The Black Wolves of Boston (eARC)

by Wen Spencer

  "I throw up real food. Sometimes immediately. Sometimes after few hours of feeling horrible. You only throw up so many times before you give up. I can taste food but then I need to spit it out. Does not make me a delightful dinner partner. Besides, your body stops wanting it, so it stops tasting as good."

  "That sucks." Food only tasted better since he became a werewolf. It was the only plus he could think of. He ate a little slower, trying to remember what they'd been talking about when the delivery guy walked in. The Frog Pond.

  "There was nothing in the pond. What do you think my dream meant then? What was the scary black thing that came out of the water in my nightmare?"

  "The blackness might have represented a breach. You don't know what one looks like, only that it generates monsters."

  "What exactly is a breach? Someone---I think it was Dr. Huff---said it was a tear in reality."

  "Exactly. What an average person sees is merely one layer of reality. Even in this realm, there are many things that they can't perceive. Ghosts and spirit guides and many specter monsters are unperceivable to a normal human."

  "Like Fred." Joshua stretched his free hand high over his head to indicate the tall willowy spirit guide.

  "Yes. Magical wounds like the bite of the werewolf or a vampire creates a hole into another realm. It is the source of our power. Yours is not the same as mine. A breach is a tear without a living focal point. Any creature it brushes against, it corrupts. Anything that animal then bites becomes corrupted too. It's a wave of evil, killing everything in its path."

  The washing machines with his shoes started to spin up to drain. It rattled ominously. He and Decker stared at it.

  "Is it supposed to do that?" Decker asked.

  "I think my tennis shoes are making it unbalanced." The wading pond had made his shoes smell weird. The wolf had tried to throw them out. Joshua didn't want to lose the few things he had of his old life. Washing his shoes was a last-ditch effort to save them from the wolf. The drawback was that he was stuck in socks until they dried. "It will automatically stop if it's too unbalanced."

  He finished the pizza as they watched the machine finish the rinse cycle. When the lights went out, he fished out the mesh laundry bag with his shoes in them. He sniffed them.

  "Well?" Decker asked.

  "I think it worked." He wasn't growling at them like before. "The cleaning mama website said to stuff them with dry towels and put them in a load with more towels."

  "Wouldn't the towels then smell like feet?"

  "I'll wash them afterwards." He pulled out the jeans he'd worn that afternoon. They also smelled clean. He tossed them into a second dryer. "Because I'm totally clueless, I had a completely useless prophetic dream---which I suppose makes it a normal nightmare."

  Decker thought for a moment before shaking his head. "No, not useless. You've discovered you have a very rare gift. In time you will learn how to properly use it. It is like any skill, it takes practice. It took years for me to hone my ability."

  Joshua swiped the payment card to start both dryers. The tennis shoes started to quietly thump as the tumbled about the drum.

  "I finished this pair." Decker held up the pair of jeans he'd been hemming.

  "Great! Thanks!" Joshua started the empty washer, poured in the liquid laundry soap, and added both pairs of shortened jeans and all his T-shirts.

  Decker had rescued the paint samples from the washer's lid. "Let's use this color for the laundry." He held up the light green named Seedling.

  "Are you sure?"

  Decker reached over and tugged on the collar of Joshua's green shirt. "I like you in green."

  The wolf drifted closer to Decker, licking his lips. Joshua blushed as he remembered the other dreams he had last night; the ones where Decker was some kind of chew toy. Stop it. Stop it.

  Luckily the phone started to play "Für Elise" in Joshua's pocket. Decker had insisted that Joshua carry it since he didn't have a clue how to use it beyond answering incoming calls.

  "What is it doing?" Decker asked after Joshua took the phone out of his pocket.

  "Elise texted me." He read it aloud. "Ask Decker if he remembers the Monkhood Coven."

  "The Monkhoods?" Decker repeated. "Oh good God, I thought they were all dead."

  "Is that a yes?"

  "It depends on what she wants to know. They were infamous in their time, much like Lizzie Borden or Jack the Ripper. They are the true reason I became a vampire, but I never met any of them personally."

