My dad and brother are probably still here somewhere.
He’d had no contact with them since his mother died following Chris’s permission to remove her life support system in the hospital. He pushed the memories away and forced himself to focus on the task at hand.
Fenris had probably had people watching the Salt Lake City airport. Chris knew that, and knew that Fenris probably already knew he was going to Oklahoma. Speed would be very important.
As soon as the plane rolled up to the gate, Chris jumped up and hurried off the jet, up the runway and through the terminal until he came to a bank of pay phones. He pulled out his calling card and dialed the number for the house in Stillwater where he’d lived when Shara became his lover. There was no answer. He hung up and stared at the telephone.
“I know she’d go there,” Chris muttered. “I know she would.”
Unless she and McGrath …
Chris called his bank and found that there had been a withdrawal of thirty thousand dollars from the IRA he and Shara used for emergency cash. The money had been wired to a branch in Oklahoma City.
A truck. Shara would have bought a truck.
He ordered another withdrawal of the same amount, sent to the same bank, then dashed out of the airport and into the first empty taxi he could find. He had to wait almost a half-hour for the wire transfer to be completed after he arrived at the bank. From the bank he walked a few blocks to a Jeep dealership and chose a black Grand Cherokee. Two hours after landing at the airport, he was on Interstate 35, heading north to Stillwater.
Another two hours later and he was sitting behind the wheel of his new Jeep, studying the ruins of the gate and the brick columns that had supported it. There was no movement from anywhere, so he dropped the vehicle into drive and bounced over the rubble and up the driveway to his old home. There was a man’s naked body laying just off the drive, a young man Chris didn’t recognize. Two more bodies were closer to the house – another naked man who appeared to be in his early forties and an older man who was well dressed.
Bodies. How many dead bodies have I had to deal with since getting involved with Shara?
“Too many,” he murmured, parking the SUV and getting out.
The doors of the house were locked and the hidden key was gone. Chris broke out a window and climbed through. The interior of the house wasn’t ransacked as he’d expected. It was still neat and orderly. There were fresh groceries in the cabinets and in the refrigerator. But he soon found there were two rifles missing, along with Shara’s .357 revolver.
In the bedroom they’d shared for such a short time he found the bed unmade, but only on one side. On the other side of the bed he found several short black hairs.
Wolf hairs.
He fingered the hairs, thinking about how long it had been since he’d last seen similar shedding.
Who was the person under the covers? And who was the wolf? Joey?
With Joey’s blond hair, Chris found it hard to believe his son would be a dark-haired wolf. Had Shara’s cycle restarted, too? He had no way of knowing.
I don’t even know if Joey is with her.
He let the hairs fall from his fingers and returned to the unlocked gun cabinet. He put a Beretta in the waistband of his jeans and loaded the remaining Winchester rifle, carrying it with him back to the kitchen. He put the rifle on the table, then took eggs and bacon from the refrigerator to make breakfast.
He ate, then sat and waited. Finally, he went outside, took a pick and shovel from the tool shed behind the house, tied the bodies to the trailer hitch of his new Jeep and dragged them out of sight in the field behind the house. He spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon digging a grave for the dead men and covering them with dirt and carefully arranged sod.
Chris drove back to the house. Shara still was not there. He went inside, showered, cooked dinner, and sat on the couch in the living room, his eyes on the front window, the Winchester over his lap and the automatic pistol on the cushion beside his right hand.
Eventually, he slept.
Ulrik
“Look at my shoulder.” Ulrik turned his naked back toward the boy. “Do you see that mark?”
“Yes.” The boy studied the mark for a moment, an X with a triangular cap over it.
“Do you know what it is?”
“Mom has one like that. I saw it when she wore her bathing suit.”
“Yes.” Ulrik turned to face Joey again. “I gave that to your mother. It is a symbol of the Pack.” Before them, a small fire crackled despite the afternoon sun. An opened plastic bag was pinned to the dirt with a large lock-blade folding knife. It was one of many packets of clothes and supplies Ulrik had placed around his land. He wore the jeans he’d taken from the bag; Joey sat with a brown blanket draped over his naked shoulders.
