by Anne Bishop
Simon howled again, but it sounded different now.
“Lieutenant, I have to tell the Wolves . . .”
“ARROOOOO!”
The Wolves froze. Burke and the local police officers scrambled onto the road.
“ARROOOOO!”
Based on the deep voice, whatever was out there was huge.
“Arroo!” Simon replied. “Arrrrrooooo!” He turned east, running past them as he headed down the road in the direction of the howl. Blair followed him.
“Nathan, wait!” Monty said when the other enforcer started to follow Simon. “What is it?”
The Wolf bristled with impatience, but Nathan shifted to a mostly human form. “The Elders found something.”
“Meg?”
“They’re not sure. It might be the not-Wolf.” He shifted back to Wolf.
“Wait.” Monty held up a hand. “Let us go with you as far as we can.”
Nathan growled. Not a welcoming sound.
“We have water,” Kowalski said. “And food. And a first-aid kit. When you find Meg, she’ll need all those things. It will be easier to carry them in the car.”
Nathan stopped growling. Monty decided that was as much agreement as they would get. Apparently Kowalski thought the same thing because he was behind the wheel of the patrol car in seconds.
Monty pulled open the passenger door, then stopped and looked at Burke.
“Go,” Burke said. “O’Sullivan and I will handle things here. Good luck, Lieutenant.”
Monty dove into the passenger seat. Kowalski had the car rolling before Monty closed the door.
• • •
The Wolves ran, and the patrol car stayed close enough to see them but far enough back to maneuver around anything unexpected.
Then Simon caught a scent—fresh enough and so familiar.
He stopped, explored the shoulder of the road. Followed the scent across the road and into the trees on the other side.
The patrol car pulled up. “Wait!” Montgomery shouted.
He hesitated, but the need to find his Meg was stronger.
That much decided, Simon waited just long enough for Blair to join him. Then they headed into the woods, following Meg’s scent on the game trail.
They followed the game trail, followed the scent, moving at a steady pace that wouldn’t leave Nathan and the police pack too far behind.
They kept moving, following the game trail and the blood trail.
Then Simon stopped, his ears pricked. Was it . . . ?
“Arroo!”
They were barely in range of that howl, but it filled him with joy. “Arroo!”
“Arroo! Arroo!”
Found you. He ran toward the sound.
• • •
The odd silence wasn’t quite so silent anymore, and Meg felt very grumpy about that—but not quite grumpy enough to tell an Elder that it wasn’t polite to laugh at someone else’s howl just because it wasn’t . . . whatever.
“Arroo!” Practice makes perfect. Miss Twyla had said that. She hadn’t said it about howling, but she had said it. In fact, she’d said a few other things about howling when Lizzy and the other children had been trying to see who could howl the loudest, but they didn’t apply to Meg.
She looked out of the corner of her eye. She couldn’t see the Elder, but she sensed that something large had settled just above one end of the small bowl of land. It hadn’t tried to communicate with her, but maybe its presence would attract some of the Crowgard and she could ask one of them to take a message to Lakeside.
Meanwhile, she was still tired and thirsty, and her ankle hurt. But that presence, while not benign, didn’t feel threatening either. At least she wasn’t alone.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath . . . and howled. “Arroo!”
Moments later she heard “Arroo!”
“Simon,” she whispered. “Arroo! Arroo!”
She waited, hardly daring to breathe. She didn’t wait long before a big Wolf came over the lip and leaped into the small bowl of land.
“Simon!” She threw her arms around him and held on, shaking. Then she felt skin instead of fur, and strong arms wrapped around her as Simon pressed his face against hers.
“Meg.” His voice shook. His body trembled. “Meg.”
“I knew you’d find me.” She squealed when something licked her ankle. Something that wasn’t Simon.
“Blair says you’re hurt.”
Meg pulled back enough to see Simon’s face. “He can tell that by licking my ankle?”
A deep growl near her hip discouraged her from saying anything sassy. She thought of telling Blair that there was an Elder nearby, but she figured he already knew that—and would nip her anyway.
“I tripped and hurt my ankle—and found . . .” She turned her head just enough to indicate a direction without actually looking at the body.
Blair moved away to inspect the body. Simon just hugged her.
“There’s an Elder here,” she whispered in his ear.
“I know,” he whispered back.
“It laughed at me when I howled to tell you I was here.”
She could feel his smile.
Then Nathan was there, practically stepping on her as he sniffed and licked.
“Okay for us to come down?” Monty asked.
Meg looked up and saw Monty and Kowalski.
“Come down,” Simon said.
They moved more carefully than the Wolves, their shoes slipping on old leaves as they made their way down to her.
Kowalski knelt in front of her, opened the daypack he carried, and produced a bottle of water. He opened it and held it out. “I have some food too, but we’ll start with the water. Drink slow. Small sips. Okay?”
