Chapter 24
When I awoke, I found myself tied back to back with my sister in a hot, smoky cavern deep in the heart of Knightsbridge Canyon. I’d been here before in wolf form, as I’d explored every bit of the area around town between the Incident and leaving home. A certain set of stalactites that looked like a hanging line of banners made me sure.
My eyes watered and my pulse raced, fighting off the effects of whatever they’d shot me with. I knew my body was trying to drive the drug out of my system. Looking around I saw that Amber and I were flanked by a deep depression like a medieval fire pit, filled with red hot coals and rising heat waves. To the left I saw the climbing flames of a bonfire. Large ancestor rocks ringed it, touching the flames. I recognized them from research I had done on the Cherokees for a travel piece about casino resorts.
Wicker scaffolding arched above us, what I realized was the skeleton of a sweat lodge.
A sweat lodge in a cavern? Okay…
Sean Gottlieb tended the fire, half-naked with his shirt tied around his waist and a handkerchief across his face like a bandit. He had welts and scars crisscrossing his back and shoulders and I wondered what had made them, then winced as I speculated about his and Jeanetta’s relationship.
I heard a bark to my right and saw Spanky pawing at the bars of a cage, looking worriedly at me.
“Spanky,” I breathed. “Amber, it’s Spanky!” I hissed.
Amber didn’t answer. Must still be out from whatever they shot her with, I thought. I was a lupine, and in better physical shape than my sister, so naturally I would awaken first.
I felt the heat begin to rise as Sean shoveled some hot ancestor rocks into the depression near my feet. I stared up at him, but he didn’t look at me until I spoke.
“Why are you doing this?” I croaked.
Spanky barked and Sean looked away, not saying anything. He went over to pour some water into a bowl and slid it into the cage.
Well, he seemed to like animals. That might be something I could work with.
“Could I get some water over here?” I coughed.
He didn’t answer, but brought a water bottle to me and held my chin up as he poured some into my mouth.
“Thank you,” I said. “Now give some to Amber.”
“She’s still out.” He looked at me for a moment in apology, and then turned to walk away.
Before I could pursue that thought, Jeanetta Macdonald strode through the cave entrance. She wore a dark bustier and a pair of black chinos, with matching Doc Martens laced up the ankles, and I had to admit, she looked kind of hot.
For a raving lunatic, that is.
At least Amber would approve of her taste in S&M fashion. Wouldn’t want to be murdered by a tacky Vogue reject after all.
“Ah, you’re awake. Good. It’s just about time to start the ceremony.”
“What the hell are you doing, Jeanetta?” I coughed and elbowed Amber in the back. I got a grunt in response, which made me think she was playing possum and buying time, hopefully thinking of a way out of this mess. Mother! I sent out a silent prayer, or plea, or mental message, whatever you do to call ghosts.
What I thought she could accomplish, I had no idea.
“You’ll find out soon enough.” Jeanetta smirked and turned toward me, taking a burgundy colored velvet bag from her belt and raising it up to the ceiling while she began to chant. The cloth in her hands was threaded with amber strands that caught the light and seemed to spangle symbols across the cavern walls.
Sean proceeded to pull dark cloth over the bamboo and the little light we had dimmed as he affixed blankets to the semicircular poles. Jeanetta approached with a wooden mixing bowl and pulled a hunting knife off her leg harness. “It’s probably obvious that this is going to hurt,” she said with glee, grinning triumphantly as she sliced a gash in my jeans and thigh, and then held the bowl beneath it.
I clenched my teeth, hissing against the pain as I tried to jerk away, but we were too securely held, not like in the movies where the villain always leaves the bonds too loose, or easy to reach and untie.
Amber wasn’t so stoic. “You bitch!” she screamed when Jeanetta cut her.
“Language, Amber.” I laughed sardonically.
“Bite me, Ashlee,” she snarled. “You got us into this.”
“Funny you should say that,” I replied, but Jeanetta cut us off.
“Girls,” Jeanetta chided us as she took her knife and sliced a few hairs from both our heads and added them to the bowl. She then went to the cage and had Sean pull Spanky out.
Shit.
“Keep her talking Ashlee,” Amber muttered and I could feel her manipulating her wrists to try to get her hands free. Good luck with that. I had already tried, and I was stronger and more limber than my sister.
“Hold him still,” Jeanetta ordered as Sean lifted the squirming dog. Spanky hated being held by anyone but our family.