“Wolf pack?” the boy asked.
“Werewolves,” Ulrik corrected. “The symbol is called the Othala rune. It is very old. It is a sign of inheritance.”
“What’s that?”
“Inheritance, to inherit something, means it comes to you through your family. For instance, if a man dies, his son might inherit his house and land.”
“Like a king?”
“Yes,” Ulrik said, nodding. “If a king dies, his son inherits the kingdom, the land, the title of king, and the responsibility of being the king.”
“Is Mom going to inherit something from you?”
“She already has. The Pack uses the rune to show that our Gift – being able to change shape – was given purposefully and that the new werewolf was properly trained.”
“Not every werewolf is born able to change shape?” Joey asked, his brow furrowed very much like his mother’s would when she was intent on understanding an issue.
“No, Joey. You are the first. That is why you are so special. You will do great things for the Pack.”
“What kind of great things?”
“We will discuss that at another time,” Ulrik said. “Today we will discuss the Othala rune.”
“Are you the king of the werewolves?”
Ulrik chuckled. “No, I am not the king. The Pack does not have a king. Not yet.”
“Am I going to be the king?”
“Ah, you are as perceptive as your mother,” Ulrik said. He sighed and looked away for a moment, then answered the boy. “Yes. We have waited centuries for one of our kind to be born naturally. You are the first.”
“What will I have to do when I’m king?”
“Later, Joey. We will discuss that later. May we talk about the rune today?”
Joey nodded, but Ulrik saw the boy’s thoughts were still on the new future he’d just discovered.
“I am going to give you this mark today,” Ulrik said. “It will hurt.”
Joey’s attention snapped back. “How much?” he asked.
“Not too much,” Ulrik said.
“How will you do it?”
Ulrik plucked the knife from the ground. The plastic bag fluttered in the light breeze. He dropped a small rock on the bag to hold it in place. Slowly, he wiped the remnants of dirt from the blade as he looked at Joey, then he placed the knife on the ground with the blade in the fire.
“When the blade is hot, I will make the mark on your shoulder the same way my father made mine,” Ulrik said. “For your mother, I fashioned a branding iron from a coat hanger, but I do not have any wire here. That way is quicker.”
“We could wait,” Joey suggested.
Ulrik shook his head. “I would not wait. I have decided we will stay here in the woods until my cycle comes upon me tomorrow. That is the time when I must become a wolf, when I cannot choose to be a man. We will go home when that time is finished. I would have you wearing the mark of the Pack before we return.” He paused and studied Joey’s reaction. “It would trouble your mother to watch. Mothers worry about such things.”
“She cried when I fell off the monkey bars at the playground once,” Joey said. “I only cut myself a little.”
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“Yes. She loves you very much. I would not have her worry about this. I will do it now and it will be healed when she sees you.” Ulrik lowered his gaze for a moment. She will not be able to deny your heritage. “This is best.”
“How bad will it hurt?”
“I will be quick,” Ulrik promised. He lifted the shirt he’d had in the hidden packet and handed it to the boy. “Go to the creek and soak this in the water. I will put it over the wound when I am finished. It will soothe the burn.”
Joey took the folded shirt, looked at it for a moment, then stood up, letting the blanket fall away from his shoulders as he did. He turned and climbed over the bank to the creek bed. Ulrik listened, wondering if the boy would run. He could change shape easily enough now. He could become a wolf and run. Maybe he could outrun an old wolf like me. A moment later Joey’s head appeared over the bank, then the boy scrambled over and returned to the fire, the blue denim shirt dripping cool water. Ulrik grinned, happy with the boy’s show of courage.
“Sit here, with your back to me,” Ulrik instructed, taking the shirt and placing it on a rock beside him. Joey sat and Ulrik took the knife from the fire. “Be very still.”
