Tales of the Winter Wolf, Vol. 1

by R. J. Blain

  “Shut up, Richard.”

  Because the drugs forced me to, I obeyed him, seething as I did.

  “I bought it from your supplier. I told him you had wanted it for a wolf. The wolfsbane was easy. I picked it,” she whispered.

  “Picked it where?”

  She looked at her feet and pointed in the general direction of the backyard. What little I could feel from my wolf was pure delight at her scheming.

  “You were growing wolfsbane in my yard?” he boomed.

  While she didn’t dare lift her gaze from the floor, she tensed, her hands balling into fists. She waited just long enough to make her father growl before shaking her head. “I found it in the woods.”

  “Unbelievable. And you used this on Richard why?”

  “The snake didn’t work and neither did the knife!” she wailed.

  “The what and the what didn’t work?” Wendy screeched from upstairs.

  My wolf once again rejoiced in the effort Nicolina Desmond had expended in her attempts to rid the Earth of us.

  “I left a snake in his shoes,” she whispered.

  “In his shoes,” Desmond echoed, his tone of stunned disbelief. Then he started laughing, sinking down beside me to pat my shoulder. “After he spent a sleepless night driving all over Seattle and the surrounding mountains for your sake, you put a snake in his shoes?”

  “What kind of snake?” Wendy asked suspiciously.

  “A rattler,” Nicolina replied, lifting her chin just a little.

  Desmond laughed harder. “Well, that wasn’t going to do much to him, at least. Maybe if it had bitten him five or six times. What else did you do?”

  “I hung a silver knife over his door,” she whispered.

  “Well, he obviously escaped that as well. Is there any reason you’re determined to inflict injury on our house guest? Where did you get a rattlesnake this time of year on such short notice?”

  “I bought it,” she replied, sniffing daintily. “I had them deliver it to the end of the driveway. I didn’t leave the property.”

  “You ordered a rattlesnake just so you could leave it in Richard’s shoes? And where is the snake now?”

  Nicolina grumbled something under her breath.

  “I couldn’t hear you, dear,” Desmond said, and I bristled at the amusement in his voice.

  “He killed it and left it on my pillow, okay?”

  “He left it on your pillow? Richard Murphy, you are an adult. I expected better from you,” Wendy scolded. I got a glimpse of her leaning over the rail. She winked at me.

  “I’d say he was simply giving her a lovely gift. Rattlesnake this time of year is hard to acquire. A delicacy. Did you cook it?” Desmond teased.

  It was a good thing I was a wolf, otherwise I would have giggled.

  “I didn’t! That’s disgusting.”

  “So where is the knife?” Desmond demanded.

  “I’m not sure. He didn’t give it back.”

  Desmond narrowed his eyes at me. “Did you give it back?”

  I bobbed my head obediently.

  “Does this have anything to do with your lack of shoes?”

  Once again, the Ketamine and wolfsbane conspired to make me nod.

  “And would these items somehow be laying in wait for my daughter in some fashion?”

  Heaving a sigh, I nodded.

  “So, let me get this straight. You have been pranking Mr. Murphy, and he, in his infinite wisdom, answered by antagonizing you? Of course he did. He’s a wolf, and wolves love games.” Desmond shook his head, digging his fingers into my fur. He found another piece of glass with his finger and cursed, sucking at the cut. “Wendy, do you have any fine-toothed combs?”

  “I’ll find one,” she replied.

  “Nicolina, I taught you better than that. Help your mother find combs. Since you got him into this situation in the first place, it’s your job to make sure every last speck of glass is out of his fur. Do you understand?” She nodded, backing away until she bumped into the staircase before fleeing.

  The doorbell rang and Desmond got up to answer it. I considered lifting my head, but drew several deep breaths.

  Anxiety strengthened scents, letting me recognize Frank immediately.

