted signifiers for the planets, the elements, as well as other compound metals and was certain the art was alchemy. Silver lay at the core of whatever she was translating. She had seen the sign for it on nearly every page. Silver was a religion to these monsters. They sang to it, worshiped it, and they were afraid of it. And that’s what kept her returning again and again to this ripped up, water-stained old book, wasting night after night trying to unlock its secrets. In the end, she knew it would be worth every torturous second. Know thine enemy. And by God, she could see right through this one.

  Emily sat back and rubbed her dry, stinging ey
es. Her back ached; she had been hunched over her desk for hours. Her watch read ten forty-seven. Was it really that late? She stared dolefully at the book lying open before her. As usual, she had lost all track of time once she cracked open its leather cover. It was worth it though. The old book oozed mystery and magic…and clues. They rose into the air like dust motes and danced before her tired eyes. Bit by bit, she was dismantling its secrets.

  The leather covers creaked as she closed the L’Almanach Garoul, 1882. On the spine, the gilt embossed title was all but worn away. The black cover boards were shabby, but the ornate decoration of moon phases still showed. The eternal moon cycle lay etched along the edges, a crescent moon blooming full, and falling back to a golden sickle. All were beautifully rendered despite the age of the book. It was a masterpiece of craftsmanship. But it was the embellishment in the center of the cover that always drew her curiosity.

  She gently touched the indentation and traced the dips and swirls of the tooled paw print. It was massive. The longest claw tips splayed over the edges of the book, and it was a big book. Emily had tried to research the markings. It was of no known animal that she could identify. Either it was an artist’s fancy tooled onto the leather for decoration, or it belonged to an animal as yet uncatalogued. She had a good idea which one it was, and it wasn’t any artist’s fancy.

  There was a tap at the door.

  “You awake?”

  She pulled her hand away as if contaminated. “Yeah, come through,” she said, though the door was already opening. She shoved the almanac under some papers.