Ulrik

by Steven E Wedel

  “I’m sure he did. But did he tell you what the leader is supposed to do?”

  “No. He didn’t say. Do I get to sit on a throne and wear a crown and call for a fiddle like in the story?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said and now her smile was real. “You’re not Old King Cole.”

  “Then what do I get to do?”

  “I don’t know, Joey. I really don’t. I wish I did.” She stopped talking and just stared at him for a minute. “The important thing right now is that you should know that not all the werewolves in the Pack want you to be a leader. Some are scared of what you’ll do when you’re the leader. They …” She stopped again and lowered her head. Joey saw a tear fall from her face and land on her shorts. He studied the dark wet circle it made. “They would kill you, if they could,” she said.

  He didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything.

  “Some of those werewolves came to our house in Montana after you ran away, Joey.” She was crying again. Her shoulders shook and she could barely talk. It scared him and Joey couldn’t help but start crying again, too.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” he said, stepping forward and hugging her again. She crushed him to her and cried in his ear.

  “It’s not your fault, baby,” she said. “Never your fault. Never.”

  “Did they hurt Dad? Did they – ” He couldn’t make himself say it. He felt his mother nodding her head, then she pushed him away and held him by the shoulders as she answered him.

  “I was looking for you in the woods. These people, the bad werewolves, they went to the hospital and killed some people there and kidnapped Jenny, then went to our house. Your father left. He probably came looking for us. And … and they found him.”

  She let go of one of his arms and pulled a chain from under her shirt. Joey saw the ring his father had always worn on his left hand.

  “No. No.” He tried to back away from the dangling gold band, but his mom held his arm tight and wouldn’t let go. She let the ring drop to her chest, where it dangled on its gold chain. Joey couldn’t take his eyes off it.

  “The man who did it came to me in a motel room. He wanted me to tell him where you were. He gave me your father’s ring and the shirt he was wearing when … when they killed him.”

  “Daddy’s dead?” Joey shook his head. “No. Dad can’t be. He can’t be dead. You said he would be here. You said he’s coming.”

  “I’m sorry, Joey. I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t want to tell you. I don’t want to even say it. I loved him so much.”

  “Then why did you kiss Thomas?”

  She released his arm. Joey thought about running away. He wanted to hide and cry for his father somewhere dark and alone. You want a piece of me? The words pounded in his mind like a drum, reminding him of the game they’d play, each brandishing a fist at the other until Joey would finally charge at him and his father would scoop him up in his arms and shake him until they both laughed.

  “You probably don’t remember Thomas visiting us in Montana once,” Shara said. “You were just five then. He picked you up in the grocery store and scared me. He did it on purpose, to show me how easy it would be for one of the bad guys to get you. He told me there were people watching us. Watching you. But I thought I could protect you.

  “Then, he fought with Kiona to try to bring you back to me. He was hurt real bad in that fight. He almost died. When he was better, we went back to get your father, but he was already … he wasn’t there. The police were at our house. Thomas helped me get to another house we have in Oklahoma. We were attacked there. One of Ulrik’s friends was killed. Then Thomas helped me get here, to where you are.

  “He’s helped me a lot. I guess … I guess …”

  “I don’t like him.”

  “Why not?”

  “He fought with Aunt Kiona. She said he’s a bad man. She said he used to kill girls. I don’t want him to hurt you.”

  “He won’t hurt me, baby.”

  Joey wanted to ask another question, but he was afraid what his mom would say. Finally, he just asked, “Is he going to be my new dad?”

  She didn’t answer for a minute, then said, “I don’t know about that.”

  “I don’t want him to be!” Joey shouted. He jumped away from his mother’s outstretched hands and ran.

  “Joey!” She was chasing him. Joey ran faster, ducking under tree branches and dodging around trunks. His eyes were blurry from tears. He bumped into a tree and fell down. He cried harder, tearing at his clothes as he got up and ran some more. He paused and pulled off his shorts and underwear, threw them aside and changed into a wolf.

