by Natalie Grey
“I don’t want to lose you, too!” Her mother yelled back. “It is dangerous, it’s more dangerous than you know! There are … things out there that you shouldn’t know about! That we moved here long ago so you’d never know about them! To keep ourselves safe!”
Yelena stopped. She wanted to brush off her mother’s words and yell at her about Alec being in danger, but the hair on her arms was standing up. Her mother was genuinely terrified. She had always scoffed at superstition now looked like she was really afraid. “Mama … what kind of things?” Yelena asked, her anger chilled.
Her mother looked away. She clearly wanted to lie, she regretted having said anything. Oddly, her eyes came to rest on Bellatrix, and that seemed to help her decide.
“Vatra Dornei is near where our family came from, long ago. I tried to keep Alec from going there, but you know your brother. Tell him not to do something….”
Yelena gave a little laugh, but it was forced. Her mother was trying to make a joke, but fear was coming off of her in waves.
“There were rumors about our family. My family, not your father’s.” Her mother was twisting her hands. “They said….”
“Mama.”
“They said we were changers.” Her mother threw the words out, as if even speaking them was an act of courage.
“Changers?”
“Skin changers. Wolves.” Her mother’s lips shaped a word silently, and then she said it aloud … “Wechselbalg. That’s what the Germans call them.”
Yelena stared at her mother. The woman was clearly going crazy. “Mama. That’s a story for babies.”
“It’s true!” Her mother looked up. Her eyes were wide. “We had to leave. Something about a pack, and being driven out, and … it isn’t safe there. There are people who aren’t natural. They aren’t human. Bad enough your brother goes, but you?” She pointed to Bellatrix. “You have some of it in you.”
“What?” Yelena shook her head wearily, “You’re talking crazy, Mama.”
Mama pointed at the big black German Shepherd. “You can hear her talk! I hear you talk to her, answering questions. All the dogs listen to you. They all accept you as their alpha, even the ones who don’t like Dmitri. He tells me about it. He doesn’t know what it means, but even he can see it.”
“Mama, I’ve always been good with dogs, but that doesn’t mean—”
Her mother cut her off. Tears were shimmering in her eyes. “If you go,” she said, shaking, “I am afraid you will never come back. There are things out there that are dangerous to you because of what you are. I have always tried to keep you from that place.” Her shoulders slumped, “Now, you know why.”
Yelena could see that she believed. Her mother, who always laughed at folk tales, really believed this one. But it was crazy. The world was connected now and science had shown that none of those sorts of things were real.
Hadn’t it?
These myths, they were stories for a time when people didn’t know how wind whistled in the trees, and called it werewolves.
She shook her head.
“I have to go find Alec,” she said flatly. “He’s my brother. I am not going to let him be hurt. I love you, Mama.” She kissed her mother on the top of her head, “I’m going to be fine.”
She picked up the suitcase and left, Bellatrix padding along with her, without a backward glance. There was no time to talk anymore.
Alec was in danger.
CHAPTER SIX
His ankle throbbed. It was an unceasing pain that he never seemed to get used to. The tiniest shift would make Theo cry out, and he soon learned that there was no way to keep from moving entirely.
At one point, passing in and out of consciousness, he remembered crying. He wasn’t proud of it, but this was a bad way to end. Alone, dying slowly, his wife never knowing what had happened to him. He never able to take back the harsh words he’d spoken.
Some part of him wanted the pain to stop, whatever that meant. He knew what it meant, and he told himself he was past caring whether or not he died. He kept eating snow, anyway, and dragging himself slowly over the ground when he had enough strength and will to force himself to movement. He’d cracked some ribs, as well as shattering the ankle. He’d managed to get all of ten feet the first night, and not much further since then.
He told himself it was not far to the resort, but he could not make up his mind whether to go through the woods, the shorter path, or out onto the ski trail, potentially a hazard to other skiers—and visible to whoever had sent the wolf.
He was sure he had seen the wolf.
He was also sure, as consciousness came and went, that Virgil had hired hit men. Ripped to shreds, the man had said. And there had been a massive wolf with claws that could do just that.
And they had the wrong man.
That, more than anything, spurred Theo into motion again. He had to find someone and tell them what had happened on the slope. They would think he was crazy, but that was a problem to deal with when it happened. He dragged himself over the ground, gritting his teeth in pain.
It was the faintest noise that caught his attention. In fact, he could not even say what the noise was, just that the breeze in the trees seemed different somehow.
