by Drew VanDyke
“Are you asking me about sex, Mrs. S?” I turned toward the door as Spanky began barking, which was usually the early warning signal for a stranger coming up the front walk.
The doorbell rang.
“Hold that thought.” I said as I pushed Spanky back and opened the door. “Spanky, shush.” I looked up.
I should have been shocked, but somewhere in the back of my head I’d known his scent was familiar, but cleaner now. Less boozy. I tried to take in more, but my allergies got the best of me and I sneezed.
“Whelan, um, hey.” I exited the door and shut it behind me, leaving the miniature Schnauzer to bark his little head off.
“Ashlee.” He stood there, staring.
At least he didn’t check me out. The situation felt creepy enough without that kind of ick.
“What are you doing here?” I began to walk down the sidewalk and away from the house, forcing him to follow me.
“What? No, hey I didn’t hear you were out? No, wow it’s good to see you. Not even a, hey bro, how’s it hangin’?” He stopped.
“What do you want me to say?” I turned around and asked him. I mean, he was my relative and I had memories of him in and out of the household growing up, some good, some bad. But it had been years. I didn’t know this man. I doubted I’d known the boy he was before.
Whelan snorted with a derision that brought back the bad memories in a rush. “Same old Ashlee.”
“How much do you need, Whelan?” I hated being such a bitch, but the sooner you put some money into Whelan’s hand, the sooner he was out of your hair and on to another handout.
“You know, for the first time I actually don’t need money, Ashlee. I’m actually flush, and I’m clean and sober twenty-seven days. Got a job and everything. Groundskeeper at a private cemetery. Just wanted to let you know.” He turned toward the beat up truck he was driving as if wounded.
I wasn’t sure I bought it, but I still felt bad for how I’d begun the conversation. “Gee, that’s great, Whelan.” I made it a statement, not an approval.
“So, you’ll tell Dad next time you see him.” He didn’t turn back toward me, but I could smell the sincerity in his manner right before I had another fit of sneezing.
He moved toward me as if to help, but I waved him off. I so did not want him touching me.
“You all right?”
“I’ll be fine, it’s just… allergies.”
“I thought Amber was the one who had allergies.”
“Me too,” I mumbled under my breath. Damn mystical connection, it must be. Note to self: ask Mom later.
Whelan turned around to go. “Anyways, you’ll tell Dad, right?”
“Yeah, that might be a while.”
“Next time you talk to him, then?”
“Sure. I’ll tell him you said hi.”
“Thanks, Ashlee. Real good to see you.” Then he climbed into his old compact pickup truck and drove away.
I went back inside and did what Will had told me to do earlier. I closed all the blinds. It was hot anyway and keeping the shades drawn kept it cooler. I didn’t want Amber to hit me up with complaints about an inflated energy bill. Then I took a cool shower.
When I got out, I felt an unnatural chill pass over me. Throwing on shorts and a t-shirt, I stepped out back for a moment in a patch of sunlight and let it warm me.
Peg had settled on a deck chair by the pool in the shade with her Kindle. I caught Will out of the corner of my eye, beyond the fence and heading down the hill, when suddenly there came a yelp and he disappeared.
I hit the deck sprinting. Dex, Sierra, Darla and Geoff ran out of the pool house and up the hill, joined by Twyla, Neal, Jackson and Sully who were coming down it. I arrived to see Will unconscious, half-buried in a six-foot-deep sinkhole, the pack surrounding him.
Geoff was already down in the hole, his finger on Will’s pulse. He lifted an eyelid with the thumb of his other hand. “Don’t worry. I’m an EMT. He’ll be all right.”
That reassured me somewhat, but I jumped in with him anyway and put my hand on Will’s cheek, feeling the strong pulse of life there. “Dammit, come on, Will. Be all right.” I caressed his face, trying to bring him around, and then turned my attention to the rest. “Someone wanna tell me what happened?” I looked up at the concerned faces one by one until I reached Sierra, who gazed back at me with tears of rage and anger in her eyes.
