On his own path, Simon kept a steady pace for about four miles, following his memories deep into the woodlands in the opposite direction from his friends. The perspiration on his body had little to do with his exertion, and grew stronger as he warily approached his destination. And there it was, two hundred feet through the trees and barely visible: a gypsy-looking camp, with its cobalt crescent moons hanging on doors and tiny windows of the old caravans. The circle’s dappled teal and sky blues, deep purples and hazy grays would hide it from anyone not actually looking for it.
A tall, slender woman stepped from one of the caravans, pausing as she wrapped a long sheepskin coat around herself. She freed her hip-length black hair from inside it, and looked through the dense growth directly at Simon. Her dark eyes held his shape as he moved. He’d forgotten just how acute her senses were, and how much more so they must have become in the passing of nearly forty years since their first meeting.
He approached quietly and slowly, all the same, and a slight smile ghosted her lips as she formed the name “Simon.”
“Selena.” He held his arms out and she grasped both his hands.
“Simon.” Her eyes were bright as she drew him into the circle of the camp. A few caravan doors were open to the fresh air, revealing bright and welcoming interiors within their deeply muted outer colors. He recognized two or three design styles of their particular owners, and was happy to note that they were still with the pack.
“Are you well?” They asked simultaneously, and with a bright laugh, Selena observed that Simon hadn’t changed all that much in the eight years since their last meeting. “Usually there is something in the eyes …” Selena trailed off, looking deeply into his. “But you are still holding well.”
“So are you — ” he bit back her true name — “Selena. You haven’t aged a moon. No, wait,” he grinned mischievously then, “you are even more graceful, perhaps.”
“And you still speak like a badly written novel,” she teased. “Simon, it’s me. No need to be so formal.”
Simon flushed slightly. Selena had always been something of a supernatural figure to him, figuratively as well as literally. “I’ve kept one of my promises,” he said quietly.
“I know. Thank you,” she nodded, and stepped back for a longer look. Simon noticed the cobalt crescent falling from its intricate golden chain, and she subconsciously swept it back inside her loose shirt. “You must know why I have brought us all back here.”
“I’d hoped you had heard,” Simon rested his foot on a large rock and leaned back against a fir tree.
“Sit down, Simon, please. Gwen and Sayuri will be happy to see you,” Selena took a seat on the rock herself. “Most of the club is out hunting before nightfall. We’re short on grocery cash this month, I’m afraid, so we’re relying on our own skills.”
Selena hesitated a long moment before speaking again, her voice concerned. “There are only a few of us left, you know, and I’m having trouble with one of them.” She gestured to a caravan, which was chained and padlocked with what seemed to be traces of silver in the links. Six men hovered nearby, trancelike, either sitting straight-backed or standing alertly outside it. Each one wore a small cobalt crescent around his neck.
“Guards?” Simon raised an eyebrow. “Really, Selena?”
“No, my dear friend. Not guards.” Selena exhaled crossly. “Count them. Six. My little troublemaker seeks a Seventh Hound to close her Artemis Circle and become a new queen all on her own.”
“Oh, good lord.”
“I’m afraid so.” Selena stretched inside her loose coat, soaking in the weak morning sunlight.
“You can’t be serious. She’s collecting Hounds? That’s unconscionable. How dangerous is she?”
Selena’s eyebrow arched as she glanced over at the little group outside the camper. “Really, Simon. She has six already; what do you think? One more and she has raised her own hunting pack. She will be uncontrollable. She in particular will be very dangerous — on a par with Vertigo.”
Simon made a weak attempt at a joke, waving toward the route he’d used to find the camp. ”I guess I’d better get moving before nightfall, then, or I’ll be a … what would I be? I can’t say I’m keen on turning twice each month.”
“Fortunately for you, there is no such thing as a two-blooded wolf. You would certainly escape the bonds of being the Seventh Hound; however, you would most likely die anyway. A better outcome, perhaps.”
“I dare say I ought to round up my boys and get as far away as I can, then.”
