by Laura Taylor
Silence. And Mark’s expression was suddenly and alarmingly blank.
“I would try to figure out how to do it myself,” she explained, not quite sure why this was such a shock to him, given what he’d done himself, “but I’m not allowed to set a single foot off the estate. I don’t mean to burden you with this, but I’ve got no other options.”
“No.”
What? She’d expected warnings about the consequences, discussions on what it would mean to take such a risk, even anger that she’d ask Mark to put himself in danger on her behalf. What she had not expected was a flat refusal.
“What?”
“I said no.”
“But you went looking for your sister! You didn’t just send her a message, you broke into a Noturatii lab!” Even in her dismay and outrage, Dee managed to keep her voice low, harsh, angry whispers bursting from her lips.
“What I did,” Mark said slowly, sternly, “was betray Il Trosa and my species. And for the record, I never, ever intended to directly contact my sister when I was researching her. I just wanted to know where she was, whether she was safe. If she’d been fine, working, dating some loser or making a couple of rug-rats for herself, that would have been the end of it. I went after her because I believed she was being tortured by the most evil organisation on this planet.”
“And now?” Dee prompted, unable to believe he would refuse her like this. “Don’t you still want to know where she is? Or have you just given up on her so easily?”
“If the Noturatii actually took my sister,” Mark said, his voice tight, “then she is now dead. If they didn’t take her, then wherever she is, it’s none of my business. And either way, there is nothing I can do to help her.” He looked up at her sadly, stark loss in his eyes. “Or you.”
Dee glared at him, the hypocrisy of his refusal galling. “Get out,” she said finally. “Get out of my room.”
Mark stood up. “Give this idea up, Dee,” he warned her softly. “We both renounced our family and our past when we swore the oath of loyalty to Il Trosa. And I can tell you from experience, there is no joy to be had in chasing ghosts that should be laid to rest.”
Dee didn’t reply. Mark waited a moment longer, perhaps hoping she would say something else, something to excuse or forgive his refusal to help her. But when it became clear she had nothing more to say, he turned and walked away.
PART TWO - BATTLE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Three months passed in what seemed like the blink of an eye. Winter closed in, covering the estate with a blanket of white. Christmas came and went, Dee delighted and surprised when the Den celebrated in true pagan fashion, complete with a feast on the twenty-first, a yule log and a ceremony honouring Sirius.
Despite being confined to the estate, Dee found there was plenty of entertainment and enough people coming and going to keep her from feeling hemmed in. Caroline assigned her to administration duties, helping Heron keep track of the Den’s finances. Much of the rest of her time was taken up with lessons, her continuing education in shifter history and culture, as well as hand-to-hand combat lessons with Tank and weapons training with Silas.
The one sore spot in her life was her relationship with Mark. After their heated discussion on her request to contact her family, their budding romance had cooled. When she’d taken some time to reflect on it, Dee had come around to see his side of the argument, understanding that what she had asked of him was simply too great a risk, too much of a betrayal of the values and rules Mark had been taught to respect. But despite her apologising for it, the incident had left a lingering awkwardness between them that they’d so far been unable to overcome.
If Dee was honest with herself, she would have to admit that she rather regretted the impulsive request. The more she got to know Mark, the more she found she liked him. She’d moved past her initial shy crush to now see him as a close friend. His dry humour was a welcome change from the serious attitudes of much of the Den, and their daily runs were a true delight, Faeydir free to explore the grounds and exercise her canine instincts in a way that Dee found to be both intriguing and, at times, quite hilarious. But even so, she missed the way he’d looked at her during those first days, the shy hopefulness, the heated glances and subtle flirting. Try as she might, she couldn’t find the courage to make an attempt at resuming their relationship, and Mark remained the perfect gentleman, warm and friendly, but with no hints of his earlier interest in her.
She’d been slowly climbing the ranks, now placed just below Alistair, and several bets had been laid that come spring, she’d be fighting for rank with Raniesha. The woman was quite intimidating – despite her preference for high heels and short skirts, Dee had come to learn that she was also an expert in explosives. When she’d asked Silas about her one day, during her regular lesson in firearms, he’d snorted and said, “Don’t underestimate her. She might look like a well-groomed poodle, but put her up against the Noturatii and heads will roll. There’s pretty much nothing she can’t blow up.”
Dee had been informed that in a few weeks’ time, an emissary from the Council was to be sent to assess her as a new shifter – usually just a formality, but given her unique situation and the questions lingering about her conversion, the impending visit was hanging over her like a dark cloud. When pressed, Caroline had finally admitted that the emissary had the power to declare Dee a danger to Il Trosa and order her to be put down, which had caused no small measure of alarm. Baron had done his best to reassure her, telling her that outcome was extremely unlikely, that the most severe result would most probably be that she was called to Italy for extra training, but nonetheless, Dee wasn’t looking forward to the assessment.
Faeydir had adapted well to life in the estate, making friends with several wolves and becoming cautious rivals with others. The winter had been cold, snow falling thickly, and the wolf had revelled in the chance to run through the drifts. She’d dug tunnels, kicked snow at her fellow wolves, and been on her first official deer hunt. The pack had brought down a young doe, one born only the year before, and a lot of snarling and snapping of teeth had ensued before Baron and Caroline had got down to the messy business of eating the carcass raw, the rest of the pack falling in to fight over what was left when they were done.