He found himself terrified that the wolf had somehow learned to fly, but he knew that was ridiculous. Cursing himself, he craned his neck painfully to look up.
No flying wolves. No, the truth was stranger than that. Black shapes stood out against the night sky, descending toward the resort. As they passed by overhead, Theo thought they almost looked like pods of metal. They weren’t falling, though, and there didn’t seem to be any sort of propulsion he could see.
The tears surprised him this time. He was actually going crazy. He was going crazy, and he was going to die here. Theo rested his face on his arms, despairing, aware of the pathetically short distance he’d managed to travel, and wept.
___
“Everyone ready?” Bethany Anne looked around the interior of the Pod. Now dressed in a high necked black shirt beneath a light jacket, having reluctantly traded her new Louboutins for what Ecaterina assured her were stylish winter boots, she was reasonably enough dressed that no one would think oddly of her.
They didn’t need to know that she was not troubled by weather anymore.
“Ready.” John nodded at her. At his side, Eric gave a thumbs up.
“Ready,” came Pete’s voice from the other pod.
“Ecaterina?” Bethany Anne tapped the communications unit.
“Ready.” Ecaterina’s voice was tight with anticipation. “I can’t wait to get down there into the snow. I hope we have to go into the mountains to find them.”
“What is it with you and cold?” Pete sounded dubious.
“It’s not that cold.”
“I’m not saying I mind it, I’m just saying I don’t think to myself, ‘hmmm, what could I do today? Why don’t I tramp around in the cold icy snow?’”
Bethany Anne cut off the communications with a shake of her head. Nathan was worried about Ecaterina going on a trip, but even he had to admit that she was both capable of handling herself, and that she was surrounded by a good team—and it would take a heart of stone to ignore the way her face lit up when she found out Bethany Anne was taking an expedition into the mountains of Romania.
At least he was smart enough not to say it around his mate.
The Pods deposited them near one of the buildings, conveniently out of the line of sight of any of the ancient security cameras. Once everyone was down, the pods went back up in the air, out of sight.
Bethany Anne crunched through the snow toward the resort.
“Everyone listen for any strange stories,” she said over her shoulder. “Remember, the most reliable people can be the ones no one believes. You know, the ones who actually admit they’ve been seeing giant wolves. When in doubt,” she pointed behind her, “let Ecaterina do the talking.”
Ecaterina grinned. “That’s right!” she rubbe
d her hands in anticipation, “None of you speak like a local who tended bars. Let me find out what’s going on!” She continued talking, adding a rough accent to her voice, “Like leading lambs to a Pricolici slaughter…”
Bethany Anne laughed and looked into the trees, where Ashur was slipping through the underbrush like a ghost. “And you stay hidden. The last thing we need is for some tourist to freak out and call the cops to shoot a wolf.”
___
Emilian wrenched the curtains back and watched the bound man flinch from the light. He wanted to be in wolf form, but he did not trust anyone else to interrogate this man—or hurt him enough. The client had been very specific. This man was to know just who had hired Emilian and his crew, and was to realize that he had been outplayed. He had been foolish, going to the ski resort alone. He had been predictable. For that, and a multitude of other sins, he would pay with pain. And with his life.
Emilian did not ask what the other sins were. He did not particularly care.
“So.” He smiled humorlessly. The man was watching him. Black hair, grey eyes. He smelled interesting, a single note of something Emilian could not quite catch.
Not important.
“You were foolish,” he observed. “You were warned what would happen.”
The man swallowed. He had been watching Emilian’s face, and he looked around himself desperately. He was tied to a chair in the center of the room, stripped of his ski gear.
The marks of Emilian’s claws had not been washed; they stood out vividly on his pale skin, though strangely, they already seemed to be healing. His face was bruised from where Cezar had hit him, but that mark, too, was fading. Cezar must have been losing his touch.
It was good that Emilian had killed him.
“Who are you?” the captive asked finally.
“Who I am is not important. I am here because you, unfortunately, made an enemy,” Emilian explained.
He picked up a scalpel and savored the fear in the man’s eyes. It was amusing, really. The scalpel could not do nearly as much damage as his own claws, but humans were weak and afraid of little things. He walked over to the man and paused, letting the man’s fear rise, and then plunged the scalpel into his upper arm. He smiled as the man screamed as Emilian shrugged, “I told you, you were warned,” he repeated.
The man’s head lolled, and he pulled it up with an effort. He had gone grey with pain.
