I took a deep breath and channeled my father. “Mr. Wolf, take your hands off that student,” I barked, making up a name on the spot that seemed to match Craggy Face better than the moniker I’d been using for him previously. “Ms. Owens, the paper is due next week, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. This should be an easy assignment after everything you’ve learned in my class.”
If Patricia had been a dog, her ears would have pinned back and her tail would have tucked in submission. She wasn’t used to being yelled at, and I felt a little bad for taking her to task.
The huffed laugh from “Mr. Wolf,” however, reminded me that Patricia and I weren’t the only ones present. So I addressed the rest of the students in a slightly warmer manner, reminding them that my usual office hours would be shaken up during exam week. “If you have any questions,” I finished, “please don’t hesitate to email or call me. You know I’m always willing to help.”
Then they were gone. My pupils, the department chair, and every single one of the handouts. I’d printed three extra papers and there’d been two absent students, so simple arithmetic suggested there should have been five handouts left on the table. But...
“I’m pretty sure Apple Kid took the last handful to build into a shrine.”
That was Mr. Wolf, still very much present as he pushed himself further than he properly should have into my personal space. His scent enfolded me, mossy and enticing, and my skin tingled as if I’d been stroked...or wanted to be.
Yes. Pet us, whispered the monster deep in my belly. Shaken by the feeling I wasn’t entirely in control of my own internal dialogue, I forced my eyes aside to take my first proper look at the second man.
The gun was gone. Adena perched on his shoulder like a pirate’s parrot. But he didn’t appear at all piratical. Instead, the stark black bird added to the stranger’s handsomeness to turn him into a fairy-tale prince in appearance, all blond hair and blue eyes.
“Ma’am, I apologize for earlier,” he started. “I can assure you, nothing like that will ever happen again.”
I nodded absently. I’d known he wasn’t really dangerous—my monster had somehow smelled it on his breath.
“Apology accepted,” I answered. But my attention kept returning, like a heat-seeking missile, to the man with the saber-tooth fang around his neck.
“NOW YOU’LL TELL US where you went,” Mr. Wolf ordered, not bothering to turn his query into a question. His eyebrows were so dark they almost became a brow ridge when they V’ed downwards. But he was no Neanderthal. His eyes possessed the intensity of Homo sapiens sapiens and I got the distinct impression he was aware of the monster lurking beneath my skin.
Perhaps that’s why I started spitting out my secret. “I...the cave...” I answered without thinking, halting only when that familiar glimmer of disappointment rose behind his pupils.
Of course. Mentioning my visions wasn’t the way to assert my sanity.
Mad at myself for the slip, I turned to the other stranger as I tried to nudge them both out the door. “Can I help you? I assume you dropped by for a reason other than to draw a gun on my students?”
“That was a mistake, Dr. Blackburn,” Prince Charming started. Which is when I remembered he’d used my predecessor’s name the first time he’d spoken to me also.
These men didn’t want me. They wanted Dr. Frank Blackburn, who had died of a heart attack so close to the start of the semester that no one even bothered to clean out his office before I moved in. I’d inherited his classes, his bird, and apparently his problems in the form of these two intruders.
“I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” I said, hating the fact that my voice quavered slightly. The trouble was, Mr. Wolf—still silent—continued circling me like a turkey vulture homing in on a piece of choice roadkill. At the moment, he was behind my back...and being unable to see him made me so twitchy it was all I could do to meet the speaker’s eyes.
“You’re not F. Blackburn?” Prince Suddenly-Not-So-Charming snapped, mouth pursing.
“I’m O. Hart,” I countered. “Frank died in his sleep over the summer. I took his place....”
Oops. That was more information than they likely needed or wanted. Plus, I couldn’t hold myself still any longer, not when I could have sworn I felt hot breath drifting across the nape of my neck.
Whirling, I found myself face to face with the larger stranger. Or, rather, face to scar-encircling-his-neck.