  “Joey! No! Don’t run away!”

  He ran as fast as he could. He ran a lot faster as a wolf. He ran until he couldn’t hear his mother chasing him, until he couldn’t hear her yelling his name, then he kept running until his sides hurt and he couldn’t breathe. Then he fell down in the grass, changed back into a boy and cried until the hard dirt under his face turned to mud.

  Aunt Kiona had left him. His father was dead. His mother was giving all her time to another man. Eventually, the sadness was all cried out and replaced with a hard knot of anger in the pit of his stomach.

  Nobody likes me.

  Ulrik

  Downstairs, the back door opened and closed. Ulrik recognized Shara’s footsteps in the kitchen. He left his bedroom to meet her at the top of the stairs as she made for her own room. Her face was haggard, drawn and pale, and her eyes showed she’d been crying. Leafs and twigs clung to her hair and clothing. She stopped on the last stair and stared back at him.

  “Did Joey come back here?” she asked.

  “No. I have not seen him.”

  Her head dropped and her shoulders hitched as she began crying again. Ulrik watched her for a moment, then stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her. She pressed her face against his shoulder and wept.

  “Come, my cub. Come to my room and talk with me.” Ulrik guided her into his bedroom and sat her at the table by his patio doors, placing a box of tissue before her. Shara smiled at him as she took two tissues and wiped at her eyes and nose.

  “He ran away from me,” she said. “Again.”

  Ulrik waited.

  “He’s upset about Thomas. I guess he saw us kiss once. That was pretty stupid of me. I had to tell him about Chris. That really upset him. He doesn’t like it that Kiona is gone. I know it has to be hard on him. He finds out he’s a werewolf, his mom is a werewolf, his dad is killed, his mom’s kissing another man and the werewolves that killed his dad want to kill him, too. And you …”

  “You told him about Fenris?” Ulrik asked.

  “A little. I told him about how his father was killed.”

  “I see.” Should I tell her about the possibility Fenris lied? No. “And what about me?”

  Shara sighed and chewed at her lip again.

  “Speak openly, my cub. You will not offend me.”

  “Fenris told me what you plan,” she said.

  “What did he say?”

  “That you want Joey to become a warrior. You want him to unite the Pack and lead werewolves in a war against regular people. You want him to be some kind of king, but with you telling him what to do.”

  Ulrik nodded. “The man who calls himself Fenris today is a liar, Shara. He is a wicked and cruel man who craves power above all other things. He already has a great deal of power. He offers the Gift freely. If his progeny do not obey him, he kills them and makes two more. I have known of him for centuries, but only met him once. You will remember I told you about stalking Adolf Hitler’s private castle during World War Two?”

  Shara nodded.

  “Fenris was employed by the dictator. It was because of Fenris and the werewolves he kept around him that I was never able to kill Hitler. After the war, Fenris disappeared. I came to know of him again, in America, seven years later. Since then, we have watched the movements of one another, biding our time, knowing that another great b
attle would take place between us.”

  “You fought with him already?”

  “Yes. It was a battle I did not win. I was arrogant and ill-prepared,” Ulrik admitted. “I thought I could kill him when he was separated from his band of werewolves for a short time. But it was a trap. And he is very strong. I barely escaped with my life.”

  “So … you don’t plan to use Joey to start a war with regular people?”

  “I do not. I have never had such a plan or desire.”

  “Then what? What is it? Why is Joey so important that you’ve had Kiona and others watching us for the past eight years?”

  “The prophecy.”

  “Yes. The prophecy. The Pack is gathering. There can be no culls among us. I’ve heard that. What does it mean? How does it apply to Joey?”

  Ulrik studied her for a long while before answering. The tears were gone, replaced by the determined light that burned deep in her dark eyes. He remembered the first time he saw those eyes in his classroom and how he had known immediately that the young woman had extraordinary potential. Had I but known she would become the Mother I sought for so long … He sighed.

