Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson

by Patricia Briggs

  “We were the ugly, barbarian cousins, you see.” He laughed. “Ironically, the white trappers misunderstood the name. We were infamous for a long time for a practice we didn’t follow. So the white men, like our cousins, thought we were barbarians.”

  “You said your mother was Salish,” she said. “Is the Marrok Native American?”

  He shook his head. “Father is a Welshman. He came over and hunted furs in the days of the fur trappers and stayed because he fell in love with the scent of pine and snow.” His father put it just that way. Charles found himself smiling again, a real smile this time, and felt her relax further—and his face didn’t hurt at all. He’d have to call his brother, Samuel, and tell him that he’d finally learned that his face wouldn’t crack if he smiled. All it had taken to teach him was an Omega werewolf.

  She turned into an alley and pulled into a small parking lot behind one of the ubiquitous four-story brick apartment buildings that filled the older suburbs of this part of town.

  “Which city are we in?” he asked.

  “Oak Park,” she said. “Home of Frank Lloyd Wright, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Scorci’s.”

  “Scorci’s?”

  She nodded her head and hopped out of the car. “The best Italian restaurant in Chicago and my current place of employment.”

  Ah. That’s why she smelled of garlic.

  “So your opinion is unbiased?” He slid out of the car with a feeling of relief. His brother made fun of his dislike of cars since even a bad accident was unlikely to kill him. But Charles wasn’t worried about dying—it was just that cars went too fast. He couldn’t get a feel for the land they passed through. And if he felt like dozing a bit as he traveled, they couldn’t follow the trail on their own. He preferred horses.

  After he got his suitcase out of the back, Anna locked the car with the key fob. The car honked once, making him jump, and he gave it an irritated look. When he turned back, Anna was staring hard at the ground.

  The anger that being in her presence had dissipated surged back full force at the strength of her fear. Someone had really done a number on her.

  “Sorry,” she whispered. If she’d been in wolf form, she’d have been cowering with her tail tucked beneath her.

  “For what?” he asked, unable to banish the rage that sent his voice down an octave. “Because I’m jumpy around cars? Not your fault.”

  He was going to have to be careful this time, he realized as he tried to pull the wolf back under control. Usually when his father sent him out to deal with trouble, he could do it coldly. But with a damaged Omega wolf around, one that he found himself responding to on several different levels, he was going to have to hold tight to his temper.

  “Anna,” he said, fully in control again. “I am my father’s hit man. It is my job as his second. But that doesn’t mean that I take pleasure in it. I am not going to hurt you, my word on it.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, clearly not believing him.

  He reminded himself that a man’s word didn’t count for much in this modern day. It helped his control that he scented as much anger on her as fear—she hadn’t been completely broken.

  He decided that further attempts to reassure her were likely to do the opposite. She would have to learn to accept that he was a man of his word. In the meantime he would give her something to think about.

  “Besides,” he told her gently, “my wolf is more interested in courting you than in asserting his dominance.”

  He walked past her before he smiled at the way her fear and anger had disappeared, replaced by shock . . . and something that might have been the beginning of interest.

  She had keys to the outer door of the building and led the way through the entry and up the stairs without looking at him at all. By the second flight her scent had dulled of every emotion besides weariness.

  She was visibly dragging as she climbed the stairs to the top floor. Her hand shook as she tried to get her key into the dead bolt of one of the two doors at the top. She needed to eat more. Werewolves shouldn’t let themselves get so thin—it could be dangerous to those around them.

  • • •

  He was an executioner, he said, sent by his father to settle problems among the werewolves. He must be even more dangerous than Leo to have survived doing that job. She could feel how dominant he was, and she knew what dominants were like. She had to stay alert, ready for any aggressive moves he might make—ready to handle the pain and the panic so she didn’t run and make him worse.

  So why was it that the longer he was around, the safer he made her feel?

  He followed her up all four flights of stairs without a word, and she refused to apologize again for her apartment. He’d invited himself, after all. It was his own fault that he’d end up sleeping on a twin-sized futon instead of a nice hotel bed. She didn’t know what to feed him—hopefully he’d eaten while he traveled. Tomorrow she’d run out and get something; she had the check from Scorci’s on her fridge, awaiting deposit in the bank.

  There had once been a pair of two-bedroom apartments on her floor, but in the seventies someone had reapportioned the fourth floor into a three-bedroom and her studio.

  Her home looked shabby and empty, with no more furniture than her futon, a card table, and a pair of folding chairs. Only the polished oak floor gave it any appeal.

  She glanced at him as he walked through the doorway behind her, but his face revealed very little he didn’t want it to. She couldn’t see what he thought, though she imagined his eyes lingered a little on the futon that worked fine for her, but was going to be much too small for him.

  “The bathroom’s through that door,” she told him unnecessarily, as the door stood open and the bathtub was clearly visible.

  He nodded, watching her with eyes that were opaque in the dim illumination of her overhead light. “Do you have to work tomorrow?” he asked.

  “No. Not until Saturday.”

  “Good. We can talk in the morning, then.” He took his small suitcase with him into the bathroom.

