Written in Red

by Anne Bishop

  “But . . . ?” He could read her well enough now to know there was something more.

  She took a deep breath and blew it out. “Two things. The BOW’s charge was low when I got back from lunch. I’m not sure it has enough charge for the drive home, and I’m not sure I can drive in snow this deep.”

  “You’re not driving. Jester should be here with a pony in a few minutes.”

  Meg brightened. “We’re riding in the sleigh?”

  He shook his head. “Only the Elementals drive the sleigh. Jester is bringing the sled. It’s big enough to fit you and Nathan. I’ll take the BOW back to the Green Complex. If it doesn’t make it, I’ll shift and go the rest of the way home in Wolf form.” No protest from her. Probably because she wanted to ride in the sled. “What’s the other thing?”

  Now she looked uneasy, as if she were about to stomp on his tail. “Merri Lee takes a bus to work.” She turned enough to look at the snow falling and falling and falling.

  Simon relaxed, pleased that he’d anticipated this. “She’s not going home. Neither is Heather. They can pick up some food at Meat-n-Greens or the grocery store, and they’ll stay in the efficiency apartments tonight. I’m going to talk to Lorne and see if he wants to stay. Marie Hawkgard is staying to keep watch, and Julia will also be in the efficiencies.”

  She opened her mouth, and he expected her to say she would stay with her friends in the too-exposed part of the Courtyard. But as she looked at him, all the color bled out of her face.

  “I need to get home,” she said quietly. “Tonight I need to get home.”

  “That’s why Jester is coming with the pony sled.” Simon studied her face. Why did she look so pale, so scared? “Meg?”

  She shook her head. “I need to go to the toilet.”

  Worried about what she might do in that room, he snarled, “Meg?”

  “I can’t just lift a leg like you do, so I have to pee before going out in the cold,” she snapped at him.

  He took a step back, letting her pass. But he also gave her a quick sniff. Nathan was right; there wasn’t any fresh blood scent on her.

  He opened the go-through for Nathan. “Wait for her by the back door. I’ll lock up.”

  He fetched the keys from the drawer in the sorting room and used the go-through. Nathan had told him that Meg usually wiped the floor after the last delivery because it got slippery from the snow brought in on the deliverymen’s boots. She hadn’t done that, which made vaulting over the counter a good way to slip and break a leg or, at best, take a bad fall.

  As he flipped the sign to CLOSED, a hooded figure in a green and white parka hurried up to the door. He considered ignoring the human and locking up, but he’d seen that same parka walking out of the Courtyard a few minutes ago.

  Pulling the door open, he growled, “What?” before he recognized the Ruthie, who looked like she was trying not to cry.

  “Mr. Wolfgard,” she said, sounding breathless. “I’m glad I caught you before everything closed up. My car is in your parking lot.”

  “That’s sensible.” It would be out of the way, and the adolescent Wolves could have fun digging it out tomorrow.

  “But there is a car stuck in the parking lot’s entrance. The driver isn’t in the vehicle, and I can’t get around it.”

  He followed the trail of her words and realized he had come to a different conclusion than she had. “You’re staying. Go around to the back door of Howling Good Reads. I’ll meet you in a couple of minutes.”

  “But . . .”

  “Go to the back door,” he snapped. “It’s time to find shelter, not go running in the snow.”

  After a hesitation, she nodded. “Thank you.”

  He watched until he was sure she was headed toward the back of the building instead of being foolish and plunging into the storm. Like Meg had done the first night she came to the Courtyard. What was wrong with human females that they didn’t have sense to find shelter?

  Of course, if Meg had taken shelter somewhere else instead of stumbling along until she came to the Courtyard, she might not have found them, and he might never have known her. So maybe Namid was wise to make human females do foolish things.

  Nathan said.

  That much settled, Simon finished locking up the office. He poked his head into the Three Ps long enough to tell Lorne to close up and come to HGR. Then he trotted to the bookstore’s back door. Nudging the Ruthie inside, he found the stockroom full of confused, anxious people. And there was Tess, who looked amused.

  “Cars are stuck in the parking lot, so you two aren’t getting out,” he said, pointing at Ruthie and Heather. Then he pointed at Merri Lee. “And taking a bus tonight is foolish. So you’re staying. We’ll open the efficiency apartments and bring food for you. You’ll have shelter. Marie and Julia Hawkgard will also stay here tonight.”

  “I have a box of chocolates and a couple of movies,” the Ruthie said. “I figured this would be a good movie night.”

  “What about other people who might be stranded?” Merri Lee asked.

  He shook his head. “Someone is trying to hurt the terra indigene. Let strangers find shelter elsewhere. They won’t be safe here.”

  While Tess went up to Simon’s office to fetch the keys for the efficiency apartments, John drew Simon aside.

  “I can stay too,” he said. “Having the Hawks stay is good, but having a Wolf guarding the door will be better.”

  “All right. Take the delivery sled and go to Meat-n-Greens. Get enough food for everyone for tonight.” When the back door opened, Simon added, “And take Lorne with you.”

