“What are you going to do? Put dark glasses and a harness on the dingo so he can guide you around?”
“I can see,” Kage growled.
“Sure,” Jed snorted. “As well as a newborn pup.”
“Sod off, vulture-face. What difference does it make to you? You’re always fine with sending her off. No matter we’re supposed to watch out for—”
“What are you watching for? The lights to come back on?”
Kage stood up. “I can fucking see—I told you. Want a demonstration?”
“What’s your plan with a dead nose and dead eyes, corpse-nose? You’re not a wolf. You’re a maggot.”
Kage took a step for him as I spoke in a normal voice. “Kage? Will you please sit down? And Jed, I’d appreciate it if you’d go sit on the couch. Or stand by the door if you want to.”
Kage stood stiffly, Jed watching him, ready to dodge his bunched fist, Kage’s muscles tight with the punch he’d been about to throw.
The room was silent.
Kage sat back down.
Jed skulked off to stand by the door—Isaac was already sitting on one end of the sofa.
“I’m grateful that your eyes are getting better,” I continued. “But I wouldn’t want to be navigating London if I even had a spec of dust in one eye. Why don’t you give yourself a day of downtime also?”
“We said we’d look out for you,” Kage mumbled.
“Nothing has tried to hurt me in London. Unless you count asphyxiation.”
“I’ll go.”
I looked around.
Jed was back to scowling downward, arms crossed.
“You will?” I asked. “You don’t need to.”
Jed didn’t respond. Kage, however, relaxed a bit.
“Okay,” I said at last. “If that’s agreeable to everyone. Isaac, Andrew, Zar, and Jed, you come with me. I’ll call Gabriel. Isaac will call the sisters. We’ll meet both, get back this afternoon, then meet with Diana if she’s available so we can go over what options we have with shifters. Does anyone have anything to add?”
Silence.
Then Zar, with furtive glances in that direction, asked, “What’s happening with the other half of quiche?”
Chapter 33
I had to leave Gabriel a voicemail, shifting plans from a visit first to The Abyssinian to heading across town from Victoria Station to the London Zoo.
I found this a comically ludicrous place to have a meeting with wolves and foxes in the forms of dressed primates, but need not have worried. No sooner had we arrived at Regent’s Park by bus and Isaac called to find out where they were then we had to turn around. The twins had changed their plans—without bothering to mention it to him—and were at that moment wandering through Harrods, which was nowhere near the London Zoo.
Isaac procured an assurance from Leum that they would meet us in the northeast corner of Hyde Park. Thusly, the five of us, Oyster cards in hand, caught a bus for Marble Arch.
Reaching the appointed corner, Isaac again called.
Leum and Dannsa were on their way to the Natural History Museum and eager for us to join them. Heading southwest on foot on Brompton Road.
I thought Jed was going to rip the phone out of his hand to give the vixens a piece of his mind. Even Zar was looking aggrieved. But Isaac not only didn’t appear upset by the news, he didn’t even seem surprised.
“This is going to happen again, isn’t it?” I asked as he hung up.
“That’s highly likely. This time, they’re only starting on their way. It will take them another ten minutes just to reach the place and get tickets—at least.”
“So what do you recommend to make sure we catch them in time?” I looked around for another bus coming to the corner.
“Run,” Isaac said.
Which was what we ended up doing. Or jogging, more like. I just couldn’t keep the pace they all could and they were aware of it by this stage in our relationship. Not for the first time I wanted to apologize for not being a she-wolf.
Even so, we crossed Hyde Park in great time, took the bridge by the Princess Diana statue, and ran for the park exit at Exhibition Road, heading south. Isaac mapped it to make sure we didn’t lose our way from here to the museum. I had to slow to a walk to get my breath back, encouraging him to run on ahead and get in line for us for tickets and find the foxes, but he would not.
After a quick breather, we jogged to the Natural History Museum with no more than a stitch in my side, breathless, and, yes, a long line for tickets.