“It was supposed to be you, dammit,” she hissed. Then she shifted right before our eyes and ran.
“What does she mean, it was supposed to be me?”
Jackson looked over at Sully and said, “If you don’t do something about this, I will.”
Sully nodded, shifted and ran after Sierra.
“How can you guys do that so easily? Shift? It’s days until the full moon!”
“Strength. Training. And it’s not that easy. But you’ve done it yourself the day before and after MoonFall, right?”
“I guess…but it was hard.”
“Don’t worry. No one expects you to do what Sierra can. And we’ll discipline her for trying to hurt you.” Jackson said it kindly, but I took it differently.
I looked from Will to him and back again. “Supposed to be me… That bitch!” I screamed, and I did something I’ve never done before and hope never to again, because it hurt like hell. I shifted without a moon anywhere near.
Leaping out of the sinkhole, I took off after Sierra at full speed, easily following her fear-filled scent.
That’s right, bitch. You’d better be afraid.
Up through the deep draw and into the Knightsbridge Canyon proper I ran. On a different day I would have enjoyed the cool of the trees and the river that flowed down into the reservoir, but today my mind was filled with only one thing.
Revenge.
Looking back later, I had to wonder if Sierra and I were so different. I mean, what kind of woman runs off and leaves her man lying injured in the dirt, right? But the pack was there to take care of him, which gave me the excuse to do what I wanted to anyway: deal with my rival once and for all.
Which was also a telling point. Rival for what? Not for Will. Sierra had no interest in a mundane. Her jealousy was about Jackson, who didn’t want either of us for anything but a breeding experiment, so she was never going to get what she wanted.
Or maybe she would; maybe after Jackson had his magic wolves, he’d produce a few more with Sierra, I don’t know.
But the point was now moot. I was gonna kill her.
I don’t know how I caught up with them. It took twenty minutes and, when I tried to reconstruct things later, probably ten miles through rough country. If a lycanthrope’s athletic conditioning translated through the shift from human to wolf, they should have both outrun me. I guess Sully overtook her and brought her down.
When I reached them, he had her pinned to the ground, his teeth clamped on her throat, which for canines is the ultimate dominance behavior. Submit or die, it said in no uncertain terms.
I wasn’t in the mood for submission.
I bowled Sully off Sierra with the full running impact of my shoulder, sending him sprawling. Instantly I lit into her, slashing and ripping at her fur in a frenzy as she tried to fend me off. No doubt she gave as good as she got, but in my state of fury I didn’t feel a thing.
They say it’s not about the size of the dog in the fight, it’s about the size of the fight in the dog, and it was true. I’d have had her that day, because I wanted it more. I’d only ever killed the once, the day of my first shift, but it had induced a PTSD-like mindset in me that sometimes amped up my adrenaline and put me over the edge into a blind rage.
A killing rage in wolf form, it seemed.
But Sully, unhurt, older and larger, in possession of his own faculties and abilities, knocked me over as I had him and stood between me and Sierra. For her part, she tried to limp away until the big male turned and snarled at her to stop. When he looked back at me, images of opposing strength and calm filled my head,
demanding I back down and submit.
I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay in the red-hot moment and embrace the raging torrent of blood that filled my nostrils – Sierra’s blood. It tasted sweet on my lips, and I reveled in it. But I couldn’t bring myself to attack Sully, and as he stood unmoving in the way, the anger leached out of me and I lowered my head.
On stiff legs, he stepped forward to tower over me as I groveled. Had I been human at that moment the whole scene would have been beyond humiliating, but I only thought about that later. At the moment, biology and thousands of years of canine racial memory had taken over. The ways of the pack dominated me.
Thank God they did. If only humans could resolve their differences this easily. Bitterness and grudges had no place in the pack, I knew, which was what made Sierra’s transgressions that much worse, and my submission so simple. My canine apology and acknowledgement wiped the slate clean and set things to right, at least as far as the wolves we had become were concerned.
Later, as humans, I was pretty sure a lot more trouble awaited.