  She tried not to listen to the unfamiliar sounds of someone else getting ready for bed as she rummaged in her closet for the old blanket she kept in it, wishing again for a nice cheap carpet instead of the gleaming hardwood floor that was pretty to look at, but cold on bare feet and sure to be hard on her backside when she tried to sleep.

  The door opened while she was kneeling on the floor, folding the blanket into a makeshift mattress as far as she could from where he would be sleeping. “You can take the bed,” she began as she turned around and found herself at eye level with a large reddish-brown werewolf.

  He wagged his tail and smiled at her obvious surprise before brushing past her and curling up on the blanket. He wiggled a bit and then put his head down on his forepaws and closed his eyes, to all appearances dropping off immediately to sleep. She knew better, but he didn’t stir as she went into the bathroom herself or when she came out dressed in her warmest pair of sweats.

  She wouldn’t have been able to sleep with a man in her apartment, but somehow, the wolf was less threatening. This wolf was less threatening. She bolted the door, turned out the light, and crawled into bed feeling safer than she had since the night she’d found out that there were monsters in the world.

  • • •

  The footsteps on the stairs the next morning didn’t bother her at first. The family who lived across from her was in and out at all times of the day or night. She pulled the pillow over her head to block the noise out, but then Anna realized the brisk, no-nonsense tread belonged to Kara—and that she had a werewolf in her apartment. She sat bolt upright and looked at Charles.

  The wolf was more beautiful in the daylight than he had been at night, his fur really red, she saw, set off by black on his legs and paws. He raised his head when she sat up and got to his feet when she did.

  She put a finger to h
er lips as Kara knocked sharply on the door.

  “Anna, you in there, girl? Did you know that someone is parked in your spot again? Do you want me to call the tow truck or do you have a man in there for once?”

  Kara wouldn’t just go away.

  “I’m here, just a minute.” She looked around frantically, but there was nowhere to hide a werewolf. He wouldn’t fit in the closet, and if she closed the bathroom door, Kara would want to know why—just as she’d demand to know why Anna suddenly had a dog the size of an Irish wolfhound and not nearly as friendly looking in her living room.

  She gave Charles one last frantic look and then hurried over to the door as he trotted off to the bathroom. She heard it click shut behind him as she unbolted the door.

  “I’m back,” said Kara breezily as she came in, setting a pair of bags down on the table. Her dark-as-night skin looked richer than usual for her week of tropical sun. “I stopped on the way home and bought some breakfast for us. You don’t eat enough to keep a mouse alive.”

  Her gaze caught on the closed bathroom door. “You do have someone here.” She smiled, but her eyes were wary. Kara had made no secret of the fact that she didn’t like Justin, who Anna had explained away, truthfully enough, as an old boyfriend.

  “Mmm.” Anna was miserably aware that Kara wouldn’t leave until she saw who was in the bathroom. For some reason Kara had taken Anna under her wing the very first day she’d moved in, shortly after she’d been Changed.

  Just then, Charles opened the bathroom door and stepped just through the doorway. “Do you have a rubber band, Anna?”

  He was fully dressed and human, but Anna knew that was impossible. It had been less than five minutes since he’d gone into the bathroom, and a werewolf took a lot longer than that to change back to human form.

  She cast a frantic glance at Kara—but her neighbor was too busy staring at the man in the bathroom doorway to take note of Anna’s shock.

  Kara’s rapt gaze made Anna take a second look as well; she had to admit that Charles, his blue-black hair hanging free to his waist in a thick sheet that made him look strangely naked despite his perfectly respectable flannel shirt and jeans, was worth staring at. He gave Kara a small smile before turning his attention back to Anna.

  “I seem to have misplaced my hair band. Do you have another one?”

  She gave him a jerky nod and brushed past him into the bathroom. How had he changed so fast? She could hardly ask him how he’d done it with Kara in the room, however.

  He smelled good. Even after three years it was disconcerting to notice such things about people. Usually she tried to ignore what her nose told her—but she had to force herself not to stop and take a deep lungful of his rich scent.

  “And just who are you?” Anna heard Kara ask suspiciously.

  “Charles Cornick.” She couldn’t tell by the sound of his voice whether he was bothered by Kara’s unfriendliness or not. “You are?”

  “This is Kara, my downstairs neighbor,” Anna told him, handing him a hair band as she slipped by him and back into the main room. “Sorry, I should have introduced you. Kara, meet Charles Cornick, who is visiting from Montana. Charles, meet Kara Mosley, my downstairs neighbor. Now shake and be nice.”

  She’d meant the admonition for Kara, who could be acerbic if she took a dislike to someone—but Charles raised an eyebrow at her before he turned back to Kara and offered a long-fingered hand.

  “From Montana?” asked Kara as she took his hand and shook it firmly once.

  He nodded and began French-braiding his hair with quick, practiced motions. “My father sent me out here because he’d heard there was a man giving Anna a bad time.”

  And with that one statement, Anna knew, he won Kara over completely.

