Nadia's Children

by Steven E Wedel

  “Years of waiting,” she said as she clipped her key ring to her belt.

  “Our resources are limited,” Thomas reminded. “If he was to come at us with war, we would have many allies ready to rush to our defense, but instead we stay here and keep everyone we don’t know away because we can’t be sure they are friend or foe.”

  Shara grunted. She knew it. It was her edict, discussed with Thomas and Holle. It truly was a thing that mixed her emotions. She had a deep fear of being caught off-guard despite their preparations, but even worse would be to allow someone they didn’t trust onto the property. She’d lost five children already. No one was coming near the one surviving child unless Shara had absolute faith in that person.

  “I’m going to check on her,” Shara announced, getting up from the chair.

  “Holle already tucked her into bed,” Thomas called

  Shara didn’t acknowledge him. She left the office and went to the room on the other side of the one she shared with Thomas, the one that had been Joey’s for a short time. It was decorated for a girl, the walls painted pink, dolls on shelves, stuffed raccoons, horses, dogs, cats and, of course, Teddy bears on the shelves, on the floor, on the desk and in the bed with the sleeping girl. Shara stood at the door, peeking in through a crack, watching Morrigan sleep. The girl’s dark curls framed a soft, round face that, when awake and smiling, was dimpled and irresistible. She held a brown-and-white stuffed dog loosely in the crook of her left arm, her other arm resting on the pillow beside her head, her tiny hand open, palm up. Shara felt her chest filling with love.

  She killed her brother.

  The thought came back unbidden. She tired to bury it again, but it demanded she look at it. Really, there was no other explanation for it. In the womb, Morrigan had somehow managed to chew through her brother’s umbilical cord, leaving him to die, taking for herself all the nourishment Shara offered. Her brother, who they’d named Faolan, was buried in the ground beneath the spot where Ulrik’s funeral pyre had been.

  Faolan. The name meant Little Wolf in Ireland, Thomas had said.

  Morrigan meant Great Queen. When Shara had pressed him, Thomas confessed the name also meant Nightmare Queen and that it was the name of an Irish goddess of war and fertility. Still, Shara had agreed to it, adding her mother’s name, Susan, as a middle name.

  Faolan had not been given a middle name.

  Shara softly closed the door and turned away. Thomas waited for her at their bedroom door. He mouthed the question, “She’s okay?” Shara nodded and went to him.

  Jenny

  Jennifer Brown heard her bedroom door open. She lay still, her face turned away from the door, toward the window. She liked to sleep with the window open, but tonight it was closed. Moonlight still streamed in through the filmy curtain, only slightly diminished by the light from the hallway as her bedroom door opened, then closed.

  Kelley Stone had warned Jenny this would happen. “He’ll make his move soon,” Kelley explained. “With Fenris coming home later this month, Hess will want to make sure you’re his, or get rid of you and make up a story to tell the boss man.”

  “What can I do?” Jenny had asked. Kelley, a lithe redhead with hard green eyes and a sly smile, had been Jenny’s only steady female influence for over seven years now.

  Kelley sighed as she came to sit on the edge of her bed, facing the teenage girl. “Your options are limited,” she had said. “Hess is an asshole, and he’s gotten to be even more of an asshole since Fenris ran out of here seven years ago. Next time Fenris calls, you could tell him you feel threatened by Hess.”

  She heard her bedroom door close. The person who’d entered paused there, then sniffed at the air, sucking in three short whiffs before shuffling forward.

  Kelley had waited for her to see the flaw in that plan. “I don’t always get to talk to him when he calls,” Jenny had offered.

  “Right. And?”

  Jenny thought about it. “It would make Walter mad.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Can’t you protect me? You and the others?” she’d asked.

  “Maybe we could. I’m not so sure they would. Especially the men.”

  “I thought they were my friends.”

