Ulrik

by Steven E Wedel

  “I don’t know,” Aunt Kiona answered.

  “Soon,” Ulrik answered.

  “Are you sure? How will she know where we are?”

  “She will know,” Ulrik said.

  “Have you sent for her?” Aunt Kiona asked.

  “She will know,” Ulrik answered. “We will talk about that later. For now, Joey, I think you are very tired from your long travels. You would like to sleep in this bed?”

  Joey started to protest, but a yawn stopped him. He nodded.

  “Very good,” Ulrik said. “Kiona and I will leave you to sleep. However, I must ask that you not leave the house without me. At least for a while. It is for your own safety. You may go anywhere inside the house, but do not go outside alone. Will you agree to that?”

  Joey nodded. “Okay.”

  “You are a good boy.” Ulrik patted his leg, then looked at Aunt Kiona. “Come, Kiona. We must let the boy sleep.”

  “I’ll stay with him until he goes to sleep,” Aunt Kiona said.

  “I think you should not. He is not a baby.”

  “I think – ”

  “I’ll be okay, Aunt Kiona,” Joey said. “You can go talk to Mr. Ulrik.”

  Joey could tell by the way she looked at him that Aunt Kiona didn’t want to leave him alone in the big bedroom. But finally she kissed him on the forehead and got up from the bed. “You call me if you need anything,” she said.

  “I will,” Joey promised. He settled into the pillows and watched as Aunt Kiona and Ulrik left the room. Ulrik winked at him just before he closed the door.

  Joey closed his eyes, but he couldn’t sleep. He kept thinking of his mother and father and how he had run away from home. He remembered turning into a wolf and how much it had hurt, but then how good it had felt. He remembered looking at his mom as she ran after him and how he had turned and ran away from her.

  He rolled over and buried his face in the pillows and cried until he fell asleep.

  Shara

  Shara sat at the table in a small motel room on the northern edge of Salt Lake City, Utah. She and Thomas McGrath had fled Bozeman, Montana, three days before, immediately after he returned from her home. Between what he’d learned from the police and what Shara had seen on the television news while he was away, she knew that Jenny Brown had been kidnapped from the hospital, several people had been savagely killed, and the police were looking for her, Chris and Joey as “persons of interest” to the case.

  Shara wondered what had become of little Jenny. She’d seemed like a nice girl, and Shara had realized nearly a month earlier that Joey had a crush on her. It had been cute. Until he bit her.

  Did he transfer the curse to her? Could he, with the injections I’ve been giving him?

  It was stupid to wonder that, Shara realized. Obviously the injections had not been potent enough to repress the wolf. She sighed and looked to the curtained window. Thomas had gone for food nearly an hour ago. He’d also said he was going to see about new transportation. Shara wondered if he was going to buy a new car. They’d left her sport utility vehicle at the motel in Bozeman, taking his car when they left.

  Shara had told Thomas about the compound she and Chris maintained in Oklahoma and how her husband would likely go there. Thomas had seemed doubtful, arguing that Chris would not have fled without first having found out something about his wife and son. But Shara felt sure Chris would have left after the police visited him. He would have expected her to have Joey with her by then and he would have expected her to realize something was wrong at home and stay away.

  Headlights shown through the curtains covering the window, lighting the dim room as tires crunched over the gravel in the parking lot. The sound of the vehicle told Shara that it was not Thomas’s little Subaru car.

  He must have traded it.

  She stood up and went to the door, opening it before Thomas had to fumble with the key. The man on the other side was not Thomas McGrath. She had a moment to take in his size, his piercing eyes and long gray hair, then he pushed her back into the room, stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

  “Shara Wellington,” the man said. His voice had an accent Shara guessed to be of northern European origin. “At last I meet the Mother face to face.”

  “Who are you?” Shara demanded. When the man didn’t approach her, but only smiled, she dove for the bed and pulled her revolver from its hiding place under a pillow. She pointed it toward him. “Who are you?”

