I leveraged myself back to my feet and pasted on a smile that had tricked my own father multiple times after he stopped wanting to hear about my visions.
Suzy, unfortunately, was a more astute judge of character. “There is something wrong with you,” she countered. “Joe told me what happened in your class yesterday. You’re sick and you need to get checked out.”
Chapter 12
“I’ll take you to the hospital,” she decided. Any second now, I expected her to wrestle me for the car keys.
“I...” I eyed Suzy, accepted the fact she wasn’t going to let this go lightly. Even though the hospital was out of the question, I threw her a bone. “Look, I’m starving. There was a diner a few miles down the road. How about we meet there and talk?”
“I don’t think that you should be driving,” Suzy countered.
But I walked a straight line and used complete sentences, knew the President’s name and the day of the week. In the end, she had no choice other than to accede...although she did demand that I go first so she could save me if I veered off the road.
Which is how we came to be driving in a cavalcade of two down the same country byway in the opposite direction from which I’d originally come, the landscape appearing fairy-tale beautiful now that darkness no longer turned trees into ghouls. By the time we were situated in a cracked-seat booth with pie and ice cream between us, I felt perfectly ordinary and Suzy had relaxed her mother-hen stance.
“I’ll go first,” she said after swallowing her third spoonful. “I owe you an explanation. About last night.”
In the face of the thief, my visions, and worries over the President, it took me a moment to realize what she was referring to. Then I remembered her flushed countenance when I walked in on her in the department office. “You don’t have to,” I said, not quite ready to discuss porn with a colleague. “We all deserve a little privacy....”
“Secrets lead to guesswork,” Suzy countered. “And I trust you, so I’ll just spit it out. I write vampire books.”
I blinked twice, rewriting my analysis of the situation. “Vampire books like Dracula? Blood and dark castles? People who turn into bats?”
“More like Twilight,” the older woman said comfortably. “I was in the middle of a very intense scene yesterday evening. I’m afraid you walked in at the, well, the climax.”
I coughed, my eyes watering both from amusement and from the fact that I’d gulped pie down the wrong pipe. Which gave me just enough time to come up with a semi-satisfactory answer before my body allowed me to talk.
“I appreciate you sharing,” I told Suzy, not quite sure how to prove that I wasn’t going to judge her for her choice of creative outlet.
To my relief, body language proved to be sufficient. Because Suzy reached across the table to snag a taste of my pie, all tension having drained out of her plump frame. “Sharing makes everything better,” she suggested.
And she was right. When I nabbed a corner of her apple filling, the taste mingled with my own chocolate to create something new and wonderful on my tongue.
Still, when Suzy raised her eyebrows, expecting a verbal reveal on my part, all the boyfriends I’d driven away with my monster rose in my memory...and I choked on my words.
“I really need to get back to the office,” I said finally, knowing as I did so that I was slamming a door shut between us.
For one long moment, Suzy left space for me to rescind my answer. Then, sighing with disappointment, she dropped a few bills on the table and got to her feet.
“Then I guess I’ll see you Monday,” Suzy told me. “Be careful, Dr. Hart.”
IDIOT, my monster murmured as I sat alone in the same booth I’d shared with Suzy half an hour earlier. I’d gone out to the car to check on Adena and grab my laptop in the interim, telling myself it was expediency not cowardice that made me choose to work here rather than returning to campus. Never mind that I had tools to date the statue back in my laboratory as well as high-speed internet that would have made further research a breeze.
I wasn’t at all surprised to be berated by my fearless monster. What proved unusual was her topic of dissent.
Suzy wanted to join your pack, my monster continued as I tried to shake off my fears of both the thief and my own mental decompensation with the classic meditation of a white-collar worker—catching up on backlogged emails. Ignoring the beast’s insightful commentary, I instead continued typing answers into my machine.
“If you’ve accumulated twenty-five citations, it’s time to stop researching and start writing,” I admonished Joe. Next, I deleted Dick’s rant about a mid-month change of the vault code. Finally, I replied to the monster prowling within my head.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Pack? Like for a trip?”
The waitress at the counter eyed me oddly, so I picked up my phone and pretended to be talking to a human. Inside my brain, the monster cackled at the subterfuge.
Friend. She wants to be your friend. You shut her out. You’re an idiot.
I started to retort...then clicked my mouth shut. I hated the fact that this being in my head was right about something. Still—“There’s nothing I can do about it at this moment. I have bigger fish to fry.”
Fish like the statue in my pocket. Even if I couldn’t run tests on it, there were surely some sleuthing avenues open to me.
Gently, I took out the wolf sculpture and set it on the table, considering the object from every side. Even remotely, I could have delved into the literature on similar statues. But I knew what I’d find if I fell down that particular rabbit hole.
North American art hadn’t reached this level of sophistication until thousands of years after dire wolves disappeared from the planet. And there had been no dire wolves in Europe when similar sculptures were made.
Plus, there was the small matter of the President and his angry bellowing. He was a creature of the modern present, not of the prehistoric past. I couldn’t understand what Claw expected me to come up with that the FBI couldn’t investigate better, especially when the data shared with me had been so slim.
