Into the Flame

by Christina Dodd

  She got her first good look at it.

  A cougar. It was a cougar.

  She frowned. Her heart stopped. She looked toward the bed where the large, soft stuffed animal lay sprawled.

  A cougar?

  As the cat began to change, her heartbeat leaped.

  The claws retracted. The bones warped into new shapes: The paws became hands, the back legs lengthened and straightened, the shoulders got broader, the hair retreated onto the head and chest and genitals.

  The face changed, too, becoming a man’s face, a familiar man’s face . . . the face of the man she loved.

  She stared. Stared so hard her eyes hurt.

  Douglas. Douglas was a Varinski.

  He’d come to Brown, sought her out, courted her, seduced her, made her trust him, got her to confide in him. . . . In a brief spasm of shame, she hid her eyes with her hands.

  She’d told him she was from Washington. She’d told him she had three brothers, that one was a wine-maker, that her father grew grapes and her mother ruled the family.

  Had she told him the name of her town?

  No.

  Had she given him anything that would enable him to pinpoint her location?

  No.

  No. Please, no.

  He stood out there, naked in the moonlight, a tattoo that looked like great claw marks ripping the skin on his left side.

  She hadn’t seen that before. He’d taken great care not to take off his shirt in the light.

  Smart guy, because that would have tipped her off for sure. Her brothers had tattoos that were just as vivid, just as distinctive, and they had come naturally the first time they became beasts.

  Completely unself-conscious with his nudity— well, why should he be self-conscious? Apparently, half the guys on campus were streaking—Douglas turned and loped away.

  Virulently, she hoped he was happy with himself. Because he’d managed to get laid, but he hadn’t caught her. He hadn’t killed her.

  And he wasn’t going to get another chance to try.

  Going to the bed, she picked up the soft, plush stuffed cougar by the scruff of the neck. Its dark, intense eyes mocked her as she walked out into the hall and to the trash chute. But she got the final laugh—she dropped the damned thing down the hole and into the Dumpster outside.

  Back to her room, she called an airline and reserved the first flight out of town toward the West Coast. It went to LA, but that was good enough. She could hang out there, try to figure out how much to tell the folks, then catch a ride to Napa to Jasha’s winery, and from there on to Washington.

  She packed her clothes, leaving most of the stuff— she’d worn it all down to the threads, anyway.

  She left the dorm, walking toward the bus stop, and as she walked, she dug into her purse, pulled out the envelope with the Father’s Day card and the plastic stick with the telltale blue stripes, and threw it into the garbage.

  No matter how hard she would try, she could never forget Douglas Black.

  He’d given her a souvenir that would last forever.

  Chapter Two

  Washington State

  Present Day

  The Varinski stood in the dark forest and watched the young woman drive up to the small two-story house, park, and get out. She leaned against the late-model Mercury Milan—a sensible car for such a pretty woman—looked up at the starry sky, and anguish twisted her face.

  For one moment, he felt almost sorry for her. Almost.

  But pity fought with lust, and lust fought with resentment.

  Because what did she have to be anguished about? Mountains covered with deep, green, primeval forest enclosed this long valley. Vines covered most of the flat ground, but the old-fashioned house, filled with light and warmth and family, occupied one end. A picket fence enclosed the carefully tended yard. Most people would call this setting idyllic, yet if she was restless for the bright lights, it was less than a half hour drive to the nearest small town, also idyllic, and two hours to Seattle.

  More important, she had family inside, waiting for her.

  Firebird Wilder might be feeling sorry for herself, but she had it made.

  With a deep breath, she headed up the steps. Placing her hand on the doorknob, she stopped. She straightened her shoulders.

  The door opened under her hand. A man greeted her. A man holding a little boy of two.

  The Varinski flinched.

  Then he thought . . . no. The man looked like a Varinski. So that was her brother, and the kid must be her nephew.

  He didn’t like to be relieved . . . but he was.

  She stepped inside and the door closed behind her.

