Wolf's Cage

by Laura Taylor

  Now, though, she was forsaking her inherent curiosity and bent for spiritual pursuits, becoming a violent force of nature willing to stomp over others to get more for herself, and she hated it, even as she saw the unfortunate necessity of it.

  But there was one other startling discovery that Genna had made in the past few weeks, one that had the potential to cause an even greater problem.

  In addition to the ability to shift, roughly one in five shifters also inherited a particular ability, a quirk of the shifter magic as it interacted with their unique DNA and state of mind. The talent usually manifested sometime in the first two years after conversion, and at first, Genna had waited with a gnawing curiosity to see if she would develop one of the coveted abilities. Some of the talents were powerful and awe-inspiring, the ability to call down lightning, for example, or to hypnotise prey into surrendering.

  But as she’d learned more, her enthusiasm had dimmed, as she’d discovered that many of the other talents were far less noteworthy; the ability to find water underground – hardly a necessity in England, with frequent rain and rivers flowing everywhere; or the power to manipulate electric currents – completely useless out here, as there was nothing that ran on electricity in the camp bar a few mobile phones, the batteries recharged via the small solar panels the pack had bought, with firm restrictions on any other form of technology.

  Each bloodline had their own set of possibilities, but since the Grey Watch was restricted to the line of Grenable, theirs was a very limited subset of the full compliment of powers. Since her gaff over the Treaty of Erim Kai Bahn, Lita had been drilling her with lessons every day, not just on the details of the Treaty, but on a range of aspects of shifter culture, along with a long list of possible manifestations of these strange abilities, and Genna now had several dozen of the possibilities memorised.

  But aside from the lack of excitement over many of the potential mystical talents, there was another reason Genna had become less than enthusiastic about developing one of her own. Some of the abilities could easily be exploited, enhanced with techniques that Il Trosa had forbidden, but which, due to the single bloodline of their pack and the limited abilities that came with it, the Grey Watch had chosen to embrace. Lita’s ability, for example, was to trace a person’s movements from their blood, able to deduce exactly where that person had been in the past twenty-four hours. Not satisfied with the results, however, Sempre had encouraged the woman to begin performing blood rituals, aided by the sacrifice of wild animals, delving ever further into the unknown, until Lita could detect not just shifters, but regular humans, animals, prey. She had effectively become a sentry for their pack, constantly checking to see who was around – a park ranger, perhaps, or a wildlife expert seeking out rare specimens, a group of hikers straying too close to their camp.

  And the overstretching of the magic, the dabbling in blood rituals that defied the laws of nature, caused some unpleasant consequences for the practitioner.

  To look at her, one would have assumed that Lita was in her seventies or eighties. She walked with a limp, her back was crooked, her skin frail and easily torn and her hair so grey it was almost white.

  But just a few weeks ago, Genna had been shocked to learn that the woman’s real age was a paltry thirty-eight years. What the hell was she supposed to do if she developed a similar talent, and Sempre insisted on slowly sucking the life out of her in a similar manner? Some shifters even said it was an offence to the divine Wolf God himself, the perpetrators forever banned from the Great Hall in the House of Sirius, and the thought was nothing short of terrifying.

  Three weeks ago, while wandering alone in the forest, Genna had made a shocking discovery. She did, indeed, possess one of the mystical talents, but the greater shock had been in discovering which one.

  She’d been searching out a buried bone, eager for something to chew and hungry enough to not care what it smelled like, and she’d tracked down the scent of one, hidden in a shallow depression out in a deserted part of the forest. Unfortunately for her, a storm had come through since the bone had been buried, a heavy branch falling right on top of her prize. As a wolf, she’d had no chance of moving the thing, and even after she’d glanced around and furtively shifted into a human, she’d found it impossible to move. It wasn’t so much wide as long, and must have weighed three or four times as much as Genna herself did. As she’d sat there, smacking at the branch in frustration, she’d imagined how much simpler things would be if she could make a short section of the branch disappear, just enough to reveal the bone, much as her clothing disappeared when she became a wolf.

  It wasn’t a totally ridiculous idea, she considered after a moment, knowing that not just clothing, but weapons, small bags, even items of food could all be made to disappear if strapped closely to the body before a shift, so she’d huddled up beside the log, making sure her thigh was pressed tight against it, hands on the wood, her body curled around it, and initiated a shift…

  Only she hadn’t shifted. Instead, she’d all but fainted in surprise as the section of the log had vanished right out from beneath her hands. The bone had been forgotten in an instant, a far more interesting mystery now presented to her. She could make objects disappear! She could reach into the other realm, the one where their bodies went when they weren’t using them, and she’d sent the wood there, instead of her own self.

  Long, private practice sessions had followed, with Genna not quite able to believe the gift at first, and then eager to see how far it could be pushed, how large an object she could make disappear, how long she could keep the item hidden… but all the while, a slow, creeping fear had been gnawing at her mind.

