Grave Origins

by Lori Drake

  “Then what is he still doing here?” Joey asked, nodding at Vince.

  “Ha! If I exiled everyone who ever challenged me, I’d have no friends at all. Besides, he was pretty drunk when it all went down. Bygones, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “This is bullshit,” Chris said, finally breaking his stoic silence. “If there were no witnesses, how can we be sure the challenge even happened?”

  “Who said there were no witnesses?” Lucas said, arching a brow.

  Joey narrowed her eyes and stared at him, ready to demand he produce these witnesses, when he brought his fingers to his mouth and whistled sharply. Behind him, a man and a woman came into view, stepping out of a side room. They gave Vince a wide berth as they approached. The man, barefoot in jeans and a tee shirt, was clearly of Native American ancestry, with his iron straight black hair and angular features. The woman was tall and top-heavy, with a messy blonde ponytail, wearing—of all things—a My Little Pony sleep shirt and shorts.

  “Nicole, Blake,” Lucas continued, “this is Chris Martin, Alpha of the Granite Falls pack, and Sam Grant, Alpha of—well, the other Grant pack. You guys really need a more distinct name. Give it some thought. Anyway, this is Nicole and Blake.”

  “Charmed, I’m sure.” Joey didn’t bother trying to keep the sarcasm from her voice. She was too busy puzzling over where Tonto and Werewolf Barbie had come from, and how they came to be in Lucas’s company. Before she could get too distracted, she shifted her focus back to Lucas. “Fine. I’ll be back in one week.”

  Lucas grimaced and sucked air through his teeth. “Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t take reservations. But you’re welcome to drop by. Have a safe trip back to your little hovel. Toodles.” He wiggled his fingers in farewell and flashed a smile, then shut the door.

  “Did that just happen?” Joey said, looking between Sam and Chris. “Tell me that didn’t happen.”

  “I’m afraid it happened,” Sam said, studying the closed door with a frown.

  Chris grumbled, “My house is not a hovel.”

  Joey smacked the back of his head. “Focus, will you?”

  “Hey!” Chris gave her an indignant look. “He’s the one being an assclown. Don’t take it out on me.”

  Muttering something about child alphas, Sam shoved his hands in his pockets and headed down the front steps.

  Joey followed him. “Do you seriously believe that Vince just happened to challenge him last night, the night before I came to do it? Come on. That’s impossible.”

  “Not impossible, but… improbable, yes,” Sam said. Ahead of them, both packs had already begun to disperse, heading for the various cars and trucks that’d ferried them all out here.

  “So, he’s faking a challenge to avoid me. That’s… that’s…”

  “Lucas?” Chris suggested, his footsteps trailing hers down the porch steps.

  Joey snorted. “I was going to go with cowardly. Is there anything in wolf law about this?”

  “No,” Sam said. “But even if there were, we don’t have any proof that’s what he’s doing. He wouldn’t have had any idea that you were coming to issue the challenge today, would he? Maybe there was a legitimate challenge.”

  “Shouldn’t it have been reported to the other local Alphas?” she asked.

  “Only if it resulted in a change of leadership,” Chris said. “And he said it happened last night, so he hasn’t exactly had a chance.”

  “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

  Chris curled an arm around her waist. “Like you have to ask. Come on, let’s go home.”

  Joey sighed and leaned into the embrace, walking with him to the car and even letting him open the passenger door for her as a way of apologizing for smacking him on the head. Even if he had deserved it.

  The ride back down the mountain was a quiet one, as Joey turned the morning’s events over and over in her head. As the road began to level out, Chris finally broke the silence.

  “Look at it this way: now you have another week to train, so you’ll be even more prepared to kick his ass next time.”

  “I guess,” Joey said, not taking her eyes off the landscape sliding past outside the car. “But what if next week… ‘Oh bother, Blake just challenged me. So sorry.’” She sighed and forced her icy fingers to uncurl, rubbing her palms against her jeans.

  Chris reached across the console and covered her hand with his much warmer one. “It’d be awfully suspicious if it happened again. I’ll make that clear to him at the Alpha meeting tonight.”

