The Liar Among Creatures (Howl for the Damed: Book Two) (Howl for the Damned 2)

by D. Fischer

  I double blink. “You’ve never seen this book?”

  “I’ve seen it but never what’s inside. As a woman, I wasn’t allowed.”

  “Then how do you know what this means?” I jab my finger into the table.

  “Every generation learns our ancient symbols.”

  “Why?” Jacob asks quietly. “Why wouldn’t a shaman allow his daughter to look at this book?”

  It’s a solid question. Aside from Kaya being a woman, a father usually has a soft spot toward his own flesh and blood. Why wouldn’t my grandfather, or my father for that matter, allow her to at least hold her own ancestry. After all, if she had a child – a male – wouldn’t she need the knowledge to be able to explain this to him?

  Kaya looks past me and straight to the wall as she dives into the memories of her own past. “The shaman’s book is never shared with an outsider, even if that outsider is your female child. Anyone who is not a shaman is forbidden to read what’s inside.”

  A silence falls over the group. I break it with a huff. “Bullshit,” I grumble. “That is bullshit.”

  “It is tradition,” Kaya challenges sternly.

  I snort. “Fine. Then how did the symbol get on their necks?”

  “I can answer that.” Chip grins and pushes his glasses up until the rims are nearly touching his eyebrows. He grips the edge of the table and leans over conspiratorially. “Magic.”

  The book murmurs with the male voices again, and this time, both Kaya and my head snap to it, then to each other. We hold each other’s gaze while I wonder if this is the first time she’s heard it whisper. Or, did she hear it whisper the entire time she was a child? I picture a young Kaya playing with her dolls on a small living room rug while the book lays on the dining table, talking softly to her. It must have been hard to be excluded from something she clearly shouldn’t have been. I can relate to that.

  If she can hear these whispers, then some of the shaman magic did indeed trickle down the female line, my own circumstance included. I wonder why my grandfather ignored this trait.

  I break the gaze and look to Chip, cocking my head to the side. “Seriously?”

  He nods. “It’s part of the curse. It warns those who approach that they’re evil, but their spirits have been dealt with. Cursed, if you will, until the end of their time.”

  “He got out his little shaman book and cursed us,” the scarred face Bane shifter had said. I can hear his voice in my head as clear as I could when he had taunted me in the woods.

  I snort, more to disrupt the memory than to contradict Chip’s words. “You’d have to be a Native American, fluent in these doodles, to understand that the Bane are cursed in the first place.”

  Chip shrugs. “Magic knows no time, no race, no prejudice. It doesn’t care the world has moved on from the magic that made it.”

  My attention returns to my aunt, who roams the page in slow sweeps with tear lined eyes. I imagine she has quite a bit of emotion coursing through her at seeing something that’s been passed down in her family for generations. It is, after all, a book she probably thought she’d never see again.

  “And if they find a way to break the curse?” I ask quietly, mindful of my aunt. The pendant warms in my pocket, almost a warning, and I touch it lightly. It travels with me everywhere, a constant companion. Chip, who misses nothing, follows the movement.

  “He got out his little shaman book and cursed us,” the memory taunts again. “Our wolves are trapped, you see. Their spirits. In a necklace of all things.”

  “I imagine the mark will disappear,” Chip says just as softly.

  “How?”

  “Once someone has been cursed, it takes a great deal of knowledge to undo it,” Kaya warns. She clears the emotion from her voice and pleads, “You shouldn’t break that curse. I do not believe you can, anyway.”

  The memory continues. “You do know that the shamans have a gift for animals,” my other attacker had said. “They can control them. Take over their minds.” That’s how my father had done it. He had the gift to control the spirits inside an animal. He could call birds to perch on his finger. My mother had said so herself. Could it be that my aunt is wrong? Could it be that maybe, just maybe, someone with the same or similar gift could return the wolf spirits to their owners? Someone like . . . me?

  “How do you know?” Jacob asks Kaya abruptly.

  She stares him down with a look that says, I just do. “She’s not a true shaman, Jacob Trent. Nobody but a true, full-blooded male shaman can make or break a curse. It has never been done.”