  That much settled, he bounded up the stairs and reached his office doorway at the same moment Tess was leaving.

  “I’ll be heading out in a BOW in a few minutes,” he said. “Do you want a ride?”

  Her brown hair kept twisting into corkscrew curls then relaxing, a sign of indecision. Finally, she shook her head. “I’m going to keep an eye on this part of the Courtyard.”

  “I don’t want us scattered.” He didn’t think she would willingly share a room with anyone overnight, and even though they were in sight, the rooms above the Liaison’s Office felt too far from company or help. He didn’t want any of his people isolated.

  “I’ll be fine,” she replied. “I have a change of clothes at the shop. I had planned to take a couple of books from our library and indulge in a snow day reading feast, but I’ll just pull a couple of books from HGR’s shelves instead. I might even bake a batch of cookies and join the girls for a movie.”

  It all sounded normal and reasonable, which was why he didn’t believe her. This was Tess, and she was rarely interested in things that were normal and reasonable.

  “All right,” Simon said. “I can—”

  “Stop sounding like a pack nurse trying to keep the pups in one place. Go home and work on keeping your own brainless pup from romping outside in a blizzard.”

  If she was going to put it that way . . .

  “I’ll walk the humans over to the apartments,” he said, his hackles raised a little about being called the pack nurse. He held out his hand. She dropped the key ring into it.

  When he got back downstairs, Heather and the Ruthie were returning from the front of the store.

  “I finally got ahold of Karl,” the Ruthie said, smiling at all of them. “He appreciates your letting me stay here.”

  Simon couldn’t think of an appropriate response, so he led his gaggle of chatty humans to the efficiency apartments. He’d opened up some of the Courtyard stores in order to study humans more closely, to watch them just as Elliot kept watch over the ones who were the city’s government. Looking after some of them made it all so . . . personal. Humans and terra indigene weren’t supposed to
be friends. It wasn’t done.

  But, somehow, it seemed he had done exactly that.

  * * *

  Meg wanted to savor her first ride in a pony sled, but the wind had picked up, driving the snow and making it hard to enjoy anything but the prospect of reaching a warm, dry place. So she huddled in the back of the sled with Nathan while Jester sat on the seat, so bundled up she had barely recognized him. The only one of them who seemed to be enjoying himself was Twister, whose harness bells jingled and whose clumpy pony feet spun the snow all around him as he trotted down the road.

  He might be removing enough snow off the road that someone could drive a BOW all the way to the Green Complex, Meg thought. As long as that someone didn’t wait too long.

  Would it make a difference? How would it make a difference? She’d felt edgy, itchy, ever since the snow had started falling, driving Nathan nuts because he picked up the mood but didn’t understand the source. Edgy and itchy, but the real prickling under her skin didn’t start until she saw Simon.

  “We’re here,” Jester said, twisting on the seat.

  Nathan scrambled off the sled, then waited for her to pick up the carry bags containing the food she’d bought during her midday break. He went ahead of her, breaking a trail, for which she was grateful. She wasn’t quite as grateful when he stopped at her stairs, shifted into that weird and disturbing half-man / half-Wolf shape, grabbed one of the carry sacks, and bounded up the stairs with it.

  The stairs were buried under snow, and it would have been hard for her to haul both bags because she couldn’t see where to put her feet, and he had been trying to help. Still, she avoided looking directly at him—and at the parts that weren’t adequately covered with fur—while she opened her front door, stomped off what snow she could, and stepped inside.

  Shoving the carry bag into her hand, he immediately shifted back to pure Wolf.

  “Do you want to come in?” she asked.

  His answer was to choose a spot on the latticework side of her porch where he had some protection from the snow and wind—and where anyone coming up the stairs wouldn’t see him before he saw them.

  He lay down and gave her an “Idiot, aren’t you going to close the door?” look. So she closed the door, shrugged out of her wet winter clothes, and hung them in the bathroom to drip.

  She put the food in the refrigerator and cupboards, and wondered if anyone would think to check for edibles before they all spoiled.

  The prophecies and visions didn’t work the same in the outside world as they had in the compound. Her own experiences, her own memories provided context. That was why, when she saw Simon standing in the Private doorway, she had slipped into that weird kind of vision that didn’t require cutting.

  Fur. And teeth. And terrible cold. Then flashes of the remembered images from the visions she had seen about the Courtyard. A storm. Men dressed in black. A sound like motors and hornets. The interior road near Erebus Sanguinati’s home. Sam howling in terror. A white room with that narrow bed. And Simon Wolfgard.

  She shifted the images this way and that like puzzle pieces, changing the sequence and searching for clues. She could save Sam. If she followed one sequence of images, she could do that much. After that? She wasn’t going to give in. She wasn’t going to hand over her body like it was someone else’s property. She would fight as hard as she could for as long as she could. The only thing she would gain from fighting was her own sense of being a person instead of a thing, because the end would be the same.

