by Jane Toombs
He smiled at her, remembering. "A Russian poet, Lementev, wrote it. My mother sang the lullaby to us, to Vlad and me when we were little. Like you, Mima, I lost my twin. You and I, we share that loss."
"But we saved these twins," she reminded him.
Yes, Sergei, thought, we did. Will I ever be sure if we were right or wrong?
Three years later, on a warm June evening, Wolf found his grandfather admiring the new iron gates built to shut
the world away from Volek House and its inhabitants. Grandfather didn't look fifty. Any stranger would guess that Mr. McQuade, two years younger, was ten years older than Sergei Volek. Wolf had to peer closely to find gray in the black hair and beard and Grandfather moved with the agility of a twenty-year-old.
Time hadn't mellowed him, either.
Might as well get it over with, Wolf told himself. Taking a deep breath, he strode up to him.
"Don't blame Mima," Wolf said. "It was my fault." Grandfather turned to look at him. Wolf flinched inwardly from the sorrow in the golden eyes.
"I don't assign blame," he said. "How can I? If nothing else, my own past prevents me."
Wolf wondered what Grandfather blamed himself for. Wolf's mother's birth? Fathering the shifter he'd had to kill? Or was it something to do with The hex witch he and Grandmother had quarreled over before he rode off to the Dakota Territory?
"Now there are eight of the blood of my blood here at Volek House," Grandfather said, turning back to contemplate the gate. He paused, seemed about to add something, then shook his head, muttering under his breath.
Wolf thought he'd said, "God help her; I can't," but couldn't be sure.
"Of these eight," Grandfather continued in a normal tone, "Natasha is the only adult--though I suppose at sixteen you're close enough to be counted as one. The other five are infants and children. Innocent. Helpless. Their fate rests on my shoulders." He glanced at Wolf. "Did it ever occur to you that ultimately you will be responsible for the little ones?"
"No." He spoke the truth. Grandfather seemed indestructible. "I think of you as immortal."
Grandfather smiled wryly. "I'm sure shifters are no more immortal than true humans. I can testify that we age. Eventually I expect to die. When I do, you'll be the oldest male Volek. The patriarch."
Wolf tried to imagine himself as head of the family. He failed.
"Grandmother would never let me," he said.
Grandfather laughed. "You're right. But she won't live forever, either. I'm certain shamans and witches, like shifters, are mere mortals."
Wolf hadn't come to talk of death and dying--quite the opposite. He changed the subject. "We've always been close, Mima and me," he said. "This just sort of happened with neither of us realizing it was going to. But if anyone's to blame, I am. You explained about the Voleks to me years ago at Gregor's house in Russia."
Grandfather sighed. "You were only a child. Still, you aren't one now and you should have known better. So should Mima. My God, she's known what I am longer than any of you. Also, she's older than you and presumably wiser."
Wolf gnawed on his lip, looking at the ground rather than at Grandfather. "We couldn't help it."
"And Druse is the result. Another carrier of the Volek heritage."
"She's not male twins!" Wolf spoke hotly. He thought his newborn daughter was the most wonderful child in the world. "She'll never be a shifter, she's a perfectly normal little girl."
Grandfather put a hand on his shoulder. "Son, we don't yet know what Druse will be. She's a Volek, true, but Mima also carries unusual traits. Whatever Druse turns out to be, we'll love her, as we do all our children. But you must promise me you and Mima will never have another child." Grandfather pounded a fist against the iron bars of the great, spiked gate. "I had this put here to keep us safe. The gate and the walls shut out intruders, even though the gate can be opened to let friends in. To visit us, not to live with us. Voleks can't afford outsiders living in the house. That's why Belinda and Rosa come in to work only during the day now and why Jose lives elsewhere.
"We have a terrible secret, Wolf. No one must ever discover what it is or every Volek, including the innocents, will be hunted and killed. By ordinary humans. Even those we once might have called friend. Never forget this truth. And never forget, either, that somewhere out there--" he waved a hand toward the road beyond the gate--"may be more stalkers, those who recognize shifters in their human forms and try to kill them."
Wolf stared at the gate. Thinking about his tiny baby daughter, he shivered.
"Our friends wouldn't hurt the babies," he protested.
"I saw innocent babies killed." Grandfather's voice was bleak. "I watched soldiers murder pregnant woman, babies and children for the crime of being Indians in a white man's world. 'Nits make lice,' General Sheridan said to defend this atrocity. So don't tell me that Volek children wouldn't be slaughtered if our neighbors discovered what I am."
Wolf stared at his grandfather as shadows crept over
the land. Spring peepers began to shrill, heralding the coming of the night.
"The safety of the clan comes first, Wolf. If you don't remember that, we'll all perish."