A gift, my monster suggested. And it took me thirty seconds to realize she was still harping on my mistreatment of the department secretary. Coffee mug. Twilight.
The beast, I had to admit, was remarkably astute. Yes, Suzy did have a thing for fancy coffee. And Twilight, she’d explained, was similar to her book.
So I ignored the statue for a few minutes while browsing through an online retailer’s website. And as I did so, I realized the one asset I hadn’t thought to tap.
I might not be able to figure out what happened to Blackburn, might not ever know how his death related to Jim Kelter. But I did have a personal relationship with a prehistoric artist. Why not pull on that thread for the statue’s sake?
And, yeah, each visit to the cave painter was probably a psychotic episode. But, real or merely a tunnel into my subconscious, the visions might be key to finding solutions that currently eluded my grasp.
I purchased a Team Edward coffee mug for Suzy, hoping she and Claw were on the same wavelength. Then, leaving a tip for the waitress, I headed out to the seclusion of my car in search of a trance.
VISIONS, APPARENTLY, are trickier to come by when you’re looking for them. Still, once I lay back the driver’s seat and locked myself inside for safety, a prolonged argument with my monster did the trick.
Anger flooded my body, then the past yanked me in so abruptly I had no way of bringing the wolf statue along for the ride. For several minutes, I rode inside the cave woman as she walked through near darkness. Then we emerged beneath a sheltering rock ledge, peering out at a vast snowfield that extended, tundra-like, on every side.
This was a chance to determine the cave painter’s location, I realized. That, at least, would be helpful data to collect. But I needed a closer look at something—a tree maybe—to pin down where I was.
Unfortunately, the cave painter was uninterested in my sleuthing. Instead,
she watched as a snow-clad figure waded toward us through the drifts.
It was the pregnant girl, I saw as she came closer. She had a burn on her cheek now and one eye was blackened. No wonder the painter I inhabited tensed and launched into a flurry of words I couldn’t comprehend.
The cave girl answered just as passionately. And, for long moments, they were lost in an argument I couldn’t understand.
Then—shockingly—the girl began stripping out of her clothes.
It was far too cold for nudity, but the painter didn’t stop her. So I had no choice but to watch as thick furs slid off smooth skin without revealing any underclothes beneath.
Seconds later, the girl kicked out of leather boots and stood naked in ankle-deep snow. Which is when the painter finally turned her head and peered off into the distance, giving me exactly what I’d hoped to see.
The crystal-clear view of a rocky peak, jagged and distinctive. The same one I’d noted during a wilderness hike three summers before.
The only problem was—this peak wasn’t in Europe. It was right here in the United States.
I lacked time to second guess myself however, because that’s when my vision went the rest of the way off the rails. The painter’s gaze returned to the naked girl, who was now goose-bump-covered and shivering. Then, as we both stood watching, the girl tensed before shimmering into the shape of a dire wolf.
Chapter 13
“Werewolves don’t exist!” I gasped.
Speak for yourself, the monster grumbled.
“Caaw!” interjected Adena, perhaps in response to me but more likely reacting to knuckles rapping against the window above my head.
I gasped, rising so quickly blood rushed out of my brain and left me light-headed. On the other side of the glass, Claw stood with eyebrows elevated. He was wearing nothing other than a t-shirt and thin shorts.
“The President is ready for you,” he murmured. And even though I shouldn’t have been able to hear him through the glass and the door that separated us, his words and intentions were impossible to mistake.
He wanted me to drive him back to the airstrip. Wanted to get in my car and travel with me through the uninhabited forest.
Which all made perfect sense...except that I was suddenly having trouble separating fiction from fact.
Because Claw had no vehicle in evidence. Had he walked miles to meet me here with—I craned my head to peer down through the window glass—no shoes to protect his feet from stones and snow?
Memories poured across me. Claw crossing my lecture hall more quickly than he should have been able to as a mere human. Claw’s proximity calling to my monster, waking her and creating this roiling mass of backtalking nonsense she’d turned into now.
Did Claw tug at my monster so dramatically because he possessed a monster in his own belly? Perhaps an even stronger one than plagued me? Was Claw like the prehistoric girl, able to shift into a wolf at will?
“Letting him in would be stupid. How did he even find me here?”
I didn’t realize I’d spoken until Claw’s eyes crinkled at the corners. He headed around to the passenger side, watched as my monster used my fingers to unlock the door and push it open in invitation.
Only then did he speak. “GPS,” he explained as he towered above the entrance, making no move to come in.
I wanted to say something, but I could only cower against the opposite door as I fought my monster’s urge to bend forward and sip his scent. She wanted to lick him. I wanted to hit the gas and escape him. Caught in the middle, my body quivered with indecision.
Claw must have picked up on my ambivalence because he cocked his head and reassured me. “I won’t go anywhere you don’t want me to.”
I shivered. Claw’s words were like a caress. Soft yet forceful. I knew they referred to far more than sinking into the passenger seat.
In self-preservation, I spat out a question. “Where did your scar come from?”
I was the queen of non sequiturs and rude inquiries. But Claw took my nosy question in stride.
