The Half-Breed Vampire

by Theresa Meyers

  “You don’t even know where my car is parked.”

  Slade shrugged and slowed his steps so she could catch up. “I’m not the best tracker in the clan for nothing. I can find a car, no problemo.” He leaned in close, taking a deep inhalation, making her squeak with indignation and step back a pace. “I’ll just follow my nose.” Of course, it didn’t hurt that he knew the make, model and license plate. With that he spun on his booted heel and strode toward the parking complex several city blocks away to go find her car.

  Of course, Office nature girl (or Strawberry Shortcake as he was beginning to think of her) insisted on driving. Slade didn’t argue, just folded himself pretzel-style into the cramped front seat and pushed it as far back as it would go. It was still a tight fit for his long legs.

  She asked politely what type of music he preferred as he turned on the radio, and when he said heavy metal, she tuned it to country because she didn’t like his selection. Didn’t bother him any. The music was loud enough to make casual chitchat impossible. He enjoyed the view of Officer Ravenwing and the passing scenery.

  She was a competent, if cautious driver, and city streets quickly gave way to the tall, lush evergreen trees. An hour later he saw the rocky gray points of the Cascades topped with snow even in the late days of summer as the highway east wound through the pass through the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area. As they started downhill, they jetted past the big reservoir that reflected the mountains and the brilliant blue sky dotted with white clouds. The land opened up, spreading out in swaths of first green, then golden grasses. The meadows were stuck here and there with frilly pines that became farther and farther apart. A couple hours’ drive, and they were a world away from the bustling, crowded streets of Seattle.

  The lay of land seemed oddly familiar. At least there were still trees, Slade thought. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, making it squeak in protest. Normally, members of the clan never left the boundaries of their territory and this was hell and gone from the border.

  “Almost there,” she said as she flicked her gaze in his direction. “Teanachee is just up the highway from Cle Elum.”

  Goody. He could hardly wait.

  They pulled off the wide strip of well-maintained asphalt that made up Highway 90 onto a far smaller, two-lane road that had seen better days. Slade’s head hit the roof of the car as it bounced over car-eating potholes.

  “We’ll stop at Jake’s before we head out to the farms that have been having the most trouble with these wolves.”

  Downtown Teanachee at rush hour consisted of one main street, an old-looking little gas and grocery jiffy mart named Jake’s, a few shops, a few houses circa 1900-something and two cars, both parked at Jake’s. If the forlorn town was sad, its backdrop was conversely majestic. The tall, imposing, purplish Cascade and Wenatchee mountain ranges colliding in points so high they reached into the clouds while their bases were fringed with a lacy skirt of evergreens.

  They pulled into the quick mart parking lot and Slade unfolded himself from the front seat and stretched.

  “Man, how do you stay away?” he said just above a whisper as she got out of the car and strode past him. Even with those ugly pants on, Slade could tell that she had a nice firm butt and he’d bet Achilles a beer she had long slender legs to match.

  The dark bun of her hair shifted over her shoulder as she turned to shoot him a glare. “May not be much to a big-city vamp like you, but for the people around here, it’s home.”

  He didn’t honestly have anything against small towns, except that they were, well, small. He’d never lived in one. The pine-scented air tickled his brain with an elusive memory, making him feel unaccountably edgy, as if he was anticipating a sneeze that never came.

  A bell strung over the door of Jake’s jangled an irritatingly cheery chime as they pushed into the minimart. Inside, the place was threadbare, but neat and clean, smelling of a mix of beef jerky, pickles and the hot, yeasty smell of fresh-baked bread. The combination of smells seemed achingly familiar, which was impossible. Slade shrugged off the misplaced sense of déjà vu and followed her to the counter.

  An older woman with deeply tanned skin and hair as white and copious as wool on a sheep came bustling out of the back room. Her dark eyes lit up when she saw nature girl. “Raina! Come here. Give your auntie Mo a hug!”

