Moonlight: The Big Bad Wolf (Black Swan 4)

by Danann, Victoria

  Storm was toying with the possibility that Litha had dropped him in the wrong dimension. A Sol who was getting married and using theatrical references? Couldn't possibly be his Sol.

  The imposter grinned at him and said, "There is one incomparable perk. You can behave like you invented asshole and the worst that your superiors will do is say, 'Good job'." He laughed. Storm stared, remembering some of the times Sol's asshole impersonation had been aimed at him. Personally.

  Replace Sol Nemamiah as Sovereign of Jefferson Unit? There was no fucking chance in the whole of the fucking universe that Storm would consider that fucking job. But he liked and respected Sol too much to not at least give the impression of considering the offer. It was, after all, intended as an honor. A great honor.

  "It'll be a loss to The Order, but you deserve to have some fun with your girl."

  "My girl." Sol repeated that with a little smile, like he was trying it on for size. "Yeah."

  "I need to give this some serious thought and talk it over with Litha." The truth of the matter was that Storm needed some time to figure out how to let Sol down easy.

  "Oh. That reminds me! About the second thing I wanted to ask you." Sol set his cup in its saucer and put it down on the table between them. "I need to prevail upon Litha to get her father to come to dinner."

  "Her father?"

  "Yes. The Council wants me to find out if he might be a potential Friend of The Order."

  For a few uncomfortable seconds Storm couldn't decide on how to respond. He finally gave in to impulse and laughed out loud.

  Sol cocked his head. "What is so funny about that?"

  Storm took a deep breath. "Waking Woden. Where do I start? Well, first, he can't come to dinner because he doesn't eat food."

  Sol looked interested. "What does he eat?"

  "He eats energy. Incubus demon?" Storm had his eyebrows raised like he thought Sol was missing something he should have picked up on. "The best he could do, on a good day, would be to sit at a place setting and watch you chew."

  Sol's blank look was gradually replaced with understanding. "Oh."

  "I will ask Litha to ask, but don't set the table. I'm telling you right now that my father-in-law is the very essence of unexpected. You cannot imagine a personality more unmanageable. He marches to the beat of his own whistle."

  "You mean the beat of his own drum."

  "No. That would be way too predictable for Deliverance. I will ask, but I'm not making any promises." Storm looked at his watch. "My wife is picking me up in twenty minutes. I want to go say a quick hello to Ram and Elora and see how they're treating my namesake before she gets here."

  "Sure. They're on the sixth floor, east end. We had to reconfigure an apartment and an adjoining rec room, but I think it's going to work until Monq gets this thing figured out."

  "Alright. Talk to you soon." They shook hands. "Congratulations about Farnsworth. Happy for you. I don't know about her."

  Sol laughed. "Yeah. I hope to get a ring on her before she realizes the enormity of her mistake."

  Storm and Litha checked into a suite at the Stanhope Hotel with a nice view of the park. They had a late dinner at a place that was rich in atmosphere, service, and gourmet fare. It was one of those places that showed four dollar signs in the price column of the restaurant guides. Then they returned to their suite and made love like honeymooners on crisp high count Egyptian cotton sheets. They ordered champagne, cheese and chocolate-covered strawberries for breakfast and Litha sighed with contentment. She never wanted to leave.

  When Storm got around to recreating his conversation with Sol, she opened her mouth to protest, but he stopped her by holding up a hand and shaking his head.

  "Don't worry. I wouldn't take that job even if I'd never met you. I just have to figure out how to tell him so that it doesn't seem like an outright rejection of him or his life's work."

  Litha nodded, but looked concerned.

  When he reached the part about agreeing to get Litha to request her father's presence at dinner, she laughed harder than he had.

  "Dinner?"

  "I know," Storm smiled.

  "They don't know what he 'eats'?" Litha sounded mystified.

  "Sol does. Now."

  She stared at Storm for a minute before saying, "Okay. I'll ask him and I almost hope he accepts." She leaned over smiling and while she pressed her lips to his, she said, "It could be fun."