  Drawn by anger, need, and the pact he had made, the Varinski walked out of the trees. He scrutinized the house, with its wide, welcoming porch that spanned the front of the house, and its windows un-draped and spilling light into the frozen lawn. He walked to the back, where he found more lawn, a winter-nipped garden surrounded by a tall deer fence, and a small orchard of fruit trees arranged in straight rows.

  This place was soft. One man could attack the house and do damage—significant damage. A hundred men could raze the entire valley and destroy every living thing in it, every creature and every blade of grass.

  Konstantine Varinski had forgotten his past, and his heedlessness had put him and everyone in his family at risk.

  The Varinski’s quiet tread was as much a part of him as his tawny hair and his dark brown eyes. He returned to the front, mounted the stairs, and walked silently from one end of the porch to the other. He looked in the windows, into the living room crowded with life, with warmth, with love.

  Although Konstantine had changed, had grown prematurely old and desperately ill, the Varinski recognized him. He sat in a recliner, a tank of oxygen beside him, an IV drip in his arm. He must be almost seventy, and painfully gaunt, yet he had the same strong frame and vigorous head of hair he had sported in photos taken forty years ago.

  His wife sat nearby. The Varinski recognized her from the old photos, too; she had barely changed. She was in her early fifties, petite, pretty, a hundred pounds soaking wet. Her dark hair shone and her dark eyes sparked with life.

  As he moved from window to window, he saw them all. Three sons who closely resembled their father. Three women whom their sons obviously adored. One lone older man, who tried to make himself small in the crowded room.

  Everyone stared at Firebird, watched Firebird. She sat on the floor by the door, her back pressed against the wall. The toddler sat in her lap.

  Her face was hard and accusing, and she spoke rapidly, like a woman in the grip of fury, yet all the while, she hugged the little boy as if he brought her comfort.

  As the Varinski watched with cruel intention, he deliberately began the change. His bones melted and mutated. His hands developed into paws, paws with long, sharp claws that could rend a man to shreds. His face lengthened and squared; his teeth shaped themselves into fangs; his jaw grew large and strong enough to snap a man’s neck. His blond hair spread down his body, becoming a golden pelt that invited the touch of any simpleton who was fool enough to dare caress the swift, intelligent, deadly beast that he had become.

  With a single spring, he silently leaped off the porch and raced across the valley, seeking the shelter of the surrounding forest.

  Firebird had been in the hospital in Seattle. From the information the Varinski had been able to collect—and he was good at collecting information—Konstantine’s children were coming in one at a time to give blood and have tests as the doctors pursued the cause and cure of his unique and life-threatening illness.

  The Varinski leaped up a tree and found a broad branch, one that allowed him to observe the house and the narrow road that wound its way into the valley, and mull over all the vulnerabilities that could be utilized in an attack.

  And all the while, he wondered, What had she discovered?

  What had left her so distraught?

  How could he turn the situatio
n to his advantage . . . and destroy the family?

  Because he wasn’t really a Varinski.

  He was the thing not even the Varinskis wanted to claim.

  Firebird would never forget this day.

  The day she discovered her family had lied to her.

  The day she’d discovered the truth.

  Now, finding herself in the safe, familiar setting of the place she had always called home, she hugged her baby, her Aleksandr, and in a steady voice that surely belonged to a stranger, she asked, ‘‘Why didn’t you tell me that I’m adopted? That I’m not related to you? To any of you?’’ She looked right at the woman she had always believed to be her mother. At Zorana. ‘‘Why didn’t you tell me I’m not your child?’’

  Her father had the guts to look bewildered.

  Her brothers exchanged glances, the kind she’d seen so many times before, the one that said, She must have cramps.

  The other people in the tiny living room—her brothers’ women, the strange man she had yet to meet—looked the way people did when they’d fallen into an emotional episode they would just as soon avoid.

  But her mother . . . oh, yes. Her mother sat pale, frozen, wide-eyed . . . guilty.

  Jasha spoke first, in that excessively reasonable, older-brother tone of voice that made her want to scream. ‘‘Firebird, are you thinking you were switched in the nursery? Because you were born at home. Rememberthe story? We all remember that night, and we’ve told you the story at least a dozen times.’’

  His wife, Ann, touched his arm and, when he looked at her, shook her head.