Isaac called again and I actually felt Jed tensing next to me as he waited for the ball to drop.
But Isaac smiled this time. “They just got in. This will keep them busy for a while. She says they’re heading for the mammal exhibits.”
We had no pack funding for this venture but Isaac bought our five tickets, then we were inside, past one stuffed giraffe looming over the entrance and another giraffe skeleton beside it. This sight so fascinated me, Andrew took my elbow to pull me on into the cathedral-like lobby below another complete—and totally captivating—skeleton of a whale suspended from the ceiling a few floors up.
“Mammals?” Zar was trying to do his bit by spotting museum signposting for us. Both he and Jed were struggling, though, as usual in any sort of crowd, keeping to perimeters and jumping away from sudden movements and noise—such as a running child or something being dropped.
Isaac lifted his phone again.
“Come on, darling, you’ll be trampled.” Andrew tugged me to one of the wide passages leading off the main lobby while I tried to gaze up at that whale.
We started moving again as Isaac talked to them. However, we’d no sooner reached the great hall of mammals then he turned us around.
“Came out a different way?” Isaac asked. “Are you in the insect room now? Stairs?” Back for the lobby. “Birds?”
Everyone looked around. I didn’t see birds, or a sign for them.
“Up the main stairs if you walked straight ahead from the entrance?” he asked.
We went up, climbing closer to that whale, and made a left turn, up more stairs, wide as a street, then to glass displays of stuffed birds from tropical origins.
“Which stairs?” Isaac said again.
“Go!” I waved at him. “This is crazy. Go catch them if they can’t hold still a second to meet us.”
Still holding the phone to his ear, Isaac ran on through the balconies over the lobby, past the birds, taking a left up more stairs, and out of sight.
In this way, with Isaac finding them and the rest of us rushing after, we finally met the slippery sisters another flight up—on the great stairs that led, among other things, to a viewing spot facing the head of the great whale that was suspended there, out over a crowd like milling mice far below.
They hugged and kissed Isaac, surprising me since I’d been gaining the impression they didn’t fancy a chat at all.
Not the sorts to make an effort to stand apart as identical twins, they looked similar even in hairstyles and dress. Very pretty with sharp, fine features, auburn-haired, light and willowy, there was, even so, nothing at all to distinguish them from the mundanes around us. They dressed in fashion jeans and silky summer tops, both wore adorable boots with buckles and two-inch heels, carried purses and a shopping bag, wore earrings and flattering makeup, and spoke with Scottish brogues that made them even more charming.
The familiarity they showed Isaac, one hanging on his arm, a hand on his shoulder, the other tossing her hair, laughing, and tapping his chest with a forefinger in answer to something he said, took me aback.
Jed trailed twenty feet behind us, no doubt hoping to avoid having to meet them at all. Zar was uneasy at my shoulder, but I think it was still the environment—not a prejudice about foxes as Kage and others had.
Andrew grinned beside me while we walked up, murmuring from the corner of his mouth, “Your Arctic prince certainly has a thing for bombshells. Let’s hope no one gets burnt.”
“Yer kin, Isaac?�
� One turned as we walked to them at the balcony railing. “This must be t’lass helping yer out? I’m Leum. My sister Dannsa.”
“Cassia. Thank you for meeting with us—”
“Yer t’witch then. Fit like?”
“Fair true?” asked Dannsa, who still held Isaac’s arm.
“Rest of yer naw but twally lups?” Leum asked of Andrew and Zar.
Isaac frowned. “Leum, they’re friends of mine.”
“Naw offense, for sure, for sure. Only yanking t’frog. Jammy timing to see ya in all.”
“Been a fair bit,” Dannsa said. “We’ve missed ya in t’old town.”
Isaac introduced the other two.
Zar hung back, giving them a nod. Andrew stepped forward to kiss their hands.
This sent both into giggles and rapid chatter that I could not follow, part from slang words and part simply from the accents tripping my ears. They seemed to be thoroughly delighted, however: calling Andrew something in the vein of a true gentleman, relinquishing Isaac to fawn on him instead.