  “What happened?” Frank demanded, and it impressed me that he was able to face off with Desmond in anything other than a whisper without calling on the pack bond and yanking the strength out of me to do it, not that I had any left to give him.

  “One of your wolves, Luke, decided to try a run at him. My daughter didn’t like it, so she shot him,” Desmond replied, stepping aside to let Frank in. Sanders followed in his wake.

  Frank whined. “Where’s Richard?”

  While Desmond didn’t say anything, Frank appeared in the living room, sidestepped Luke’s body, and hurried to me. He spat curses, looking down at me before easing onto the floor next to me. He lifted my head and situated me on his lap. I closed my eyes and sighed. While exhaustion had effectively closed down my link to the pack, with him touching me, I could feel him.

  He was anxious, but he was otherwise fine.

  “You look like you’ve been through a war,” Frank murmured, picking another shard out of my fur. “Was he thrown through the window or did he go through it on his own?”

  “Neither; Luke came through the window at him from behind so he took the brunt of it.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Indeed,” Desmond agreed. “Sorry for the short notice, Sanders.”

  “No problem, Desmond. Can’t you keep him out of trouble even for a few days?”

  Desmond laughed. “Ask me again in a few days. Oh, Frank. That reminds me. I dressed down Richard’s brother and informed him that I would return Richard when I felt like it. Once you’re satisfied, be a good boy and fly on home and reassure them he’s safe and sound.”

  “He closed down the pack bond,” Frank said hesitantly, picking out another piece of glass from my fur.

  “Don’t worry about it, he’ll restore it once he rested. He probably shut it down when Luke was shot. Did you…?” Desmond prodded Luke’s body with his foot.

  “No.”

  “Then leave him alone. When he’s ready, he’ll open the pack bonds. Give it a few days to let the edge wear off. Go home and keep your pack under control,” Desmond ordered.

  “What about Luke?”

  “He attacked Richard. I’ll deal with the corpse. Let’s get your Alpha upstairs and settled. We’ll take care of the details after.”

  I spent the next three days with Desmond. When I was awake, he hovered. When I was asleep, I’m pretty sure he lurked somewhere nearby. To add insult to injury, he insisted I sleep at his feet on his bed, and because of the wolfsbane and Ketamine, I couldn’t fight him.

  It took that long for me to recuperate enough to make the change back to human. When I grabbed the folded pile of my clothes in my teeth and stared in resignation at the bathroom, Desmond sighed.

  “Will you need help with it?”

  I put my ears back and thought dark thoughts, storming my way into the bathroom.

  I was aware of him hovering outside of the door, just in case.

  The transformation from wolf to human was far worse than the transition from human to wolf. My body resisted the change, desiring the wildness of my birth form. It hurt like hell, and I clenched my teeth so I wouldn’t scream.

  It lasted far longer than it should have, and when I was finished, I curled on the tiled floor, gasping for breath. Normally, transforming was a painful but tidy affair, but due to how long it took me to shift forms, I suffered through a bloody nose. Desmond let himself in, pressing his fingers to my throat to check my pulse. “Fifty minutes,” he announced. “Stay here,” he ordered.

  I growled, and since I was tired of obeying his demands, I got dressed, bending over the sink to run cold water over my head and clean up the mess. While it helped lower the fever induced by the long change, it left me shivering. I was toweling my hair when Desm
ond made his appearance, a bottle of whisky in one hand and the Ketamine in the other.

  “Pick,” he ordered.

  The whisky was the cheap stuff, the type I kept around for disinfecting injuries rather than drinking. I grabbed it, muttering curses at him. He grinned at me, gesturing for me to get out of his bathroom. I left the bottle on his dresser. “Neither,” I growled, and my voice sounded more like a wolf’s than a man’s.

  With Desmond following in my wake, I hunted down my phone, which was on the kitchen counter. When I grabbed it, the pop-bang of firecrackers startled me into dropping it, my heart in my throat. The innocent-looking poppers scattered over the granite. Somewhere nearby, I heard Nicolina laugh.