  If Sempre found out about this, then her life was effectively over. This was one of the rarest gifts, one that hadn’t been seen in a shifter for over two hundred years. It was one of the most powerful abilities any shifter could receive, those bearing this talent said to be blessed by Sirius himself, and its uses were enormous. She could steal things, and if searched, no one would ever find them. She could open locked doors, simply by making the lock vanish. She could disable cars or weapons, a handy trick against the Noturatii. There were a great many more experiments Genna wanted to try, but with the constant risk of being discovered, she found that more often than not, her fear outweighed her curiosity, leaving her development in her gift stunted and irregular.

  Now, back in the camp, Genna heard the first rumblings of a disagreement, and furtively slunk out of her resting spot to listen to the older females talking.

  “We have to go,” one of them was saying. “There’s no way around it.”

  “It’s too great a risk,” another said unhappily. “Fenrae-Ul is going to be there. You want to end up where Rintur did, her human half ripped right out of her? I don’t care what Baron says, she’s not to be trusted.”

  “We can make it as short as possible,” Sempre put in, sounding tired and irritated, rather than her usual commanding self. “Two days, tops. And Fenrae can’t attack any of us during the meeting. It would breach the rules of the Treaty.”

  “What are they talking about?” Genna asked Luna in a whisper, after shifting into human form. Luna was loitering near the older females, and while not exactly her friend, Luna was one of the more even tempered wolves, more prone to cooperation than confrontation, and Genna had developed a cautious admiration for her.

  “Scotland,” Luna whispered back. “Every year we have a meeting in summer with the Il Trosa pack, and this year it’s set to take place in an estate up near the Cairngorm National Park. Sempre doesn’t want to go. None of them do, not with Fenrae-Ul set to kill us all, and they’re more pissed off than usual with Baron this year. Take my advice – when we eventually get there, keep your head down and don’t make any waves. It’s going to be unpleasant enough as it is.”

  “Maybe we could insist that Fenrae isn’t present,” one of the women went on. “Baron has to honour the Treaty just as much as we do, and it’s not an unreasonable request
.”

  “But it’s one he’d never listen to,” Sempre replied. “Come on, you’ve met him. He’s as stubborn as a mule, with the personality of a rabid bear.”

  “If going to the meeting is such a risk,” Genna asked Luna softly, “why do we have to go?”

  “It’s a condition of the Treaty,” Luna answered with a shrug. “A mandatory meeting once a year between us and Il Trosa to discuss any potential problems, to take a census of our population, and to give a full report on our activities for the year.”

  Ah, that explained it, then. Genna had learned quickly that, for all their complaining about it, the Treaty was regarded as a sacred document, more important even than the shifter’s doctrine regarding Sirius the Wolf God and his decrees on their lives and behaviour, and there wasn’t a wolf among them who would dare break one of its commands.

  “In the end, they’ll decide we have to go,” Luna added, nodding to the still-arguing females. “But they feel better if they complain about it for a while first. It makes them feel like they made the noble concession to attend, rather than that they were forced into it.” She shrugged, then turned to leave. “Nothing ever happens at the meetings, anyway. They talk politics for a few days, agree to continue disagreeing, same as we have done for centuries, and then we all go home again.” She smiled, a wry, almost sad look. “Back to the damp and the cold, and the grey, grey sky.” And then she laughed. “Not like Scotland’s much better, in terms of weather, but look on the bright side. At least it’s a change of scenery.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Baron sat in the back seat of the van, staring out the window as they wound their way along the road to the estate in Scotland. John was curled up next to him, head on his shoulder, fast asleep. Outside the van, rolling hills dotted with sheep drifted past, dense pockets of forest and wide fields of heather giving the scenery a rugged, untamed look.

  The estate they were heading to was on the outskirts of the Cairngorm National Park, far enough from the major tourist centres to afford them privacy. It was set in a wide valley, with high hills on all sides that protected it from snooping eyes, and a thick forest that was home to a decent population of wild deer and with a river running along the valley floor. The house was a grand affair, twice the size of the Lakes District manor, with peaked turrets and bay windows, grey stone rising to tall chimneys. There were several cottages off the side, perfect for extra accommodation for those preferring a little peace and quiet away from the main crowd, and inside the manor there was a huge dining room, industrial kitchen and several halls for meetings.

  While most of the Den would be staying in the main house, Caroline, Baron, John and Andre had been allocated one of the cottages, a concession to John’s need for privacy and to keep Andre away from the bulk of the shifters. For all their respect for the Council, having an assassin on site tended to make everyone a bit leery, and placing him out of the main house would go a long way towards keeping the peace.

  But more than that, Baron had also made the arrangement for the express purpose of assisting Andre in his assessment of Caroline. The need for the utmost discretion made it difficult to manufacture situations of any importance where the two of them would be thrown together, but by getting them to live in adjacent bedrooms for a few weeks, he was confident that Andre would manage to make time for the occasional ‘chat’, discussions on protocol for the Densmeet, or the opportunity to witness Caroline defusing the odd argument between shifters on the estate. He wasn’t sure exactly what the assessment procedure consisted of, or what specific criteria Caroline was being measured against, but it was a long and complicated process, that much was clear.