  ‘‘What?’’ His voice rose a little. ‘‘I’m just pointing out the facts.’’

  Firebird’s voice rose, too. ‘‘And I’m telling you what the doctor told me. I am not related to any of you. He made that plain enough.’’

  Everyone at Seattle’s Swedish Hospital had told the family that Dr. Mitchell was the best in the field of genetic illnesses. She herself had seen that he was first in the field of arrogance, and last in the field of tact.

  ‘‘Why the hell are your parents having me waste my time testing you? You’re adopted. I’m looking for a genetic mutation that is causing your father’s disease. You’re no good to us.’’ He turned away.

  ‘‘Someone screwed up, and it’s not my parents.’’ Furious with him, Firebird stood and lunged, catching his arm. ‘‘I’m not adopted.’’

  He looked down at her as if she were a worm. ‘‘Oh, for God’s sake. I don’t have time to screw with this. I don’t have time to counsel you through your shock and anger. The lab redid the blood test three different times. You’re no more related to Konstantine and Zorana Wilder and their sons than you are to me.’’ He flung the chart at her. ‘‘Look for yourself.’’

  She had. She’d gone through the chart so many times the results were burned on her eyeballs. It never changed.

  Konstantine pushed himself upright in his recliner and robustly said, ‘‘That jackass of a doctor made a mistake.’’

  ‘‘No. He didn’t. Papa, you are type A. Mama, you are type AB. That means all of your children must be blood type A, B, or AB. The hospital lab typed me as O negative.’’

  ‘‘Well, they’re wrong.’’ Rurik was the second son, a former Air Force pilot with an officer’s forceful way of expressing himself. ‘‘Jasha’s right. I remember that night, and it was raining so hard—no way anyone was switching babies around.’’

  Adrik was the youngest son. He had been gone, vanished for seventeen years doing heaven knew what. He’d come back changed from a laughing teenager into a stern-faced man. Now he knelt beside Firebird and spoke gently, convinced he was right. ‘‘I remember seeing you the next morning. I thought you were the ugliest thing I’d ever seen, all wrinkled, red, and ugly. You were certainly a new baby. The hospital has to have messed this up.’’

  ‘‘I checked my card from the Red Cross blood center. I am O negative. It doesn’t take an advanced degree in genetics to see that someone with my blood type can’t be the child of two people who are their blood type.’’

  The men exchanged glances.

  ‘‘Isn’t it possible there’s some kind of genetic mutation?’’ Ann asked.

  Firebird looked right at Zorana. ‘‘I don’t know. Mama, what do you think?’’

  ‘‘God.’’ Zorana stared back, stricken with horror. ‘‘God.’’

  Adrik got to his feet. ‘‘Mama?’’

  ‘‘Zorana?’’ Konstantine leaned forward. ‘‘What’s wrong?’’

  Big tears welled in Zorana’s eyes. She pressed her fingers to her lips and shook her head in violent shudders.

  The sight of her mother’s conscience-stricken face calmed Firebird’s agitation.

  The worst was over. She had her confirmation.

  It was true. Zorana knew it was true.

  Firebird was not her daughter.

  In a low tone, Firebird said, ‘‘Mama, why don’t you tell us everything you can remember about that night when you gave birth to . . . your baby.’’

  Zorana nodded in wretched assent, and began the story Firebird had heard a dozen times. But this time, Zorana told them the details she’d kept hidden for so many years . . .

  Chapter Three

  Twenty-three years ago . . .

  Lightning flashed.

  Thunder roared.

  ‘‘Push, Zorana, push!’’

  Wind slashed through the night.

  Rain sluiced down in buckets, in inches an hour, pounding the windows of the Wilders’ small house.

  In the haze created by pain, Zorana Wilder had lost control of the weather.

  ‘‘Push, Zorana, push!’’

  Zorana bared her teeth at the doctor. ‘‘Get away from me.’’

  ‘‘Get away from you?’’ Dr. Lewis swayed on his feet, and if smell were any indication, he had swum through a river of whisky to get here through the storm. ‘‘If I don’t deliver this baby, who will? This old-maid schoolteacher?’’ He brayed with laughter.

