ALWAYS IN SHADOW
A Novella
(Book Three of Never Cry Werewolf)
by
Heather Davis
Always in Shadow: A Novella
(Book Three of Never Cry Werewolf)
Copyright © 2013 by Heather Davis
http://heatherdavisbooks.com
Cover Art by Asha Hossain
Original e-Book Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this ebook may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not be construed as real. Any resemblance to any persons living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is purely coincidental.
Dedicated to my animal friends, who have taught me more about being human than any person I know.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
About the Author
Chapter One
MOONLIGHT IS relentless. It works its way around curtains and through shades, slipping in like a practiced thief to steal away the safety of the shadows. I’d never needed those shadows more than I did that winter. Darkness had become my friend since I’d been infected.
Even the barest touch of moonlight through the windows of the private plane taking me far away from Switzerland made my exposed skin tingle. And it was a good thing I was going far away. I’d been trapped at The Steinfelder Academy for Girls for the last few months, and if my werewolf friends hadn’t broken me out that morning, it would have been bad news on the society page. Nothing says a quality education quite like scratched debutantes and screaming heiresses. Yep, they were lucky I escaped.
I was so about to become a werewolf.
I tried to look on the bright side, if there was one. At least I’d be with my boyfriend Austin Bridges the Third and his family for the holidays instead of being trapped in an evil Swiss boarding school. The other stuff – changing into an animal, the uncontrollable hunger, the gaining of unsightly hair – well, we were flying on a private plane toward the temporary antidote. It was in a place called Muldania.
If you’ve never heard of Muldania, I don’t blame you. I hardly paid attention in Geography class, either. Muldania is tiny country wedged between Bulgaria and Romania. Apparently, that part of the Carpathian Mountains had once been a hotbed of werewolf hunks like my Austin. Now, it’s mostly known for, well... I couldn’t even tell you. Maybe that’s why most people haven’t heard of it.
So, yeah, I was on the run to Muldania that night. I know it sounds funny to be on the run in a private plane. It’s definitely way better than hitchhiking – which you should never ever do, by the way. But don’t be too impressed by the private plane. It was just Austin’s family’s jet, because when your dad is an internationally known rock star, he can’t fly coach anymore.
The Bridges family had created my cover story, too; they’d sent an official looking e-mail from the academy to my parents, telling them I was on a school-sponsored ski trip. It wasn’t like they could say I was seeking protection and an anti-change serum from a pack of werewolves.
You might be saying to yourself, “Aside from going through the hairy-change stuff, what could be so evil about a boarding school besides bad food and stuck-up classmates?” Well, it turns out there is a worldwide network called the Seven Horsemen trying to wipe out werewolves. They were the ones who’d convinced my parents to send me to Steinfelder so they could use me as a pawn to draw Austin and his pack out. I’d escaped the academy unscathed, but Austin had been shot in the shoulder during my escape. He was sleeping in the back of the plane, having hardly stirred during the whole flight. The wolves told me he was going to be all right, but I was scared for him – and scared for me.
Though I was safer with the Bridges family than I’d be anywhere else, the change was on my mind. I’d seen Austin transform once, back when we first met at Camp Crescent the summer before and he’d been off the serum. I couldn’t begin to imagine the bone-crushing pain that I’d witnessed him undergo that night. Well, in a matter of days, there wouldn’t be any imagining needed – I was going to be Lycan unless I got that serum.
Many years ago, a chemist had developed the serum so the Bridges could live like normal people instead of hiding out in a cave or someplace awful like that on moonlit nights. Not that the Bridges actually lived like normal people. The band had fans all over the world and their photos were splashed across magazine covers. But their rock star lifestyles actually helped explain things, like when Austin’s dad had bitten the head off a live parakeet. He had probably missed his dose of serum, but everyone chalked it up to him being a crazy old rocker dude.
Most werewolf characters I’d seen in movies stayed away from people, but the Bridges were hiding in the public eye. The fame protected from their enemies because someone killing a rock star would be a lot more visible than someone knocking off an everyday citizen. Not that I wanted to think about anything bad happening to anyone, but fame totally helped the pack, I was learning.
I usually sleep pretty well on planes, but not that night. My eyes were open, scanning the windows for renegade moonbeams. My senses were heightened, too. Everything made me jump, even the slightest sound, because of my supersonic hearing. To take the edge off, I really needed some gummy worms and a warm bed – and of course, the serum.
The plane shook in a field of turbulence for a few minutes, which freaked me out even more than I had been. Then, after a sharp descent, we skidded to a landing on a small airstrip cut into a valley between snow-capped peaks that were framed in moonlight.
“We’re here,” Austin’s father Fuzz said to me. “You can let go now.”
“Let go?” I glanced down and saw what he’d seen: my hands gripping the armrests so tightly I’d left marks in the leather. “Whoa. Sorry.”
“Those wouldn’t be the first claw marks in the upholstery,” Fuzz said, arching a bushy eyebrow. “Onward, yeah?” He zipped up his leather motorcycle jacket and scooped up a leather satchel before ushering me out the plane door. Stuffy, Fuzz was not. He was loud, British, hairy and had a great sense of humor, though I wasn’t in the mood for laughing on this trip.