  “Kaya,” Chip drawls thoughtfully. “Do you know any shamans who could break it?”

  She shakes her head. “Even if I did, only a shaman who shares the same blood can undo a curse of an individual’s spirit. Especially a supernatural individual where two living beings are one and the same.” The shifters, she means – part wolf, part man. “In this case, the shaman himself or his successor would be the one to break the Bane’s curse.”

  “Right,” I grunt, straightening my spine. “So, I am right. It’s me who has to break it.”

  “Like I said,” Kaya expresses patiently. As discreetly as she can, she wipes the single tear that made a trail down her cheek. “You are not a shaman. You are a skinwalker.”

  I hold up a finger. “With the ability to call on an animal spirit, right? Like my father?” I quickly tell them my suspicions and theories, gesturing wildly with my hands as my anxiety levels rise. I recount what the Bane had said in the woods, what my mother had told me, and what I believe them to ultimately mean. Once I’m finished, their faces are scrunched with either confusion or disbelief. I can’t tell which.

  “I can put their wolves back,” I say. Still, no answer. I look to Jacob, the man with usually more answers than questions. “What do we do?”

  “I don’t know.” His lips tighten. “But even if you could break it, Kaya’s right. I don’t think we should.”

  We? As if this breaking their curse has anything to do with the Alpha of the Riva Pack. I refrain from challenging him.

  “Why?” Chip and I say together.

  Jacob crosses his arms. “Because Adriel Whitethorn cursed them for a reason. For now, we maintain the lie.”

  “Reason or not,” I grind out. “That doesn’t solve our immediate problem. They strike me as the kind of people who won’t believe us if we try to tell them I can’t break the curse because I’m not a shaman when they know and have seen me change into the spirit of a wolf.”

  “We’ll figure that out as it comes,” he says, matching tone. Chip bristles at the weight of the alpha’s words. “As your aunt said, it’s more likely that you can’t break it. And as I said, I won’t allow the curse to be broken even if it could be done.”

  We stare at one another, stubbornness against stubbornness. I can break it. I know it deep in my soul, and if breaking it gets them to go away – to leave me alone, well, isn’t it worth entertaining? This entire pack is in danger because of this curse.

  Seeming to pick up on my thoughts, he murmurs, “It is a small price to pay to protect other, more innocent people, Jinx.” My jaw flexes as his eyes narrow, all the while knowing he has a point. By releasing this curse, I’d be ensuring the Riva Pack’s safety but dooming everyone else the Bane comes in contact with. They’re ruthless killers. Bloodthirsty. They’d be unstoppable with their wolves. I flush at my lapse in judgment.

  “Jinx,” Chip begins. “I think you should –”

  Screw this.

  Fishing roughly in my pocket for the warmed pendant, I slap it on the table. It clunks loudly in the quiet room, and Kaya flinches as if I struck her. I’m sick of being pushed this way and that. It all comes back to this, doesn’t it? The curse. The pendant. The burden.

  Monster. Freak.

  “Keep this safe,” I tell Chip more softly than the rage burning a hole in my stomach. “Run more tests on it. Destroy it. Do whatever you want to it.” I turn on a heel and leave the lab.


  That night, I dream of several scenes. The broken gate. The blob anger as I feed it lies. And then I dream of the white wolf. I’m the wolf, like I always am in this dream, living the life it once lived. I’m staring at my reflection in the puddle when suddenly, I hear a bang and feel the sharp sting of a bullet lodging itself into my ribcage. I wake abruptly, heart thumping loud in my ears. Searching my skin to make sure it was nothing but a memory, I cover my face with my hands and sigh into my palms. Alone in Jacob’s bed, the echoing burn of being shot throbs along my side.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Jacob Trent

  It’s late into the night, and everyone under my care is asleep or retired to their rooms. My body, my wolf, my very soul long to hunt down Jinx, slide into the warm sheets, and hold her tightly to my chest. But I can’t. I can’t because I don’t know what’s going on between us. I don’t know anything about anything anymore. Deep inside, I barely recognize myself.