So thirsty, but she obeyed.
“Her ankle is hurt.” Simon helped her move her leg to a position where Kowalski could look at it.
Apparently look didn’t mean touch, because Simon snarled and his canines lengthened to Wolf size.
“Have to touch to tell what’s wrong,” Kowalski said, looking at Simon.
The snarling quieted but didn’t stop—and got quite a bit nastier and louder when Karl’s prodding made her yip.
Kowalski opened the first-aid kit. “I’m pretty sure it’s sprained, not broken. Got an elastic bandage in here. We can wrap the ankle to give it some support until we can get Meg home for a proper checkup.” He pulled out other things and handed them to Simon. “You can clean the cuts on her arm, then put some of the antibiotic ointment on them and wrap them. We’ll need to watch them for infection since I don’t think the cuts were made under the most sanitary conditions.”
Not wanting Simon to think about why that had happened, Meg held out her left hand. “A bush attacked me when I was running.”
Since she couldn’t say when the cut was made, she couldn’t point out the bush for him to bite—although she didn’t doubt that, if he really wanted to, Simon could find the exact bush by sniffing out the tiny chunk of skin she’d left behind.
The bush bite calmed him a little, probably because it sounded ridiculous. Simon cleaned the cuts, grumbled about the stinky medicine, and used an unreasonable amount of gauze to wrap her arm and hand while Kowalski wrapped an elastic bandage around her ankle.
“Meg?” Lieutenant Montgomery crouched
beside her.
It wasn’t your fault, she thought.
He gave her bandaged arm an odd look as he held up a slim brown wallet. “While you were running through the woods, did you wonder about finding a doctor for your arm?”
“I wasn’t always running through the woods. I was, but . . . Visions become strange when the cuts are too close,” she said. “I couldn’t tell what I was thinking from what I was seeing. Why?”
Monty studied her. “Some of the doctors on the governor’s task force were reported as missing. I think you found one of them.”
CHAPTER 28
Thaisday, Messis 23
After Meg told them she had heard sirens, Nathan retraced their steps and led Kowalski back to the patrol car while Blair searched the area for a more direct trail to the road. Simon would have preferred shifting back to Wolf, especially after sensing the presence of more Elders, but if he did that, he couldn’t talk to Meg. On the other hand, he couldn’t express himself properly in this human form.
And he couldn’t sniff what he wanted to sniff to find out if that Cyrus had hurt his Meg in other ways.
“I’ll have to give a statement?” Meg asked Montgomery.
“Yes, but not today.” Montgomery smiled. “We’ll take you home. Emily Faire can give you a checkup, make sure there aren’t any cuts we missed.”
Simon thought Montgomery wanted to ask about something else, then thought better of it.
“Arroo!”
“Problem?” Montgomery asked.
“Only if the Crows around here learn how to turn on your police cars—and drive.”
Montgomery looked alarmed.
“He’s teasing you,” Meg said, patting Montgomery’s arm. “Aren’t you, Simon? Simon?”
He looked at her.
“Oh dear.”
Eventually Kowalski and Nathan arrived with a carful of Crows, who obligingly hopped out and then perched on any part of the car where they didn’t slide off. Burke and O’Sullivan arrived a few minutes later with Captain Miller and his officer following in their own car.
After a brief discussion, it was decided that Burke and Montgomery would take Simon and Meg home, while Kowalski and O’Sullivan, along with Blair and Nathan, would help Captain Miller and the humans from the medical office retrieve the body in the woods. With the Elders so close, it wasn’t safe for the humans to go in without the Wolfgard going with them.
While Simon carried Meg to Burke’s black sedan, she didn’t say anything about his not wearing clothes. But as soon as they were settled in the backseat, she glanced at him and blushed. “Simon, could you . . . ?”
Another human had hurt her, and right now she didn’t trust this form. He shifted to Wolf and did his best to find a comfortable position after she hauled him halfway into her lap and held on.
• • •
It took longer to return to Lakeside than it had to drive to the spot where the car and Cyrus Montgomery had been located.
Burke hadn’t said anything about a patrol car full of Crows, but every time the Crowgard flew toward the road, he slowed down to let them keep pace with the sedan for a minute or two—to let them see the sweet blood in the backseat, sleeping with her cheek on the head of a large, dozing Wolf.
Then the Crowgard flew off to spread the word: Broomstick Girl and her Wolf were going home.
CHAPTER 29
Messis
The Crow took the small mesh bag and flew west. He had not been the first courier; he wouldn’t be the last. When he was ready to return home, there would be another Crow waiting and ready to take the mesh bag on the next stage of its journey.
It took a few days, but eventually the mesh bag was delivered to Jenni Crowgard, as promised. She took it and flew off to a private spot in the Lakeside Courtyard, then invited Starr and Jake to join her.