Sierra led us on the return journey, limping and blood-soaked. I followed, my eyes on her constantly, and Sully brought up the rear, watching us both, I was sure. He had nothing to worry about. My desire to end her had passed, leaving an emptiness in its place. I wondered what would happen and almost felt sorry for her.
Until I thought about Will.
When we got back, Sully drove Sierra into the partly finished basement of the pool house by way of the duck blind and tunnel. I forgot about them as I saw the flashing lights of the ambulance parked on the street, as near to the scene of the mishap as they could get. Two burly paramedics carried a stretcher with Will on it across the yard, assisted by two of the pack.
Jackson waited by the sinkhole, my shorts and t-shirt in his hand. He tossed them at me and turned around while I shifted back to human form. Once I was minimally dressed, he said, “His leg is broken and he has a concussion, but he’ll be fine.”
“Thanks.”
“You should have let Sully handle it.”
I looked at the parts of me I could see. Bites and raw slashes oozed. “I think I should go to the ER too.”
“Not like that. Too many questions. Jump in the pool. The chlorine will disinfect your wounds, and after that, the pack will heal you. By tomorrow all you’ll have to do is wear pants and long sleeves to cover up the bruises.”
I wanted to argue, but I had no energy. In fact, I felt like I could fall down and sleep right there in the dirt. I dragged myself to the pool and got in before I had a chance to think too hard about it. Five minutes later, Jackson led me to the pool house basement.
“I have to go see Will,” I protested.
“No. He’ll be well taken care of. His sister’s a nurse at the hospital, right?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
Sierra lay naked atop a mattress I recognized as mine. Geoff sponged disinfectant into deep gashes all over her body, and I felt a mixture of pride in my victory and shame at what I’d done. When he finished, he started with the suturing. I couldn’t watch.
“You’re better than this,” I heard my father’s voice in my head and I cringed. Just another reason that my Dad and I didn’t talk much. I got tired of all the lectures and hearing the disappointment in his voice when I didn’t measure up. But today, it seemed like he was probably right.
Jackson gestured toward an empty cushion on the floor, and I sat, my back against the concrete wall. The rest of the pack formed a circle around both of us injured women and began to chant. I went to sleep, and dreamed of warmth and love. When I awoke sometime during the night, everyone but Geoff and Sierra was gone, and I felt better. The woman lay unconscious inside the heavy steel kennel, the door locked. I guess she was in pack time-out.
I nodded to Geoff and slipped out of the pool house basement. After showering in the main house, I crawled into the guest bed, my bed these last nights, and finished my interrupted sleep.
When I awoke, I examined myself, finding things as Jackson had predicted. Yellow and purple bruises decorated my legs, arms and torso, but raiding Amber’s walk-in gymnasium of a closet yielded jeans and a long-sleeved blouse that would do.
Geoff told me to borrow one of the work trucks, so I drove myself to the hospital and sneaked in before official visiting hours. Samantha, Will’s sister, gave me a disapproving look from the nurses’ station. “What did you get him into?” she snapped when she saw me.
“Me? He was helping on the construction site.”
“Your pool house renovation. Where do sinkholes come into it?”
I sighed. “I’m just the girlfriend, Sam, not the general contractor. I can’t keep Will from working if he wants to. Shit happens.” I was tempted to deflect some of her sisterly irritation to Sierra, but I couldn’t see how any good would come of that. The pack would take care of its own.
She jerked her head down the hall and went back to scribbling on her charts, so I moved past. I didn’t need another fight right now.
Inside the room I saw Will’s left leg in a cast, but he was sleeping. I sat and stared at him for a few minutes, feeling somehow this was my fault, before I decided to lean over and take his hand.
That woke him. “Hey, Ash.” He blinked with fading sleep.
“Hey you,” I said, squeezing his fingers. “How you doin’?”
“Doin’ fine. Mild concussion and the leg break was clean. Doc says I’ll be walking in ten or twelve weeks.”
I thought about the pack healing. Could they help him too, or only a were? I made a mental note to ask. “You need anything?”