  He laughed softly. “I mean you no harm, Shara. Not this time. I thought, perhaps, we could talk. Discuss the issues separating us.”

  “Who are you?” Shara demanded again. She emphasized the question by pulling back the hammer on her pistol.

  “You are a bold one, though none too smart. It was a dumb thing you did, opening the door that way,” he said, ignoring her threat. “Had you been able to call upon the sensibilities of the wolf, you would have known that it was not your traveling companion on the other side of the door.”

  “Thomas will be back soon.”

  “No doubt.”

  “Who are you?”

  “You were sitting here when I pulled up,” the man said, motioning with one gloved hand toward the chair beside the little table. “Please, sit down. You will not mind if I sit here, will you?” He pointed toward the chair on the other side of the table.

  “You better tell me who you are right now.”

  The man only looked at her from the corner of his eye as he stepped aside and sat in the chair. Shara thought he moved and sat rather primly, his motions showing a lot of grace. And no fear. Once seated, he looked at her again and smiled. “You would not shoot me,” he said, then waved again. “I know you realize what I am. And I know your revolver is loaded with silver bullets. I know you could kill me easily. But I also know you fear the sound the shot would make. You fear having to leave here without a car, without McGrath. You are afraid to be alone.”

  They faced each other for a long moment. At last Shara carefully released the hammer of the .357 and lowered the weapon to her side.

  “Come. Sit and talk with me,” the man said, waving again at the empty chair.

  Shara sat, placing the gun on the table before her, keeping it in her hand. The man noted this and smiled again. He had an angular face that made his chin seem pointed. His lips were colorless, but his eyes were an overpowering gray, like the sky at dawn. The lines around his eyes and mouth spoke of age, while the eyes themselves seemed both young and ancient. “Who are you?” she asked again.

  “I am called Fenris,” he said.

  Shara started. She felt her eyes widen and her grip on the gun tightened.

  The man nodded at her. “Yes,” he said. “Fenris. You have heard of me, I think.”

  “You want to kill me. And Joey.”

  “It is a thought I have entertained.”

  “Why?”

  “I first learned of you, Shara, when Tony Weismann contacted me some eleven years ago. You remember Mr. Weismann? You should, since you killed him.”

  “I couldn’t forget him,” Shara said, remembering how Weismann, another of Ulrik’s progeny, had tried to kill her and Joey shortly after Joey’s birth. “I used to think he was the leader of the part of the Pack that wanted me dead.”

  Fenris laughed. “Oh no. Tony Weismann aspired to power, but he was a man of passion. His passion is what killed him, really. He was intensely jealous of you. It was Ulrik’s doing. He favored you. Even before he knew you were the Mother. Weismann wanted to be the one to kill you, thinking it would be a way for him to thumb his nose at Ulrik while elevating himself to a position to challenge me. He was arrogant to think he could defeat you in the manner in which he attacked.”

  “Have you come to succeed where he failed?”

  “No. At least, not tonight.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “I wish to offer you an alternative.”

  “What alternative?”

  “First, you agree to hav
e yourself sterilized so that you cannot bear more children. And, you give us the boy.”

  “Never,” Shara said, shaking her head. “I won’t give you Joey. And who knows if I can be sterilized. With your regenerative powers there’s no guarantee. Don’t you think I thought of that after … after the first time I gave birth?”

  Fenris shrugged. “I do not know what you thought. I did not know you then. Did not know of you, even. I have only come to know you over the past five or six years, from watching you go about your life, trying to pretend you are not the Mother. Trying to pretend you are not a werewolf, and that your son is not a werewolf, too.”

  “I won’t give you Joey.”

  “At the moment, it really isn’t possible for you to give us the boy,” Fenris reminded. “We know he was taken by Ulrik’s Indian friend, Kiona Brokentooth. Unfortunately, we were not prepared to track her movement and we lost her and the boy.”

  “You don’t know where they are?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you think I would be able to give Joey to you? Not that I ever would. But I don’t even know where he is. If I knew, I would be with him right now.”

