by Mark Henwick
“I know,” I said. “Whatever you need, you got.”
I couldn’t make that promise. I really couldn’t. I slipped my arms around her and hugged gently.
To start with, it was like hugging a piece of wood. A piece of wood that was leaking on my shirt. Then gradually, she loosened up a little.
“I really want...”
She didn’t finish the sentence, and didn’t speak again. I said very little—just little standard phrases. It all felt too raw, but when I left her ten minutes later, I felt we’d made progress, however small.
We stopped off at Manassah for a shower and change of clothing.
Both of us wanted to take more time.
I sensed Yelena through our half-open eukori; the phantom throb of her jaw. She wanted to exchange Blood. In return, she felt my confused, frustrated anxiety about Kath and the baby. But we both knew we had to rescue Tullah, and the first step was to find out where she was being kept.
Within fifteen minutes we were out and back on the road to Haven.
Chapter 61
Back in the Hill Bitch, it was time to try calling Alex again. I needed people on the ground to search for Tullah. Or wolves. Wolves would be much better.
I would use my pack as part of their training, but they weren’t going to be enough on their own. There was the Denver pack, and I had a position in it, but not high enough to order groups of them around. However, Alex had that authority and he knew about Diana and Kaothos, so he’d understand the issue.
His cell was answered, but it wasn’t Alex. It was a woman.
I could almost hear her gulp in response to my growl.
“I’ll pass you to him, alpha,” she said.
I could hear voices in the background. So, either some kind of pack meeting... or an orgy.
Hypocritical much? I mouthed to myself.
I wondered if the rumor mill had delivered any stories about Zane and me to Alex. And how I was going to deal with it.
“Amber.” Alex’s voice caught me, as it often did, sending tremors all down my body.
Despite the guilt, I couldn’t stop myself. “Who was that woman?”
“Just one of your pack, assigned to answering my cell because everyone wants to talk to me.”
He was chuckling. I had to leave it there.
Business, woman. Talk business.
“I need some of the Denver pack,” I said. “I can tell you why, but I need you out of the pack’s hearing.”
“Hold on,” he said. I heard him telling the others he was going to take my call outside, and the good-natured ribbing he got for it.
“Okay, I’m away from them. Shoot.”
I brought him up to date, while he muttered and snarled at the problems this all threw up.
“So this substantiation thing seemed to go north from San Juan after they got Tullah? There’s a lot of Colorado to cover going that way. There’s groups of the pack in Grand Junction, and towns like Steamboat. We have patrols that check our borders, which can be used to search, if they can be told what they’re searching for.”
Wolves could smell a person from across a town if they were concentrating. I could get Tullah’s clothes out to them. If Alex gave them orders, I wouldn’t need to explain anything about Kaothos, just that Tullah had been kidnapped and had to be rescued.
“Where exactly are the pack’s borders at the moment?” I asked. That was more of a problem. Borders for the Denver pack had always been a little vague. Now we were part of the Southern League and in open conflict with the Rocky Mountain Confederation. Vague was not acceptable.
Alex blew out a breath.
“Weaver doesn’t have to take her far into Wyoming to be out of reach,” he said. “Any Denver pack going past I-80 is asking for a response from the Wind River pack.”
I drew a line in my mind between Rock Springs and Cheyenne that was the interstate’s route. It wasn’t far into Wyoming at all. Both Rock Springs and Cheyenne packs were part of the Southern League, but they weren’t strong and their territories were small.
“What about east? Salt Lake?”
“No.” Alex shut that down. “Salt Lake City, western Utah and most of Nevada is all officially unaligned. We don’t want to do something that ends up with them joining the Confederation. If we need to go there, we’ll need Felix and Cameron in on this. And they’ll need to know why.”
“Which will mean Skylur being willing to tell them.”
“Yeah. Like that’ll happen this year.” I could hear Alex’s frown. “Even within those boundaries, that’s a lot of territory, Amber. We don’t have enough wolves.”
“I’m getting our Adepts to do a working that should cut it down.”
“How much?” Alex said. “Even if you could get it down to one county like Moffat, that’s what, 4,500 square miles? Towns we can do. Major roads. Railroads. The countryside... that’s something else.”
We were both quiet for a moment.
“You could ask Zane for help,” he said, and my heart stopped.
Had he heard the rumors? Was this some kind of test to see what I said?
I kicked myself mentally. That wasn’t Alex’s style.
More importantly, this ducking and diving wasn’t my style either.
And I was wearing his ring.
I’d rather have done this face to face, but I didn’t have that luxury.
“Yeah. About him,” I said. “He got... we got into some heavy petting at the warehouse, just before the challenge. There’s bound to be rumors—”
“Pia called and told me about the working that Weaver used on you,” Alex said. “Not your fault.”
“Not Zane’s fault either,” I said.
Alex just snorted.
I could tell he was angry, but it wasn’t directed at me. I hadn’t realized how much it had been preying on my mind until I felt the flood of relief at his reaction.
“I got your back,” he said.
“I got yours. I love you.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m very lovable.”