“My father. He didn’t like my behavior, so he strung me up as an object lesson.”
I blinked. That wasn’t the answer I’d anticipated. “Some lesson! You might have died.” I swallowed, that possibility tightening my throat.
“I was meant to. The lesson wasn’t intended for me.”
For one split second, the pain in his eyes matched mine whenever I thought about my only parent. Werewolf or no werewolf, this man had been hurt by the world.
And when it came right down to it, weren’t we all monstrous?
This time, it was me rather than my inner beast who patted the passenger seat. “Get in. I’ll drive us back to the plane.”
WE RODE TO THE AIRSTRIP in silence. But it was a warm silence that filled the vehicle with a precarious peace.
Perhaps that’s why I felt comfortable enough to make a request when we met Harry at the entrance to the aircraft. “I need to join the pilot,” Harry told Claw over my head. “Any place you particularly want to go? Las Vegas? Disney World?”
Claw laughed as if the words were a joke rather than a question, the vulnerability that had sat heavy on his shoulders since he told me about his scar slipping away. I guess destination did seem redundant when you were accustomed to using airplanes as secure meeting spaces with no particular need to travel between point A and point B.
I, on the other hand, still had an image of the cave woman’s landmark bouncing around in my head, a much-needed respite from other suppositions of an even more fantastical bent. Seeing the mountain from above wasn’t likely to spark an epiphany. Still.... “Could we head toward the Poconos instead?”
Harry raised an eyebrow—he clearly hadn’t been expecting a response to his rhetorical question. But—“Do it,” Claw demanded even as he ushered me toward the seating area we’d inhabited earlier.
By this point, the airplane was rising rapidly, turning north and west to follow the path I’d requested. It was too late to change my mind and choose self-preservation. Too late to take my guesses and my monster and run.
Eat, the beast admonished, waking sufficiently to turn my feet toward a buffet of fruit and sandwiches. She flicked bread off five triangles to get at thick slices of meat in the center then growled her disappointment when the red condiment turned out to be ketchup rather than blood.
And I let her dine in peace and quiet. My monster was soothed by Claw’s proximity, and he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to share what he’d brought me here to talk about. It was almost like a human first date—only not as awkward and, I hoped, with no hospital visit at the end.
We sat wordlessly until roads gave way to trees beneath us. Sat a little longer as snow began dusting the windows with its frozen crystals.
Then, finally, the external impetus we’d been waiting for materialized. Claw and I both jumped to our feet as Val and the President entered through a door on the opposite end of the cabin.
The last time I’d seen him, Jim Kelter had looked nothing like his on-screen persona. Now, though, he was back in character—well-shaved jaw and eyes twinkling with pleasure when they met mine.
And yet, underneath that pleasantness, something dangerous lurked.
Careful, whispered my monster. And Claw, as if hearing the warning, took one long step forward to stand between me and Jim Kelter. In the process, he slid Val sideways so she was closer to me than to the President.
“Mr. President,” I said, speaking around Claw’s broad body while stroking Adena to soothe her. “I’m so sorry for throwing the tooth at you earlier.”
“It won’t happen again,” Jim Kelter answered, his voice grim and growly. Then, much more pleasantly. “Please, let’s all take our seats before we talk.”
“I’M THE ONE WHO SHOULD apologize for our initial introduction,” the President told me once we’d settled ourselves into the same facing seats Claw and I had sat in earlier. Only this time there were four of us—five if you counted Adena pecki
ng at the buttery leather behind my head.
“Or, rather, for the lack thereof,” the President continued without taking Adena to task for defacing governmental property. “It’s an honor to have you aboard and willing to help us with this important task.”
Only, he didn’t seem keen on telling me what the important task was. We sat in awkward silence for one long moment, me waiting for further information and the President lost in his thoughts.
Well, when in doubt, go for the obvious conversation opener. Without overthinking the matter, I used the question that had worked many times before.
“How are your kids?”
It was as if I’d flicked on a light switch. The lines on Jim Kelter’s forehead softened, his entire stance morphing from imposing leader to proud dad. He pulled out his wallet and started flipping through photos.
“Analise is a teenager now,” he told me, tapping his index finger on the face of the grinning girl who would have been a media darling if the President’s family hadn’t been off limits to reporters. “Janet is getting braces, which she hates.”
I smiled. His enthusiasm was contagious. “Do you think...?” I started, only to fall silent as Claw cleared his throat and pulled a syringe out of his jacket pocket
Right. We weren’t here to visit. We were here about that “important task” that supposedly needed my help.
Leaning forward, I noted that the syringe contents were blood-red and yet, at the same time, bordered on bioluminescent. “What...?” I cocked my head, trying to understand what Claw was getting at.
“You didn’t explain?” the President asked, offspring forgotten as he glared into the other man’s eyes.
“She wasn’t ready to hear it,” the man sitting kitty-corner across from me muttered in answer.
Again, the air filled with a strange, tingling intensity, prompting Adena to caw loudly beside my ear. By the time I’d winced then rubbed the offending area back into submission, Jim Kelter had reestablished his television persona—calm, kind, and entirely sane.
Wolf Dreams Page 7