  The woman, who was nearly as wide as she was tall and dressed in a lurid red-and-purple muumuu, engulfed nature girl in a bone-crushing hug. “Now who is this fine young man you’ve got with you? A new boyfriend?” She chucked Raina under the chin affectionately with a crooked finger.

  Slade stifled a smirk as Raina turned three shades of ever-increasing red beneath the dusky natural tone of her skin. She smoothed a strand of dark hair that had escaped her ruthless bun, tucking it deftly behind her ears. Apparently nature girl didn’t get out much. Her gaze flicked in his direction for just a moment, but Slade was sure the temperature control in the small store was on the fritz because he could have sworn he’d gotten a blast of heat from her direction.

  “No, just someone who’s come to help us with the wolves that have been bothering the folks out near Red Top Mountain. We came in to grab a few supplies before heading out there.”

  The older woman wasn’t intimidated, despite Slade’s size. She strode straight up to him and looked him deeply in the eyes. Her pupils dilated some, a satisfied grin widening her brown cheeks further.

  “Well, well, well. Look what the crow brought home to the nest.” She put a pillow-soft plump hand, fragrant with the yeasty scent of warm bread, on either side of his face and pulled down until they were eye to eye. “Those are some unusual eyes you’ve got there, son. Same mouth. High cheeks and that devil’s dimple on your chin. You must be Kaycee Blackwolf’s boy.” She patted his cheek affectionately, then waddled back behind the counter, the rubber soles of her shoes squeaking on the worn linoleum. “Can I get either of you children some jerky?”

  “Who’s Kaycee Blackwolf?” His question sounded abrupt even to his own ears, but a sudden uncomfortable churning had started in his gut and Slade didn’t like it one bit. Not knowing about his past hadn’t been too much of a hindrance among the vampires, but here, in the confines of the little minimart, it left him feeling exposed.

  The older woman hardly seemed fazed by his question, but sighed heavily and shook her head and pulled out two large chunks of dark dried meat with crinkling white bakery tissue and handed one to each of them. Slade’s stomach grumbled. While meat wouldn’t do much to stem his hunger, it couldn’t hurt, so he took a bite. The combination of salt and sweet, heated with pepper, filled his mouth. The taste and texture sparked another profound feeling of déjà vu.

  “She was one of us. Long time ago. So sad. You should take a lesson from that one.” She shook an admonishing finger at Raina. “That girl was chosen like you. Never would stay home. Had to go see the big world. And the big world swallowed her up.” The older woman’s fingers snapped together like a biting mouth.

  “I haven’t gone anywhere,” Raina mumbled around a mouthful of jerky.

  Auntie Mo clucked. “City’s no place for the likes of us, Whisperer, mark my words.”

  Raina turned away from her aunt and Slade noted that she rolled her eyes as she did so, but that she didn’t argue with the woman. Officer nature girl started gathering up an armful of foodstuffs from the aisles and snatched up a couple of gallons of water for their trek.

  What Slade didn’t realize was his momentary drift in attention had left him open for attack. “As for you…” Auntie Mo shook a plump, well-creased finger at him. “You Blackwolfs have had your share of sadness. Dark things happen to you. Make amends with the ancestors and things should go better.”

  Slade quirked a brow at the woman. “How can you be so sure you know who I am?” He was confident she’d never seen a vampire before.

  Her mouth split into a knowing smile. “We know our own, little Blackwolf.”

  An image of Auntie Mo,
her hair black, threaded with the start of silver at the temples, filled his mind. Her utter certainty bit down hard on him, painful and sharp. Other than the vampire clan, he hadn’t known any kind of family, at least none that he could remember. So why the hell did he clearly remember this woman, only much younger?

  “I’m sorry, have we ever met before?”

  The old woman chuckled. “Don’t remember me, eh? No matter. Probably better you don’t. Dark times they were. Dark times.”

  Slade was even more puzzled.

  He helped Raina unload her armful of goods onto the counter and watched Auntie Mo’s arthritic fingers make short work of efficiently packing the sacks, then stared out the window at the gravel lot and the distant pines, feeling antsy as hell and wanting to be gone.