Chapter 3
“Then this isn’t yours.”
The words should have been a question, but they weren’t. Instead, they were a statement of ownership even as he slipped the silver chain that had recently been around his neck over my head.
The saber-tooth-cat fang tapped against my nose as it lowered from my forehead to my chin then continued its way downward. Calloused skin grazed my cheek as his hand retreated. And I couldn’t seem to stop my fingers from cupping the heavy artifact that seemed to burn through my sweater with borrowed heat.
“No, it’s not mine,” I answered, even though the fang felt right hanging there. Even though the weight around my neck seemed to lift me up rather than bowing me down.
The men on either side of me exchanged loaded glances. “She isn’t...” started Prince Charming.
“Doesn’t matter,” answered Mr. Wolf. Then, spearing me again with his unbreakable attention, he introduced both of them in rapid succession. “Claw.” This was himself. “Harry.” A thumb jab in the direction of the fairy-tale prince.
“Olivia,” I replied, somehow needing him to know my first name even though a second ago I’d been trying to rush him out the door.
“O-liv-ia,” he repeated, the word seductive and warm in his deep rumble. For a moment, we were suspended in the lull that followed. Then: “We need your help.”
Yes, anything. I wasn’t sure if that was me or the monster. But I somehow managed not to speak the words aloud.
As if responding to my caution, Claw raised his eyebrows at Harry. And the latter accepted the conversational ball as easily as he’d dropped it in the first place. “Ma’am, we work for the President.”
“Of the university?”
Adena cackled a throaty laugh at my confusion while Harry corrected me. “No. Of the nation. As you may have noticed, Jim Kelter...hasn’t been feeling quite himself.”
This made no sense. “I’m not a medical doctor,” I pointed out, although my gaze remained focused on Claw. “My PhD is in archaeology. I study cave paintings, ancient artifacts, and old bones.”
“Like this?” Claw’s finger almost grazed my breast as he tapped the fang he’d given me. But his motion was careful, calculated. Only air slid across my sweater to impact the underlying skin.
I shivered, knowing there was no point in explaining that a bone and a tooth were slightly different in molecular structure. No one would care about biochemistry when dealing with an erratic head of state.
“Yes,” I started. “But...”
“Then we need you.” Claw’s voice reverberated through my bones like the beat of a drum.
He smells like home, the monster inside me whispered, forcing my body to lean forward and inhale a deeper whiff of his woodsy scent.
And the monster’s mirroring of my own feelings slapped me back to reality. I couldn’t afford to be sidetracked by a sexual fancy that would send my mental health floundering.
Plus: “You look out for you,” my father was fond of saying. “Everyone else is doing the same.”
Our nation’s President had dozens—hundreds—of people on staff to ensure his well-being. I had myself...plus Adena when she felt like obeying my commands.
Rationally, I was making the right decision. So I wasn’t sure why it hurt so badly to deny Claw’s request.
“I’m afraid I can’t help,” I answered, snapping my fingers at the raven. She landed on my shoulder with the weight of disappointment, head swiveling to peer behind us as I strode out of the room.
THERE WAS A STUDENT waiting for me in
the hallway when I headed back to campus to deal with my inherited mess after a quick stop home to swallow my meds and toss the cat tooth into my kitchen junk drawer. Adena had also demanded a bite to eat, and I’d changed my shoes because my feet were killing me. To cut a long story short, by the time I rounded the corner and found the freckled class perfectionist waiting for me, I was running quite a bit behind.
He was bundled up against the winter chill, head bowed in a manner that promised our interlude wouldn’t be brief. Still, I smiled and welcomed him. “Joe.”
“I know this isn’t your office hours....” The sixteen-year-old freshman started apologizing the moment I came into view.
“Don’t worry about it.” I dug for my keys in my bag then took a look through the narrow office-door window as I fumbled with the lock. Inside, the piles of my predecessor’s jumbled-together stuff looked taller than when I’d left them. Great.