  The discussion in the lab about spirits had dredged up old memories, feelings, and issues I thought I had resolved. Since that discussion, the only thing I can think of is that somewhere, on another realm, Allie exists. I know this. Anyone who fought in the Realms War knows the Death Realm exists. That’s where she is. Not until I die will I get to see her again, get to tell her how sorry I am. I thought I had adjusted to life without my best friend, but the loss of her feels quite similar to the absence of Jinx’s smiles and taunts and attention. Within a five minute walk inside this compound, the one person I truly can’t bear to be without is sleeping in my bed. Without me.

  What kind of a man does that make me?

  Sitting in front of the fireplace, I listen to the crackling flames and inhale the smoke. This room is used for movies and a few rounds of pool. Only tendrils of smoke escape into it, slithering up the wall or curling softly in front of me like a lover’s crooked finger. The rest is whisked up the chimney and into the cold night’s atmosphere. Aside from the library, this is the only fireplace we still burn actual wood in, and sometimes, the familiarity of it calms me more than the outdoors. It’s my favorite fireplace. The flames remind me of when my father and I used to sit before it, hot mugs in our hands as we joked and laughed with my mother.

  Laughter or the TV’s audio usually fill the silence, but not this late into the night. The throw pillows are strewn about as if all the couches were occupied beyond capacity. Those who were left without a seat had sprawled across the large rug to watch whatever movie had been playing earlier.

  Empty tequila bottles grace each end table, and plastic cups surround them like houses around castles, the spilled liquor like rivers and ponds. Glenda’s going to have a few choice words to say about this mess, but right now, I find it a comfort. Jinx was in here, watching the movie with the pack. It’s a relief to know she has shoulders to rest her head on, even if I itch to make sure it’s my shoulder, and my shoulder alone, she inevitably seeks. But I can’t push that matter, either. Not in the state she and I find ourselves.

  Tipping back from my cross-legged seat in front of the fire, I dig inside my sweatpants’ pocket and pinch the familiar rubber band I had stored there. I pull it out and twirl it in the fire’s light. It’s worn to the point where I’m surprised it hasn’t snapped yet. My wrist was twice the size of hers, and when I began to wear it, it was a tight fit. Now, it’s large and aged and dirty.

  I bring my nose to it, hoping to smell a bit of Allie’s scent and wishing uselessly for a bit of her wisdom with it. All I can smell is Jinx and her lingering scent still in the room. I huff a sigh and pop an ache knotted in my neck. Without Jinx to chase my troubles, my troubles are snapping back.

  “You know,” a soft but gravelly voice says behind me. I startle and turn, annoyed by the stinging aroma of cigarette smoke wafting up my nose. “We were taught to never hold on to the dead’s belongings. You have quite a few in this building.” Kaya, making her way around the pillows on the floor, sits gracefully in a reclining chair. I hadn’t heard her come in.

  “What do you mean?”

  She nods toward the rubber band in my hand. “That. It was your friend's, was it not?”

  “Allie’s.”

  Kaya crosses her ankles. “There’s an old tale of ours. Holding onto the dead’s belongings is a bad omen.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” she murmurs with a sense of grace. “Spirits cling to their favorite objects, Alpha. My niece knows that as well as I do. I believe you know this as well.”

  I frown.

  “Yes,” she says with a small smile as if I asked her a question. “She can hear the echoes of the spirits among their possessions. It is part of who she is. It is also the only part of herself she trusts. But you know this too.”

  I’ve seen her struggle with herself today. Amelia had even mentioned it. She believes Jinx has fallen back to her old ways of fearing everything she is and maybe even holding a grudge against the mess her father has left for her.

  I look back to the fireplace, remembering when Kaya and Jinx first met. They had mentioned the whisperings of the mantel’s objects, and later, Jinx mentioned them in my office.

  “Is it such a bad thing? That a spirit might cling to their things?” How could it be? Knowing a sliver of Allie, sweet and kind and funny Allie, might be attached to her lucky rubber band doesn’t give me any unease. It does the opposite. My insides warm to this possibility. Even though she’s underground and a tombstone proclaims her death, she’s still slightly alive.