“What are you doing?” I demanded as she raised her knife. “I thought you were an animal rights activist? Or was that all bullshit, like the rest of your life?”
Hey, it was all I could think of at the time.
“Oh, don’t worry. I like dogs more than I like people.” Then she turned to back to Sean, who was frowning at her. “Present company excluded, of course.”
Spanky froze in Sean’s grip. He seemed to know when danger was coming and he bared his teeth.
“Don’t even think about it.” She narrowed her eyes at him as Sean held Spanky’s mouth shut while he snarled.
“If you hurt my dog…” Amber began, but then I smelled an acrid smell of hair burning, and heard a yelp of surprise and a curse as Spanky went flying out of Sean’s arms to hit the ground running. I could hear his barking fading in the distance and I thanked the Lord that at least one of our pack had made it out unscathed.
On the other hand, you would think that he’d show a bit more loyalty.
“I didn’t know you were such a witch, Jeanetta,” Amber snarled. “A bitch, well, that I knew. But blood magic? Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
Interesting. What did Amber know about magic beyond reruns of Charmed and Once Upon a Time? I started to get the feeling she’d been holding out on me again.
“You don’t think I came into this unprepared, do you?” Jeanetta mocked.
I looked at her blankly, and sensed Amber doing the same, if perhaps with slightly more comprehension.
“See, I know what you are,” Jeanetta continued.
“Oh really.” I matched her haughty tone. “And what do you think that is?” I coughed.
“Yee Naaldlooshii…” The words came out of her in a hiss, and a malevolent gleam sparked from her eyes. A shiver ran through me. Jeanetta poured more noxious herbs over the fire. “Ánt’įįhnii!” Her voice got louder and I could I feel an ache behind my jaw. “Adagąsh!” Her voice took on the cadence of a song as she screamed the last words. “Azhįtee! Nee Yaaldlooshii!”
“Ashlee!” Amber’s voice rose into a different register and I could feel my own anxiety begin to rise with hers as I felt the pads of my fingers tear and claws burst out from my knuckles, straining the tension of the rope that bound us. Blood ran down my wrists and the smell made me woozy.
Holy Shit! I thought. She was doing it. Jeanetta Macdonald was making me shift.
Yee Naaldlooshii. Skinwalker. She’d called me a skinwalker. I’d run into the Navajo legend when I first started researching werewolf mythology back in high school. But I wasn’t a skinwalker – I was something else, product of a different magic.
“I don’t know how you managed that,” Amber whispered. She couldn’t see that the sharp things her hands touched were actually a part of me rather than rocks or knives. Who knows what she thought? But I could feel her sliding the hemp fibers across my claws causing them to part, bit by bit, as she sawed at our bonds.
“Me neither,” I said.
“Werewolves, shifters, all the same thing,” Jeanetta cackled. “I
knew it all along!”
But she was wrong. The legend of the skinwalker said that a shapeshifter utilized rituals to assume the form of a beast. In doing so, she would shed her human skin to become the shape of the animal she wanted to change into. But it cost a blood sacrifice to do so. In order to return to human form, a skinwalker had to consume her own human pelt, eyeballs, scalp and all.
Besides being totally gross and nasty, I wasn’t a skinwalker. Or a Navajo.
On the other hand, there had to be some kind of overlap, because whatever she had done had affected me.
“After you killed my brother I spent years researching the legends of your kind. In my travels, I found a tribal elder who was willing to share with me the secrets of your people.”
“What, Scottish people?” What my people? I barely knew what I was.
“He said if I could force the shape of the wolf onto you while the moon was waning, and then burned your skin, you would be bound into your shifted form for the rest of your days.”
“You’re insane!” I laughed uproariously, which made Jeanetta furious.
“Ashlee,” my twin said, “don’t antagonize the psycho.”
“We’ll find out who’s insane now, won’t we?” Jeanetta said tightly. “Sean, cover them up and then go look for that damn dog. We need it.” As she said this I realized that I could still hear Spanky barking from outside the cave. I guess the little furball hadn’t run off after all.
Amber whimpered as the cloth concentrated the smoke around us. The heat began to become unbearable as Jeanetta chanted and threw blood and herbs into the fire, causing more choking fumes. My head began to swim and I could hear Amber retching.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” she said and then she passed out, her body going slack against me. Jeanetta’s annoying noises stopped and it sounded like she moved away, probably to prepare her next round of tortures. I could hear her chanting start up again, farther away.
“Hold on, Amb. I’ll think of something.” My claws were already out and I could feel my lupine side come out and take on that monochromatic perception where the olfactory senses filled in the visual details.
