Walking Wolf Road (Wolf Road Chronicles Book 1)

by Brandon M. Herbert

  Even standing back, I could read the words carved in the memorial plaque. ‘Morgan James Kendle, beloved husband and father, stolen too soon’. He’d died the year I was born—the year we were born, the year that made us both fatherless.

  It was not a similarity I had ever wished to share with someone. At least now I knew why ghosts scared him.

  I remembered the smiling man in the picture on Fen’s bookcase, and tried to imagine what it would be like to know that your father had died loving you. My first impulse said it was worse to be unloved and abandoned, but then I realized it was just easier to mourn something you never really had. To know you had the sweetness of the world and had it stolen away, life would taste all the more bitter in its passing.

  Fen didn’t speak as he stood and walked back toward me with a weak forced smile. I wrapped my arm around his shoulder and he leaned into me. The drive back was even more silent than before, and when we parked I was struck again by how much their home looked the house where I grew up in Idaho.

  Fen’s mother made us mugs of hot apple cider, and the smell was warm and comforting, like something you’d curl up with in a blanket and hibernate.

  “How did it happen?” I asked quietly as we sat down on Fen’s bed.

  “Hit and run. Police said it was probably a drunk driver, but they never found who did it. I was six months old, I… I just wish I could remember him.” he said and we lapsed into silence.

  “My father left us before I was even born. Just, vanished… We looked for years, but couldn’t find a trace of him, and Mom finally gave up when she met John.” I looked at him, “So you can believe me when I say I know how you feel; and I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged, but I couldn’t tell if he really meant it. “Thanks, but it’s alright. Nothing can change it, and I think it happened for a reason, just like everything that’s happened to you.”

  “Oh?” My cynicism flared, but I was curious nonetheless to hear what he had to say.

  “Our lives, the events and choices that shaped them; haven’t you ever wondered why everything happened the way it did? Why you ended up here of all places? She’d been sending me dreams of you for a long time…” It took me a moment to realize he meant Lupa. “Nothing substantial, nothing I could draw or describe, except that you would be a black wolf. ‘Marked by Brother Raven,’ she’d said. But as soon as I met you, I recognized your scent and your black hair. I knew you were the one.”

  I frowned, “I remember you saying something about that after you bit me. But… why’d she tell you I was coming? Did she do that with the others too?”

  “No.” At first, I thought he wasn’t going to continue, “She said, ‘Soon… he will come to you. He will bring strength and power into the Pack… once he overcomes himself, he will remind you all what it is to be Wolf. He will be marked by Brother Raven, and someday he—’” Fen faltered a moment, “‘He will protect the Pack,’” he concluded hastily.

  I wondered if that was what she’d really said, but I trusted Fen and pushed the doubt from my mind.

  “Just before school started I thought I caught a whiff of you on the wind. I’d been wrong before, so I didn’t get my hopes us too high; but then there you were. Right down the road from me too.” He smiled wryly, “Right on Wolf Road…” I laughed with him; it really was ironic.

  “What do you mean you’ve been wrong before?” I asked, curious about the odd reference.

  “I told you, she’d warned me you were coming for a long time, years actually. When she told me you were coming ‘soon’, I was stupid and thought of ‘soon’ in human terms, not in reference to an ancient spirit.” He winced, “I… made mistakes… I made assumptions, and I hurt someone I cared for very much, hurt them badly because I’d tried to second-guess her. And I lost them forever…” Fen wasn’t one for fidgeting, but he rubbed a hand up and down his forearm and didn’t look at me.

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Why’d you keep it all secret?” I asked softly.

  “You didn’t need to know,” was all he said, and something tickled at the back of my mind, clawing and scratching at the door, but I was afraid to open it. Still though, I had to know.

  “Who was it?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It was a long time before you came here.” Fen didn’t continue, and I didn’t press him. I saw the toll his memories took, he’d aged years before my eyes and shadows lined his face.