  This was the beginning of the prophecy she’d seen about herself.

  This was the night she was going to die.

  CHAPTER 25

  Slow and steady, Monty thought as the cab did a crawl and slide down Whitetail Road. Slow and steady.

  Every time they reached a traffic light, he listened to the zzzzzeeeeeeeee of tires spinning as the cars tried to get enough traction to move through the intersection and keep going. When they finally reached the Chestnut Street intersection and it was clear they were going to wait through several changes of the traffic light before the cab would be able to make the turn, Monty said, “I’ll get out here,” and paid the driver.

  “I think we’ll get through this storm all right,” the cabby said as Monty got out. “It looks like the snow is letting up.”

  * * *

  Asia listened to the putt putt brrmmm of a BOW growling its way through snow. Then she called the special messenger.

  “Simon Wolfgard is headed for the Green Complex. Your benefactor’s property should be there already. Looks like some employees are staying overnight in the apartments above the shops, but there’s no one in the business part of the Courtyard who will interfere with you.”

  “We’re all in position. The Stag and Hare is still open and crowded. You can blend in there. As soon as we’ve reacquired the property, we’ll be heading out of the city. I’ll call you.”

  Maybe he would call her. She had a feeling she might be conveniently left behind. That was fine. The messenger and his men were just the diversion she needed to acquire the pup and get out of the Courtyard before the Others knew what happened.

  She waited another minute, then left the maintenance garage and hurried to the garage that held the BOW Darrell had driven last week.

  That space was empty, but when she opened the next door, that garage contained a BOW. She unhooked the vehicle from its power source and got in. The BOW grumbled when she turned the key, but the engine turned over. She located the controls for the lights and wipers. When she turned on the lights, she noticed the power bar showed a thirty-percent charge.

  She couldn’t remember how much charge the BOW had used the night Darrell had driven to the Green Complex, and that annoyed her. Asia Crane, SI, would remember that kind of detail from just a glance at the dashboard.

  It’ll be enough to get me there and back, Asia thought as she turned off the lights and backed out of the garage. After all, I’m not the one breaking the trail.

  Muscling the BOW into the tracks left by Simon’s vehicle, Asia headed for the Green Complex and the bit of fur that was going to make Bigwig and the other backers piles of money and make her a very famous woman.

  * * *

  A gust of wind playfully pushed the BOW. Simon growled, not sure if that gust was simply weather or if it was Air amusing herself. Either way, the direction had shifted, which meant the storm was curling around the city instead of continuing to slam through it. That softening had to be Winter’s doing, with help from Air. It was still a good day to get home and stay home, and with tomorrow being Earthday, clearing the delivery area and the parking lot could be done leisurely. And he liked the idea of Wolves digging out the cars stuck in their lot. That would be more fun than being in human form and shoveling.

  Maybe they could let the ponies . . . ? No, he wasn’t ready to encourage the ponies to reveal their true nature and abilities by clearing the snow in the places where humans could see them. But inside the Courtyard was another matter. Tornado, Cyclone, and Twister were not small forces, but they could work smaller for play. He could tell by the way the road had been cleared that Jester had hitched one of them to the pony sled so that Meg would be able to get home. And Blair had noticed short snow funnels that moved along the Courtyard’s interior roads at the speed of a trotting pony. The three ponies were pleased because they didn’t get to use their natures often in this part of Thaisia, and Blair was pleased because he wasn’t using time or fuel to plow the roads.

  And Meg could drive anywhere she wanted within the Courtyard without getting stuck in the snow, which pleased all of them.

  It took more time than usual, but he reached the visitor’s parking at the Green Complex and slowed to consider. The lane leading back to the garages hadn’t been cleared at all, and any vehicles that were back there weren’t going anywhere for a day or two. That left the s
pots across the road from the complex.

  Someone with large, powerful limbs had swiped most of the snow from the guest spots. Simon wasn’t sure two BOWs could fit into the cleared space and have room for the drivers to get out, but there was plenty of room for him, and nobody else would be using a vehicle to get home. In his smoke form, Vlad could travel faster in this weather than any other terra indigene except the Elementals.

  He studied the snow next to the cleared space. Then he turned off the BOW’s lights and let his eyes adjust. With the lights on, it appeared that what stood beside the parking space was a swirl of snow. But in the dark, that swirl became a shape.

  Henry Beargard was a large man and a massive Grizzly. But when Henry took the spirit bear form, he was even bigger. And standing on his hind legs, as he was now, he looked like he could pluck the stars from the sky.

  Simon asked.

  Henry paused.

  He growled. She had shared those words with Henry, the spirit guide for their Courtyard. And the Grizzly was restless.

  Henry dropped to all fours and moved off.

  Simon watched him go, his form visible only because the Wolf knew what to look for. He parked the BOW and hurried across the road, wondering if he’d find Sam at his apartment or at Meg’s. Then he stopped, listened.

  he called.

  she replied.

  Nothing out there now, but he had heard it.