I wondered if I could continue this partial shift. I never could quite do it before and I ran the risk of hurting Amber badly if I had to go all the way, but if Jeanetta could force me into my wolf form, I couldn’t guarantee that I could control it anyway. I didn’t think I’d hurt my twin, but I hadn’t ever been forced into the change before.
I centered myself and felt the ropes dig deeper into my flesh. My vision began to blur and I got a bad taste in my mouth as my canines began to lengthen.
“Amber, forgive me for getting you into this mess,” I said softly as darkness covered us and the muffled sounds of Jeanetta’s chant faded away into the background. The sound of pine sap popping and the crackling of the coals around us seemed to get louder in my brain.
Sweat poured down my face and I could feel it drenching my sister’s back. She was unusually quiet, and I wondered if she’d passed out again. I kind of hoped she had, just in case…in case...“Amber?”
“I’m here.” She coughed. “I’ve found if you take shallow breaths it’s not that bad.”
“I have a confession to make…”
“What, that you’re a werewolf and spend your full moons running around the hills and munching on forest critters?” she said offhandedly. “Ooh, big secret.”
“You knew?” I barked. The sound of betrayal echoed around me in the muffled silence.
“Of course I knew! Why do you think I worry about you all the time? And haven’t you noticed that I always call you after a full moon to make sure you’re okay? Seriously, Ashlee, you’re not a very good liar. Remember, we have the same face and I can read you like a book. Besides: visions, hellooo!”
I was floored. All this time, she knew my secret and she never said a thing.
“So, when were you going to tell me that you knew?”
“It wasn’t my place.” When she said that I could hear echoes of my mom in her words.
“Do you see Mother too?” I asked, and before it was out of my mouth, I knew it was the wrong thing to say.
“What do you mean?”
Crap. I was so not good at this.
Finally I felt the rope fibers part and I stood. My mother’s face hovered in the darkness and I could see her putting her finger to her lips.
“Nothing. Just visions, hellooo,” I said with as much snark as I could muster. I tore the restraints off my ankles and proceeded to set Amber free. There wasn’t much room to maneuver, but I slid to the ground and lifted the cloth tarp to look out into the cavern. I couldn’t be sure that Jeanetta didn’t have more tranquilizer darts ready and I wasn’t about to waste this opportunity.
I couldn’t see much of anything.
“Amber, I need your eyes.”
“Sorry, I’m using them, thank you,” Amber said as she joined me on the ground. Her voice quavered a little as she stared into my face. “Your eyes are different. Wolfy.”
“Yeah, and that means I’m color-blind and can’t see worth shit in this smoky mess. So, tell me what you see. Where’s Sean? Where’s Jeanetta?”
“She’s right outside the cave entrance and, um…”
“What?” I asked.
“Well, she’s naked…”
“Glad I can’t see that.”
“Actually…”
“Focus, Amber. No time to go admiring her killer bod.”
“That's a bit too apropos. And she’s holding some kind of pelt up to the sky.”
The sound of chanting rose again and then came a whoosh.
I felt my whole body go rigid. “Uh oh,” I said.
“What?” Amber whispered.
“What just happened?” I ground out, my tongue getting hung up on my teeth.
“She dropped the pelt into the fire.”
I moaned and could feel my bones begin to turn and bend and crack.
“Ashlee!” Amber grabbed my face and looked into my eyes. She must not have liked what she saw there, because she scrabbled back away from me.
“What?” I coughed. My body…I hardly felt human anymore, and I probably wasn’t mostly.
“My, what incredibly big teeth you have…”
Yeah, well, humor was one of our strengths. Laughing in the face of danger. That, and, making lemonade out of lemons. Someone should tell Jeanetta to be careful what she conjured, or she might get it.
Or it might get her.
I struggled with my clothes for a moment before I got free of them. With a roar, I leaped from the folds of the sweat lodge and slammed headlong into something. Stars danced in my optic nerves as I stumbled leftward, rubbing up against a barrier I couldn’t see or smell.
Looking up, I saw Jeanetta continuing her ritual incantations, and I instinctively tried to rush her again, but I couldn’t reach her. I felt as if a wall of glass stopped me, and made my sensitive nose burn as I pushed against it.
On the ground I could see an elaborate symbol drawn, some kind of wheel-shape, like a dream-catcher or magic circle. I tried to scratch at it with my paw but nothing I did could reach it.