I was a slob at home, but I liked my workspace tidy. So it had been a bit of a shock when I’d arrived at my office a week ago to find the room full of unlabeled artifacts related to Blackburn’s specialty—the first humans to grace the North American continent. There were stacks of scientific journals by the hundred on the same topic. And, off in one corner, an odd mass of wires and chemicals must have had something to do with a hobby; it certainly made no sense to my archaeological eye.
Even Adena’s perch had been shunted out of the main thoroughfare. The raven cawed annoyance at leaving the center of attention, but she still fluttered off my shoulder and onto her wooden foothold as I ushered Joe inside.
“Tell me about your paper,” I nudged him. The freshman was brilliant, but he required a fair amount of hand-holding. I had a feeling by the time he achieved the age of the average freshman, he would have grown into his own skin.
That happy day was two years in the future however. So I ignored my to-do list and prepared to hold some metaphorical hands.
Sure enough, the flood gates opened as soon as I gave him the opportunity. “I was thinking of delving into Native American petroglyphs.” His eyes sparkled as he lost track of his surroundings and traversed more familiar terrain—the inside of his own head. “Subtopic: form constants and the possible use of hallucinogens. I’d like to track down modern shamans to interview, but I doubt I’ll have time to speak with more than one or two.”
He glared at me then, frustrated that I’d given him less than a week to compile his magnum opus. I swallowed my amusement as I replied. “You do realize that when I said you needed secondary sources, I was referring to scientific articles? This isn’t a dissertation, Joe. This is only 25% of your grade in one class.”
“Yes,” he started. “But the material merits—”
We both glanced up as someone tapped on my open door.
OF COURSE. WHO ELSE. Dr. Dick Duncan, nemesis and boss, hovered there, smirking.
“Dick,” I greeted him, hating the fact that Joe’s slender shoulders cowered the moment the department chair glanced in his direction. A good professor lifted up her students. Dr. Duncan got a kick out of knocking them down.
“Ah, you’re speaking to the boy genius.” He laughed, displaying teeth that were far more perfect than you’d expect from a man of his generation. Word on the street was that they were all fake...just like his interest in his students. “Don’t let me interrupt.”
“No, I was going.” Joe, who would gladly have talked archaeology for at least another half hour, stuffed his notebook in his bag so rapidly the pages bent over. Then he slid through the gap between Dick and the door jamb, the other professor not doing him the courtesy of coming inside to widen the space.
“Well?” I asked after the thuds of Joe’s footsteps had receded. I’d need to check on the boy later if I didn’t want a repeat of his first reaction paper, a one-paragraph assignment that he’d handed in two weeks late and twenty pages long.
“Just making sure you’re doing your job,” Dick answered, apparently ignorant of the irony of the situation. Then he wandered away without saying anything further, acting for all the world as if he’d had no purpose in entering other than hazing the young.
Frustrated, I stared after my boss for one long moment. Was this really the leadership the university wanted heading up our department? Unfortunately, as the youngest professor on the totem pole, there was nothing I could do about it. So I dismissed the annoyance and instead dove into the office-cleaning project I’d avoided for far too long.
I’m not sure when the hallway grew quiet, the last faculty members and students filtering away to their homes and dormitories. I just knew that when the last of Blackburn’s papers were picked through and separated into piles—photocopies to be discarded, notes to be filed, materials to be returned to the university library—the view outside my window had darkened into night.
I hadn’t meant to be here so late on the final day of the semester, and I could tell Adena was antsy after sitting on her perch for so long. I’d get her an egg out of the department refrigerator to tide her over and do just a little more filing. Then I’d find my way home....
But when I padded down the hall toward the main entrance, the sound of fingers clacking on a keyboard emerged out of the darkness. Past the entrance and down the corridor, now I was following a rectangle of light that spilled out into the hall.