  Joey pinched the bridge of her nose. “God, please don’t come home with another black eye.”

  Chris chuckled and brought her hand to his lips, kissing it softly. “No black eyes, I promise.”

  Joey sighed, but let it go at that. Truth be told, she was worried. Lucas had been grating on Chris’s nerves for weeks, but the other night was the first time—that she knew of—it’d come to blows. But she couldn’t help but feel like she was sitting on a powder keg, and there were way too many sparks flying around for comfort.

  June 21, 1862

  Our calamitous summer continues. Yurei had to put the mule down yesterday, but at least we’ll have fresh meat for a few weeks and jerky to trade in the fall. A new family finally settled at the old Jones place. It’s been empty for over a year. I plan to take over a welcome basket tomorrow. I still have a few jars of blackberry jam left from last summer, the batch that Muriel swears danced on her tongue like God’s own angels. She is a peculiar woman. I certainly have never had angels dancing on my tongue, nor would I want them to. But I figure I can spare a jar of jam if it will put me in good stead with the new neighbors.

  Chris suppressed a sigh and rubbed his temples, glancing across the kitchen table at Justin, who was hard at work translating the next passage. When Cathy had come across the journal of a woman who might share his gift for astral walking, Chris had been so excited by the prospect that she may have written something about her experiences in the astral realm. Now that he’d read close to half of it, he’d begun to despair that there might not be a single useful nugget of information in the whole damn thing.

  Nadezhda Trubnikova, as far as Chris could tell, was a fairly unremarkable nineteenth-century woman. Her journal mostly chronicled family ailments, crop yields, town gossip, and spiritual reflections. Chris found it mind-numbing, and couldn’t imagine it was any better for Justin, whom he’d recruited to help him with translation once he’d found out that the sweater-vested librarian spoke Russian—among other things. What was it Justin had called himself? A hyperpolyglot, which was a fancy way of saying he spoke dozens of languages. He’d rattled them all off, but Chris had already forgotten half of them by the time he was done.

  “Is there something on my face?” Justin asked, glancing up over the rim of his reading glasses.

  “Nope. I was just wondering if this is as dry for you as it is for me.”

  He chuckled and shook his head. “Nah. I think it’s interesting. A slice of nineteenth-century life, you know? Primary sources like these are hard to come by, especially in such good condition.”

  “Mom would’ve loved you.” Chris smiled, though it was bittersweet. Justin was a scholar at heart, much like Chris’s late mother. In all her years, she’d never stopped learning. It was one aspect of her personality he felt was reflected in him, but as much as he liked history, he wasn’t nearly as into the minutiae of it as Justin seemed to be.

  “From what I’ve heard of her, she was quite a woman. I’m sorry I never had a chance to properly meet her.”

  Chris nodded, and an awkward silence followed before Justin returned his focus to the text. Justin and Adelaide had only crossed paths briefly the night she died, but Chris thought she would’ve approved of his addition to the Grant pack. Chris let him get back to work, turning his attention to the translated pages with a barely suppressed sigh. As much work as Justin had done to translate the journal—free of charge, at that—the least Chris could do was read it.

&
nbsp; One of Emma’s favorite jokes drifted through his mind, provoking a mental chuckle.

  And I always try to do the very least I can do.

  He missed his friend and her impish sense of humor, and for a moment entertained the idea of flying down to San Diego to pay her a visit. They spoke weekly, but he hadn’t seen her since the trial and her subsequent incarceration. He could take Joey, make a weekend of it… It might be a good distraction for her while she waited out the week until she could challenge Lucas again. Thinking of Lucas made anger rise within him, and his wolf did the metaphysical equivalent of lifting his head from his paws, stirring in response to the powerful emotion. Swallowing a sigh, he shoved his thoughts aside and tried to focus on the task at hand.

  Still, when Adam came into the kitchen a few minutes later, he was a welcome distraction. Adam had his laptop tucked under his arm and his glasses hooked on the neck of his T-shirt. A wide grin split his face, and Chris found himself smiling back even without knowing the reason behind it.