I descended the steps onto the tarmac. There was no terminal, no snack bar, no baggage claim. We were about as far from fancy Zurich as you could get.
“Here you go, miss,” the pilot said, handing me a backpack from the luggage cart the crew had brought around.
“Thanks.” The bag didn’t have much in it – only the things my rescuers had packed for my escape from school. I slid it onto my shoulder as I took in the landscape. It was stark, desolate, and very, very wintry. “Muldania,” I whispered.
“Home,” Fuzz said, descending the ramp behind me. “You’re part of the family now, Shelby.”
“Very true,” Austin said.
I turned at the sound of his voice. “Hey! How are you feeling?”
He touched a hand gingerly to his bandaged shoulder and smiled weakly, making my heart ache. “I’m managing,” he said.
“Come along, then.” Fuzz wrapped his burly arm around Austin’s thin frame and helped him walk.
A black SUV crunched through the layer of snow on the tarmac, skidding to stop near us. “Right,�
�� said Fuzz. “This’ll be Boris, then.”
Boris, a tall guy in a black suit and dark glasses, stepped out of the SUV and hustled to open the back door. Once Austin was comfortable in the backseat, I climbed in next to him, while Fuzz joined Boris in the front seat.
“Couldn’t be bothered to be bloody on time, I see,” Fuzz growled.
Boris gunned the engine, and we sped away from the airfield and onto a country road. “Plane comes early,” he said, in a heavily accented voice.
Night swept across the small valley as we drove. I wasn’t quite sure what I had expected Muldania to look like, but right now, it looked like Aspen, Colorado, where I’d been on vacation once. Back then, my stepmother Priscilla, who everyone called Honeybun, had been quite the ski bunny. Now, I wasn’t sure when they’d ski again because Honeybun was having a baby. I’d found that out on our last video chat from the academy. She and Dad wouldn’t be skiing at all this season.
The SUV swerved suddenly as a snowmobile zoomed toward us. In the front of the car, Boris muttered a curse word in some foreign language.
“Is that Muldanian?” I whispered to Austin, reaching for his hand.
Austin turned his head toward me, his eyes with the faintest of glimmer in them. “It’s Russian.”
“There are Russian werewolves?”
“Bloke’s a bloody vampire – he’s from all over,” Fuzz said, looking back at me. A grin spread across his bearded face.
“A vampire?” I whispered, even though now I was totally sure Boris could hear me with his amped up senses. I’d only met one other vampire, a guy who’d helped with the rescue mission, so I was still getting used to the idea of them.
“We all stick together these days,” Fuzz said, nodding. “We share common enemies.”
“Besides, I want to play piano in band,” Boris said, his gaze never wandering from the road.
“There is no piano. I keep telling him that,” Fuzz replied under his breath.
“In the meantime, Father lets him drive.” Austin rested his head on my shoulder.
I reached up to push his silky brown bangs from his face.
“Thanks.” His eyelashes fluttered closed.
For a moment, there in the shadows of the Muldanian evening, Austin looked peaceful, content. In other circumstances, I would have been happy, too. In other, non-about-to-be-a-werewolf circumstances.
My expression must have betrayed my worry because Fuzz said, “Darling girl, I thought you said on the plane you were ready to embrace our ways.”
“I don’t have a choice. I mean, except for holding it off with the serum.”
“Well,” he continued, “from what I’ve seen so far, I think you have the courage to revel fully in the way of the wolf. I’m sure Austin told you about his mother. She wasn’t our kind, not at first, but she found a way to adapt.”
I had heard the story about Austin’s mother. The trouble was, it didn’t have a happy ending. She’d died in Scotland in a so-called hunting accident when Austin was young. I didn’t want to end up that way.
“Courage,” Fuzz said, patting my hand. “You have that in spades.”
I nodded. It had been my courage that had sealed my fate with Austin’s back at Camp Crescent. Though I’d been sent to brat camp by my stepmother for an attitude adjustment, Austin had been sent there without his father’s knowledge and without his anti-change serum. I’d helped him escape one night, but while he was injured and disoriented from a fight with the local wildlife, he’d grazed me with his teeth. It hadn’t seemed like anything big at first, but the wound had taken forever to heal and in the end, it had left more than a scar.
“Oi!” Fuzz called out suddenly. “Stop here for pork rinds.”
Boris swerved the car left, veering into an icy parking lot. “Thanks for advance notice, boss.”
“Pork rinds? Gross,” I muttered.
“Actually, they’re like potato chips married bacon,” Fuzz said. “The best wolf treat I can think of, short of downing a spring lamb in the field.”
“Yikes. Are there any vegetarian werewolves?” I asked, feeling queasy.
“I doubt it.” Fuzz got out of the SUV and then opened my door. “Coming?”
I shrugged out from under Austin’s head and leaned him carefully in the other direction toward the window. I wasn’t going to miss out on a chance to purchase some gummy worms, if they had any.
