by Laura Taylor
“No fucking way.” It was John who spoke, an emphatic refusal that Baron knew the cause of without even asking. John was the best tracker in their group, and to accomplish what Andre was suggesting and still obey Council laws – as well as local animal control bylaws – the wolf would have to be collared and leashed; a tame pet, not a wild animal.
And nobody collared John. Ever. Not even Baron.
“I’ll shift,” Mark volunteered. “I know Dee’s scent. I’ll be able to find her.”
Hardly a surprise, right there. This was one of the reasons he’d brought Mark along. There was the firm chance that he might do something risky or even downright stupid in the hope of finding her, but on the other hand, he would also be willing to put himself on the line in a multitude of ways to achieve his goal.
But just as he was agreeing with Mark’s plan, it was Andre who really made him sit up and pay attention. “I’d like to shift as well,” the warrior said, scanning the area again. “I can hear better that way. Keep track of who might be around.”
A stunned silence met the statement.
“You’d have to be leashed,” Baron said dumbly. Surely Andre would have already realised that. “And you don’t know what Dee smells like.”
A wry smile from the emissary. “Yes. That has occurred to me. But once Mark finds her scent, I should be able to follow it.”
Well, what do you know? The Council’s watchdog was willing to be collared like a dumb pet. And there was nothing funny at all about that, Baron realised, seeing the cool calculation in Andre’s eyes. His respect for the man went up a notch.
Andre and Mark disappeared inside the van, emerging a few moments later in wolf form. Baron snapped collars around both their necks, then leads. He tossed the keys to Alistair who had, up until now, said nothing. “You drive. I’ll call you and let you know where we’re headed.”
“No problem.” Alistair was in the driver’s seat in a flash. No, he wasn’t the best fighter, or the best tracker, Baron admitted to himself, echoing Andre’s earlier comments. But he was a genius behind the wheel, and if they needed to outrun a Noturatii vehicle, he had absolute confidence that Alistair would find a way.
“Let’s go,” he said, handing Mark’s leash to John. “Which way?”
Both wolves put their noses to the ground, sorting out a hundred human scents from Dee’s particular one. John and Baron just meandered around after the wolves, adopting that patient, faintly embarrassed look of dog owners waiting for their animals to relieve themselves and wishing they would get on with it.
And then, over near the edge of the parking lot, Mark suddenly tensed, nose roving over the concrete again and again, then he let out a yip that had Andre at his side in a heartbeat, scenting the ground to learn Dee’s smell.
The next few minutes were excruciating. The wolves could have followed the scent trail at breakneck speed, but Baron and John would never have been able to keep up, and there was always the need to maintain the appearance of normal people walking normal pets. In this part of England, they couldn’t afford to draw the slightest attention to themselves without calling the Noturatii down upon them. So they strolled along the road, through a park, down an alley, trying to stay patient when all Baron wanted to do was unclip the collars and let the wolves run.
Finally they came to the edge of the town, wide paddocks opening up, then, in the distance, giving way to thick forest. At the end of Baron’s leash, Mark put his tail up. He scented the air drifting in from the field and yipped a plaintive request. And Baron was all too ready to agree. Now that they were out of the guts of civilisation, they could all move faster as wolves. Baron pulled out his phone.
“Alistair? We’re going to be out of range for a while. Heading north.”
“That’s Grey Watch territory,” Alistair replied, scepticism heavy in his voice.
“And that’s where Dee headed,” Baron stated flatly, raising an eyebrow at Mark, who nodded in confirmation.
“No problem,” Alistair said, shelving any reservations he might have had, and this was the other reason Baron had brought him. He thought fast, reacted well to sudden changes of plan and could improvise the pants off anyone in the Den. “I’ll head out of town and rendezvous with you in the forest.”
Baron hung up, then glanced at John. Without a word, they both unclipped the collars on the wolves and pocketed the leashes. “Grey Watch territory, folks,” Baron reminded the group. “Watch yourselves. These wolves be crazy.” He shifted, with John following a moment later, and then all four wolves took off across the field.