Andrew, naturally, went right along—assuring them they were visions, he was privileged to make their acquaintance, and did they care for lunch in the museum café, or anywhere else they’d fancy in London?
“Oh, we’re plugged,” Leum said, fanning her face with a museum flier. “Do just as well for a blather here out of t’way.”
“Café’s too loud,” Dannsa said, smiling into Andrew’s face with many teeth showing. “Shrieking kits and all having a gobble. Have a seat on yon steps and we’ll bosie all ya likes.”
From this, and accompanied by gestures, I gathered they didn’t want lunch but to sit down out of the way on the huge staircase behind us. Fine with me. It was quiet up here with only visitors streaming up to snap pictures of the whale. We were all just starting to head this way, however, when something even stranger than this rush of what seemed like a foreign language made me stop and jump back.
With the twins fawning on him, I wasn’t even sure for a second what had happened, but Andrew’s smiling and agreeing to all they said was cut short when Leum caught his left wrist and twisted his arm behind his back as fast as a striking snake. In the same flash, as if part of the same living creature, Dannsa had whipped something out of his hand and grabbed his jaw with her free hand, holding him in place to stare into his eyes from very close range.
“Possible yer misunderstanding who ya face, wolf,” Dannsa said softly, her voice now slowing as well. “And yer a pal a’Isaac, who’s a pal a’ours. So we’ll let ya keep yer balls this time. But think on. Impress on yon wee brain who yer sniffing. We can bite a fly’s eye out. Suppose yer sly in t’wormy world, eh? Sure true. Naw hardly t’us, though. Naw but a fresh kit tripping on his own brush. Try it again, lup, and yer sure to see how quick a vixen can get about.”
Dannsa placed the coin pouch from Andrew’s hand back into her sister’s purse. Both of them let him go.
“Now yer meaning a word on shifters?” Leum asked sweetly as she moved again toward the stairs, looking from Andrew to Isaac. “Trouble down south?”
“That’s right,” Isaac said, stepping with her. “I’ll tell you about it and we’d value your input. We won’t take much of your time.”
“Naw, yer right, it’s good t’see ya, Isaac. We’ve minutes to spare for ya.”
Zar cast me an anxious look as we followed them. “Cass?”
“It’s nothing.” I tried to force the smile off my own face. “Only … I’ve always liked foxes.”
Chapter 34
I’m not sure I could reproduce the conversation with the twins even if I tried. While, if I could, it would be another nuisance to read.
Like Andrew’s abridgment, a summery:
Isaac explained the situation briefly to them, giving few details, and Leum and Dannsa listened and slowed their speech as they answered, giving thought to the matter while becoming easier to understand in the process. So it was their opinions that became the next hurdle.
They were sure we knew, of course, that there had been shifter wars for thousands of years. Yes. And they weren’t all out in the open, pack against pack affairs. Some of them had been closed affairs like this. No.
Zar frowned, cocking his head as if unsure he’d heard right.
If we wanted to find the group of shifters now stalking shifters we need only find where the pattern had occurred last time. Of course, we had right from the start been aware of making a connection with history and lore, but had drawn a blank. Did they know more complete sources for this history? Admittedly, it wasn’t much good just charging around after, say, a lone urban wolf demanding she account for herself. If we had something to go on in the past, it could leave a line in the sand to today. Yet, with shifter history apparently so scarce in written form, and little remembered, where to go for that? It was a shifter library we needed after all, not a vampiric one.
Then the difficulties began to arise.
“Irish wolves kept t’best accounts of all the shifter history. Naw only their own,” Leum told us.
“But…” Zar shook his head. “There are no Irish wolves. The last wolves left Ireland during the Great Famine.”
“Fair true. So where’d they scatter?”
“To—” Zar stopped and looked at me. “They mostly immigrated to America.”
“Aye, so they say. Are they still scribes? Naw clue.” Leum shrugged. “But we’re sure that’s where ya may spot them. Could at least be keeping aural histories thriving.”