Turning, I growled and whined, looking around for some trick or way through. Whatever it was, it kept me out, and suddenly I was wracked with another wave of pain, a convulsion that threatened to drive away my human mind, leaving only the animal. If that happened, Jeanetta would have the perfect revenge, destroying me with no real evidence of what had been done – nothing that would convict her in a court of law, anyway.
“Ashlee!” my sister screamed from inside, and I rushed back into the cave. Amber grabbed the bamboo center-post and brought the fabric down into the coals of the fire like the collapse of a teepee. Smoke poured out of the chamber as the material caught fire, and I leaped in to tug at the ropes still ringing one hand, leading her out into the open air. She collapsed, coughing and helpless.
Another spasm went through me and I screamed, a hor
rible gut-wrenching sound never meant to proceed from a canine throat. Spanky charged forward out of the darkness to nuzzle me in that way that dogs have, sensing another of its kind in pain. Or maybe he just knew I was family.
Rolling over to stare into his eyes, I tried to make the little Schnauzer to understand. I nudged him with my forehead, pushing him toward Jeanetta as she danced and gestured and spoke words of power. Crawling toward the crazy witch, I tried to tell Spanky what to do.
Somehow, he got it. Maybe it was a dog thing, or maybe that “Speak With Animals” spell I always liked when we used to play D&D really worked, but he turned and began scratching at the design. Formed in the dirt by colored chalk, it only took a few strokes of Spanky’s forepaws before he made a gash in its perfection and I was able to press in close to help him. A few seconds more and we had an opening.
I leaped through, and moments later, Jeanetta lay in shock beneath my snarling muzzle.
At that moment, Will charged out of the darkness. Mom must have gotten through to him, or maybe he just decided to search Jeanetta's old stomping grounds and saw the fire. Or both.
Unfortunately he carried an axe, and he lifted it over his head in preparation for cleaving me in half.
I froze with shock, disbelieving that he would ever do such a thing to me, before realizing that all he saw was a big wolf attacking a human woman. A naked human woman. Ew.
“WILL!” Amber screamed as Spanky sank his teeth into Will’s calf.
“What the –” Will cried as he slapped at Spanky with one hand, forgetting about splitting my skull. The Schnauzer dodged and barked, frantic.
I backed away and then slunk in a circle to where Amber was climbing to her feet, fairly certain Will wouldn’t attack her to get through to me. “Will, leave the wolf alone. Jeanetta just tried to kill me and Ashlee.”
“Where is Ashlee?” Will asked, looking around, still hefting the axe.
I held my pose and tried to will my sister to do what needed to be done. I guess some of it got through, or we simply thought alike, as she said, “Ashlee’s fine. Just tie that bitch up and gag her.” It warmed my heart to hear my sister call someone else the b-word.
Confused, Will put the axe down, bound Jeanetta’s hands, gagged her, and then threw a blanket over her. Our nemesis didn’t protest or resist, seemingly in shock.
“Honey?” Sean stumbled up behind us in the dark after giving up on catching the frantically dodging Spanky. Smoke continued to pour from the cavern as a wind drew it from the chamber. I leaped on him, driving him to the ground, and then Will tied him up too as I stayed out of the way. He kept looking at me, trying to figure it all out, but it was just too bizarre, I was sure. I mean really, if it was you, would you deduce some wolf was your girlfriend without a lot of persuading or proof?
Nearby, Spanky barked joyously around the ghost of my dead mother. She made a shushing motion and he calmed down and sat, staring up at her.
“What’s he looking at?” Amber asked me as she tried to brush her clothing clean, a hopeless exercise.
I gave a noncommittal yip as Mother put her finger to her lips. Why I couldn’t just tell Amber, I had no idea. Some kind of otherworldly rule, or something, I guessed.
“Fine, be that way,” my sister said, as if she understood. Which she probably did. “So much for an honest relationship.”
Ouch. That stung, but I wasn’t much on defying Mom when she was alive and I sure wasn’t going to when she was dead. Then I remembered Shane, and wondered if this all would mean that she would find peace and cross over.
Maybe that was why she didn’t want me to tell Amber. Maybe resolving all that would send her away, and I abruptly knew that I did not want that to happen, not at all. I’d rather have some of Mother here than all of her gone.
Maybe that was part of what family is about.
“Who are you talking to, Amber?” Will asked, still completely befuddled. He’d been all ready to rescue me and instead found most of the rescuing all done, and me apparently not around to be saved. That’s got to let a guy down for sure.