  “Ready?” Raina’s voice startled him.

  He gave her no other answer than a quick, firm nod as she tossed three twenty-dollar bills down on the counter, picked up two grocery bags, then jerked her chin to indicate he pick up the other two.

  “You children be careful out in the woods,” Auntie Mo called out over the chime of the bell on the door.

  Raina gave a halfhearted wave and made a beeline to her car, tossing the bags into the backseat. He followed her example. Hell, as far as he was concerned, the sooner he got done with this little adventure to natureville, the better.

  Slade picked up a curious mixture of embarrassment and annoyance scenting the air with bubblegum and smoke as Raina started the car and pulled back out onto the main road through town. Clearly, while she knew and liked the older woman, there were things left unspoken between them that nature girl didn’t want to deal with.

  There were a number of things Auntie Mo had said that had piqued Slade’s curiosity. Why was she so thoroughly convinced that she knew who his mother was? Why had she called Officer Ravenwing Whisperer? And what in the hell had the old woman meant by being chosen? Slade chewed on the ideas along with his piece of beef jerky as they turned off the narrow paved road up a gravel track. He was better off not knowing, he told himself. He needed focus. The more focus he had the sooner he could go back to pounding a beer or two with the other members of the security team and playing poker during the day.

  Raina gave up trying to tune anything in on the radio. They were far enough away from the towers, and hemmed in by mountains so big the signals didn’t make it through. Only the static on her police scanner made any noise at all.

  The relative silence that had stretched between them was broken by the deep, dark timbre of Donovan’s voice. “So why do they call it Jake’s if it’s run by your aunt?”

  “Jake was Mo’s husband. And she’s not really my aunt. Not by blood, anyway. Well, not direct blood relation.” She was botching her explanation, but the relationship was complicated. “She’s more like a great-aunt several times removed. As a sign of affection and respect, our tribe calls all older male and female relations on the mother’s side secs—which translates into aunt and uncle.”

  He fixed those disconcerting topaz-colored eyes on her and for a moment Raina held her breath. It was as though he could see straight through her and into her head, peeling apart her memories, her dreams and her fears like the segments of an orange. He turned his gaze back out toward the looming mountains and she exhaled a sigh of relief.

  “Why’d she call you Whisperer? That your middle name?”

  “Are you just trying to make conversation? Because it’s not really necessary, Mr. Donovan.”

  “Slade. If we’re going to be working on this together for more than twenty-four hours you might as well call me Slade.”

  “Fine. Slade. Whatever.”

  “So?”

  “So what?”

  “Why’d she call you Whisperer?”

  Raina tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “I don’t think that’s really any of your business.”

  “For the sake of argument let’s say it would help me to understand what we’re looking at with these wolves.”

  “I don’t see how it could.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s all a bunch of tribal myth and legend. Folklore. Nothing that could possibly help us in this very real situation we’ve got with these flesh-and-blood wolves.”

  “Humor me.”

  Raina heaved a heavy sigh. “It’s my calling.”

  “To not talk loudly?”

  She threw him a withering glare. “The full name is Wolf Whisperer.”

  “Which has nothing to do with wolves, because…”

  “Because the wolves I’m supposed to be able to whisper to are actually the embodiment of our ancestors’ spirits, okay? That enough hocus-pocus for you?”

  Slade chuckled.

  “What, now you’re going to make fun of me for it?”

  He put up his hands in mock surrender. “Me. No.”

  “Then why are you laughing?”

  “Because you get so worked up about it. It’s just a name, babe. Not your whole world.”

  Raina let the slight pass and gave a mirthless little laugh. “I wish it were that easy.” She paused, choosing her next words carefully because they ached in her chest. “In my tribe, the name is everything. There is only one chosen Wolf Whisperer in a generation. One who is selected by the elders to be the tribe’s connection to the ancestors’ knowledge, protection, healing and justice.” The last word made her want to gag.