  Kelley had reached out then and pushed a lock of Jenny’s brown hair behind her ear, then traced her fingers gently along the line of her jaw before letting the hand drop back into her own lap. “Baby, nobody follows Fenris because they love him. Some believe what he believes about society and civilization. Others, like Hess and most of the men here, follow Fenris because they don’t want to be put under the rule of the Alpha. They like their freedom. Or so they say, without realizing until it’s too late that once you associate with Fenris you’re stuck with him. Leave without permission, or let him think you disagree with him, and he’ll kill you.”

  “So nobody would help me against Walter?”

  “What I’m saying, Jenny, is that if it isn’t Walter Hess, it’ll be somebody else. And most of the men here are pretty much the same.”

  The sickly smell of whiskey and Walter Hess washed over her. Jenny lay still, pretending sleep, knowing it wouldn’t help.

  “What should I do?” she had asked Kelley.

  “The best thing you can do, sweetie, is to go along with him, then tell Fenris face to face when he gets home. When he can deal with Hess in person. He’s not going to be happy with a lot of the things Hess has done around here, anyway.”

  “Let him rape me?”

  “You probably won’t enjoy it, but sex is like that sometimes,” Kelley had said, her voice sad. “In fact, if you fight him, it’ll probably only excite him and make it worse on you. Just lay there and take it.”

  “Won’t you help me? Together we could fight him off.” Jenny had known she was begging and didn’t care. My first time? Letting Walter Hess rut on me? It isn’t supposed to be like that.

  Kelley shook her head. “I’ve taught you everything I can, Jenny. This one you have to learn on your own.”

  “What am I supposed to learn?”

  “How to handle men.”

  “Not all men are like Walter,” Jenny had argued. “Fenris isn’t. I wish he’d taken me with him.”

  “I know, sweetie. I know. But he didn’t. And no, not all men are like Hess, but too many of them are. They think with their dicks more than with their heads.”

  The conversation had ended there. That had been a couple of days ago. Jenny hadn’t mentioned it again, but she’d seen Kelley watching her after Hess made some of his loaded comments. There was some other way. There had to be, Jenny had decided.

  “Jenny?” Hess cooed softly over her bed. “Jennnniferrrr?”

  He’d found her in the living room reading a Charles Dickens novel after dinner. He’d already been drinking as he sat down across from her. Jenny had felt his eyes moving over her like two slimy slugs, leaving silvery trails of goo everywhere he looked.

  “You’ve grown up to be a helluva woman,” he had slurred.

  Jenny looked over the top of her book and offered a neutral, “Thanks, Walter.”

  “Seriously,” he went on, “Look at those legs. And those young, perky tits.”

  The skin on Jenny’s bare legs crawled and she wished she’d worn jeans instead of just jean shorts. “You’re such a flatterer,” she said, this time unable to even look over her book at him.

  “Maybe you’d want to show me those sometime.”

  She’d had to swallow several times, then close her eyes as she answered, “Maybe.”

  He’d choked on his drink. Ice rattled in the glass as he lowered it, bent over, gulping and staring hard at her. “You better not be teasing me,” he said between coughs.

  Jenny closed her book and stood up. “When everyone’s asleep,” she said, then walked away as casually as she could, carrying her book and letting her ponytail swing because she knew he was watching her.

  Now, here he was, thinking he’d been invited.

  “You awake?�
�� he whispered.

  Jenny moaned sleepily. She heard the metallic rattle of his belt being pulled loose, then the rustle of his jeans coming down. He had to steady himself with a hand on the bed to pull off his shoes, socks, and jeans. Standing up caused him to stagger back a step with his T-shirt pulled over his face. Then the shirt was on the floor, too, and he was pulling back the covers and sliding into the bed behind her. His big, clammy hand found her hip, tugged at the elastic of the cotton panties she wore. Jenny held her hands together between her breasts, squeezed tightly, waiting.

  “You said you’d give me some of this tonight,” Walter hissed into her hair. His breath was fetid and foul with liquor. His cheek was stubbly and painful against her ear.

  “Are you ready?” she asked. “I’m scared, and I don’t know what to do. You just do whatever you have to do to be ready, then do it to me.”

  “What the fuck?” he panted, then fell away from her, onto his back. “I could have jerked off in my own room.”