“That would be best,” nodded Selena. “Be careful tonight, Simon; It is the sharpest night of the moon, and I have scouts covering a 100-mile field. You must not cross them in any way.” They stood up together. “Gwen and Sayuri will be happy that you stopped by. And you remember Quinsey?”
Simon nodded with a grin, “Tell her I send her a hug; see what she says.”
“She would rather tell you herself,” Selena laughed. “It is lovely to see you again, my dear friend, and you have kept both your promises well.”
Simon couldn’t look at her. “I don’t think so,” he mumbled. “Your son …”
Selena’s face became somber. “You did the best you could. I could neither recognize his car nor stop myself. My own son! Twice,” she continued bitterly, “twice I lost him.” Simon found a patch of moss to examine for a few moments, until he heard Selena’s breathing return to normal. “As for your second promise; what can you tell me?”
Simon told her everything.
Her eyes grew even darker. “You left her alone? With those … Hunter-creatures? And with Vertigo in the area? Simon!”
“Selena, it was the only option.”
In the late morning rays, Selena stood, shadow of the wolf encroaching with her rising determination, and called her circle together.
“What about Tanis?” asked one of the women.
“Let her join us,” responded the queen. “Simon, find Gregory right away. You and he will ride with us before it gets any later. We will all be leaving together.”
“How? I mean … Selena, you could kill us later if we’re even close to you.”
Two women strode into camp, armed with bows and arrows and carrying freshly killed rabbits. The taller, a black woman who looked to be in her early forties, slowly took aim at him. “Hello, Simon,” she grinned at him.
“Quinsey! Always a pleasure,” he laughed.
“Ah, good; Quinsey, you’re here. Gwen, would you tell the rest of the team to get the bikes? We are leaving within the hour, and taking Simon with us.” She smiled fondly at Simon, “They are of a fellow pack, and we’ll pick them up along the way.”
“Sure,” Gwen, a pixie-ish young woman with an easy smile, brushed her tousled blonde bob out of her eyes and looked at Simon dubiously. “This fellow pack – are they some of us?”
“Not of the crescent, but yes, they are old friends. We must leave very soon, so that we reach Pigeon Creek well before sunset.”
Gwen and Quinsey rounded up their fellows, each of whom appeared with a hardy-looking motorbike that was to be loaded up with spare clothing, trail food, and the requisite coffee. Tanis was released after all the preparations had been made, spouting language that would make a sailor blush while her Hounds eyed Simon suspiciously. There was also an unsettling gleam in the young woman’s eyes as they ran over Simon from head to toe and back again.
Selena gave the order and a dozen engines revved and roared. Tonight, under the sharpest crescent of the new moon, the Chimerae would hunt.
Tell Me True
Karina had been half-expecting it. The men’s stares had been deeper, the voices more clipped in the past two days. Finally, the Hunters cornered her in the bright little kitchen and an FBI agent revealed himself.
“How could you!” Karina demanded. “How could you?!” But they clamped down on her and shackled her to a kitchen chair. She strained against the handcuffs until her wrists chafed and bled.
Th
e interrogation wore Karina out in twelve different places. “Where is your grandmother now?” The FBI agent’s badge reflected off the sunlight pouring through the kitchen window as he leaned over to adjust the voice recorder.
“She died when I was six – I told you that.”
“How is Simon related to you?” Adam bent and spoke very softly from behind her, just over her shoulder.
“Put your wolf ears on, maybe they’ll help!” Karina spat at him. “He’s my mother’s sister’s son!”
“Your mother was an only child. We know a lot more than you think, Miss Redfeather. Just talk to us.”
“How does Simon know your grandmother?” persisted the Badge.
They were into their second hour of the same questions.
“Why did your grandmother stop talking to your father? When?”
“I told you. After he came back from boarding school he wasn’t the same. There was a rift.”
“What kind of rift?”
“He wasn’t Ojibwe any more – that’s what my uncle told me. It was all stolen from him at the Catlinite school. It broke her heart. They didn’t speak for a long time, and she finally died.”