Faeydir was in her element, Dee knew, when she was called outside some ten minutes later. Rituals were good, the wolf insisted. It showed that these wolves embraced their magic, unlike Il Trosa who seemed only to want to control and restrict it. They slept outside. They lived simple lives. And Dee was struck by several images in her mind that made little sense, until she realised that Faeydir was remembering an ancient time, a past life perhaps, when she had lived with a very similar group of shifters. Wild, free, primitive. They could do well here, the wolf suggested, at which point Dee sharply showed her an image of Mark in her head. That pulled Faeydir up short. Right, Dee thought with a touch of triumph. No Den, no Mark. It was enough to make Faeydir think twice, but not enough to change her mind completely. Wait and see what the morning is like, she seemed to say. But the small concession was enough to give Dee hope that she could talk Faeydir around. These people seemed nice enough, if a little on the defensive side, but it would take a lot more than that to convince her to live with them.
She followed Sempre through the camp, down a short slope and over to a small waterfall – barely big enough to qualify really, just a short drop where a stream ran over the edge of a boulder. A dozen shifters were gathered around, all of them in human form, and Dee was startled to see a rabbit in a cage set beside the water. Faeydir perked up immediately. Dinner, perhaps?
No, Dee told her firmly. But what?
Lita stood at the centre of the group, dressed in a long, flowing robe, and she smiled when she saw Sempre arrive. “I have said the prayers and cleansed the site. The ritual can begin,” she said.
Sempre nodded. “Proceed.”
“Dee? If you would come forward, please?”
Dee did so, conscious of being the centre of attention. But at the same time, she realised there were no men among the gathered shifters. Was that because men were forbidden from seeing this particular ritual? Or because there weren’t any men here in the first place? While some women might prefer to live without men, it was impossible to maintain a pack without them. Only male shifters could convert females, after all.
“This will only hurt for a moment,” Lita said, picking up a long knife, and Dee reluctantly held out her wrist. The knife was mercifully sharp, and she barely felt the cut, watching resolutely as her blood dripped into a small bowl. Lita handed her a short bandage and motioned for her to step back.
Chanting started up, and Dee tried to pay attention as she wrapped her wrist. Despite her reservations about the Watch, she was genuinely curious about this ritual. Aside from the one to reveal her sire, she hadn’t seen any others at the estate, and this side of the shifter life was fascinating.
But then, to Dee’s shock and embarrassment, Lita undid the ties on her robe and let it fall to the ground, leaving her completely naked. And aside from the nudity, Dee suddenly felt cold in sympathy for the woman. The air was frosty, her breath clouding in front of her, and Lita must have been freezing.
The chanting grew in volume, and Lita lifted her arms, revealing a fine network of tattoos along her forearms. She turned in slow circles, head thrown back, eyes closed… and then she stopped suddenly. She threw her arms wide and howled.
Privately, Dee was amused by the sound. It lacked the deep resonance of a real wolf howl, the sound thin and shaky, and she could feel Faeydir scoff at the noise. A series of images flashed though her mind, and it took a moment to work out what Faeydir
meant. This one is as weak as a puppy, she seemed to be saying. But Dee disagreed. Okay, so her howl was weak, but the woman herself… there was something odd, something disturbing about her that Dee hadn’t picked up on before.
And then Lita stepped forward and opened the cage, taking out the rabbit.
It had been drugged, Dee realised immediately. It didn’t struggle, didn’t even fidget the way a normal pet rabbit would have done. Instead it lay limply in her arms, eyes half closed, and a terrible sense of dread filled her. She suddenly wanted to be far away from here, anywhere but here, and she instinctively turned to Faeydir for support. They were going to kill the rabbit, not for food, but as a sacrifice for the ritual. And once again, Dee’s abhorrence for death and bloodshed rushed to the fore.