  Joshua typed in "he recognizes the name but isn't sure he knows anything useful."

  The phone played "Für Elise" again, this time as Elise called them.

  Joshua answered with a cautious "Hello?"

  "Let me talk to him!" Elise snapped.

  Joshua tapped the speakerphone icon. "He's right here."

  "Tell me everything you remember of the Monkhoods. You were alive then, right?"

  Decker looked surprised at the phone. Joshua wasn't sure if it was because he didn't realize that it had a speaker or because of what Elise asked him. "Everything?"

  "Everything!"

  Decker slowly spread his hands as if "Everything" was too big to wrap his brains around. "The Monkhoods were a powerful English coven, reportedly from Bristol. They fled England at the time of the Great Purge that the London pack carried out after the Great Fire of London in 1666. The Monkhoods had started the fire. They made a scapegoat of Thomas Farriner who owned the bakery where the fire started. They'd also taken the Lord Mayor as a puppet and kept him from starting the firebreaks. It allowed the fire to claim most of the city. The Wickers hoped that in one act they could rid city of both the werewolf prince and the London-based Grigori tribes."

  "The Great Purge was the first time that the Grigori allied with the werewolves instead of simply coexisting under the terms of the peace treaty. The Monkhoods settled in Salem in 1667 and quietly started to eliminate all the people who were resistant to their powers. It came to head during the witch trails in 1692. It was claimed later that the Monkhoods had lost control over the events, that the Puritans took the ball and ran, as Saul liked to say. Either way, the Prince of Boston went to war against them, forcing them to shift to New York City when I was ten years old."

  Joshua took a deep breath as he realized Decker was over three hundred years old. He looked twenty, which was probably how old he was when he was made a vampire.

  Decker didn't notice Joshua's dismay. "New York had been New Amsterdam and property of the Dutch until 1664. Since we did not have the Puritan influence of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, most divines lived well. Cotton Mather had little influence until the English took over. Things quickly changed after the Monkhoods arrived. They turned humans against anyone not of their coven, much as they had done in Salem."

  "Why didn't the Prince of New York stop them?" Elise asked.

  "The Wolf King had made Barnabas Tatterskein Prince of Boston in 1640," Decker said. "He was a wise old man when he forced the Monkhoods out of his territory. Alexander hadn't made Wolter Eskola Prince of New York until 1690. Wolter was barely twenty when the Wolf King shifted him out of the Gelderland pack, along with a half dozen cousins and one older brother as reinforcements. Wolter was too young to recognize the dangers that the Wickers represented."

  "You were there when the Wickers killed Wolter. Right?" Elise said.

  "I wasn't," Decker said. "The Wickers had moved against me. I believe it was to keep the prince from asking my help in finding them. I'd fled the city just two days before he was killed. I was halfway to Philadelphia when the Wolf King's arrival emptied New York of monsters."

  "Close enough!" Elise said. "Did anyone ever find and destroy their spell books?"

  Decker shook his head. "No. New York City was not what it is today. It was possible for a determined force to search every inch of it. The Wolf King is nothing but determined."

  "Were the Wickers all killed?" Elise said.

  "I believe so," Decker said. "O
ne or two or maybe three had been torn to pieces in the process of trying to capture Wolter's heir when they killed the prince. There were so many pieces it was difficult to tell how many witches were killed. The Wolf King had all the boats locked down until they could be searched. The wolves scoured the area on foot for days in all directions. It's unlikely that any of the Wickers escaped."

  "So most likely the grimoires were well hidden someplace where they could have been found by another coven?" Elise said.

  "Yes. It was even possible they'd left a copy hidden in Bristol. It was an unthinkable distance when I was young. If the Prince of London hadn't searched Bristol closely, any cache could remain hidden for years."

  Joshua startled slightly at the name "Bristol." He'd eaten at the Bristol Lounge that afternoon. Was just a weird coincidence or something more?

  "What the hell is that thumping noise?" Elise asked.

  "My shoes," Joshua said. "They're in the dryer."

  "Where the hell are you?" Elise snapped.

  "At a laundry," Joshua said.