“How?”
“I told you, I don’t know! She just died! I was little. I don’t know.”
“And your parents?” The Badge idly flipped through a file.
“You already know. It’s all in those papers! Or you can just ask Adam, here, since he knows so much.”
“Let’s see … eight years ago; car crash for your Dad, cancer for your Mom? What, six months apart?” drawled The Badge.
Karina’s furious tears dripped onto her shirt —Simon’s shirt — and she remained silent.
“Sure it was a crash? New moon, no light … sure it wasn’t something else?” Adam whispered again.
Karina sobbed an unintelligible response.
“All right. That’ll do.” Standing up to tuck both the digital recorder and his FBI badge back into his shirt, Reese McConnell unhooked her from the cuffs and the lie detector and left her shivering at the table.
Karina stumbled to the bedroom; carrying nothing, she slipped out the window into the cold late afternoon light and abandoned her former life.
In an instant, on her trail were a pack of Hunters, along with a raving maniac in human form — and a full contingent of Something Else.
Karina’s Turn
“Nice work, Hunter,” McConnell smiled as he inspected Karina’s deep, muddy tracks, which led into the woods north of the property. “She’s not even trying. She’ll lead us right to him.”
“I want desRosiers, and I don’t want her hurt,” Adam’s jaw was squared again. “Look. She might not even know where he is.”
“Oh, come on now. She’ll take us right to him.” The FBI agent stood and stretched. “With any luck we might get Vertigo, too, what do you think? He’s got her scent. We follow her, we get all three of them.”
“She’s not … bait.”
“Well, hell yes, she is. You ain’t going soft on us, are you?” Reese chuckled and moved off into the woods with a contingent of half a dozen Hunters. “You forgetting about your wife and boy, Hunter?” Reese tossed over his shoulder, laughing with the exhilaration of the hunt.
With a snarl, Adam shouldered his rifle and took off after him.
Not far from the cottage, Vertigo’s ears picked up the snap of a twig; and he caught a whiff of the woman’s sweat and just a touch of fresh blood. His mark would not heal so easily, either, he grinned to himself. Almost sundown, and he was cursed at the wrong time of the month. Well, he could still have some fun. He reached into his memory to replay some of his finest, most horrific memories. His blood pulsed faster.
And so he tracked her, working himself up with every step. There was someone else nearby, too, but something wasn’t right. He couldn’t be bothered analyzing it as he closed in on his prey, focusing on the blood and sweat and the hint of Simon’s scent from the shirt she must be wearing.
Karina headed through the undergrowth, half blinded by tears and rage. Where was Simon? How could he have abandoned her? Adam was right then, after all. But Adam was a monster — and Reese —
Karina ran smack into something that took the wind out of her; she doubled up, gasping. Whatever it was had hit her right in the midsection.
“I’m sorry,” came a soft voice, grandmotherly almost. “I try not to let that happen, but I’m not very tall and people tend to run into me.” A gentle hand took hers, and there was the faintest trace of hair on the palm. Karina, still bent over, looked up and into the concerned eyes of a small Japanese woman with gray-streaked hair, and just the faintest hint of a blue ring around each iris. How could this be happening?
“Come,” the woman indicated a hollow log. “You must enter here.” Her voice was lightly accented, and she began to speak more urgently. “Please. You must hurry. Sunset is near.” The woman’s eyes were taking on a familiar luminescence and as she held out her other hand, which was heavily gloved, Karina saw chains of silver draped in it. “I will cover you up when you are inside. Listen to me. Another Chimera — like me — is coming. Do not come out. I will go away now and leave you alone.” The woman shuddered and Karina lost no time in questioning her, diving inside the musty hideout and seeing the chains drop across the entrance, hearing them draped across the log. Then footsteps rushed away into the brush.
There was stillness for a moment, before the early darkness erupted in a nerve-shattering shriek which dissolved into a liquid howl.