  My wolf was pleased.

  Desmond chuckled. “Beats snakes, silver daggers, and drugs,” he said, going to work cleaning up the mess.

  I scowled, wondering how I was going to survive my stay with the Desmonds.

  Glitter

  Richard Murphy has many sides, and Nicolina Desmond is dismayed to discover that he truly has the patience of a hunting wolf and his pranks are just as nefarious as hers. When the bodies of Fenerec turn up in her back yard, however, she might have to kill again, and her target is none other than Yellowknife’s injured Alpha.

  Glitter is a companion story, overlapping and following Firecracker.

  I was thoroughly sick and tired of combing glass out of Richard Murphy’s fur. Every morning and evening for three days, my father made an appearance at my door, holding out a comb and a brush. I sat on the edge of my parents’ bed, picking through clumps of matted silvered fur.

  I combed out a lot more than glass. Bathing the Fenerec wasn’t an option; my proposal to dump him in the tub was met with a disapproving scowl.

  Without the help of the shower, blood-matted fur was a living nightmare to groom. Father had warned me over and over against going anywhere near an injured Fenerec. Maybe that only applied to wolves who were conscious? Yet there I was, seated beside Richard, wondering when he would decide to roll over and rip my hands off for handling him so roughly out of necessity.

  Throughout my attempts to brush out his fur, which involved a great deal of yanking and pulling, Richard Murphy didn’t move. He didn’t even whine. Once, he cracked open his eyes, but instead of the wolf-yellow gleam I had come to expect from an angry werewolf, his were dark and glassy. That worried my mother and father; they stood constant watch, one of them always upstairs with him and me while the other prowled the ground floor.

  Several times, my father left the house, returning later with wild eyes and wearing different clothes. I knew better than to ask. My sister was smart; she made herself scarce, careful to disappear whenever my mother and father were agitated.

  I wasn’t so lucky. I took the ultimate blame for the broken window, the trashed furniture, and the bloodstained carpeting. It was my job, when I wasn’t studying, to make myself useful and resolve the problem, seeing as I had too much time on my hands. Since I had managed to buy a rattler in winter, was reckless enough to abuse my father’s contacts, and had otherwise proved I was resourceful, it fell to me to handle—and pay for—all of the repairs.

  The only people my parents let anywhere near the house were the repairmen, each one selected from a list my father provided. Inquisitors also came to deal with the dead wolf’s body—at least, I assumed they were Inquisitors. I recognized one of the Fenerec they’d brought in as one of my father’s associates.

  The other had shown up twice, taking a keen interest in Richard Murphy, which my father didn’t like it. He was driven off with snarls and threats before I could learn who he was and why he wanted to be close to the unconscious Alpha.

  While I was pissed Richard had shown up, matching so well with my twin, I hadn’t wanted to actually kill him. Misery over an extended period of time had been my goal. I had deserved my father’s wrath; he would’ve trounced me, but I doubted he would have actually hurt me, not that Richard had any way of knowing that.

  The last thing I had expected was for Richard Murphy to challenge my father over it, going so far as to bite his arm.

  It hadn’t been a fair fight. It hadn’t been much of a fight at all. If the strange wolf hadn’t broken through the window, Richard would have died, and it would have been my fault. Maybe I didn’t like him, maybe I wanted to see him suffer, maybe I enjoyed catching him off guard, tormenting for even thinking at looking at my sister, but I didn’t want him to die.

  To make matters worse, neither Mother or Father were talking about it. They simply hovered around our Fenerec guest, growled whenever we got too close without permission, and waited. I started to worry by the end of the second day.

  Hungry Fenerec were dangerous, and Richard hadn’t eaten a thing, either refusing my father’s offerings outright, or sleeping through any attempts to feed him.

  On the fourth morning, my father didn’t show up with the comb, and I made my escape to the kitchen while I could, only to discover my parents with a yawning, glazed-eyed Richard, his sopping hair dripping all over his silk shirt. I ducked out of sight to watch from the living room.