  "I know." Storm narrowed his eyes a little and looked thoughtful. "I think maybe you're a bad influence on me."

  "Sounds sexy."

  He snorted. "Everything sounds sexy to you. You're a sex demon."

  "Half sex demon."

  "Whatever." He started to pull her onto his lap but she lost her balance and they both ended up on the floor giggling.

  ***

  CHAPTER_3

  Stalkson trotted across the ridge, silhouetted by the moon three days past full. There was a light dusting of snow that would melt off shortly after the sun rose the next day.

  The borders of Elk Mountain touched the national preserve in northeast Washington and the wilderness of Canada. The reservation was over two million acres of pristine Rocky Mountain panhandle, but sometimes it didn't seem nearly big enough to satisfy his need. Schee-Chu-Umsh had lived for thousands of years in his territory before they made room for Stalkson's tribe.

  It was big enough for them.

  Wolves didn't typically seek solitude, but now and then he needed it for little stretches of time. He did his best thinking when he ran by himself. Whoever said, "It's good to be king", had obviously never been one.

  He was restless. Most of his tribe was asleep - the lucky ones curled up with their mates, feeling as content as creatures can be. Werewolves got a surge of energy at the full moon - their blood waxing, responding to the magnetic pull in the same way as the tides. Their bodies and spirits responded to the call to hunt and mate. By the third day, they were usually exhausted. The unmated were exhausted from running. The mated were exhausted from fucking. And hunting. And more fucking.

  It should feel good. It used to feel good, roaming alone, sorting things out. Sometimes he thought he could think better in wolf form. The brain equipment was different, but that was a good thing. It gave him a fresh perspective. His wolf simply processed information from another point of view.

  Hot tonight. It's never hot. How could it feel hot on a December night? As cool air drifted across the warmer water of Coeur d'Alene Lake, the ghostly mist below would soon rise and give cover to even the most inept predators. At such times, even bumblers could be successful as hunters.

  There was no one to see him trot past, but if there had been, they probably would have said he was a beautiful sight. Nothing says "wild" like a lone wolf on a full moon night. The combination of the snow and the white birch bark made his dark fur stand out on moonlit nights like that one.

  Maybe it wasn't the weather. Maybe it was him, heat coming from the inside. Stalkson wasn't big on introspection. It had no practical application that he could see, and a thing that lacked practical application was, as his father used to say, useless as tits on a boar hog. The leader of one of the thirteen remaining tribes of werewolves had no time or use for introspection, especially not with something as catastrophic as extinction looming.

  The thought of the extinction of the wolf people under his care was weighing him down. Sometimes it even made him feel short of breath. His mind was in such turmoil as he ran along that he almost missed the movement, but his peripheral vision was sharp and his reflexes were quick. He froze with one paw lifted in the graceful pose of a bird dog on point. Just ahead was a twelve point buck, weighing in at about four hundred pounds.

  Stalkson realized he was upwind. The big boy must have smelled wolf and been startled out of his nocturnal cover.

  For just a second, just one crazy second, Stalkson felt an impulse urge him to attempt pulling the great horned monster down alone. Just a little surge of adrenaline... In hi
s youth he might have tried it. And might have barely limped his stupid, young self home, too.

  No. He wasn't going to challenge the other magnificent male, no matter how appealing the idea seemed. They stared at each other barely breathing, neither blinking nor moving a muscle. Stalkson knew the big elk would never turn his back on him. As predator on the scene, he was the one who would have to break the stalemate.

  Deciding to make it quick and painless, he wheeled on his haunches and ran in the opposite direction for a few yards before slowing his pace to resume an easy trot. All too soon his thoughts drifted back to the ever present troubles.

  These days his mind was always crowded with problems. And maybe fear. Fear of what could be coming if they didn't solve the problem.

  He thought about the carefree days of his youth when there was beauty and balance in the world. The tribe was blessed with a new crop of pups every spring, half male, half female. The birth of a male pup was a joyful occasion because there was no question that he would find a mate when his time came.