“Ass.”
We laughed quietly. It felt good, even though he was over 500 miles away.
“I have family news,” I said. “Your sister-in-law is pregnant.”
“Oh, shit.”
“That’s what I said. David’s got them at his house and... it’s complicated, but it may work out.”
“Well, that good to hear, but not entirely what I meant. If that research we did about the Farrell family curse was right—”
I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. How could I have forgotten?
“That’s her first-born,” I said. “The baby will die.”
Then I said: “No. No. Not going to happen.”
There had to be something I could do. Some kind of defense.
Hide Kath in the dungeon at Haven?
What if the curse didn’t need to reach in and touch her? What if it was already inside her? Or inside me?
I could hear background noises from Alex’s end and I had one last, difficult question. Despite how it made me feel, I asked: “Is it acceptable to ask Zane for a favor? I mean the alpha politics of it.”
“He’ll expect favors in return, which will be nothing to do with alpha politics. The alpha politics, I can handle. Hold on a moment.”
Someone was talking to Alex about pack-owned businesses taking new orders and wanting to change their scheduled departure dates.
“I gotta go,” Alex said, speaking quickly. “Call Zane. He can always say no. Take no shit from him. Whichever way, get Tullah back and let me worry about rumors. Love you. Bye.”
Yelena was nodding as I put the cell away.
“It’s like you tell me about when you were a soldier,” she said. “David. Alex. Jen. Trust the rest of the people in your squad to be good enough to do their job. Concentrate on yours.”
She’d heard what was said. She was trying to distract me.
“I suppose there’s an old Ukrainian saying about it?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. Chase two hares and there will be nothing for the pot.”
“That’s not Ukrainian. Well, maybe it is, but anyway, it’s the same saying in America.”
“So? Sometimes is not only Ukrainians who are smart.”
Back at Haven, I got Bian up to speed on what was happening and looked in on Mykala and Tove down in the dungeon with Diana.
They were both fine, but sleepy.
Tove woke up enough to give me a hug. I could tell from the scent that Rita had been down checking on her.
Mykayla demanded a hug as well, pretended to howl, cracked jokes about werewolves and sexual stamina, then flopped back down on the bed and was asleep in ten seconds.
I left them with Diana and headed up the elevator. It was time for my Adepts to try out their long-range direction sensing.
No, not to try. To succeed. We couldn’t afford anything else.
Chapter 62
“We can do it.” Gabrielle was caught up in her own excitement, everything else put aside.
“Good. Does it take time to recover afterwards?”
“Give us an hour or so before we go a second time.”
“Perfect. We’ll get more than that.”
There was no point in running the working from the same place twice. If it worked, we were going to move some distance before trying again.
Bian had provided them with a huge wall map of the US. I looked down at where western Colorado met Utah, and felt the return of doubts. That was a big slice of country to hide in, even if he’d stopped there. There was nothing to say he wouldn’t keep going.
I kept those thoughts to myself. “What about safety?” I asked.
“Actually, this will be more like a spirit walk. We’ll be nearly invisible in the spirit world. I think this way is better than the substantiation Gwen decided to do.”
I raised my eyebrows. I liked the confidence, but the Hecate got to be a big boss in the League for a reason. Was there something about this method that my group hadn’t realized? And I didn’t like that little word nearly.
It was cold. Gabrielle had decided not to use the room we’d used for the spirit walk to Erie. We were on Haven’s flat roof, under a clear sky, in the middle of the night. This far away from the Denver light pollution, the stars were brilliant.
Other than the setting, Gabrielle told me that the preparation would be like the Erie spirit walk. We were definitely not going to be taking peyote. I guessed I was going to miss the fun parts of riding a blitzed coyote high over the Rockies, but I’d take that for a safer trip.
Gabrielle was muttering about having something of Tullah’s to focus on.
“We’re looking for my twin sister,” I said. “Take it on trust, and I’ll explain later. I don’t need anything. Let’s go.”
“Oh. Okay.”
They’d cleared an area in the middle of the roof. The map lay to one side, weighed down with ornate paperweights and a box that Alice had brought up. We sat cross-legged on a large rug they’d found.
Flying the magic carpet, eh? I kept that to myself, too.
Kane had found an actual drum in the mansion, and was drumming his fingers idly on it. He seemed eager to start as well.
Gabrielle sat behind me. She’d gotten a hairbrush and began to run it through my hair.
“Is this really part of it?” I was impatient.
“It seemed to relax you when we did the spirit walk,” she said. “Is it okay?”
“It’s fine,” I said, but I could feel I’d made her nervous now.
I clamped down on my impatience.
Kane’s drumming changed to a leisurely, steady beat.
Flint started humming.
Alice took the parts of a flute out of her box and put it together. Blew some experimental notes.
Sweet sound, but I was still eager to get going, fidgeting.
Gabrielle and Alice must have exchanged looks. Alice took a black velvet cloth from the flute box and walked around until she was alongside me.
She blindfolded me with the cloth.
“Kinky,” Gabrielle said.