  “Just enough to make it ready,” she urged.

  Walter grumbled some more, but after a moment Jenny could feel him pulling at himself. It was sickening, but just what she needed. She couldn’t tell for sure, but she believed he had both hands under the covers as he fiddled with his genitalia. She took a deep breath, then flipped over and rose to her knees on the bed.

  Walter’s bleary eyes widened, rising from her face to the knife held above her head. The blade gleamed blue in the moonlight for a moment. His mouth opened and his hands moved, but never escaped the confines of the blanket. Jenny brought the knife down with all her strength, plunging through the blanket and into the living meat beneath it. Once. Twice. Three times, then a blind flurry of rising and falling. The blanket became red and wet. A bubble of blood formed and popped between Walter’s open lips, then his eyes glazed and he died.

  Jenny brought the blade down one more time, drove it into his chest, then turned it and yanked it free. She stared at the dead man’s face. Then she held up her knife to examine it.

  Silver was extremely hard to come by in a house of werewolves, but on one trip into the city she’d managed to shoplift a small silver crucifix from a mall jewelry store. She had never dared to wear it, though, for fear of having it taken away from her. After leaving Walter in the living room after dinner, she’d come upstairs to her room with one of Fenris’s old daggers that had been mounted as decoration on the wall of a hallway. She roughed up the knife’s blood groove with sandpaper and used a propane torch from the tool shed to melt the crucifix, chain and all, in a steel spoon. She poured the silver into the scratched-up groove, then put everything away as the metal cooled and hardened.

  It was gone now. Scratching the steel of the dagger had only been enough to make a temporary weld with the silver. Somewhere in Walter Hess’s body was a two-inch hardened silver blob. That was good enough. It had done what she’d intended.

  Jenny got off the bed and quickly pulled on her jeans and hiking boots. She’d put some extra clothes, matches and some dried meat and fruit in a pack that she slung over her shoulder. She tucked the dagger into her belt at her left hip and slipped quietly out of her room. She turned the lock on her door and pushed it closed.

  “Did you kill him?”

  Jenny nearly screamed. Her heart hammered in her chest and she felt adrenaline coursing through her body. Why hadn’t she felt that while she was stabbing Walter, she wondered. She turned to face Kelley.

  “You scared me.”

  “Did you kill him?” she asked again.

  Jenny nodded.

  Kelley nodded back. “Come on.”

  Together, they went through the house to the three-car garage. Kelley passed her own Porche and Walter’s old Camaro to stop in front of a newer Chevrolet Silverado pickup. “If I’d taught you to drive a stick, I’d tell you to take mine,” Kelley said. “But there’s no time now. They’ll come after you when they find his body, but you also have to watch for cops. You’re underage. You don’t have a driver’s license. It’s not likely, but somebody here might report this truck as stolen. Get as far away as you can, but as soon as possible when the sun comes up, you ditch this truck and find some other way to travel. Roll it into a lake or something. Okay?”

  Jenny nodded. “You won’t come with me?”

  “I told you, baby, once you associate with Fenris, he’ll kill you for going against him. If he ever catches you, he might not kill you just for what you did to Hess and for stealing a truck and running away. If he knew I helped you, though, it’d be the end for me. I’m going up to my bed and will act as shocked as everyone else tomorrow morning. Now, there’s more food in the back seat of the truck. Fill your pack with as much as you can carry, but travel light. Stay away from other people as much as you can. And please, sweetie, as much as I want to know where you are and that you’re okay, don’t call me. Promise me that?”

  “Okay,” Jenny said. The tears were coming and she didn’t try to hide them. Kelley held out her arms and Jenny stepped into them.

  “Go fast, Jenny,” the older woman said. “I wrote the code to the gate on a sticky note on the dashboard. Alex Draper is on duty out there somewhere, watching the road, but I don’t think he’ll stop you. He’s looking for people coming in. Don’t stop for anyone, but don’t look like you’re running if you can help it. Act confident and people will usually leave you alone.”