  Stalkson stopped long enough to look at the moonlit landscape. Beautiful. Still beautiful. But the balance was gone. Not just in the diminishing number of females, but also in the signs of spoilage. The part of his personality that was wolf would wax poetic with some romantic inanity, like "evil on the wind".

  He wished it was. It would be easier to engage in spiritual battle than fight the ravages of technology fallout. Twilights were too pink and orange. It would be a watercolor dream if it didn't mean the choking air pollution from Los Angeles to Beijing had started to drift and hang in the air over the natural refuges set aside by Teddy Roosevelt and others. There was no such thing as natural refuge from bad air.

  His ears pricked when he heard a distant howl on the wind. He would have sniggered if wolf lips worked that way. If only humans knew how bad they were at attempting to mimic animal language, he supposed they would stop trying. He turned and headed in the direction of the fake howl. Might as well investigate.

  BlueClaw tossed a dry branch on the fire and waited. He felt a pair of eyes on him and looked in the direction of the sensation just in time to see a dark wolf emerge from the darker forest and shift into a man mid-stride. He smiled. "Brother Wolf. I thought you might be out and about on this fine moonlit night."

  "ShuShu." Stalkson squatted down by the fire. The night might feel warm to fur, but it was chill to bare skin. The sensitive nerve endings of his balls reacted to the brush of dry grass beneath him. "You called?"

  BlueClaw grinned. "I thought you might be out tonight." The gleam in Stalkson's eye was more than reflected firelight. There was teasing there as well. "I know. You think my wolf howl sucks."

  Stalkson shrugged and smiled at his old friend. "What's troubling you?"

  "Like most old men, I can't sleep. And, I suspect, like most old men I was thinking about love."

  Stalkson couldn't have been more surprised if the old man had said he was thinking about becoming an investment banker. "You think the minds of old men are preoccupied with love? What about it?"

  "I think that, when people near the end of their lives, we begin to review. Thoughts turn to what we did experience and what we didn't experience. Reliving our stories... Well, that's healthy. Dwelling on what might have happened and didn't? If we think about it too long, demons of disappointment turn those thoughts into regrets. Once that happens, it can be hard to think about anything else."

  Stalkson arched an eyebrow. "Demons?"

  "It's a metaphor. Are you paying attention?"

  "You know you're going out of your way to be vague."

  BlueClaw laughed softly. "So it seems."

  "For once, why don't you just come at it straight and say what's on your mind?"

  "You are such an alpha!" Stalkson had no reaction to that whatsoever. "Okay. I'll try."

  "Go for it."

  "I liked my wife. We lived together for nearly forty years before she passed over. We had a nice life, a nice partnership, a nice mutual understanding." When BlueClaw paused, Stalkson encouraged him to continue with a crisp nod. "The key word there is nice."

  "Well... that's nice."

  "Funny."

  "I thought so. Look, I'm not being dismissive, exactly, I just don't see the problem. Do you regret having a nice relationship with your wife?"

  "No. What I regret is that I didn't find that woman."

  Stalkson looked confused. "What woman?"

  "You know. That woman. The one who stirs the kind of passion that would make you run into the fire for her."

  The fire drew Stalkson's gaze. "Why would you want a relationship with a woman who would ask you to run into fire? And what a waste of time it would be to consider such a silly proposition."

  BlueClaw stared at him. "I don't think I ever realized before just how literal you are."

  "Okay."

  "I would have liked to have experienced love that was so powerful it was all-consuming. It's the one thing I'll be sorry to have missed. I think I would trade everything else to have had that."

  The werewolf stared at the old ShuShu for a few seconds then threw his head back and laughed hard and deep. It was good. It was purging. He couldn't remember the last time he had laughed like that.

  "BlueClaw. You're a powerful man. Everyone in your tribe envies you, wants to be you, and you... what? Wish you had thrown all that away for an idea that's very likely a myth?"

  BlueClaw just smiled and sighed. "It gives me peace to know I told you."

  Stalkson snorted and stood to leave. "Peace, huh? Next time you call me you'd better have something real to say."

  "Well, what do I know? I'm just an old man."