Joey gasped when the knife touched his pale skin, but he jerked only a little – no more than Ulrik had anticipated. The boy’s body tensed, but he held still and remained quiet as Ulrik deftly carved out the shape of the rune, going deep enough into the flesh to scar, the hot blade cauterizing the wound as he worked. He made the rune about three inches tall and two inches wide, then pressed the wet shirt to Joey’s back.
“You are a very brave boy, my cub,” Ulrik said. “You will make a fine king.”
John
“You don’t have to go.”
John Redleaf finished pulling on his boot before looking at Kiona. His long black hair was unbraided and hung around his face. He straightened and reached for his shirt even as Kiona sat up on the bed, letting the bedcovers slide down to reveal her full breasts. John stood and pulled on the shirt, quickly buttoning it.
“You could stay here. Ulrik won’t come back until his cycle is over. Nobody would see that there’s a bear around the house,” Kiona argued.
“You have begun a war you are not prepared to win,” John said. “Killing Andreas was a mistake.”
“We’ve been over this. We couldn’t let him go. Not after what he overheard.”
“You’re wrong, Kiona. Your teacher would have been mad, but he would not have taken action against you. He will send you away for Andreas’s death.”
She gave him a look that reminded John of a petulant child. “He wouldn’t dare. Joey loves me.”
“His mother will be here soon.”
“Maybe,” Kiona said. “Maybe Joey loves me more now.”
“Your desire clouds your reason.”
“Shut up.” Kiona pulled a lock of her own black hair over her shoulder and picked at it, pouting.
“You should come with me,” John said.
“You always hunt alone.”
“Not for the hunt. You should fly away from here with me. Get away before Ulrik returns.”
“I wouldn’t worry about him coming back if you would stay here.”
“We are outnumbered here, Kiona. Your plan was to win the boy’s affection. You were doing that. Until he talked to his mother. Now he answers to Ulrik, and you have killed one of Ulrik’s servants. But there are more of them out there. He has many werewolves loyal to him watching the house. They may already have discovered Andreas’s grave and gone to tell Ulrik. We could kill many of them, but not all. You have begun a war we cannot win.”
She continued tending to the lock of hair. John walked around the bed and took her hands in his. When she still did not look up at him, he put both her wrists in one of his hands and used the other to tilt her chin up. “Come with me. We will do the Ghost Dance, then we will change shape and hunt together. Like when we returned from Europe.”
She smiled a sad smile at the memory, then shook her head. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “The most he’ll do is send me away.”
John nodded. “I believe you are right about that. Despite the frustration you have caused him, Ulrik still loves you. You are the daughter he cannot always control.”
Kiona laughed. “Keep your cell phone charged up. If I have to leave, I’ll call you. You’ll pick me up?”
“I can’t answer the phone as a bear,” John said. He held up a hand and waggled his fingers. “The paws can’t work the buttons.”
“Idiot,” Kiona said, but smiled. “I’ll leave a message for when you have fingers again.”
“Yes. As I told you when you agreed to help me find the wolf shaman, I will be in your debt for as many days as the sun rises.”
“You still talk like an Indian.”
“As you should,” John reminded.
Kiona offered a small smile and said, “The Sioux didn’t give in as easily as the Cherokee, you know. Ours was a trail of blood, not tears.”
It was an old jab, made in jest, but it still needled John to hear it. He released her wrists and said, “I will keep the phone charged. If your white master doesn’t kill you, I will come back or pick you up when he drives you away.”
Kiona’s face showed that she knew she had pushed him too far. John considered apologizing for his words, then decided not to. He grabbed the knapsack he’d packed, slung it over his shoulder and left the room.
He stowed the cables and stakes that he’d used to secure his airplane, then climbed into the cockpit. Without looking directly at the house, he saw that Kiona was watching him from the window of her bedroom. She hadn’t bothered to dress. John started the engine and taxied the small plane to the driveway, straightened it out and opened the throttle. A moment later he was airborne, flying low over the trees that bordered Ulrik’s yard. He aimed the nose north, leaving Kiona and her problems behind for the time being.