  “Justin? You’re gonna take care of that rat bastard?” She gave Charles an appraising look. “Now, you’re in good shape, don’t get me wrong—but Justin is a bad piece of business. I lived in Cabrini-Green until my mama got smart and married her a good man. Those projects, though, they grew a certain sort of predator—the kind that loves violence for its own sake. That Justin, he has dead eyes—sent me back twenty years the first time I saw him. He’s hurt people before and liked it. You’re not going to frighten him off with just a warning.”

  The corner of Charles’s lip turned up and his eyes warmed, changing his appearance entirely. “Thank you for the heads-up,” he told her.

  Kara gave him a regal nod. “If I know Anna, there’s not an ounce of food to be found in the whole apartment. You need to feed that girl up. There’s bagels and cream cheese in those bags on the table—and no, I don’t mean to stay. I’ve got a week’s worth of work waiting on me, but I couldn’t go without knowing that Anna would eat something.”

  “I’ll see that she does,” Charles told her, the small smile still on his face.

  Kara reached way up and patted his cheek in a motherly gesture. “Thank you.” She gave Anna a quick hug and pulled an envelope out of her pocket and set it on the table next to the bagels. “You take this for watching the cat so I don’t have to take him to the kennels with all those dogs he hates and pay them four times this amount. I find it in my cookie jar again, and I’ll take him to the kennels just for spite because it will make you feel guilty.”

  Then she was gone.

  Anna waited until the sound of her footsteps reached the next landing, then said, “How did you change so fast?”

  “Do you want garlic or blueberry?” Charles asked, opening the bag.

  When she didn’t answer his question, he put both hands on the table and sighed. “You mean you haven’t heard the story of the Marrok and his Indian maiden?” She couldn’t read his voice, and his face was tilted away from her so she couldn’t read that, either.

  “No,” she said.

  He gave a short laugh, though she didn’t think there was any humor behind it. “My mother was beautiful, and it saved her life. She’d been out gathering herbs and surprised a moose. It ran over her and she was dying from it when my father, attracted by the noise, came upon her. He saved my mother’s life by turning her into a werewolf.”

  He took out the bagels and set them on the table with napkins. He sat down and waved her to the other seat. “Start eating and I’ll tell you the rest of the story.”

  He’d given her the blueberry one. She sat opposite him and took a bite.

  He gave a satisfied nod and then continued. “It was one of those love at first sight things on both their parts, apparently. Must have been looks, because neither one of them could speak the other’s language at first. All was well until she became pregnant. My mother’s father was a person of magic and he helped her when she told him that she needed to stay human until I was born. So every month, when my father and brother hunted under the moon, she stayed human. And every moon she grew weaker and weaker. My father argued with her and with her father, worried that she was killing herself.”

  “Why did she do that?” Anna asked.

  Charles frowned at her. “How long have you been a werewolf?”

  “Three years last August.”

  “Werewolf women can’t have children,” he said. “The change is too hard on the fetus. They miscarry in the third or fourth month.”

  Anna stared at him. No one had ever told her that.

  “Are you all right?”

  She didn’t know how to answer him. She hadn’t exactly been planning on having children—especially as weird as her life had been for the last few years. She just hadn’t planned on not having children, either.

  “This should have been explained to you before you chose to Change,” he said.

  It was her turn to laugh. “No one explained anything. No, it’s all right. Please tell me the rest of your story.”

  He watched her for a long moment, then gave her an oddly solemn nod. “Despite my father’s protest
s, she held out until my birth. Weakened by the magic of fighting the moon’s call, she did not survive it. I was born a werewolf, not Changed as all the rest are. It gives me a few extra abilities—like being able to change fast.”

  “That would be nice,” she said with feeling.

  “It still hurts,” he added.

  She played with a piece of bagel. “Are you going to look for the missing boy?”

  His mouth tightened. “No. We know where Alan Frazier is.”

  Something in his voice told her. “He’s dead?”

  He nodded. “There are some good people looking into his death, they’ll find out who is responsible. He was Changed without his consent, the girl who was with him was killed. Then he was sold to be used as a laboratory guinea pig. The person responsible will pay for their crimes.”

  She started to ask him something more, but the door to her apartment flew open and hit the wall behind it, leaving Justin standing in the open doorway.

  She’d been so intent on Charles, she hadn’t heard Justin coming up the stairs. She’d forgotten to lock her door after Kara left. Not that it would have done her much good. Justin had a key to her apartment.

  She couldn’t help her flinch as he strode through the door as if he owned the place. “Payday,” he said. “You owe me a check.” He looked at Charles. “Time for you to go. The lady and I have some business.”

  Anna couldn’t believe that even Justin would take that tone with Charles. She looked at him to gauge his reaction and saw why Justin had put his foot in it.

  Charles was fussing with his plate, his eyes on his hands. All his awesome force of personality was bottled up and stuffed somewhere it didn’t show.

  “I don’t think I’d better go,” he murmured, still looking down. “She might need my help.”

  Justin’s lip curled. “Where’d you pick this one up, bitch? Wait until I let Leo know you’ve found a stray and haven’t told him about it.” He crossed the room and took a handful of her hair. He used it to force her to her feet and up against the wall, shoving her with a hip in a gesture that was both sexual and violent. He leaned his face into hers. “Just you wait. Maybe he’ll decide to let me punish you again. I’d like that.”