She knew the moment the realisation hit Faeydir at what this was. And once again, her wolf completely surprised her. Suddenly the childish, demanding animal was gone, replaced with a sapient consciousness that seemed old far beyond her years.
Faeydir knew this ritual. She’d seen it performed before. And while she didn’t share Dee’s disgust at the process, she disapproved of it for a number of complex reasons. This magic was forbidden. It came with consequences that were unpredictable and unwise, and Faeydir was instantly disappointed that these wolves had reverted to such measures. Out of ignorance? Desperation? Weak wolves, these were, she informed Dee. And she was rapidly rethinking her stance on wanting to stay.
Distracted by trying to translate Faeydir’s ramblings, Dee realised that she had missed part of the ritual. Lita was now standing beside a stone tablet, a knife in her hand, the rabbit laid out in front of her. And part of her wanted to look away.
But another part needed to watch. She needed to see this, to know that these wolves were not part of her pack, were not part of anything she wanted to be involved in. It was easy to believe that the Noturatii were the most dangerous threat to Il Trosa, the only real concern in an otherwise peaceful existence. But there were other monsters hiding in plain sight, she was starting to learn.
Stay? she asked Faeydir.
In response, she got a bright image of Mark in her mind. And the rather more frightening image of them racing through the forest, away from here… in the dark. What? Faeydir wasn’t even willing to stay until morning now?
And then the knife came down and Dee felt Faeydir cringe. Blood rituals tainted the practitioner, the wolf explained in her usual mess of pictures and feelings. Yes, each wolf had their own magic. Far more than the Den allowed for. But this was cheating, reaching into mystical aspects which should not be tampered with, like an athlete who takes drugs to enhance their performance. Or people who have plastic surgery to look more beautiful. How the hell did a wolf know anything about plastic surgery, Dee wondered, before Faeydir tossed up an image of a television show she’d been watching a few weeks ago about that very thing. Wow. The wolf paid more attention than she thought.
But Dee had been through a blood ritual herself, she reminded Faeydir, to discover which blood line she belonged to. And she had willingly donated her blood to this ritual, she realised in horror.
Her own blood, Faeydir responded. Not another animal’s. What she did with her own was up to her. This magic would not taint Dee. Only Lita. Only those who chanted.
The chanting had kept up all through the ritual, a soft, background noise that was almost hypnotic, and Dee watched with a sense of revulsion as the bowl of her blood was laid reverently upon the stone tablet. And then Lita began drawing intricate patterns with the rabbit’s blood around the bowl.
She’d been worried about Silas doing something like this, Dee thought with no small amount of irony. Not a bunch of old women running about naked in the forest. The smell of burning reached her, the blood set alight with a combination of herbs. More chanting, and Dee stared at the trees, trying not to see the little furry body lying still…
“I have found the Noturatii men,” Lita announced suddenly, startling Dee. She looked up, seeing that the rabbit blood had turned to black ashes on the tablet. Lita was studying them closely. “They have gone south. One of the shifters went with them… The other shifter has gone west. Far to the west.” She looked up at Dee. “I dare say one of your companions has gone home to his Den.” She turned back to the ashes. “And two wolves have come north into the forest.” A sharper glance at Dee. “You told us you were alone.”
Sempre stepped closer to her. “Where is the other? Who is it? Do not deceive me, girl.”
Dee shook her head. “I’m alone. I swear to you, I came here alone. I was with two men and neither of them came north with me.”
“You lie,” Lita stated flatly. “I see two beings coming north. Both contain the shifter magic. Who have you brought with you?!”
Me, Faeydir told her. An image of them standing side by side – of course, two beings, though they shared a body. Bloody hell, how was she going to explain this one?
“It’s kind of complicated,” she told them hesitantly. “My wolf and I, we didn’t really… um… We never merged properly. Is that what you call it? That’s what they call it at home. She’s different. Her own personality, her own thoughts and desires, kind of like Faeydir in your legends. She and her human shared a body, but had separate minds…”
The shifters around her were gaping at her in astonishment. And wow, she might just have underestimated how big this news really was for them. But somehow she’d assumed that shifters who cast spells and killed rabbits to locate their enemies might have a better handle on the weird than this.