I laughed. “Until you’ve gone on a spirit walk by getting sweaty in a sauna with two naked, handsome men, don’t use that word.”
She laughed. Flint and Kane joined in, with a little undertone to their laughs. Oh, yes. We would probably never use peyote again for spirit walks, but I’d bet they’d come up with reasons we needed to use a sweat lodge. Fine by me. Even if nothing physical happened, like a good little Athanate, I fed on emotions, and lust was okay.
Alice snorted and returned to her flute.
She was much better than I expected her to be, playing a sort of improvisation on tunes I thought I should recognize, and weaving it cleverly around the beat that Flint and Kane provided.
Without really meaning to, I leaned back on Gabrielle and she started the gentle touches across my face, as she had last time. Again, I would have sworn that she was painting my face.
That tune Alice was playing! I knew it—the way it rose and fell, like a bird in flight.
Now it was the wind that stroked my face, and the wind was the music, and it was all one.
Turn. I heard a whisper. Turn all the way around.
I was a bird, a red hawk, riding the air currents. This wasn’t like the crazy spirit walk where I snatched control from Gabrielle, or where Flint and I rode a crazy coyote into the heart of a mountain storm.
This is better.
This is a good team.
There was no transition either; there were no strange feelings as walls went all weird and transparent as we moved through them. We were all, together, simply a hawk, flying in the night. It was the most natural thing to lift one wing and wheel around in the sky.
And the other way.
Back we went, wheeling effortlessly. Beautiful.
I could see Haven far below. The lights of the town of Evergreen. Golden to the north. The dark bulk of Mount Evans to the west. Denver to the east, sparkling in the night.
Twin sister came the whisper. Twin sister.
It had to come through me. I was the one who knew Tara. On my own, I didn’t have the power to reach out through the spirit world, but I felt the rest of them fitting around me like a jigsaw. Alice. Flint. Kane. Gabrielle. They’d provide the juice.
Around and around we circled, higher and higher, like a tune trying to find that perfect note that makes everything that went before fall into place.
It got to be too much. The air felt too thin. The sky was empty. We stooped, fell, but Flint caught me. Alice’s spiraling tune pulled me back to rise again.
And again.
It was on the third attempt I heard an answering sound. The circle of my flight had grown wide. I was higher than I had been before. The first hints of tiredness from the rest of the team had joined the whispers in my mind.
The sound was gone before I could latch onto it. It was no more than a breath, a dream of a word, gone as quickly as it had come. A phantom that vanished as I looked.
There.
Around we went.
Don’t try. Concentrate on being. Stay open. Listen.
Gabrielle’s whispers blurred into the memory of one of my sensei’s martial arts disciplines.
Don’t think. Act.
There!
I didn’t know where ‘there’ was.
Doesn’t matter. Around again.
I struggled to rise, to complete my circle, to point the way I’d sensed it.
Tara! I called.
Hush. Gabrielle responded immediately. Don’t call.
We were losing height. Losing focus.
There?
This time I wasn’t sure. Now I was looking, looking, and it all broke up and floated away like mist.
Back. Back. Back. Down.
I was on the roof at Haven. I was lying against Gabrielle with my arms stretched out and my lungs laboring for air.
“No!” I said, sitting bolt upright. “I had her. I cou
ld hear her! We have to go back!”
Gabrielle’s arms held me back. “It’s okay,” she said.
“You did well,” Alice said. “It was enough for the first time. We have our direction.”
“But where...”
Flint was already bent over the map. Kane helped me up. It was well past midnight. They both looked tired. They all looked tired. They’d designed a working that cost them heavily while it allowed me to fly around, as they say, free as a bird.
Flint took a pencil and drew a steady line across the map. It went west, but north as well. From Evergreen next to Denver out to Moffat county in the northwest corner of Colorado.
Onward.
Dinosaur National Monument.
Ashley National Forest.
And onward. Out of the Denver pack’s boundaries.
Very obviously, right through the middle of Salt Lake City.
Damn.
Chapter 63
“I know I said we need to take a second direction, but I didn’t expect this.” Gabrielle looked up at Jen’s Pilatus looming in the pre-dawn light next morning.
Yelena had gone ahead of us to Centennial, and the aircraft was fueled and prepped.
She was standing at the top of the steps watching us.
“Who’s the pilot?” Gabrielle asked as we climbed up. She saw Yelena waiting, dressed in her biker leathers. “Not you?”
I laughed as Yelena let her fangs manifest in answer and Gabrielle flinched.
“Careful. Don’t say anything bad about her flying or dancing. She gets grumpy.”
Gabrielle laughed.
“We miss morning training and evening training. Again,” Yelena reminded me.
Yes, we had. Morning training was just hard physical work with Yelena. Evening training was where she threw me all over the mats and treated me like a punching bag if I dared to slow down. She was obviously looking forward to our next session, which was probably scheduled for this evening.
Depending on how today went.
Our first reading had gone through Salt Lake, across the top of Nevada and California before reaching the coast, stopping in the neighborhood of the Californian town of Crescent City on Highway 101.