“Breakfast. I’m starving.”
I checked with Sam and found out food was on its way. I kept him company when it arrived, until I got a text from Jackson. How’s Will? it read.
Good.
Meet at the magic shop at ten.
Magic shop?
Magic shop at ten. Be there.
I guess that meant no answers would be forthcoming until then. Fortunately, they gave Will a pain pill and he went back to sleep by nine thirty. I grabbed a fast food double breakfast and arrived at The Grand Illusion Magic and Curio Emporium by the appointed time.
Chapter 6
Inside, the place seemed divided roughly in half. On the left, the tools of the magician’s art from cards and nesting cups all the way up to split chests and mirrored tables were displayed. There was even a lethal-looking guillotine in one corner.
On the right side of the shop were distributed an assortment of antiques, discreetly tagged with prices too high for someone like me to even contemplate. A few of them also seemed related to the illusionary disciplines, while others were merely old things, no doubt gleaned from local barn and estate sales. Funny how something a wealthy person would never have touched in the 1800s – a rusting, wooden-handled farm implement, for example – became a stylish adornment for the walls of the upwardly mobile of the twenty-first century.
A pale nebbish of a man nodded at me from behind the counter. “May I help you, miss?”
“Jackson asked me to come at ten.”
“Right this way.” He pulled back a curtain from the wall, revealing a door, which he opened, gesturing me through.
“Thanks.”
He murmured something I didn’t catch as I slipped past. The door shut behind me, leaving me in a dim corridor that seemed far too long for such a small shop. I guess the whole property was deeper than I’d realized.
Light spilled from a doorway at the end, and Jackson stepped into it to wave me forward.
“What’s going on?” I hissed.
“No need to be quiet. I thought you should be here for this, as the representative of the offended party.”
The room on the other side of the door proved to be spacious, at least twenty by thirty. Where were they getting all of this space from? But I forgot about all that when I saw who were assembled there.
The whole pack stood in a circle, Sierra in the center, hands c
lasped and head down. No one made a move, but I had the impression they surrounded her for a purpose. Jackson waved me to a place on a low dais. “This way you can see everything.”
“Everything what? And why are we meeting at Shelby’s magic shop? Why not the lodge?”
He didn’t answer, just pointed at a spot on the floor. Stay. Woof. Okay, I stayed. Jackson took a place in the circle.
“Master, we await you,” Jackson intoned. Yeah, intoned was the only way I could describe it.
A door back of the dais opened, and who emerged but Mr. Constantine Shelby himself, dressed in an old-fashioned tuxedo and tails, as if getting ready for a magic show. Is that what this was going to be? Somehow, I thought not.
“Don’t worry, dear,” my ghostly mother said from my elbow. I jerked my head toward her and she made a shushing motion and gestured me to look back at the waiting tableau. “Don’t mind me.”
“How can I not mind you when you scare the bejezus out of me like that?”
“Shh.”
Shelby cleared his throat. I expected some kind of stage patter, but instead, he stepped to the edge of the dais so he could peer down at the circle of lycanthropes, clasping his hands behind his back and scowling in evident disapproval. “You may proceed with my blessing,” he said, as if he were in charge.
Which I guess he was, come to find out.
The scene took on a sudden surreal feeling for me, and I seemed rooted to the spot. “Sierra Layton.” Jackson spoke with words that washed over me as if in a dream. “You have transgressed pack law for the third time, beyond our ability to tolerate. You attempted to do serious harm to another of us without leave or sufficient reason, and in so doing you injured a friendly mundane. Your actions risk our anonymity and bring discredit upon the master of this territory. Do you have anything to say in your defense?”
I realized now that this was a court, a hearing of some kind, and Sierra was on trial. Was Shelby the judge? Jackson had called him Master, which could be anything from an acknowledgement of status – Master used to be the title of those highly skilled in any art or craft, after all, like Stradivarius or Michelangelo – up to a declaration that he was some kind of big boss. And he wasn’t pack, I was sure. What was he?