  "Yeah? You keep saying that, but you talk more like an old woman."

  BlueClaw smiled wider. "Word to the wise."

  "Right now I'm thinking you wouldn't know wise if it bit you in the ass."

  Stalkson collapsed into his wolf form with an economy of energy and motion. He looked at the gray-haired figure sitting on the ground, shook his head, and sneezed once before he turned and trotted away.

  After a few minutes he was again standing near the drop off to the lake below. His massive wolf chest heaved a big sigh and he resumed trotting along the ridge. Every heart in the tribe, from youngest to oldest, looked to him for answers. He was supposed to lead the way, supposed to know the way to lead. The position of alpha didn't come with a shroud of sagacity. It meant strength and will and fearlessness, not wisdom. He was failing the people who depended on him. He saw it in the eyes of every young blood, that unmistakable look of emptiness and longing that showed in the expression of a werewolf without a mate. Hopelessness was hard to look at.

  They were going to die off and it seemed there was nothing he could do about it. No enemy to kill. No threat to scare away. The keyword was no. As he trotted along the ridgeline path that word rang in his mind over and over, increasing in volume. No. No. No. Until finally it rang out loud and true and clear. No! I will not accept this!

  If the purported miracle worker, Monq, would not come to Elk Mountain, the king of Elk Mountain would go to Monq.

  ***

  CHAPTER_4

  Ram and Elora had left a trail of "firsts" in the wake of their turbulent and torrid relationship. For the most part, they took pioneering in stride. So becoming the first family to be quartered in a Black Swan Unit with an active Hunters Division didn't seem all that out of the ordinary - for them. Possibly because, until fairly recently, they had been hunters themselves.

  After remodeling one of the extra large sixth floor corner apartments and annexing the adjoining rec room to their overall square footage, it wasn't that bad. At least not to Ram. He wasn't just mouthing words when he said he could be happy anywhere so long as Elora and Helm were with him. He was completely sincere.

  Elora worked at hiding a dash of melancholy. She felt like she had come so close to her fantasy of a small Irish farm/kennel only to have it slip from her grasp when she had ba
rely gotten a taste. Still, she knew there were far worse scenarios than sharing smallish quarters with the two boys who put stars in her heaven. Several hundred times a day she told herself that it wasn't that steep a price for Helm's safety and Ram's peace of mind.

  Sol had asked her to resume her hand to hand classes for active and in-training hunters in exchange for free room and board and she was glad to do it. It kept her skills tight, kept her in good shape, and, more importantly, something one of the knights learned from her might save a life someday. It's rare that an opportunity with no downside comes along.

  Ram had been right about having a legion of in-house babysitters. Helm was precious, magnetic, and fun. Put that together and it meant there was never a shortage of hands ready to grab for him. In other words, there was no question about the baby's paternity.

  One nurse, who was hired after Elora left Jefferson Unit, said she didn't want to offend, but that she worried that the chemicals used in dying the baby's hair that color might not be good for him.

  Sir Hawking, Black Swan Knight, Retired, quickly grew tired of nothing to do. He commandeered a couple of classrooms not in use and established a new music department. He used one to teach music as an extracurricular to the trainees who were interested. The other was being outfitted as rehearsal space for the band he was forming with some of the kids who played instruments.

  He told Elora that he had never forgotten what she'd said about warriors in her world being required to also write poetry or play musical instruments so that they would be balanced.

  "Rammel." She laughed at him. "I was talking about pan pipes. You don't balance warrior energy by plugging into heavy metal. That kind of music makes angst simmer like lava that's always threatening to erupt."

  "There you have it then. 'Twill be a great release for the boys."

  She just shook her head and smiled.

  Ram thought it would be romantic to retrace the steps of their first date, even though it hadn't been officially called a date at the time. When the anniversary of that occasion came around Manhattan was, once again, decked out in all her glory for Yule. They left Helm with Elsbeth, the nurse who had become Elora's first female friend in Loti Dimension, and Sir Finnemore, who had been spending a lot of time hanging around Elsbeth lately.