  She’d seen the justice meted out by the ancestors when she was little. It had been horrifying. Kaycee Blackwolf had been ripped to pieces by the superhuman-size wolves while the tribal members had turned their backs and walked away. Just another reason she didn’t really want to be the Whisperer at all.

  The fact that Kaycee had been Slade’s mother wasn’t lost on her. If anything, it made it all worse. Truly he was the last person she should be getting help from—he was qelaen—an outcast who caused others to turn away, because of his mother’s actions. But telling him the intricacies of tribal lore and law weren’t going to score her any points with him right now, so she was better off to keep it to herself.

  Blackwolf had been the Whisperer of her generation and Raina was in no mood to follow in her shoes. Rather than run from the tribe like Kaycee had, Raina had done everything she could to embrace the role in a different way by helping bring the tribe into the twenty-first century. She’d gone to college, learned natural resource science, gone to the police academy and gotten a job as a game warden with the state to protect the animals they valued and their rights to hunt the land, as well as bring modern justice to the tribe.

  Since the night of Blackwolf’s tribunal and execution, the oversize wolves had not been seen or heard from. That was until a month ago, when rumors starting flying. Three attacks, two on livestock and one on a human, had put Raina smack-dab in the middle of a clash between local authorities, tribal interest and the wolves.

  She’d chalked it up to developers nosing around the river valley and farther up into the hills aggravating the wildlife, but now she wasn’t so sure.

  “What about Auntie Mo’s mix-up?”

  His question snapped her out of her thoughts. “Mix-up?”

  “Yeah. I assume the reason you came to the clan calling me Blackwolf is because she was mixed up.”

  “There is no mix-up. Auntie Mo was right, Kaycee Donovan Blackwolf was your mother.”

  Slade snorted. “Lady, I don’t have any memories of my mother or my father. So you’re talking to a wall.”

  “Tell you what. When we’re done interviewing Joseph, we’ll hop down to Ellensburg and you can look up the county records for yourself.”

  Of course she already knew what was there. She’d investigated it herself to find him in the first place. While Kaycee was Slade’s mother, no father had been listed on the birth certificate, which kind of made Raina wonder if that was the reason the tribunal had let the wolves take her.

  “Sounds like you’ve already done that.”

  Raina slid him a cautious
sideways glance beneath her lashes. Slade Donovan Blackwolf was not a man to be toyed with. All the way from Seattle to Teanachee she’d wondered if she might expire from lack of oxygen in the car. He seemed to soak up the air around him. There was no point in playing games with him. He’d need to know the truth sooner or later.

  “I have.”

  He grunted. “Since you seem to have all the answers, if this Kaycee Blackwolf was my mother, who was my father?”

  Raina gave a little shrug. “I’m sorry. There was no father’s name listed.” Raina couldn’t imagine what it would be like not knowing who her parents were. Her mom and dad had made her who she was. He could only have been eight or nine years old when Kaycee had been murdered. Where had he gone? Who’d raised him? Curiosity ate at her, but she schooled her features not to give away the questions tumbling around in her head.

  He was here for one thing, and one thing only. She needed his unique set of skills to track down the elusive large wolves. And once she’d accomplished that, she had to get as far away from him as possible before she, too, became another sad tribal tale.

  His dark brows beetled together until they nearly met in the middle over the bridge of his strong, straight nose. If Donovan didn’t like hearing that, he certainly wasn’t going to like hearing how his mother had died.

  “So what happened? She decide a kid was an inconvenience, and dumped me off somewhere to be raised by vampires?”

  Raina felt an answering ache of sympathy in her chest and chose her words with care. “Your mother had an accident.”

  She tightened her grip on the steering wheel even more as she felt Slade turn those whiskey eyes on her. His searing gaze heated her skin uncomfortably.

  “What kind of accident?”

  Raina hesitated, unsure if now was really the time to be discussing this subject. “She was killed by wolves.”

  All the color drained from Slade’s already pale skin. “Did you say wolves?”

  Raina swallowed hard and nodded.

  “How long until we get in range of cell service?”

  “Why?”