  “The night you bit me, I’d fallen asleep in the park after fighting with John.” I told him about the weird dream of the figure with the amber eyes, which had repeated a couple times in the months since.

  He laughed softly, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio—”

  “—than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” I finished for him and we smiled at each other. He sighed and glanced at his clock.

  “Come on, I’ll walk you home.” I nodded and we washed our mugs and pulled our jackets on. We stepped out the door and into the frigid night. Streetlights shut off as we passed under them, only to relight as soon as we passed; like we walked in our own pool of night.

  He laughed when another one turned off.

  “What’s so funny?” I tilted my head in confusion.

  “Our shifting energy trips out electronics. That’s why the lights keep turning off.”

  “Really? That sounds pretty far-fetched, even for us.”

  He gave me a look, “Then let’s let the scientific method decide, shall we?” He turned and looked behind us, one of the dark lights turned on he pointed at it. “Focus your shifting energy on that light.”

  It sounded ridiculous, but I tried anyway and imagined a cloud of that tingling heat stretch out like a hand. Fen’s forehead was lined with concentration and I blinked when the light clicked back off again.

  “Okay, stop,” Fen muttered and I relaxed. As soon as we did, the light clicked back on. We did it again, and I laughed and bowed to Fen, conceding the point. I remembered the streetlights shut off the night I saw the raven too, and in the locker room, and in the bathroom, and… well damnit…

  Condensation on the grass frosted into a brittle crust that crunched underfoot as we walked up to my porch.

  “Thank you for coming with me today Jimmy.” Fen hugged me, and I felt my face flush. I laughed it off and we said our goodnights and Fen turned to go home, but something wouldn’t let me walk inside yet. Fen glanced back and noticed me standing there.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You know… even if I don’t know this guy; I’m just curious to know his name.” I muttered.

  “What makes you think it was a guy?” Fen asked, suspicious.

  I shrugged, “I don’t know, just a feeling.”

  He sighed, and remained silent. He didn’t suspect anything from my reaction, which was good; I already knew the name I expected to hear so it didn’t surprise me. He just assumed the name meant nothing, and walked away. I whispered the name again when he was gone and felt a sliver of sadness curl inside me.

  “Corwin Corbeaux…”

  I soared over the ground in fluid motion and wove through trees and brush like a black wind. My heart pounded as I caught sight of my quarry running ahead, a flash of white fur sliced through the pitch of the obsidian forest. I grinned a toothy lupine smile and put on a little more speed.

  It took almost a week of calling to her as I fell asleep. I kept running into a dark wall every time I tried, shadowed and obscured, it writhed and barred my way with a terrifying dry hiss. Eventually though, I broke through and reached my destination. Lupa was always the one who drew me here, so I savored my accomplishment almost as much as the chase itself.

  We broke out of the trees and raced along the shore of the lake, eruptions of sand followed our paws. I drew a deep breath and surged forward and tackled her into the sand. We rolled over each other and splashed into the water, then stood up and shook ourselves. I shifted into my human form and she followed, like her image was tied to mine.

  She smiled
at me, “You’re growing stronger.”

  I smiled, “Thanks…” I forced myself to think past the warm feeling in my gut, and recall why I came here. “Um, I need to ask you a question.” She nodded, “Fen told me that you’d sent him dreams of me before he met me, but not any of the others. Why just me?”

  “Did Fen also tell you what I told him about you?” She lowered her head.

  “He said that I would ‘protect the Pack’. From what?”

  “Was that all he said?” Her smile wilted, and I nodded. “I trust Fen to tell you when he feels the time is right. I am not always aware of events in the Middle World, and Fen has been my liaison for many years. I trust that if he has not yet told you the rest, then he has a good reason.”

  I sank into the water and frowned, “So you trust Fen, but not me?” I hated the childish snap in my voice as soon as I heard it. I wanted to trust her faith in Fen… but I didn’t…

  “Why do you sound upset?” She tilted her head, her look of confusion genuine.

  “It just… it feels like you’re playing favorites. And you’re so cold about it, like you don’t even care.”