  “I do not know,” he admitted.

  She blinked several times. “What?”

  “I do not know.”

  “You don’t know? What do you mean you don’t know? How can you not know? You’ve spent your life trying to fulfill this prophecy and you’re telling me now you don’t know what it means? I don’t believe that.”

  “It is true. Though I would not say I have spent my life attempting to fulfill the prophecy,” he said. “I have managed to do a few other things during my many years.”

  She shook her head. “How can you not know what it means?”

  “There is no one who understands the prophecy, Shara. Not me. Not Fenris. Not Kiona or Thomas.”

  “You just go around repeating it without knowing what it means?”

  “It has been passed down through generations of our kind. Some say it was communicated to the second generation by an Old One who retained the gift of speech after the curse.”

  Shara’s face lit with a new fire. “So I was right!” she said. “Those dreams I had of prehistoric people dancing around a fire and a witch casting a spell on them so that they became the animals they were imitating. That all really happened!”

  Ulrik nodded. “I believe it to be true. We all have that dream.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that when I first told you about the dream? There was so much you didn’t tell me.”

  “Think back to your zoology lessons, my cub. How often does a female wolf enter her breeding cycle?”

  “Annually. Just once a year.”

  “You enter a breeding cycle – you come into heat – every month. I sensed this about you when we were in the mountains during your training. I knew then that you were different. I suspected you were the Mother. After so many centuries of looking for you, I had finally found you. It frightened me. I was not sure how to treat you. Would you sense that you were special? Would you act like an alpha female? Was I worthy to be your partner? Would you want me? I could not know. And I loved you too much to force myself on you, so I refused to be with you during your cycles, sending you off to hunt or claiming I was scouting for us.”

  “You were afraid?” She smiled. “I never would have suspected that. I’ve never seen you afraid of anything. I can’t imagine it. And of me, even.”

  “Yes. Not knowing what you would instinctively know on your own and what you were destined to learn, I withheld some of my knowledge from you.”

  “Okay. All right. I can see that. But this prophecy … what about that? You really don’t know what it means? Or are you still trying to make me figure something out on my own?”

  “I promise you, my cub, I do not know the meaning. Only the Alpha will know his will.”

  “Joey.”

  Ulrik averted his eyes and did not answer. Shara did not seem to notice his lack of response.

  “I guess the prophecy doesn’t say what will happen,” she said. “The Pack will gather. There can be no culls among us. Who are the culls?”

  “I do not know. Weaklings. Shapeshifters who will not offer allegiance. The Alpha will know. I do not.”

  “What have you told Joey about the prophecy?”

  “Very little.”

  “Does he know who the culls are? Does he even know what the word means?”

  “I do not believe he knows.”

  “Have you seen signs …” She paused and the line appeared between her eyebrows, indicating she was thinking very hard about something. “Has Joey shown signs of really being the leader? The Alpha?”

  Ulrik shook his head. “I have seen no such signs,” he admitted. “But he is still a child. There is time.”

  Chris

  “Open the gate,” Kiona said.

  “Leave the room,” Chris answered. His hand hovered over the keypad but he refused to punch in the code to open the gate with the woman in his control room. He watched a quick wave of anger pass over her dark face and ebony eyes, then she turned away and huffed out of the room to join John Redleaf at the front door.

  Chris turned his attention back to the monitors. There was a thin, lanky man standing at his front gate. The man was dressed in faded jeans, a black Nirvana T-shirt with an army green overcoat that hung to his knees. As Chris watched, the man hesitantly reached for the iron bars of the gate. Chris contemplated it for a moment, then leaned over the microphone and pushed the button to talk.

  “It’s electrified,” he said. “Touch it and it’ll fry you like a piece of bacon.”

  The man jumped away from the gate as if he’d already been shocked. Chris smiled. He spoke into the microphone again. “You’re Fenris’s man?”