Vertigo was brought up short.
It couldn’t be.
He checked the moon. Its sharp crescent peeked from behind the clouds.
Another long howl, very, very near …
They were here?
That split second nearly cost him his existence, as a force hurled itself toward him from the woods. He couldn’t scent it! It was brisk mountain air, it was a fresh wind, it was … Where was it? Vertigo was struck with something he had rarely felt in nearly three hundred years, when the Firewolves attacked the caravan of Papal emissaries trudging across the plains of Tejas in New Spain. The simple wooden cross on the breast of his tunic hadn’t helped him that full moonlit night. In a guilty flash he had understood, when the yellow beast slavered before him, that his old sins, those unspeakable accusations which had led to his banishment from Sevilla, had claimed their just repentance.
Not half a mile away, Adam and Reese froze.
“She’s a … ” Reese began.
“Not possible,” whispered Adam. “I’ve been here at new moon. There must be — ”
A number of hollow, melodious howls took up the cry.
“There must be a dozen of them,” he finished quietly.
Reese hissed, “Got any silver? Locked and loaded? Good. Hell, you may need to toss your patch at ’em. Whaddaya know — what a coup, huh? They really do exist!”
Adam took off ahead of his own pack, Reese hard on his heels, directly towards the mournful cries.
Selena rose high on her toes, growling a warning to her Chimerae as her world came into focus again. Vertigo, she scented. Hunters, too. And was that Karina — oh, my; how long had it been! A stillness in the sounds told her that one of her own had her prey cornered. But there would be no other blood spilled tonight, just the one, that of the yellow dog; even though it was the sharpest of the crescent moons. Selena moved her fellows silently towards the place where Vertigo was cornered.
He was crouched low, there under a tree, near a log covered with the burning silver — how it stung Selena’s eyes — but she forced herself to focus on this human beast. This creature who had found a place as a priest at the Catlinite School, where the white people had taken her son away. This monster who had effectively killed her child before he was nine years old, long before his life had finally been taken.
Selena stifled a howl and the driving need to disembowel this animal with a single claw strike, but to do so slowly, so that he would know who she w
as and why this was happening. Vertigo was the one, the taker of souls. The Chimera pack circled Vertigo, but held themselves back as the raggedy human beast began to howl himself and Selena crouched for the kill.
As she lunged at her foul target, a shot rang out and a silver bullet splattered low against a nearby tree trunk. The drops immolated two of her Chimerae.
The pack turned as one, each seeking a gray-shirted target. Adam Hunter reloaded, scanning his rifle sights in the direction of the sounds he was approaching. What was that — silver chains draped across that hollow log? Was Karina hidden in there? Had she known about all this?
Damn, why weren’t they visible? Adam saw a flash of eyes that also caught Reese’s attention and McConnell fired, missing his shot. His life ended in a flash as the Chimera wolf tore out his throat.
Tanis thrilled at the taste of fresh blood from the red-headed man. The others were occupied and she had her pick of the Hunters who had scattered and were running for their lives. She had dreamed of the crunching of bone, she had enjoyed imagining the choking sounds of clean kills; but so far, these were only the sounds of humans fleeing through the woods, gasping for breath. Under Selena, the Chimerae were not allowed add to their number, and Tanis growled in dark disappointment.
She wheeled, and look there! Her Seventh stood before her.
What a gorgeous thing he was! Black hair, such blue, blue eyes! Mmmm, and scratches from the bushes dripped sweet-scented blood on his cheek. An excellent Seventh Hound to complete her own pack and start fresh, away from these weaklings who shied from bestowing the thrall bite. Selena would see what havoc Tanis could wreak now, and rightfully so! The world was hers, and not even Selena would be able to govern her.
Tanis crouched and approached as the Hunter fumbled for another bullet. Slowly she advanced; slowly, slowly … it wouldn’t do to have him either immolate or turn on her when she bit. She needed only to move behind him, at just the right angle.
Falling Silver (Rising Bloodlines Book 1) Page 11