  “Oh, I do not doubt that,” Fenris said. “But I know our friend Ulrik. He is soft. He has grown softer and more sentimental over the past few years. He will feel guilty for holding your son. He will send word to you, telling you where he is and asking that you join him.”

  “Is it true, what Thomas said? That Ulrik … that he wants to use Joey to make werewolves more powerful than regular people?”

  “It is,” Fenris said, nodding.

  “And you don’t want that?”

  “No. I prefer things as they are.”

  “I can’t believe he would do that. That he would want that.”

  “Ulrik is cunning,” Fenris admitted. “I have followed his activities for nearly three hundred years. You know the story of his maker, the man called Gar? Ulrik saw him killed by common peasants. He has seen other women he loved killed for loving him back. He holds a grudge against those without the Gift.”

  “Ulrik isn’t vengeful,” Shara argued. “He’s too … too rational. He told me about Gar. But he also told me about helping to free slaves and about how much he hated Hitler. Why would he want to make Joey a leader even worse than Hitler?”

  “I do not know that Ulrik plans a genocide of humans without the Gift. He simply wants to see those with the Gift holding positions of power. He wants to punish those who would persecute werewolves. He wants to return to life as it was for him as a young boy, when he did not have to hide the wolf from the Chawana Indians he lived with.”

  “When they thought he was a god.”

  “Yes. When the Indians made sacrifices to him. He would make Joey that kind of person. Do you want that for your son?”

  Shara shook her head. “But I won’t give him to you, either. You would kill him, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  After a prolonged silence Shara said, “You should leave. I won’t agree to your demands.”

  “You disappoint me, Shara. Aren’t you curious about the girl, Jennifer Brown? And your husband?”

  “Chris? What do you know about Chris?”

  Fenris reached inside his coat and pulled out a rolled bundle of flannel. Shara recognized it immediately as one of Chris’s shirts. Fenris pushed it across the table to her. Shara saw blood on the fabric. She used her free hand to unroll the shirt. The front and back was shredded. The flannel was stiff with blood. She raised it to her nose and sniffed, smelling Chris’s cologne and natural odor on the shirt. She closed her eyes and lowered the garment.

  “There is this, too,” Fenris said. He rolled a golden ring across the table. The wedding band clinked against the steel of Shara’s revolver and fell over. Shara remembered standing under an oak tree near their house in Montana, promising to love Chris forever as she put the ring on his finger.

  “You killed him?” she asked.

  “I did not kill him. Three of my associates followed him from your home. They caught up with him very near the Colorado border. If you will not agree to my terms, I will leave you now. But I leave you with this warning: The next time we meet, your fate will be the same as your husband’s. And I will find your son. With your help or without it. And he will be dealt with.”

  Shara dropped the shirt and stood up quickly, raising the pistol and pointing it at Fenris’s face. “Get up,” she said, her voice a hiss.

  Smiling, Fenris stood. “What will you do with me, Shara?”

  “Get out,” she said. “Get in your car. I’ll drive. We’ll drive away from the city and I’ll kill you.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Move,” she commanded.

  “Very well.” Fenris walked to the door and opened it. “What have we here? Friends of mine have arrived.”

  Three large men stood outside the doorway, grinning in at Shara. As she contemplated her next move, headlights swept over the three men and she heard Thomas’s car crunching over the gravel. It stopped and a door opened.

  “I think your friend has returned,” Fenris said. “That will make it convenient for us.”

  Shara heard a soft pop, then one of the men blocking her motel room doorway crumpled to the floor. There was a small hole in the back of his coat where the bullet had entered.

  “Damn!” Fenris cursed. While Shara was distracted, Fenris knocked the gun out of her hand and jumped over the bed. He charged into the bathroom of the little room and Shara heard the sound of breaking glass.

  Another muffled pop and another of the men staggered through the doorway and fell dead on the carpet. Shara lunged for her gun and brought it up to point at the last werewolf standing in the doorway.