  Miss Joyce, the aforementioned old-maid schoolteacher, paced back and forth in the Wilders’ small master bedroom, agitation, fear, or perhaps a bad application of blush placing a red spot of color on each cheek. She’d arrived with the doctor, dressed in her usual uniform of orthopedic shoes, a long-sleeved blue cotton dress buttoned up to her throat, and a pleated plastic rain bonnet. With thorough circumspection, she had explained that she’d been with him when he received the call and thought she should come and be of assistance.

  Zorana barely refrained from snapping that the best assistance Miss Joyce could have given was to keep him sober.

  Some things were beyond even Miss Joyce’s authority.

  If only Konstantine were here. Always before, when Zorana gave birth, he had held her hand and encouraged her with his rumbling voice and his strength. And it had been ten years since Zorana had given birth. This labor was grueling. This son was bigger. He’d come quickly, too quickly for her to get to the hospital, and now she strained and sweated in her own bed, by the light of two bedside lamps, attended by a drunkard and a sixty-year-old virgin.

  Konstantine Wilder had a lot to answer for.

  ‘‘Where is he?’’ Zorana gasped. ‘‘Where is the bastard who got me into this condition?’’

  Miss Joyce swam into view, the edges of her form wavering, her face distorted, her smile stretched and flat.

  ‘‘Damn you, Doctor,’’ Zorana gritted between her teeth. ‘‘What kind of drugs did you give me?’’

  Dr. Lewis adjusted his glasses and peered at her in astonishment. ‘‘You asked for them. Remember? You told the schoolteacher—’’

  ‘‘No, I didn’t!’’ Zorana shouted. ‘‘No drugs. I told you . . . no drugs!’’

  Miss Joyce wiped Zorana’s forehead with a damp cloth. ‘‘She doesn’t remember,’’ Zorana heard her say to the doctor.

  If Zorana had had a single ounce of energy to spare, she would have leaped off the bed and slapped them
both.

  ‘‘Push, Zorana, push!’’ Miss Joyce said.

  Zorana grasped her knees, took a breath, leaned up, and pushed.

  The bed shook with the roll of the thunder.

  The pressure inside was deep and strong. The baby was almost here.

  ‘‘Where is Konstantine?’’ she cried in a panic.

  ‘‘The dam on the creek, the one he uses for irrigation, is giving way. It’s about to flood the vines.’’ The red spots in Miss Joyce’s cheeks grew mottled, and she fanned herself with her hand.

  ‘‘I don’t care about the vines. Let them wash away.’’ Zorana could feel another pain building. ‘‘Bring Konstantine. His son is coming.’’

  Dr. Lewis laughed. ‘‘You think it’s another son?’’

  Of course it was a son. For a thousand years, the Varinskis, and now the Wilders, had had only sons. She had three sons, strong sons, mischievous sons, beautiful sons. . . . ‘‘Get Konstantine here now!’’ Zorana demanded.

  Miss Joyce pushed a pillow under her shoulders, and in a brisk schoolteacher tone, she said, ‘‘If he doesn’t get the flood under control, the house is going to wash away, and all of us with it.’’

  Zorana looked out the window. The black night pressed against the glass. Then a spear of lightning so bright it seared her eyeballs blasted the darkness.

  She moaned. Tears of pain and fear slipped from the corners of her eyes, and worry splintered her mind. Her other boys—Jasha, Rurik, and Adrik—should be in bed asleep, but no one could have slept through this violent tempest. And Konstantine was out there somewhere, in the rain and the lightning and the shrieking wind, risking his life . . . because the pain and the drugs had eroded her power . . . and the storm battered them with the force of all the storms she’d vanquished. ‘‘Konstantine . . .’’ she moaned softly.

  The doctor took a pull from his bottle, rolled up his sleeves, and swiped at his sweaty face with his bare hand. ‘‘Not much longer now.’’

  Repulsed, again Zorana shrieked, ‘‘Get away from me!’’

  ‘‘Don’t be silly, woman. I’m a doctor. You need me.’’ Dr. Lewis grinned idiotically and bent toward her.