Dee had mostly hidden in the back of her mind during that day, not wanting to see the beautiful animal in such pain, not wanting to see the body parts strewn across the snow, red on white a terrible banner that reminded her of a disturbingly similar scene – blood painted across white tiles, body parts scattered around a lab… She’d retreated as far as she could go, hiding behind her wolf and letting Faeydir run the show, the Den none the wiser as to her difficulties in accepting this side of their life.
Early one morning, as spring was making its presence felt, the first buds appearing on the trees as winter began a reluctant retreat, Dee was called into the library. At first, she’d expected nothing more than another lesson, Caroline sometimes choosing one of the thick books and ploughing through the historical accounts it contained, so she was a little alarmed when she found herself face to face with not just Caroline, but a frowning Baron and a serious-looking Tank.
“Did I do something wrong?” she asked immediately. Faeydir had been behaving admirably, or so she’d thought, and she’d been working hard at her lessons, making an effort to obey the rules of the Den.
“No, you did nothing wrong,” Caroline replied flatly, and Dee was by now familiar enough with her tactless manner to take the statement at face value. “You’ve actually been doing very well, which comes as no small surprise, given how you started off here.” It was a compliment dressed up as an insult, and Dee was in a good enough mood to just roll with it for today. “It’s time we let you off the estate,” Caroline announced without preamble, and Dee had given so little thought to the idea that it took a moment to register.
“What? Outside? I can go-”
“We’re not talking free rein to go anywhere,” Baron interr
upted. “You’ll still need to be supervised, and it’ll be a long time before you get to go anywhere on your own. But it’s time we started getting Faeydir used to the outside.”
“We’ll start small,” Caroline went on. “A trip to the local village. We’ll go to the supermarket, see how your wolf reacts to strangers and cars and whatever else you find. And if that goes well, then we’ll need to take you to get vaccinated. You haven’t had your rabies shot yet, and we have regular visits from wolves from various countries in eastern Europe where infection is still common, so it’s worth doing.”
“The local villagers know some of us,” Baron took over again. “And they think we run a business retreat for an international company. It explains why some of us, like Tank and Alistair, are seen around town a lot – ostensibly because they work here full-time – and why others are seen on an occasional basis.”
“Because they supposedly work in an overseas office and have just dropped in for a visit,” Dee rounded out the idea.
“Before we came up with it, there were rumours about us being some odd sort of commune,” Caroline said. “There aren’t many reasons for twenty adults to be living under one roof together, so some kind of plausible explanation was required. We try very hard to keep ourselves off the ‘weird’ radar.”
“Makes sense. And the locals believe this story?”
“They’re more than happy to accept it, hook, line and sinker,” Tank said with a dry laugh. “People like things to fit into neat boxes, and if there’s a rational reason for something that otherwise seems a little out of the ordinary, that just means they don’t have to spend time and energy worrying about it. They can put their blinkers back on and go about their lives.”
“So when do we get to go?” Dee asked, suddenly eager to get out and about.
“Tomorrow, if the weather’s fine,” Caroline said. “And before we do, we have a fair bit of preparation to do. Starting with how your wolf is going to react to the butcher’s shop…”
The following day was a Wednesday, and it dawned bright and clear, if still cold. Dee spent the morning with Caroline and Tank, discussing contingency plans, what to expect in the village, and what to do if something went wrong. Tank was the default choice for bodyguard and Caroline was going in case she was needed to forcibly prevent Dee from shifting – though the act of preventing her would itself cause a disturbance, and was only to be used as a last resort.
Alistair dropped in at one point to help them invent some cover stories for the more likely problems they would encounter, and Dee carefully memorised and recited every one. If the villagers asked, she was working in Canada and had come here for a conference that was happening at the weekend. If she needed to make a quick exit from a situation, she should check her watch and suddenly ‘remember’ she was expecting a call from overseas, and ‘remind’ Caroline that they needed to get back to the estate. If Faeydir played up and Dee turned pale or felt dizzy or any one of a dozen other symptoms, then she should complain about a ‘migraine’ and Tank would get her off the street and into the van as quickly as possible. If Caroline had to zap her, they could tell people she had epilepsy and had just had a minor seizure.
Dee found herself staggered at the degree of planning needed for what she considered to be a minor excursion. Other shifters in the Den spent a good amount of time away from the estate – just take Alistair, for example. He worked freelance for a local newspaper, maintained a wide net of contacts in a number of industries, regularly travelled to London, Paris, Rome. He was a consummate extravert and Dee wondered just how many lies he told on an average day, and how he managed to keep track of them all. It gave her a whole new perspective on life as a shifter, a new respect for how closely these people guarded their secret, and made her dread the day when she would be ready to face the big wide world for more than an hour or two. The complexity of the whole thing was giving her a headache.