By the time the sun set, he had left his airplane in a rented hangar and was sitting before a small fire in the woods of southwest Texas. He stared at the dancing flames, feeding them twigs, thinking about his loyalties and wondering if he would return to Kiona Brokentooth and her child messiah.
I do not believe he is the one.
John Redleaf wasn’t sure why he didn’t believe it, and he didn’t especially care. The dream he’d held long ago was dead. His people – not just the Cherokee, but all the Indians – had given up thoughts of freedom. Instead, they worried about profits from smoke shops and marketing flashy casinos in an effort to take the white man’s money a few dollars at a time.
The fight has gone out of them.
His people could not be relied on to fight for their own freedom. The knowledge disgusted John Redleaf. For several generations he had gone from one tribal council to another, urging a unified revolt, but the number of councils that would even hear him out had dwindled to nothing.
The bear’s war had evolved. Where once he hunted only white people, he now included Indians as a punishment for their refusal to return to the old ways.
But even the life of the bear had become threatened. There were few places left where a bear could roam freely. Even fewer for a bear with a taste for human flesh.
He threw the last of his twigs into the fire and watched a dried leaf curl and blacken in the heat. Was it worth it? Would it have been better if I had lived a shorter span of years and died as a warrior of my time?
He grunted. He knew the answer.
And yet, shortly after surviving Wounded Knee, he’d met Kiona. She was stalking a Blackfoot family, planning to steal a young boy in hopes she could give him the Gift and make him the prophesied Alpha. She’d talked John into accepting the Gift and joining her tribe, her Pack, for the coming war. He’d agreed, but he didn’t want to become a wolf. His spirit guide was a bear, and Kiona had indicated she’d heard of a shaman who could offer that particular Gift to him.
In Scandinavia they’d found the old man – Galar the Red – living i
n a cave like an animal. The man was ancient and frail. He claimed that he had been given the Gift from one of the First Generation, those shapeshifters who, it was said, had been bitten by the Old Ones first cursed and made animals.
It had been dark in Scandinavia, above the Arctic Circle. John remembered it well, and he hadn’t liked it. Until it was gone, he hadn’t realized how much he loved the sunlight.
Galar had resisted at first. The old man was superstitious, paranoid and mad with loneliness. He had been living in the mountains for over two hundred years, he said, because everyone wanted the berserker power he had. He hadn’t shared his Gift since coming to the mountains, he said, and he wasn’t about to give it to some red-skinned stranger from the New World.
In the end, it had been Kiona who changed his mind. She’d simply walked into Galar’s cave naked and offered herself to the old man on the condition he give his Gift to her man. Galar had roared with lust and frustration as Kiona slowly danced near his fire.
“I’ll give it to him, but I’ll not teach him,” Galar said. “He’ll be a rogue. An outcast. Doomed among his own kind.”
Then he charged. John remembered holding up his hands as the pale old man came at him with surprising speed and strength. For a heartbeat the white-haired man was gone, replaced by a foaming brown bear that sank its long fangs into John’s left bicep, then it was the man standing before him again, wiping blood from his mouth and chin. Galar turned to Kiona, already opening his ragged pants.
“Let me tend his wound first,” Kiona said.
“To hell with him,” Galar protested. “You promised.”
“I can do it,” John said. He’d left the cavern and sat on a boulder not far away to sew up his wound, wishing he could block out the sounds coming from the dark mouth of the cave.
He’d grown sick afterward and they couldn’t leave as they’d planned. Kiona tended him in Galar’s primitive dwelling with an elixir her mentor had taught her to make. Now Galar required regular payment for their room and board. John remembered slipping in and out of feverish dreams, never knowing for sure when he was dreaming of Galar rutting with Kiona and when it was really happening.
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