  “Ah, I understand. You need to remember that even though I can look like a human woman, I am Wolf through and through. I am not human, and I don’t think like one. It may seem ‘cold’ to you, but nature is indifferent. This—” she gestured at herself, “is nothing more than a costume…

  “However, I will tell you this…” She stood from the water and walked toward me as the stars and trees faded into a black void, leaving only the two of us. “In the end you will remind them all what it means to be Wolf. You will prove to them what a true spirit of the wild is.” She stopped and looked into my eyes, “Overcome yourself, my warrior wolf, and your path will make itself clear to you.”

  She pushed me lightly on the chest, and I was sucked back; falling, vertigo clutching at me—

  My body jerked violently when I thudded back into it and I threw myself out of bed, caught in my sheets. I gasped for breath and pressed my fingers into my eyes to try and ease the pounding ache in my skull. I’d never been forcefully ejected from that place, and I never wanted to experience that again.

  Why’d she push me out? Was she angry with me? I just wanted to know the full story. I wanted to trust Fen, wanted to believe that he just hadn’t been able to remember what she’d said verbatim. But doubt still nagged at the back of my mind like a bug I just couldn’t squash.

  I looked at my clock with despair and then put on some clothes and crawled upstairs to start a pot of coffee. I tried to be quiet, but Mom shuffled downstairs a few minutes later, yawning. I poured a mug of coffee and fixed it up for her.

  We sat there quietly; just the two of us, like we used to in Idaho back when I was a kid. Working at the hospital had hollowed her out almost every day, but she’d tried to make time for me every morning. We sat together and talked about anything, everything, and nothing at all, before she went to work and I went to school. But that was before John came into the picture…

  The memories made me think of Fen, and his father’s tombstone.

  “Hey Mom,” I said, hesitant, “would you mind telling me about my dad again?”

  She sighed and held her head, “Really Jimmy? After everything John’s done for you, you’re still hung up on him? I don’t know if I have the patience to deal with this so early today…”

  “Please, Mom…”

  She looked at me. Something in my voice must have gotten through to her. “Fine,” she sighed again, “I still don’t know if I can get there from here, but I’ll try…” Her eyes drifted around the room while she leaned back in her chair with both hands wrapped around her warm coffee mug.

  “Well, as you know, I met him in my junior year of high school. Taylor was kind of a bad boy. He was Coeur D’Alene Indian, artistic, and generally said ‘fuck you’ to the world.” She shrugged, “You know I didn’t really know him that well. All I really knew about him was that he fought with his dad a lot and he was dating a friend of mine at the time, Beth. One night, we were all at this party out in the woods before school started, getting totally wasted. Anyway, one thing led to another…” Her voice trailed off and see looked uncomfortable.

  “Beth was devastated,” she said, the guilt clear on her face, “I felt so horrible about it, so I figured that was why I felt sick all the time when school started. After a couple months though, I figured out what was really going on.

  “I kept it secret as long as I could, I didn’t know what to do. I was so scared. I don’t really know what I expected when I told Taylor that I was pregnant. I won’t tell you the things he called me before he stormed out, but I’m sure you can imagine the general theme.” She cleared her throat and took a sip of coffee, “I figured giving him time was a good idea, but a couple days later his father knocked on my door. When Taylor found out that his dad came to see me, the two of them had a huge blowout and Taylor skipped town that night.”

  “You’ve never talked much about my grandfather. What was he like?”

  She laughed, “I find that hard to believe Jimmy, are you sure you didn’t just forget?”

  “I’m pretty sure,” I said and rolled me eyes, “tell me more about Taylor’s dad.”

  “Well, the man was gruff, kind of a grizzled cynical Korean War Vet. At first impression, he was about as cuddly as sandpaper, but underneath that, he was kind of… fuzzy.”