“Wait – what is this?” I said with a gasp as I stepped out into the snow.
“I believe you call them mini-marts.” Fuzz walked ahead, his shaggy hair long over the collar of his leather jacket.
I crunched after him across the parking lot toward the bright lights of the glass-fronted little building that looked neither quaint nor old. Out in front, a man with a cart was selling sausages tucked into fluffy little rolls. I paused, smelling the perfume of the little treats, my stomach growling more than normal.
“Come now. We’ll get some of these on the way out,” Fuzz said, signaling our order to the man and then leading me into the store.
Florescent lights buzzed overhead as I wandered the narrow aisles. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought we were back in the States. I walked to the candy section. No gummy worms, but I grabbed a couple packs of squishy, fruit-shaped sweets.
When I joined Fuzz at the counter, he was speaking what I guessed was Muldanian to the man working the register. As they chatted, my gaze traveled over the collection of newspapers and maps piled nearby, I grabbed a travel-sized one marked with a name that looked like Muldania since I had no idea about the mountains that surrounded us and wanted to get my bearings. But then something caught my eye. A familiar-looking girl staring up at me from the cover of a tabloid magazine. Eva Maleva. The pop princess Austin had told me was a distant cousin and not the love interest the tabs made her out to be.
“Dear Eva,” Fuzz grumbled. “They won’t leave her alone.”
“What did she do?”
“She’s on the outs with some boyfriend again,” Fuzz said in a low voice. “And just in time for her opening appearance at the castle.”
“Castle?”
Fuzz took the sack of pork rinds from the counter. “Certainly Austin told you we own our ancestral castle now. That’s why we’re here. We’ve reclaimed it.”
“But what about Eva? An opening appearance?”
“We’ve had the concert on the calendar for weeks now – a New Year’s Eve bash broadcast live around the world. Eva’s our opening act. With you here, I have half a mind to cancel the thing, but that would call more attention to us.”
“Cancel it because of me?”
“It’s not exactly ideal to have a newborn pup tearing around the castle during the festivities.”
“A newborn pup?” It took me a second to figure out he was talking about me.
Fuzz smiled gently. “According to what Austin’s told me, you’re not long from the change. You’ll likely be furry on the night of the concert. That’s the next full moon.”
“I should leave, then.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! This is the safest place for you. At any rate, we can’t cancel the concert – it’s going to help pay the balance on the castle’s mortgage. You wouldn’t believe the bloody payments.... murder on a wolf’s budget. And, you can’t take the serum until your first change, so you’re stuck with us.”
As we exited the mini-mart, I saw Boris standing outside the SUV looking concerned. He gestured for us to hurry.
Fuzz gave the vendor in front of the mini-mart a few bills from his pocket and then handed me the sack of sausages. “I must ask you to wait until we get into the car, my girl. We don’t want anyone to see you feed after you’ve been so starved for sustenance.”
“Right,” I snorted. Like I’d really tear into the sausages right there in the snowy parking lot! I had some self control, wolfish senses or not.
We strode toward where Boris had parked the car, passing several rusted-looking small cars and a white va
n with a logo on the door advertising Muldrazny Inn. The Bridges’ shiny SUV stood out like a beacon in the midst of the plain, dirty vehicles.
“What takes so long?” Boris asked, helping us into the back seat.
“Snacks!” Fuzz said, holding up the bag of pork rinds.
“We must go. People stare at car.” Boris gunned the engine and we slid out of the lot, nearly flattening the young dark-haired young driver of the inn’s van who was stepping out onto the snow. He jumped back against the side of the vehicle, shaking a fist and yelling something as we motored away.
“You almost hit that guy!”
“What a pity,” Boris said, hissing out a breath.
“A little slower, chap,” Fuzz said as he pulled open the bag of pork rinds. The smell of the salty, fried snacks filled the back of the car. My stomach groaned. We’d had sandwiches on the private plane not that long ago. Still, my insides burned with hunger.
Next to me in the seat, Austin opened his eyes. “Is that—”
“Yes, darling boy.” Fuzz plucked a rind from and held it out in front of Austin, who crunched right into it.
“Thank you.” Austin sat up and reached for the bag.
“I knew those would perk you up,” said Fuzz, smiling widely. “Not to worry. We have Doctor Lyndon waiting at the castle. She’ll take a look at your shoulder before beginning the real assignment.”
I paused. “She’s the one with the serum?”
“Yes,” Austin said, crunching into another salty treat.
“I really do feel fine,” I said. “I mean, maybe we’re wrong about this wolf stuff.”
“Shelby, my dear?” Fuzz reached for my hands and held them up to my face. They were covered with grease and smelled delicious, for some reason.
I looked down. Crumbs from the rolls littered my lap. At my feet was an empty paper bag all balled up. I had no recollection of snarfing down all the sausages, but apparently I had. “Oh, crapola.”
“Your wolf is hungry,” Fuzz said, laughing. “I don’t think you even chewed.”
Always in Shadow: A Novella (Never Cry Werewolf) Page 1