  “What’s up?” Chris asked.

  “I found them.” Adam plopped down on the bench beside Justin, who didn’t so much as glance up from his work.

  Chris, on the other hand, was more than happy to set his reading aside, which Adam knew full well. Otherwise, the submissive wolf would’ve at least hesitated to interrupt his Alpha. “Maria’s birth pack?”

  “Yup. Well, at least the pack that was in Cincinnati when she was born.” Adam set his laptop on the table and opened it up, fingers dancing over the keys.

  “That’s great,” Chris said.

  Figuring out where Maria had come from had become a priority once she accepted their offer of sanctuary. After all, it wasn’t every day a wolf was raised to believe all wolves—including her—were inherently evil and trained to hunt them. What was more, her supposed twin brother was completely human. It was quite a puzzle. Maria didn’t know much about her birth mother, just her first name. Meghan. It wasn’t much to go on. With their help, she’d requested a copy of her birth certificate from the county, but it hadn’t arrived yet.

  Adam grinned. “Wait until you hear the rest. They’re practically in our backyard.”

  “Really? Where?”

  Adam tapped a key and spun his laptop around, displaying a map with a pinpoint at the center. “Wenatchee.”

  The map was too zoomed in for Chris to get any idea of where exactly that was, and he’d never heard of it. “How far is that?”

  Adam leaned over the screen, somehow managing to manipulate the trackpad upside down without a hitch. He zoomed the map out while he spoke. “One hundred twenty miles, give or take. It’s on the other side of the mountains.”

  “Huh. That’s pretty close, yeah. Good job. Did you update the database?”

  “Not yet. I figured you’d want to make contact first, find out if it’s all the same people. You know how non-nuclear packs are.”

  Chris nodded. Packs that were brought together due to geography rather than blood didn’t always relocate together, and in order to update the database properly, they’d need to know which wolves were still with the pack and which had moved on. “But now that you mention it… what makes you think it’s the same pack?”

  “The Alpha is the last known Alpha of the Cincinnati pack. I still think it’s strange as hell that there are no wolves in Cincinnati right now. It’s a big city.”

  Chris shrugged. “There could be—they’re just not on our radar. The database isn’t infallible, but the fact it thought this group was still in Cincinnati is evidence enough. Anyway, thanks, Adam. This is great.” He stood from the table, but paused. “Don’t tell Maria just yet, okay? I want to talk to Joey first. We may want to feel these people out before we introduce her. I don’t want to get her hopes up.”

  “Sure thing, boss.” Adam saluted.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Chris told Justin, then headed off in search of his fiancée.

  He found her in the basement, taking out some frustration on a punching bag. The stairs creaked and groaned under him as he descended, announcing his arrival so he didn’t have to.

  Joey gave the bag a few more good whacks before pausing to look over her shoulder at him. “Looking for me?”

  “Yup. I’ve got good news.”

  Her features bore a skeptical slant, but she turned toward him, unfastened her gloves’ Velcro straps, and pulled them off. “I could use some good news. Hit me. So to speak.”

  Chris stopped at the edge of the mat and tucked his hands in his pockets. “Adam’s got a lead on the Cincinnati pack. Their Alpha, at least, resettled in a town not far from here, on the other side of the mountains. So I was thinking, a road trip sounds like just what the doctor ordered. We’ve got a week to kill. We can go check out this pack, maybe get a little closer to figuring out where Maria came from and how she ended up being raised by a hyper-religious nut job.”

  Joey’s eyes lit up at the mention of the pack, then dimmed a little. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “Uh, why wouldn’t it be? I mean, it’d be good for Maria to meet her people, and let’s face it… a little distraction would be great for us right now.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Joey said, smacking her gloves together absently. “I meant you leaving town while Lucas is obviously up to no good.”

  Chris smirked. “What, on a Friday?”

  “Touché. But you’ve got the Alpha meeting tonight. You can’t miss that.”

  She wasn’t wrong. Chris frowned and folded his arms. “So we go tomorrow.”

  “You know what I mean. It’s not just today.”