  “Fuzzy?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, he was fuzzy, like a teddy bear; he always wanted me to call him Papa ‘Wrench.” She smiled, but it wilted fast, “as you know, I grew up alone; my parents were never there. The most attention they ever gave me was when I got pregnant and they kicked me out. Papa ‘Wrench was a loner, like me. He took me in, gave me a home, kept me fed, and made me stay in school. Even before you were born, you meant the world to him. He took care of you while I was in school.”

  I frowned, “That’s so weird, I don’t remember him at all. What happened?”

  She looked down at her mug, “He died of a heart attack a couple months after you were born. He didn’t have a lot, but left what he had to me, and that was how I paid the deposit on the house we rented.”

  Something inside me seemed to really want me to hurt, so I finally asked a question that had been in the back of my mind for years. “Do you wish you’d had an abortion?”

  She shook her head, “Jimmy, I love you so much. Please don’t twist things around. I don’t regret having you, but I know it wasn’t a fair situation for either of us. I was still a kid, Jimmy! I wasn’t ready to be a parent emotionally or financially; and at first it was hard for me to put your happiness ahead of my own. While everyone I knew was going out and having fun and being young, I had to stay home taking care of an infant. And then you had to sit in daycare all day while I worked and went to classes to get my RN. I winged it your entire childhood until John came along.”

  As if on cue, the floorboard creaked on the stairs, and I realized John was listening to us. I didn’t know how long he’d been there. I looked at the clock, and realized it was almost time for Jake to get up. I wolfed down a bowl of cereal while I packed lunches for Jake and myself.

  I walked Jake to school, and shuffled the rest of the way to the high school yawning. The late night, busy dreams, and too-early morning made me feel thoroughly zombified. It was the last day of school before Thanksgiving break, and some of the teachers seemed as excited as we were. Others were not so merciful though, and gave us assignments to complete over the break. In Myths and Legends, Mrs. Coulter drew names out of a hat to pair us up for our assignment. I didn’t even try to mask my displeasure when Loki was matched up with Garrison from Yearbook, but I forgot about it when my name was drawn.

  “Jimmy Walker and—Bo Tyrson!”

  Shit.

  I didn’t want to, but I picked up my bag anyway and moved to an open desk near Bo and we turned them to face each other. Mrs. Coulter wrote our pairings on the board while
she explained the project.

  “Your assignment is to research and present a specific Greek myth or deity. Discuss your selection with your partner and then raise your hand and I’ll write you down, but every group has to pick something different.”

  “So, uh…” I started uncomfortably, “who would you like to do it on?”

  His deep voice was quiet and rather soft. “I don’t care; whatever.”

  “Great, I have no idea either.” I thought for a minute, and saw Loki raise her hand out of the corner of my eye when an idea came to me. “What about Apollo?”

  “Sure, why not,” he mumbled, and I turned to raise my hand. Then promptly dropped it as I watched Mrs. Coulter finish writing in ‘Apollo’ next to Loki and Garrison’s names. She pointed at me, “Yes Jimmy, what would you like to do?”

  “Never mind, we were going to take Apollo, but I guess not…” I glared playfully at Loki and her acnefied partner, and she stuck her tongue out in kind. I turned back to Bo, “I guess just look through the book and see if anything jumps out.” He nodded and opened his text as I pulled mine out of my bag and flipped through, skimming over the bold section headers.

  “Zeus?” he muttered so quietly I almost didn’t hear him.

  “Sure, okay.” I nodded and Bo started to raise his hand.

  He didn’t even make it halfway before muttering “Dammit” and dropping his hand. I turned and saw ‘Zeus’ next to Lacey and Gabe’s names.

  Our luck held for the rest of the class, but despite the constant irritation, I noticed how—different—Bo was… He was so quiet, so studious… The difference was startling; he didn’t act anything like Jack and Malcolm. Instead of bold and boisterous, he showed a quiet thoughtfulness that I hadn’t even thought he could have. I’d never been close enough to realize that his eyes were a glacial blue in stark contrast to his tan face. They were quick and sharp; probably just as suited to skimming a book as observing an opponent’s moves in football.

  He seemed to notice me watching him, and looked up; “What?”