With deft moves, she opened the bag with her beak and plucked out the prize. It wasn’t as fresh as when the Feather Lakes Crowgard had taken it for her—with the Elders’ permission—but that didn’t matter.
The three of them tore at the soft tissue and, with a vengeful glee, ate one of Cyrus Montgomery’s eyes.
CHAPTER 30
Firesday, Messis 24
Douglas Burke followed Greg O’Sullivan into the mayor’s office and took a seat at the round table. Mayor Chen and Police Commissioner Alvarez occupied the other two chairs.
“Shouldn’t the Chestnut Street station chief be here?” Burke asked. He’d gone over the head of his own chief as well as those of the rest of the station chiefs in Lakeside enough times over the past month—or more—that he was a little surprised he still had a job.
“I’ll have a meeting with all the station chiefs later today to discuss how we proceed going forward,” Alvarez replied. “To do that, I need an accurate assessment of whether or not Lakeside has a future, or if the incident with Cyrus Montgomery was, in effect, a death sentence for all of us.”
Silence. Then O’Sullivan said, “Kick a pebble, start a landslide.”
Burke nodded and addressed the explanation to Chen and Alvarez. “For the terra indigene, the attacks by the Humans First and Last movement were somewhat understandable—two opposing packs fighting for territory, winner take all, and everything that lives within that territory has to adjust to the rules laid down by the victors. But the disruptions and conflicts within a human pack that could be created by someone like Cyrus Montgomery weren’t something that had been seen by the Others in the wild country—especially the Elders. Maybe there was concern that that kind of behavior could be absorbed by shifters who had too much contact with us. Sort of a psychological kind of rabies. Or maybe the Elders needed to study the effect one disruptive personality could have on a small community of humans before they allowed us to resettle places under their control. I doubt we’ll ever know for sure.”
“Captain Burke and I talked with Henry Beargard earlier this morning,” O’Sullivan said. “We had the impression that the Elders took some responsibility for what happened because they didn’t heed Simon Wolfgard’s warnings about Cyrus being a danger to the Courtyard’s residents. We also had the impression that seeing the police and Wolves working together to find Ms. Corbyn had shown the terra indigene who had little interaction with us that humans could fit in with other creatures.” He paused. “Governor Hannigan received a message last night. He doesn’t know how it was delivered or who, specifically, it was from, but the gist of the message was that police, firemen, and medical personnel can do their jobs after dark without fear of attack by the terra indigene, and that those who clearly belong to those professions won’t be harmed if they enter the wild country to search for a missing human.”
“That’s a big concession,” Alvarez said.
“With some luck and more work on our part to continue to build trust, some phone lines between regions may be restored as well,” Burke said.
“The mayor’s office will do what it can to help build that trust,” Chen said.
Alvarez shifted in his chair. “What about the blood prophets? Is the governor going to replace the doctors who were killed by people trying to find those girls?”
O’Sullivan shook his head. “The task force has been disbanded. There are less obvious ways for caretakers to share information about the girls, and letting those girls remain hidden is safer for all of us.”
Chen looked at Alvarez, then at Burke. “What is being done about Sandee Montgomery and yo
ung Clarence Montgomery? Were their crimes against the Courtyard premeditated?”
Burke shook his head. “Cyrus had given Clarence twenty dollars to cause trouble and draw attention away from the Liaison’s Office at the time he had planned to abduct Meg Corbyn. The boy did it as much for the pleasure of causing trouble as for the money, but he didn’t know what his father intended—or that Cyrus had no intention of coming back for him.”
“The boy can’t be charged as an adult,” Alvarez said. “And given the nature of his crimes and the fact that they took place on property belonging to the Courtyard, human law is rather flexible. There is a ‘tough love’ school tucked away in the Addirondak Mountains. It’s connected to a village that discourages visitors and is, in fact, so deep in the wild country, there aren’t many people outside of law enforcement who even know it exists.”
Burke wondered if the village was an Intuit community. Something to ask Steve Ferryman the next time they talked.
“I’m going to recommend that Clarence be sent there,” Alvarez continued.
“It’s a good solution,” Burke said. “He’ll receive care and a chance at an education, and maybe he’ll turn away from the path his father had encouraged. One thing is certain: he won’t survive if he stays in Lakeside.”
“What about Sandee Montgomery?” Chen asked. “She was arrested for drugs, but she was on property that we’ve already established is not bound by our laws.”
“Prison is a rough place, but it’s about the only place right now where she would have enough time to make some choices,” Burke replied. “She was told the skin cream would repel the Sanguinati, which it does since it was laced with heavy-duty household cleaners. But Sandee was the actual target, not the Sanguinati. She’d gotten in a dispute with a couple of other prostitutes who were freelancing in the downtown area. The women’s male friends came up with the idea of the cream as a way to disfigure Sandee enough that she would no longer be competition.”