  Elise cursed. "You're supposed to stay at Decker's house because it's warded. The Wickers can find you if you're running all over the city."

  "I'm not running all..." Joshua remembered where he'd been most of the day. "We're just on the next block. We'll go home when my shoes are dry."

  "Why the fuck did you wash your shoes?"

  The wolf growled in anger. Joshua wasn't sure if it was because the wolf didn't like Elise shouting at him or if because it was remembering why the shoes smelled.

  "The wolf wanted to throw them away," Joshua said. "Because they smelled bad to him."

  There was long silence on the other end of the phone.

  "Hello?" Decker tapped the phone, accidently turning off and on the speaker.

  "Don't." Joshua blocked him from doing it again.

  "Fine," Elise said quietly. "Finish your laundry. Go home. Don't. Leave. The. House."

  She hung up before Joshua could argue with her which was probably a good thing. It also meant that he had promised nothing.

  32: Seth

  "I'm making a list." Seth had pulled Cameron into the kitchen for a semi-private conversation as the other two Musketeers coached Ewan through transforming into a wolf and back. In hindsight, IHOP had been a mistake, but they'd gotten safely away. Lunch and dinner had been catered by Cameron's mother. "It's a list of dos and don'ts. I need to leave for a little while."

  "Why? Thane Silva said they're still dealing with puppets."

  Dinner had been five quarts of homemade potato salad, fifty pieces of fried chicken and two dozen ears of corn on the cob. Seth wasn't sure if this was a huge miscalculation on what her sons could eat or if the leftovers would be gone by morning. When Cameron's mother dropped off the food, she'd said that the Thane had called the main house while they were at the restaurant.

  "I know what Thane Silva told your mother." Seth didn't bother to explain that the Thane routinely said one thing and did another. "There's a newborn puppy in my territory. He's totally alone. I need to go check on him."

  "The newborn from Utica?" Cameron asked.

  "Yes." Seth didn't want to explain further. He didn't want the information to leak back to Isaiah. One disaster at a time. "He went all the way to Boston and stopped. I didn't realize it until I talked with your grandfather yesterday."

  "What about Ewan?" Cameron asked.

  There was a startled yelp in the living room and a loud crash. Seth ignored it.

  "Ewan's doing better than I was after a week." Ewan had familiar people and places surrounding him. Seth had been stripped of everything except Jack. He wrote "Don't take Ewan out in public again" at the top of the list. "My biggest concern was that he was safe from the other heirs. After living with you for a day, I'm no longer worried that one of you will kill him."

  He added "Don't leave him alone with other heirs" just to be sure.

  There was another yelp and crash from the living room.

  Cameron glanced toward the noise, worry on his face. "Are you sure he's going to be okay?"

  "The important thing is to not put him under stress. The amnesia means that the wolf is more in control than normal. It's closer to the Source than Ewan is, so it can easily tap his power. Anyone that angers him will be dealing with an alpha wolf, not Ewan. None of you can control it. It's unlikely that he'll kill any of you; the wolf is protective of those it loves. Everyone else is fair game."

  "So basically he's like a newborn?" Cameron's father had been killed shortly after he'd turned eighteen. It had fallen to Cameron to shepherd his younger brothers and sisters through their change. Between his experience and strong dominance, he was a good candidate for taking care of Ewan. It was the only reason Seth felt like he could safely leave.

  "Yes. One that can kick your butt, but a newborn." Seth wrote down "no arguments with each other."

  Speaking of newborns---Seth checked on Joshua. His older brother continued to confound him. Joshua had gone to the hardware store again, this time to buy flamingos for Decker's yard. Afterwards, he'd taken the Red Line to Boston Commons and waded about the Frog Pond. What in God's name was he doing? Why flamingos? Why had he gone wading in November? Why did he leave the safety of Decker's house?