“Who is she?” Sempre demanded, and Dee opened her mouth to reply, then realised that Sempre wasn’t talking to her, but to Lita.
Lita grabbed her cloak and wrapped it quickly around herself, looking far less welcoming than she had in the tent earlier. She picked up the knife again. “I will need more of her blood to find out.”
“Collar her,” Sempre demanded. “Tie her up. And bleed her. I want answers!” Dee suddenly found herself being grabbed, rough hands forcing her towards Lita, shouts and chaos all around her. But the one thing she focused on was that sharp command. Not ‘tie her up’, not ‘bleed her’, but ‘collar her’ was the thing that struck terror into her. It had been one of her first lessons with Baron about safety, about what to do in an emergency, about how to escape attempts to capture her. Never, ever, he had said, let anyone collar you. Most restraints were useless on a shifter – ropes, handcuffs, even a strait jacket were rendered useless when the shift came on, the body rearranged and reformed around the objects, setting the shifter instantly free.
But a collar? That was the one exception, the one piece of equipment that could fit equally well on a human, or on a wolf. Even if she shifted, the collar would still be around her neck, her wolf captured like a dumb animal, as surely as her human self would be if she didn’t do something fast.
“Stop! What are you doing? I can tell you whatever you want to know,” she tried desperately to reason with her captors. “You don’t have to tie me up!”
“Don’t resist, child,” Lita said sharply. “The legends contain more than one wandering spirit. Faeydir was the first, but certainly not the last who will come again in another form. We must know who you are.”
Hands were tying her wrists, a thick press of bodies keeping her from moving, making Dee claustrophobic. The rough treatment reminded her of the lab, memories coming fast of scalpel blades and needles and bright lights.
And then she saw the thing she had been taught to fear: a thick, metal collar that could be secured with a padlock, a thick chain trailing from it, and a look of glee on the faces of those who brought it.
There would be no escaping once that thing was on her, no leaving in the morning, and even the sharp curiosity to know exactly who Faeydir really was, perhaps finally solving the mystery of why people in her own Den feared her, was a faint memory as she saw her own captivity stark and vivid in front of her.
Faeydir was livid, snarling in her mind at this b
etrayal by these wild wolves. These were nothing like the ones she had lived with, who had run free under the full moon and howled at the dawn. These were weak, traitors, abominations twisted by their own lies.
Escape, Dee commanded, her hands already tied, knowing Faeydir was their only chance for freedom now. Escape!
The transformation was different this time, not the smooth, easy blending of bodies as one retreated and the other emerged, but a hard, jarring jolt. As her new limbs appeared, paws and fur and legs where arms had been, Faeydir twisted inside her, spun them around and broke free of the restraints in the split second that they were neither Dee nor Faeydir, and Dee found them on the ground, in wolf form, no longer tied to anything.
Escape!
Faeydir was up before she’d even thought the word, scrambling to find her feet, weaving between multiple pairs of legs, skidding on loose leaves, and then they were off, bolting through the trees in the pitch black, leaving the lamps and firelight and startled expressions behind.
But not for long. Moments later there was the crackle of feet on leaves, then the lighter footsteps of wolves, not humans, howls instead of spoken commands. Dee shuddered within Faeydir’s mind as she realised that the Grey Watch was coming after them, a dozen or more wolves, skilled, fast, deadly, who knew these woods a hell of a lot better than she did, and all hell bent on stopping her, at any cost.
Bloody hell. What had they got into this time?
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Baron reached the edge of the forest and slowed to a halt. He scented the air, the ground. No doubt about it, Dee had come this way. But the smell of unfamiliar wolves was thick on the ground, and he’d had enough run ins with the Grey Watch to last a lifetime.