“Who sent you?” His voice was a rasp.
“Virgil. He told us where you would be skiing. He told you that you would be ripped to shreds if you didn’t listen to him.”
“I don’t … know a Virgil.”
“Liar.” Emilian hit him in the face, and snarled in disappointment when he saw that the man was unconscious. He pulled the scalpel out of his victim’s arm and tossed it onto the tray.
Gott Verdammt, now he would have to wait until the man woke up again.
___
“Thank you.” Yelena smiled at the bus driver as she made her way off. “Oh, don’t worry,” she said, as the woman began to stand up. “I’ll get my bag, myself.”
“You’re a good kid.” The woman smiled at her. “You deserve this vacation. Have fun skiing, dearie.”
Yelena hoped her smile hadn’t frozen too obviously, “I will.” She was hardly going to confide in this woman that her brother had been lost and might be in serious danger. She dragged her suitcase out of the side compartment and went back to give the woman a thumbs up. “Thanks again!”
She hefted the bag as the bus drove away into the night, and then looked to the forest, where a shadow waited patiently among the trees.
I’ll be back soon. She had no idea if Bellatrix could hear her. Don’t kill too many rabbits.
She thought she heard the chuff of the dog’s laughter, and smiled. She had not been able to bring Bellatrix on the bus, but she sensed that the dog had enjoyed making her way through the forest from the train station nearby.
At the doors of the hotel, she paused and took a deep breath. Alec might be here, she told herself. He might be inside. Maybe he had taken a fall and sprained his ankle, but they’d brought him right back and he’d be hanging out, flirting with the bartender. Maybe everything was fine, and she was just overreacting. She’d had plenty of time on the train to wonder if he was just going to laugh at her when she showed up.
Somehow, she knew that wasn’t the case.
She heard laughter nearby and spotted a group walking through the trees. Tourists, probably, wandering through the forests of Romania at night and telling one another ghost stories about vampires. Yelena rolled her eyes and made her way through the glass doors and up to the elegant desk. A pretty blonde woman smiled at her.
“Hello, I’m Petra.” She frowned, as if trying to remember something. “You look familiar.”
That made things easier. “Ah, actually, my brother is staying here.” Yelena tried not to look sick with fear as she asked the question, “Alec Nikolaev. Is he still here?”
When the woman’s face fell, Yelena gripped the desk to keep herself upright. Oh, no.
“He, ah….” Petra was twisting her hands now. She looked toward the door that must go to the manager’s office. “Let me get—”
“Just tell me.” Yelena knew her voice was too high, too scared. “Did something happen to him?”
The woman hesitated, but she couldn’t resist the plea in Yelena’s eyes. “He went out early this morning,” she explained. “Very early. It was just him and one other skier on the slopes. Neither of them … neither of them have been back all day. No one has seen them.” She swallowed hard. “We sent out tons of patrols. We have tried to find them, I promise, but they’re nowhere on the trail.”
It was as if a yawning void had opened beneath Yelena’s feet. She wanted to sob. Dimly, she heard herself speaking: “It’s probably nothing. Maybe he’s just at a pub nearby.”
Petra nodded eagerly. “Maybe! We haven’t asked in the village. We should do that.”
“I’ll … I’ll handle it.” Yelena heard the group behind her enter the hotel. They were still laughing and bantering. She thought fast, biting her lip. “Could I, ah … could I get a key to his room? He said he booked a double.”
“It was just the one bed.” Petra shook her head regretfully.
She had started the lie, and now she had to continue it. Maybe there was a clue in Alec’s room, after all. “Well, then I’m going to get some sleep and he can sleep on the couch,” Yelena announced. “Isn’t that just like a brother, asking me out here and not remembering to book a room for me?”
Petra laughed at that. She pulled something up on the computer and selected a key. “Just like my brother, for sure. Here you go. I’ll tell him you’re here if he comes back—and to let you sleep.”
“Thanks.” Yelena tried to smile. She took the key and hefted her bag over her shoulder….
The pain was sudden and blinding, like a knife stuck into her upper arm. She doubled over with a cry. It hurt—it hurt so much. She was sobbing with it, her knees had given out, and a second later, horrified, she realized that she had thrown up. She heard a howl from outside and the stab of Bellatrix’s worry.
Don’t … don’t come in. She could hardly form the thought. She couldn’t even see, it hurt so much. Bellatrix tended to unsettle people, with how big she was.
Yelena could not bear it if something happened to the dog because of her.