The department office. Who would be inside at this hour? Poking my head around the corner cautiously, I wasn’t sure what I expected to see. But it certainly wasn’t the plump, middle-aged secretary bowed over her laptop with the intensity of a predator on the hunt.
“Hello,” I said, then jumped as Suzy slammed down the lid with all the force of a teenager caught watching pornography.
“Oh! Hello.” Her face was flushed, her eyes glassy. What exactly did she get up to in her office after dark?
“I just came by to grab a snack for Adena,” I said vaguely, motioning at the bird on my shoulder. “But I can take her home to feed her. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“You’re not interrupting anything. I was just leaving. Here, let me get it for you.”
Despite Suzy’s more usual cadence, I hesitated in the doorway, not wanting to deal with further problems. After all, I could feel the monster coiled inside me, napping lightly after her exertions earlier in the day.
But Adena possessed none of my reservations. Flying off my shoulder, the raven landed on Suzy’s arm then began picking at the older woman’s shiny bracelets.
And Suzy reacted the way she always did. “What a charmer,” she cooed, scratching Adena’s neck once before opening the refrigerator door and pulling out one of the raw eggs she kept inside for my raven. But she didn’t offer to chat. Instead, she ejected me, locking up her office and trotting alongside as we headed down the hall.
“You should be careful going home,” she warned. “The students tell me there’s a big, black dog wandering around that scared a freshman out of her panties.”
There were always crazy stories on a college campus, so I shrugged off the unlikelihood of panty-dropping beasts. “You be careful too,” I answered vaguely. Then I froze, Adena’s egg slipping through my fingers, as I took in the jumble of white papers spread across what should have been a pristine, empty floor in front of my office door.
Chapter 4
Adena clacked her beak together beside my ear, as alarmed as I was by the disarray that hadn’t been present when we’d passed through this same stretch of hallway ten minutes earlier. “Call Security,” I demanded, pulling rank on Suzy for her own benefit. The department secretary was smart and intrepid; I could just imagine her trying to take on a burglar using nothing other than her purse.
Unfortunately, Suzy’s mama-bear instincts transcended office hierarchy. And she wasn’t just armed with her purse—a can of pepper spray materialized in her hands one second before she sidestepped me and sprinted down the hall.
Well, if she was going to Nancy Drew it, then I couldn’t be tentative. I grabbed my keys and stuffed
them like claws between my fisted fingers, the monster’s voice consuming my body as well as my mind.
Ready. Our head turned without me willing it to, scanning the hallway as we caught up with Suzy. The lights grew brighter, sounds louder. We’re ready, the monster repeated.
But both voice and makeshift weapon wound up being unnecessary since my office was devoid of human life.
“Who would do this?” Suzy demanded as we took in the shambles that used to be my office. The careful piles were now mixed together, Blackburn’s boxes of artifacts similarly spilled out and pawed through. Worst of all, several ancient objects had been broken in the process, fresh edges glinting where stones had split in half.
“The bigger question is why,” I answered, pondering my own query as I spoke it. Why take the time to ruin stones that weren’t even precious enough to have been catalogued? And if the perpetrator had managed to break into my locked office during the few minutes I’d been absent...might they have similar access to the department’s vault?
“What are you thinking?” Suzy prodded, struck by my silence as I pondered the devastation this burglar could wreak on the locked, climate-controlled room in the basement. The vault, unlike my office, was full of museum-quality, one-of-a-kind artifacts.
“I’m thinking...” I started, then caught myself rather than providing a full answer. Yes, despite the absurdity of risking my skin on the altar of inanimate objects, I was going to head downstairs to see what I could salvage. On the other hand, I wasn’t willing to draw Suzy into such a hare-brained attempt.
So I swayed slightly, finding it easy to fake faintness after so many real encounters with the weakness. “Would you mind making me a cup of tea with sugar?” I asked, keeping my voice tremulous. “Then call Security while you’re at it. I think I need to sit down for just a minute.”
Wolf Dreams Page 2