  After a long drive through progressively narrower and more winding roads, the Den’s four vans pulled up at the front of the manor and the shifters piled out, stretching muscles stiff from the long drive. Security was the first issue of the day, with Silas, Baron, Caroline and Tank going on a thorough inspection of the immediate area. As promised, the owner had cleared out, leaving the rooms already made up, the manor clean and tidy and the estate deserted. They paid a hefty price for the privilege of absolute privacy, but it was worth it, high stone walls surrounding the entire estate and prominent signs announcing that this was private property, leaving the shifters free to roam about in wolf form without fear of discovery.

  “The food will be arriving around midday,” George informed Baron, when he returned to the front entrance. “I’ll let you know when it’s all clear.” With humans scheduled to be entering the estate, there was a strict ban on shifting until they were gone, and the Den would be anxious to get out and about and start exploring their new territory in wolf form.

  “Security’s fine,” Baron announced, holstering his gun after the others had reported back. “Let’s get these vans unloaded.” Along with the bags of personal effects that each shifter had brought, there were also a few crates of weapons – primarily for training purposes, but also a necessary precaution against the unlikely risk that the Noturatii might stumble upon them out here, as well as several of the ancient texts from the Den’s library. Some of the books were still half blank, and would be added to while they were here, an official census of both the Den and the English Grey Watch pack, an annual report from the Council on the progress of Il Trosa as a whole, and a report on the Densmeet itself, including a full list of every shifter in attendance and a record of those fallen, who would be honoured at the Nochtan-Eil.

  Everyone set to work immediately, lugging suitcases up long flights of stairs, computers to one of the halls, weapons to another, and a collection of dog beds into the large foyer that also doubled as a living room. There were also four heavy duty vacuum cleaners, necessary for getting all the fur out of the carpet before they left. While the owners were aware that their guests would be bringing ‘a few dogs’ for their summer vacation, there would be little excuse for the sheer volume of wolf fur that would be left lying around, and it was both for politeness, maintaining a good relationship with the owner, and for secrecy, hiding any sign of their presence, that the Den would be conducting a thorough clean up before they left the estate.

  The situation in Italy had finally settled down, much to everyone’s relief, so the ban on travel had been lifted just a few days ago, allowing the Italian wolves to join the festivities, and more importantly, it meant that the Councillors themselves would be able to attend the Densmeets, a valuable opportunity to spend face-to-face time with the rest of Il Trosa.

  The French shifters would be arriving that afternoon, coming by train from France, with the rest of the guests filtering in over the next few days. A lucky few would be coming by private jet; the Council owned a modest plane that could seat up to thirty people. But using the plane too often could arouse the suspicions of the Noturatii, so many others would be travelling via more conventional methods, small commercial flights or high speed trains, as shifters from dozens of different Dens were shuttled all over Europe to attend their respective meetings.

  Inside their cottage, Caroline and Andre chose their bedrooms. Andre disappeared inside, while Caroline simply dumped her bag and headed back outside to oversee the unpacking. No doubt there would be a few squabbles over who got which room in the manor, and it would speed up the process to have someone on hand to keep the peace, and pull rank, if necessary.

  Baron and John had a large room with a queen-sized bed, and Baron hefted their two suitcases inside, followed by John, lugging the case of precious books. John kicked the door shut, dumped the box by the wall, and then set about exploring. A small ensuite bathroom, fresh towels laid out. A bay window looking out into a private courtyard. The wardrobe, the bathroom cabinets, the dresser… he even checked under the bed and behind the picture frames, and if Baron hadn’t understood the reason for his paranoia quite so well, he would have found the inspection to be quite amusing.

  When he was done, John flopped down onto the bed, wriggling around, arms and legs splayed, then he lay still, a sigh escaping his lips
.

  “It’s pretty comfortable,” he concluded. “A little too bouncy, but I can live with that. We should try it out. See if it lives up to expectations.” He spread his legs a little, possibly just a concession to comfort… but then he palmed his own groin, and Baron barely glanced at the growing bulge in the boy’s trousers.

  “Put your libido back in its box and help me unpack,” he said mildly, knowing it was a waste of time. John didn’t understand unpacking, had no concept of the need to keep clothes neat and tidy. It was a good day when dirty laundry even made it into the hamper, more often just tossed onto the floor, or worse, hidden under the bed. Baron had learned to go on a weekly hunt for it each time he did his own laundry, otherwise it was likely to sit there for weeks until it stank and was on the verge of going mouldy.

  “How many people are coming?” John asked, not for the first time, and Baron braced himself for the first wave of the yearly anxiety that came with every Densmeet. It wouldn’t be too bad this year, with the meeting in a familiar space and with John surrounded by his own Den members. Other years were far worse, with the Den split up and John having to cope not just with multiple strangers wandering around, but also with totally new scenery, foreign languages, alien cultures. It was exhausting, Baron having to constantly be aware of his boyfriend’s moods and running interference between him and the other shifters when things got too tense.

  “Thirty-four,” Baron told him, shaking out a shirt and sliding it onto a hanger. “Plus our twenty means a total of fifty-four.” He went on to list them all, each of the Dens invited, the number of shifters from each one, the languages they spoke and the ranks of each person. And all the while John lay on the bed, fiddling with the blankets, moving the pillows around, occasionally glancing out the window with a look that was designed to convey indifference, but which failed completely.