  Jack had caught up to Seth late last night. With the Albany pack in mourning, Jack didn't press for Shelter and Assistance. His cousin checked into the hotel across Wolf Road from the Court. In the morning, Jack retrieved the angelic blade from the pack's funeral home. He and the Grigori spent the rest of the day buying clothes (Jack was wearing Seth's), restocking the Grigori's first-aid kit, and using their respective world-wide contacts to try and track the surviving Wickers. The coven had vanished out of Utica. The Grigori were currently combing international flights, looking for anomalies that would suggest someone had flown unreported out of Belgrade since the massacre on Friday. Seth wasn't sure how this would help find the coven, but he supposed any lead was better than none.

  Aside from Joshua being a newborn, the fact that the Wickers were still looking for him was alarming. It was becoming more and more clear that Seth had to do something about his brother. Quickly.

  "I won't be gone long." Hopefully. "If I have to, can I bring the puppy back to here? It would be best that he has other wolves around."

  "We have younglings here at Court." Cameron didn't want to say no. The man understood how dangerous a newborn could be. "We have a hunting lodge near Saratoga Springs. Maybe it would be best to take both your puppy and Ewan there."

  "That sounds good." Seth still had Jack's phone which tracked all the Thanes, even Isaiah. The king's son was in Utica. According to Jack, the Thanes had dealt with nearly two dozen ferals in Ewan's wake. Isaiah followed up by killing all the puppets that he could find in case they were running on scripts. Isaiah should have run out of people to kill. Why was he still in Utica?

  Whatever the reason, it only reminded Seth that he couldn't let Isaiah anywhere near Joshua. "I'm sorry about having to ask for help. I'm not sure what else to do with the puppy while I'm here shepherding Ewan."

  "It's no problem! You're just a kid. We shouldn't be putting all this on you. We have a younger brother who is fifteen. Sorley. When your family was killed, Sire went to Alexander and asked that we could foster you. Sire thought it better here with kids your own age than at the Castle, surrounded by men. The king said he needed you in New York."

  It was the first Seth had heard of the request. Considering how long he had amnesia, it wasn't surprising that he didn't remember Albany's visit to the Castle. Considering the amount of time that Alexander spent training Seth on being a prince---lessons that drove Isaiah mad with jealousy---it wasn't surprising that the king refused the offer.

  "When Sire realized you were in Utica," Cameron continued, "he demanded to see you so he could talk with you. We couldn't help but overhear what Sire told you about Isaiah and the whole writing on the wall stuff. What he didn't tell you is that he's fought with
the king---as much as anyone can fight with Alexander---about sending wolves to Boston. It didn't have to be you. It could be anyone. Things would be better in Albany if Boston had even a handful of wolves to keep the area stabilized. Sire wanted Thanes to be stationed there. The king refused."

  Seth felt a stab of guilt. In the last three years, Albany had lost a dozen of their people. How many of those were because Seth hadn't gone home? "He says that he doesn't want anyone in Boston until I take residence, but he won't let me move back. I've spent that last three years going to summer school so I could graduate early. I thought I'd be able to go to Harvard next fall, but he says---he says I'm to go to Columbia instead."

  "Four more years," Cameron whispered like it was a death sentence. Considering the effect on Albany, it was.

  "I'm sorry." Seth silently vowed that it wouldn't be four years. Somehow he'd get back to Boston.

  "It's not your fault. Sire always said that the king knows things and sees things that we can't even begin to understand. Not that it didn't make Sire angry, but he accepted that the king was doing the right thing."

  Seth locked down on a growl. He'd heard the same mantra over and over again for the last three years. Meanwhile his family was dead, people were dying in his territory, and now to discover that his neighbors were being killed off too. Why? Why wouldn't Alexander let him go home? What had Alexander meant by "needed"? It wasn't as if Seth did anything in New York City except endure Isaiah's torture.

  "You can bring your puppy here," Cameron said. "Anytime in the future, if you need someplace to chill, we're cool with you coming here. Anytime. We'll even get a bed so you don't have to sleep on the couch. We had one but it got broken."

  There was another crash in the living room but this time followed by laughter.

  It was not hard to imagine how the bed had gotten broken. Seth and his brothers were constantly breaking their furniture when he was little. His mother called them demoledores.

  He fought a wave of bitter sadness. His younger brothers were a pile of ashes and a collection of gravestones over empty graves; there was no bachelors' house in the future of the Boston pack.