  “Yes,” she says, breaking my thoughts. “A spirit cannot fully move on if the living are still mourning it, Jacob Trent. By keeping her alive through her possession, you are keeping her from her next life in the Death Realm. Oh yes, I know about the realms,” she adds at my raised eyebrows.

  The fire crackles and spits. “Is she still attached to this?” I hold up the rubber band.

  “Indeed.”

  I close my eyes briefly, wondering if Jinx could hear Allie’s whisperings whenever she saw me wearing it. A pang of guilt stabs my chest. I had taken it off the night I took Jinx to the woods. I had seen her eyeing my empty wrist and the hope that had blossomed in her eyes.

  “What do you do with the objects of the dead? Their possessions?”

  Kaya shifts her interest to the fireplace and studies it thoughtfully. “We burn them.”

  “Burn them?”

  She nods. “It is the only way. The only sure way. There is no death, Jacob. Not truly. Only a change of realms. Only a transference from one place to the next.” She takes a thoughtful pause. “But again, you know that already. You only need to be reminded that your friend – your loved one – is not lost. She is simply somewhere else. And you’re forcing her to stay here with you.”

  I swallow thickly and look back at my rubber band. “Does it help?”

  “With what?”

  “With moving on. Does it help to burn them?”

  She chuckles lightly. “No, Alpha. It does not help with grief. It is meant to help the spirit, not you. It is the last act of selflessness you can do for the ones you love, both dead and alive.”

  I twirl it again, and holding my breath, I toss it into the fire. The rubber whines as it melts against the bright red wood. My heart shatters. It breaks and shatters and breaks again. As the fire devours it, it feels like I’m burying her all over. The sound of my shovel pushing the dirt over her grave scrapes inside my head. I clench my jaw at it.

  A squeak in the chair’s springs reaches my ears before a cold hand touches my shoulder. “You will do well by my niece if you care this way so freely.”

  “Your niece wants nothing to do with me. Not anymore.”

  “Our first teacher is our own heart.”

  “What?” I look back at her, scowling. The fire waves red and orange reflective fingers across her face. I take a stab at her vague wisdom. “Trust myself?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” She leans away, and I search her face. Such wisdom and yet so many secrets. My wo
lf presses forward to peer inside her easy gaze, desperate to devour what she knows. “You should. Trust yourself, that is. I’ve met many men in your position. The difference between you and them is only one thing, alpha.”

  I chuckle, giving in to this little game she’s playing. “Is it another proverb?”

  She grins back, stained teeth shadowed by the dark room. “Man has responsibility, not power, because the rain falls on both the just and the unjust. You have a deep understanding of that. You’ve witnessed it, in your war of the realms, and yet, the force of the rain does not deter the way you stand.”

  “We lost a lot of people,” I whisper to the fire, to the melted rubber band molding to the disintegrating logs, their simmering heat shifting the red and orange colors like an aurora borealis through the cracks of bark.

  “That you did, but you’re still the support your pack needs. The only thing you’ve lost is how to trust what’s inside you because what’s inside you can only be mended by moving forward. Jinx is your glue, young alpha, whether you’ve predicted it or not. Whether you want it or not. She is what you walk toward.”

  “I want it,” I whisper. Chills spread over my shoulders and down my chest. I clear my throat. “I want her.”

  She nods, once. “Mending the fracture between the two of you will help the loss of your friends feel less great. Mending it will only make you a better man. She will need better men if she’s going to endure what may come next.”

  If she’s going to endure whatever the Bane have in store next.

  I don’t know how long I looked at the fire. I don’t know what time it was that I finally left it, but when I did, Kaya was no longer sitting there. Her words echoed inside my head until I finally rested it on the guest bedroom’s pillow, blinking sleepily at Kaya’s worn dream catcher pinned to the headboard. I don’t know when she brought it in here nor how she knew about my tendency for nightmares, but it smells like cigarette smoke. A draft tickles the feather, and that’s the last thing I see before a dreamless sleep drags me under.