  On the monitor, the man nodded, his long, greasy hair falling around his face as he did. He pushed the errant locks behind his ears, then said, “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Vince. Vincent Oldham.”

  “Are you alone, Vince?”

  “Yeah, man. I’m alone.”

  “If you fuck with us, Vince, I’m going to put a silver bullet in your greasy head,” Chris promised. “Do you understand that?”

  “Yeah, man. We’re cool. You gonna let me in, or what?”

  Chris looked at the keypad, wondering again if this was a bad idea. I don’t know of any other way to get Shara and Joey back. He punched in the six-digit code and watched the gate open. Vincent Oldham slipped through and began trotting toward the house. Chris closed the gate.

  “He’s coming,” Chris called.

  “We see him,” Kiona answered.

  Chris scanned the bank of monitors again but didn’t see any other movement or signs of other werewolves watching the house from the perimeter. “I don’t like this,” he muttered, then went to the living room, his hand resting on the butt of his Glock in its holster at his side. He stood behind Kiona, who was beside John, and watched through the front door as Fenris’s man approached. “I hope you’re right about this,” he said.

  “It’ll work out,” Kiona said.

  “It better.” Chris pushed his way between them and opened the door. He went to stand on the porch, drawing the pistol as Vincent entered the shade of the house. The man raised his arms in supplication.

  “I’m unarmed,” he said.

  “Are you one of the werewolves that attacked my house while my wife was here?” Chris asked.

  “Maybe. Yeah. I guess so. We didn’t hurt her, man. She got away. Her and McGrath both got away.”

  “Did Fenris tell you to kill her?”

  “No. He wants her alive.”

  “Why?”

  The man blinked as if he didn’t understand the question. “She’s the Mother.”

  “Why does Fenris want the Mother?” Chris asked as Kiona and John came to stand behind him.

  “We all want the Mother,” Vincent said.

  Chris looked the
man over again. Vincent seemed exceptionally nervous. He was unshaven, his coat and pants were dirty and something about his eyes said he feared more than the gun pointed at him.

  “Do you know him?” Chris asked the Indians.

  “No,” Kiona answered. “Fenris makes a lot of werewolves. Most are expendable. I’d say he’s one of them.”

  “What do you do for Fenris?” Chris asked.

  The man shrugged, his arms still up, bent at the elbow so his hands were on a level with his head. “A lot of things.”

  “Other than kill, what do you do?” Chris repeated.

  “Computer stuff. You know. Track people and shit.”

  John Redleaf finally broke his silence. “Are we being watched right now?”

  Vincent’s eyes shifted and Chris saw that the man really wanted to look over his shoulder. Finally he said, “I don’t know. Who’d watch us?”

  “I think we should go inside,” John suggested.

  “I agree,” Kiona said.

  “Fine.” Chris lowered the gun just a little. “I mean it, Vincent. Give me one reason to and I’ll kill you before you can even think about changing shape on us.”

  “It’s cool, man. It’s cool.” Vincent slowly lowered his hands and came up the steps to join them on the porch. “It’s cool,” he repeated. Chris got a whiff of the man and wrinkled his nose at the smell of wet animal, cigarettes and coffee.

  John and Kiona went inside. Vincent followed them and Chris brought up the rear, closing the door behind him. John went to the stereo in the living room and turned it on, dialing in a classical radio station. Mozart’s “Symphony No. 35” filled the room. John turned it up.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Chris asked. “You have the damn TV on all the time, now you turn on the radio when we’re going to talk to him?” He went to the stereo and reached for the power button. John Redleaf’s powerful hand clamped down on his wrist.

  “I do know this man,” John said.

  “Hey John. I wondered if you’d say anything,” Vincent said, nodding slightly at the big Indian.

  John relaxed his hold on his wrist and Chris let his arm drop to his side. “Why didn’t you say something outside?” The volume of the music meant he had to almost shout.