  “Thank you,” Jenny said, and now she sobbed. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

  “Stay safe.” Kelley pushed her away, pushed her toward the driver’s door of the truck. “Now go. Wait until I’m back inside before you open the garage door. Bye.”

  Jenny stood with one hand on the handle of the truck’s door, watching Kelley hurry back toward the door of the house. One last wave, then the door closed. Jenny got into the truck, wiped at her eyes and pushed the remote control on the visor. The garage door began to rattle up behind her. She turned the ignition and the engine came to life. Quickly, Jenny went through the list of things to do before starting to drive, checking mirrors, fastening her seatbelt, adjusting the seat, then she carefully dropped the gearshift into reverse and began her journey.

  Fenris

  Fenris took several deep breaths as the Aeromexico jet’s engines revved up. He did not like flying. That, he knew, he shared with Ulrik. Unlike his old nemesis, however, he would do it when it was expedient.

  Skandar, on the other hand, had to be drugged. The Old One slept beside Fenris, his first class seat reclined enough that he wouldn’t pitch forward. The man did not seem so old. Anyone looking at him in his jeans, red-and-black checked flannel shirt, boots, with his long brown hair braided at the back of his head would have taken him for a man in his early 30s. In seven years of talking to him, first through sign language, then in hesitant combinations of English, French and Old German, even Fenris couldn’t guess his real age. Skandar remembered killing and eating Roman legionnaires and, he’d said, he had been a wolf for many generations by that time.

  The jet leaped forward and raced down the runway, the engines screaming as loudly as Fenris wanted to. The ride was rough as the tires burned along the tarmac, then there was that gut-wrenching moment when the tires left the earth and they were airborne. Fenris exhaled and casually lowered the visor over his window so he would not see the ground dropping away beneath them. In a few hours they would land in California and he would get a car to drive home and surprise his household. Judging by the conversations he’d had with Kelley and others, it seemed Walter Hess had slipped into some hedonism while left on his own. He would undoubtedly have to be reminded of his place.

  Fenris found his thoughts returning to Jenny. She’d been a girl when he’d left her. It was odd, he considered, how he’d often found himself thinking about her, even missing her. Quiet, meek, not completely trusting him, or suspecting it had been him who had personally killed her parents, he’d still found her pleasant company and was glad he hadn’t killed h
er when it seemed he’d be unable to use her to get to Shara’s child.

  Ah, Shara. He’d found where Ulrik was hiding her. Skandar’s need to go west, once he’d been able to communicate it, had paid off. They’d remained in France for five years, during which time they’d learned to speak to one another. Fenris had picked Skandar’s memory for everything he could find regarding the Pack, their origins, and the prophecy about the Mother. It had been precious little. He’d learned Skandar had been Nadia’s lover, that Nadia was not the old crone of legend, but that she’d been a young oracle, and gifted, and that when Skandar’s people had raided Nadia’s village and taken the people for food, Nadia had fed them Skandar’s own newborn son as a way to infect them with her curse.

  Following Skandar’s instincts, Fenris had brought them to America on a cruise ship, landing in New York City. They’d traveled slowly and on foot from there, sometimes as men, sometimes as wolves, always moving southwest. For a long time Fenris was convinced they would return to Oklahoma, but they had passed through that state, and Texas, crossing into Mexico almost six months ago.

  A month later they’d found the belt of trees surrounding Ulrik’s mansion. Skandar had been nearly mad with his desire to race across the last several hundred yards of Mexican plain and into the trees, but Fenris held him back.

  “The Alpha is in there,” Skandar had argued. “I feel it.”

  “He is well guarded,” Fenris said.

  “We are no threat,” Skandar reminded. He had not yet accepted Fenris’s outlook on what was best for the Pack. “We should go.”

  “We are not going,” Fenris said, taking the other man by the arm. For a moment, he felt Skandar tense, saw the hair twist from the pores along his jaw and he thought their relationship of convenience would end there, and he had to admit he was curious to know if he could defeat an Old One in a fair fight. “The one I told you about is there, too,” Fenris reminded. “The one who would keep the Alpha for himself, to control him.”