  The third man was struggling to remove his coat, transforming as he worked to pull his arms from the sleeves. Another muffled shot and he stumbled against the door frame, slumping over and sliding to a sitting position, shedding wolf hair as his eyes glazed over in death.

  Then Thomas was in the doorway, dragging the bodies inside. He grabbed Shara by the arms, forcing her to lower her own weapon. He shook her to get her attention. Slowly Shara focused her eyes on his face.

  “We have to go,” he said. “Right now.” He pulled her by the arm out of the room and pushed her into his car.

  “No!” Shara said, suddenly finding the strength to fight back. “Not yet.” She jumped out of the car and ran back into the room. She grabbed Chris’s bloody shirt and wedding ring from the table, then ran back to the car. “Let’s go,” she said.

  Thomas spun the car around and was back on the highway in a moment. Behind them they heard the sound of police sirens approaching.

  “I didn’t know you had a gun,” Shara said. “Let alone one with a silencer. Why didn’t I think of that? This .357 would have brought everybody in the motel out to see what was going on.”

  “Those three, they were all of them?” Thomas asked.

  “No,” Shara said. “He was here. Fenris.” She explained the demands Fenris had made and how he’d run into the bathroom to escape through the window. She held up Chris’s shirt. “He’s dead,” she said, her voice suddenly breaking as the sobs came. “Chris is dead.”

  Ulrik

  “Where is your quiet friend?” Ulrik asked. He and Kiona sat at the table in his kitchen, eating bacon, eggs and toast. Joey was upstairs, still asleep.

  “He’s around,” Kiona answered. “He likes to be alone.”

  “You brought him to intimidate me?”

  “Why would you think that?” Kiona asked, pushing a crispy strip of bacon into her mouth.

  “Is it not enough that the Pack is split already? Why must you make our work more difficult with your defiance?”

  “You want to find Shara and bring the bitch here. We don’t need her. I will be the boy’s mother now.”

  “Joey has cried himself to sleep every night he has been here. He resists his training because he wants his mother, and yo
u complicate matters by calling yourself his aunt, by reminding him of his mother’s warnings about me. I should send you away.”

  “I would not go,” Kiona said quietly. “And John Redleaf would become angry if my feelings were hurt.”

  “Do not threaten me,” Ulrik warned. “You have your friend, but I have many here who are loyal to me. At my command they would fall on your bear friend and tear him to pieces. It was by my grace that you received the Gift and it is by my grace that your friend is alive today.”

  “You underestimate John Redleaf. And me,” Kiona said, scooping the last of her scrambled eggs into her mouth. “And you have to consider how upset Joey would become if anything was to happen to me.”

  “The boy must learn to deal with loss,” Ulrik said, pushing his own plate away.

  “Like the loss of his mother.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Where is the bitch?”

  Ulrik grimaced. “Do not speak of her in that manner,” he said.

  Kiona smiled and held his eyes as she softly repeated, “Bitch, bitch, bitch.”

  “Why must my progeny be such spoiled brats?”

  “Genetics. Where is she? I know you know.”

  “I do.”

  “Oh, but it’s a secret. You know I could find out if I wanted.”

  “You may find your contacts in the Pack limited since your decision to bring your friend here,” Ulrik said.

  “You would speak against me? After the years I spent watching over Joey?”

  “Damn you!” Ulrik slammed a hand onto the table, making the dishes jump and rattle. “This is no game we are playing. There was to be no one here I did not choose. No one I do not know I can trust. And you come here with this bear friend of yours. You openly defy me. You cost us valuable time by coddling the Alpha when he should be learning how to control his Gift, how to lead the Pack. I chose you to watch over Joey because I knew you would care for him as if he were your own son. But you go too far. Your actions threaten further dissension in the Pack. I will not tolerate it.”

  Ulrik followed Kiona’s eyes as they slid away from him to the boy standing in the kitchen doorway. Joey’s face showed his fear. He looked from Ulrik to Kiona, then slowly edged through the doorway and walked toward the woman, keeping his eyes fixed on Ulrik.