  “We can’t just sit on this. Maria’s pack now, and getting answers about her past might help her in the present.”

  “I know, babe. And I’m not suggesting we sit on it, but maybe we should… I dunno, delegate it or something.”

  “To whom, exactly? We have a bit of an alpha shortage in this pack. It won’t do us much good to send a beta wolf on a fact-finding mission into another pack’s territory. They’d be too easily influenced by local alphas.”

  “Never thought I’d miss Jessica,” Joey muttered, almost too quietly for Chris to hear.

  They hadn’t gotten so much as a postcard from her since she’d left town to ride with the Gray River pack.

  “What about Itsuo?” Joey asked.

  Chris shook his head. “Jenny’s got finals coming up, and he won’t go without her.” The old wolf was fiercely protective of his granddaughter. Overprotective, Chris thought at times. But he had his reasons, and Chris knew better than to try to get in the way. Itsuo submitted to his authority mostly out of respect for Chris’s birth father.

  Joey bit her lip and sighed. “I can’t go. I need to train. Why don’t you go after the Alpha meeting? I can hold down the fort.”

  Chris wanted to go. He really wanted to go. Nothing sounded better than getting the hell out of town for a couple of days, but he suspected Joey needed it way more than he did. His decision made, he toed off his shoes and stepped onto the mat. Crossing it, he stopped in front of her and grasped her shoulders. “Take Ben and Maria with you, so you can train while you’re gone.”

  “Eh…” She wrinkled her nose.

  He kissed the tip of her nose. “Come on, love. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for Maria.”

  Joey sighed and shook her head. “I’ll think about it, okay?”

  “That’s all I ask.” He smiled and squeezed her shoulders. “Want to show me some of your new moves?”

  She moved faster than he could think, swatting his hands from her shoulders. The next thing he knew, she had her legs around his neck and he was on the ground, blinking at the sudden turn of events.

  “No fair… I wasn’t ready!” he gasped out.

  She released the pressure with a throaty laugh. “That’s one thing Maria taught me. Don’t wait for your opponent to be ready.”

  Words to live by.

  4

  Joey’s conf
licted thoughts and emotions went with her into her post-workout shower. As the hot water sluiced over her body, she turned her face into the spray and swallowed a sigh. Did she want to go? Not really. The athlete in her saw any distraction from her training as inviting failure. If she lost focus now and lost the challenge as a result, she’d know that she hadn’t put as much into her training as she could have. Still, Ben said she was ready. Would a couple of days really make that big a difference? Or, better yet, was she willing to roll the dice and take the chance?

  Chris was right. She could take Ben and Maria with her to continue training while she was gone, but she knew those training sessions wouldn’t be the same as they would if she remained in town. For one, she might not be able to find a good spot to train with Ben in wolf form. Worst-case scenario, they could move the furniture around in the hotel room, but even then… that was hardly an optimal environment. Also, Ben wasn’t exactly Maria’s biggest fan. Though he hadn’t gone so far as to question Chris and Joey’s decision to offer Maria sanctuary outright, he made his opinion known in other ways, like avoiding coming to the house and referring to her as “the hunter.”

  The idea of being cooped up in a car with the two of them for a few hours didn’t sound like Joey’s idea of a good time, by any stretch. But she also had to admit that Chris was right about Maria being pack. Joey knew she had to balance her own needs and desires with what was best for the pack. That was what she’d agreed to when she’d become Chris’s second. Then again, they were also making assumptions about what Maria wanted and needed. Maybe it was time someone asked her.

  When she finished her shower, Joey went searching for Maria and found her in the master suite upstairs. There was no trace of the pack’s former Alpha remaining, thank goodness. Pausing on the threshold, Joey looked around the big room and smiled to herself. It’d undergone quite the transformation in the last few weeks, as Eric’s belongings and decor were moved out and Adam oversaw renovating it into a combination home theater and game room. A big television dominated one wall, with a mismatched array of recliners and bean bags in front of it. A pool table sat in the open area behind them, and there were a few arcade games scattered around the perimeter. Even the walls had been repainted, pale brown replacing steely gray.