Finally, though, after a lunch of rabbit eaten raw on the kitchen tiles, Dee and Faeydir were ready to head out. She’d explained the situation extensively to Faeydir, had talked through some of the wolf’s concerns with Caroline, each and every question and objection being taken very seriously, and Faeydir had finally understood that she was not to come out for any reason whatsoever once they left the estate. A short trip, Dee promised her, at her wary concern. Two hours tops, and then they’d be back, and Mark would take her for a run and she could be in wolf form for the entire evening. Mollified, Faeydir had agreed, and as she climbed into the van, Dee could feel her sitting front and centre, curious about where they were going and how they were getting there. Once they’d pulled out of the driveway, Faeydir sent her a vivid image of the van window rolled down and Dee’s head sticking out to catch the wind.
No! Dee said firmly. I’m running the show here. Human time, remember? An image of a pile of faeces showed up in her mind, and Dee just shook her head.
The village was bigger than Dee had expected, a row of shops that included a hairdresser, a butcher, a bakery, a clothing outlet, even a hardware store. The streets were active, but not overly crowded, and once they’d parked and got out of the van, Dee noticed several people waving at Tank. He was hard to miss, after all, and the locals must have been accustomed to him playing ‘tour guide’ for the ‘business guests’.
The trip to the supermarket was more to expose Faeydir to the concept, rather than because they needed to buy anything, and Dee deliberately strolled past the meat display, testing the reaction of her wolf. But Faeydir had been warned about the abundance of food here, the smells and the variety, and she made no unexpected demands, much to Dee’s relief. In the end they bought a small selection of fruits and a box of cookies, paid for the purchases, and headed back out into the crisp air.
Next they turned down the street, just a casual stroll past the shops. The smells coming from the bakery made Dee’s mouth water, and she had to pause outside a small café to inhale the scent of freshly ground coffee. There was a coffee machine at the Den, but it never tasted quite as good as one made fresh by a trained barista, and it was months since she’d been able to indulge that particular craving.
They reached the end of the row without incident and were about to turn around when Faeydir suddenly gave Dee an urgent nudge. Despite her insistence that this was ‘human time’, she’d got a lot better at cooperating with her wolf in the last few months, finally understanding that Faeydir saw life from a different perspective and could pick up on details that Dee might otherwise miss. So she pulled Caroline and Tank up with a sharp word and looked around for the cause of Faeydir’s concern.
A dog was coming down the street towards them. He had no obvious humans with him, but a collar with a tag suggested that someone owned him. The breed wasn’t immediately obvious – he was a medium sized creature of light brown that could have been part Labrador, part spaniel, or part German shepherd. He stopped a few feet away, sniffed cautiously, then sat down, wagging his tail at them.
Dee checked in with Faeydir again, not certain what the problem was. She choked back a laugh when she understood what the wolf wanted. “No, he can’t come home with us,” she said aloud – a habit she’d got into when talking to her wolf, and the rest of the Den had become accustomed to her talking to herself.
Caroline snorted. “She wants to keep it, does she?”
“I think she wants to feed it, look after it,” Dee said, a little mystified. “I don’t think she understands that it’s not a wolf. She just registers that it’s young and not capable of looking after itself, so therefore it must be a puppy. And puppies should be cared for.”
Caroline let out a laugh, one of the few rare ones that Dee had ever heard from her. “That’s priceless. Come on. It’s time we got back.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Dee said, not moving as Caroline and Tank both turned back towards the van. “She needs to know it’s going to be looked after.”
Caroline raised an eyebrow. “We’re not taking it home.”
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br /> Dee had a brief internal conversation with Faeydir and got the feeling that the wolf was perfectly willing to press the issue, one way or another. “You’ve spent the last three months telling me I need to respect my wolf,” Dee said, trying not to sound defiant. “And what she’s telling me is that she’s concerned about the dog, and since she can’t come out and look after it herself…” Dee emphasised the words, an implicit threat that Faeydir would do that very thing, “… then she needs me to do it for her.”
There was a moment’s silence as Caroline and Tank absorbed the implications of that. Then Tank crouched down and held out his hand. “Here, boy. Come here.”
The dog trotted forward, ears back, tail wagging, eager to please. Tank stroked his head, then snagged his collar, reading the writing inscribed on the tag. “There’s no address, but there’s a phone number.” He pulled out his mobile and tapped in the number. “Hey there,” he said, when someone answered. “I think your dog might have pulled an escape stunt. I have him with me at the end of High Street… Okay. Sure. Five minutes? No problem.” He hung up. “The owners will meet us here in five. Is that good enough for your inner social worker?”
Dee consulted with Faeydir and had to explain several times the concept that humans kept dogs as companions and cared for them, providing food, shelter and medical care. In the end, Faeydir decided to accept the explanation, even though it made little sense to her. Real wolves would never delegate all of their care to human hands. And Dee had to remind herself not to be offended by the opinion. After all, Faeydir spent a good deal of her time fending for herself, catching rabbits for food, drinking water from the stream that was still running. She’d even slept outside one night, building an impromptu den under a tree root, with a pile of old leaves for insulation.
“No problem,” Dee reported back to Tank, who was looking on expectantly. “Good call.”