I was all but stammering and spluttering over this. We weren’t in the States; we were here. We could not go to the States. No one was being murdered there, it was also right here. Even if we did want a chat with descendants of the last wolves of Ireland, where were they? How would we find them? They weren’t going to be listed with some nice identifying features in the Yellow Pages or on Facebook.
And so on.
The twins were unmoved by my babbling objections.
Dannsa said it made not the slightest difference where the murders took place today if the point was investigating history as to where, why, who, and how they happened last time. The history these Irish wolves supposedly kept was, after all, European.
As to where Irish wolves might be now, this was also met with shrugs—though Leum added helpfully that we might check New York City since that was where they would have landed off the ships in 1850.
I simply stared at her. I couldn’t even laugh, the whole thing was so … not even…
Then Dannsa’s sharp eyes lit up. “Have ya asked t’shamans?”
“Shamans? You mean … fringe magic? Members of the mundane community?”
“Naw, naw—shifters.”
“There are … shaman shifters?”
“There are supposed to be in North and South America,” Zar said. “West, the Rocky Mountains, they say. Or southwest, the old coyote shamans.” But he sighed. “What difference does it make? We could ask Diana, but, barring that, how would we get in touch with these people? We no more have a directory to shaman shifters who could find the record-keeping shifters than we have one to those shifters in the first place. If we can’t reach any of these people, what use are they? Cassia’s right. We can’t go to the States to solve a crime that started in West Sussex.”
So we spent some time hashing through other thoughts, telling them more of the crimes while the twins answered with speculation rather than any information on suspects or motives.
Sure, it could be urban wolves. But if disenfranchisement was the motive, why go for vampires and faie? It could be a human group of some sort, but not many humans could possibly have the know how, skills, and simple strength and abilities to do what we’d been seeing. Quick and powerful enough to kill wolves? Savvy enough to find and destroy vampires? Smart, magical, and resourceful enough to kill faie? Until proven otherwise, shifters were, unfortunately, making more and more sense.
The twins, however, had no other theories beyond digging into more shifters, questio
ning packs and tribes in general, and seeking out paw prints in history to see if one led to our door.
We parted company with more questions, not answers, but at least something to think about. Of course, we couldn’t visit the States and put up notices on bulletin boards looking for shaman shifters. Zar, however, could do more reading through what materials the pack did have, we could inform the elders in the South Coast Cooperative of the sort of thing we needed with the hopes of someone having more insights to offer, and I could scry for this history, matching patterns from the past.
A trail from there to here. A concept we’d had very early on. An idea that matched images of what felt like shifter wars that I’d had from early scrying. But could we follow that trail? Would our time be better spent focusing here and now than in reading through dusty history books?
Perhaps it was counter intuitive, yet this idea of learning from the past had been with us on this case all along. Even the fact that I’d been in Brighton for a “history conference” from the start. And Dieter’s ramblings about the past. Ancient castles, historic sites, Gavin’s observations, now even these very modern fox twins telling us to look to the past for answers in the present…
I had to listen to messages like that.
What exactly we could do about the messages, however, remained to be seen.
Chapter 35
After our meeting with the vixens—which, although I felt bad for Andrew’s discomfort, and frequently felt confused, I mostly enjoyed—I had a message from Gabriel.
Yes, he would meet with Zar, only wanted us to say when we were on the way.
I texted as we waited for another bus.
Too much. Zar had gone from dealing with public transport and London—mental and emotional drain and stress—to dealing with these matters of finding answers to save his pack, to now facing a meeting with his eldest brother whom he had not seen or heard from in six years. A brother who had left the pack, the family, never called, never wrote, and whose new lifestyle Zar found nothing short of sickening.
On the upper deck of the bus on the way across town, I sat next to him and held Zar’s right hand in both of mine, leaning into him to speak softly on the rumbling, rocking bus.
Moonlight Betrayal: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 5) Page 20