Wolf walked back to the house alone in the gathering dusk, leaving Grandfather by the gate. When he became aware of his slumped shoulders, he squared them with an effort.
At that moment he felt as though the weight of the world rested on him and him alone.
Sergei watched the crescent moon sinking in the sky. Setting. The moon waxed, in two weeks it would be full, shedding beautiful, disturbing silver light over his world. Over him. Enticing the beast within. By luck it had been Renwick who'd seen him in beast form, seen two beasts on the night the other beast died. Since Renwick drank heavily, nobody took him seriously. But if McQuade had been the one....
He shook his head. A narrow escape. As Custer's death at Little Bighorn had proven, luck eventually runs out.
He'd not take any more chances; he'd never shift again.
He'd begin this new decade by making this house the family's fortress, keeping them safe and outsiders at bay. All except Voleks--and Mima, of course--were outsiders.
He wondered what had possessed Mima to lay with Wolf without thought for the consequences. If she didn't know of herbs to prevent conception, surely Liisi did and would have given them to Mima for the asking. Wolf, he understood. The boy was at the age where his prick ruled his head. He'd been that age himself, once. Which was why Wolf existed.
Why the Voleks? he asked himself. What purpose, if any, was I created for? He thought of Ivan and Arno, his twin sons. When they're old enough, he decided, I'll tell them about the Russian forests and the mystery hidden there. Perhaps when they're grown it will be safe for a Volek to travel in Russia and they can search for our origins. For
a reason. There has to be a reason.
Darkness settled around him. Peepers chorused, somewhere in the distant hills a coyote howled. God grant nothing but coyotes roamed the hills from now on. About to turn away from the gate, Sergei held, his special sense alerted.
Riders. Three horses, three men. He tensed, his hand reaching for a pistol that wasn't there. He didn't go armed within his own walls.
Whoever they are, they're not enemies, he chided himself, but he didn't relax, his attention fixed on the road outside the gates. Whoever rode this way was coming to Volek House for the road led nowhere else. He'd learned the hard way that night riders seldom brought good news.
He didn't have to let them in. He was damned if he would. He concentrated on their energy glows and frowned. One was different. Reddish, like a normal human but shadowed.
Apprehension prickled Sergei's nape as he stood waiting, hearing the pound of hoofs, then the creak of leather, finally a man's voice as the horses stopped. "Damn, there's a gate."
"Who are you?" Sergei called. "What do you want?"
A man slid from the lead horse and strode to the gate. "Sherman?" he said. "Sherman, is that you?"
"Oh, hell, I know you've changed your name," the man went on, "but to me you're Sherman Oso."
Then Sergei recognized the voice. "My God," he said. "Guy Kellogg."
A lantern hung from a post beside the gate, matches were in a oilskin packet on a shelf below. Sergei struck a match and lit the lantern, holding it up. The man outside his gate was Guy without a doubt. As he looked at him, Sergei understood why he'd befriended Guy long ago in New Orleans. Something about Guy reminded him of his lost twin. Of Vlad. "I've searched the country for you," Guy said. "A man who changes his name is hard to find."
He turned, gesturing, and when two people walked out of the darkness into the circle of light Sergei realized he'd been wrong in believing all the riders were male. These two were women.
The elder, about forty, dark-haired and exotic looking, had the odd energy glow. Concentrating on her, Sergei scarcely noticed the younger except to see she resembled Guy. "I've come to you from Paris," Guy went on, "because I believe you're the only man in the world who can understand and cure her strange affliction." He put an arm around the older woman. "This is my wife, Annette." He gestured toward the younger. "My daughter, Cecelia."
Sergei nodded. "Sergei Volek." He gave no greeting,
as much disturbed by Guy's words as by Annette Kellogg's abnormal aura. He wondered why Guy thought he could help. Was it because of Guy's damned artist's eye that had seen the underlying darkness in Sherman Oso? Or did Dr. Kellogg break his vow of silence before he died?
The clan comes first, Sergei reminded himself firmly. Whatever was wrong with Annette Kellogg could only mean trouble for the Voleks.
But how could he turn Guy away? Hadn't Guy's father saved Sherman Oso's life and his reason? Hadn't Dr. Kellogg proved to be a friend many times over?
Sergei took down the great iron key from its hook on the lantern post. He inserted the key into the lock and slowly turned it, then drew back the bar holding the gates closed. Taking a deep breath, he said formally, "Guy La Branche Kellogg, I welcome you to Volek House. You, your wife and your daughter will be my honored guests."
He tried his best to hide his dismay at his own violation of clan safety and his heart-deep fear of the consequences. Though he'd yet to exchange a word with her, Sergei knew by her energy aura that Annette Kellogg was not a normal human.
He'd invited her in.
Had he also invited danger and disaster into Volek House?