Suddenly, Spanky tore away and scurried down the hillside toward the trailhead parking lot below. I could see lights from a car, and after baring my teeth at our prisoners one more time, I sat down and leaned into Amber, huddling together for warmth in the chill November breeze. She put her arm around me like I was a dog or a child, and I rolled my shoulder and head into her lap while she ran her hand through my fur. Weird, I know, but it felt right. When in lupine, do as the lupines do, I guess.
“Well, what do you know?” Elle climbed up to the trail to the cavern, her hand on the .357 she carried at her hip. “Looks like the gang’s all here,” she said as she strode over to look down at the two bound miscreants. She didn’t seem at all discomfited by the sight of a hundred-pound wolf laying in her lover’s lap.
Lover’s lap, Lover’s Leap, whatever.
Spanky cavorted around her feet until she told him to calm down, at which point he went over to sit next to the very subdued Sean, as if guarding him. Or maybe he was making some kind of statement about his human captor, that he was just as much a dog as any domestic canine. Jeanetta had certainly treated him like one, I found out later.
My older brother Adam trailed behind Elle, a sword from his collection slung incongruously over his back. “Hey there, girl.” He winked at me and ruffled the fur on my head. What, did everyone know what I was, and no one bothered to let me know they knew? I felt like I was left out of my own secret.
I wondered if Dad knew. We kids had kept a lot of secrets from him growing up, or thought we did, but I had to assume one of my siblings or Mom had informed him. In his phlegmatic way, he’d probably just shrugged when he’d gotten the news and said something like, “Oh. That’s interesting.”
Then I wondered what other things I didn’t know that the others were keeping from me. I mean, if I had this werewolf thing going on, and Amber had her visions, and Mom was a ghost, and here my brother was carrying a very real and very sharp sword, ready to smite our enemies…it hardly bore thinking about. Really made my eyes water with that cringey feeling I get when I’ve been stupid or oblivious for quite a while, and suddenly realize it.
I heard Elle talking to Chief Hernandez on her cell, directing a unit up the canyon to the trailhead. “Yeah. The old Indian cave. Will Stenfield saw the fire up here and called me.”
Moments later we saw flashing lights wending their way up the road’s switchbacks toward us.
Elle called, “Hey Will. Why don’t you meet the Chief down at the trailhead. And look for Ashlee while you’re at it. She’d bound to be around here somewhere.”
Will obeyed like the beta he was.
As I didn’t have human speech just then, Amber filled Elle and Adam in on what our kidnappers had done. They walked over to Jeanetta and Sean, who lay on the ground in their bonds, defeated.
Elle took the woman’s gag off. “You’ve been a very bad girl, Macdonald. You too, Gottlieb.”
“She made me do it,” Sean said.
“Shut up, Sean,” Jeanetta said without heat.
“No, Mi-…no, Jeanetta.” He spat her name like a curse. “You can’t make me do things anymore.”
“Oh, Sean,” she sighed. “I never made you do anything you didn’t already want to.”
I thought as I watched, isn’t that how life’s devils always do it?
The bound woman turned her smarmy smile up toward Elle. “Actually, for the record, I didn’t do anything at all. In fact, I tried to rescue these two from this nut here.” She jerked her head at Sean.
“Save it,” Adam said. “If Sean testifies – and I bet the city attorney here will offer some kind of deal – there will be multiple witnesses telling all about your crimes, not to mention the physical evidence, such as misused tranquilizer darts from the Animal Clinic’s inventory.”
“But if it goes to trial, I’ll tell everyone what she is.” Jeanetta pointed her chin at me, and I pulle
d my lips back from my teeth.
“Right,” Adam laughed in that superior way he had that I had always hated. Right now, though, I could have kissed him. Or at least licked his face, whatever. He continued, “They’ll just cart you off to the nuthouse. Unless that’s your strategy? Insanity plea?”
Jeanetta sagged and lowered her eyes. “Just get it over with,” she muttered.
When we saw the cops climbing the trail, Will in tow, Amber suddenly shook me. “You gotta go,” she whispered, and I realized she was right. “I’ll tell them you got away first and must be out there somewhere. That’s not even a lie,” she grinned.
I chuffed once, nuzzled her neck, and then ran up the hillside. Spanky barked, and I could see my mother waving to me from her position floating above the whole scene like some Christmas angel.
“I guess there really are wolves in Knightsbridge Canyon after all,” I heard Adam say as I loped off into the darkness.
MoonRise Page 25