  They weren’t talking, and in a half-asleep daze, Richard headed to the counter, reaching for his phone.

  I had forgotten about the firecrackers, which went off as soon as he picked it up, set off by a miniature mouse trap I had affixed to the bottom of his phone. At the crack-pop, the Fenerec jumped, dropping the phone, and for a brief moment, the wolf-yellow gleam returned to his eyes before fading back to brown.

  I backed away, clapping my hands over my mouth so I wouldn’t laugh. It didn’t stop my mirth from bubbling out of me. I made a run for it, making it halfway up the stairs before my father recovered enough to bellow my name.

  That afternoon, my father and mother relaxed enough to leave the house without our Fenerec guest. I was too relieved to be away from home to do more than sigh at my father’s ridiculous enjoyment of the zoo.

  When we returned, Richard Murphy was nowhere to be seen. The house was quiet, just as we had left it, with the alarm system engaged. My father frowned, sniffing at the air, his eyes yellowing.

  My mother was trying not to smile. When I glared at her, she shrugged.

  “I could have told you this would happen,” my mother murmured, taking off her jacket and draping it across the new chair in the living room. I had done a good job. The only sign that remained of the fight was a cracked tile near the kitchen and the presence of new carpet and furniture.

  My father grumbled, baring his teeth at my mother, who lowered her eyes but smiled. “Find him,” he ordered, pointing at me.

  “Me?” I blurted. “What do I have to do with this? I’m not his zookeeper, you are.”

  That wasn’t the right answer. My father growled, stepped to me, and lifted my chin with his finger so I was forced to look him in the eyes. “You and I will hunt him. Your mother and sister will make dinner.”

  Arguing with my father was a good way to stir his ire. “Yes, sir,” I whispered.

  He let me go. “Start upstairs. If he went back to being a wolf, he’ll probably have picked somewhere dark and confined to hole up in.”

  “He’s not a cat,” I grumbled, heading for the staircase. Where could a wolf the size of a pony hide in our house?

  Apparently, there were a lot of places he could hide. I found his shoes in my closet, along with my knife and a pair of the rankest socks I’d ever had the misfortune of smelling. My dismayed cry brought my father at a run, who stared at me with an arched brow.

  “So that’s where he stashed his shoes. In your closet?” he shook his head, laughed, and once I had removed the knife, he claimed Richard’s oxfords. He narrowed his eyes at my blade. “I don’t know where you got that, but you may keep it under one condition.”

  I held my breath and waited. When he didn’t speak, I was careful to keep my gaze fixed to the floor. “What condition, sir?” I asked.

  “You do not stab me, your mother, or Richard with
it. If another Fenerec even thinks of touching you, you shove it in his eye and twist the blade around for a while. Make sure he’s dead,” he snarled, brushing his fingers against my bruised throat before stalking out of my room.

  We didn’t find Richard Murphy in the house, pausing in our search long enough to eat dinner. When both my father and I had checked every room and even ventured into the basement, there was no sign of our Fenerec house guest, not even a single gleam of his silvered fur. His clothes were still in his room, his Porsche was still parked in our driveway, and his keys were on the counter next to his phone.

  “Where could he have gone?” My father flexed his hands and paced in the kitchen until my mother drove him out with a swat of her slotted spoon.

  “Did you check to see if he disabled and rearmed the alarm?” my mother asked, leaning against the counter.

  Lisa glanced at me, grinning over something. I slid my way around the table to join her, whispering, “What’s so funny?”

  “Look at Dad. He’s totally having his tail yanked.”

  I scowled, watching our father with interest. He was going to pace a trench in the tiles at the way he was going. “So?”

  “Dad hates losing,” Lisa replied, smirking. “It’s been two hours, and Mr. Murphy has given him the slip.”

  “Lisa,” my father chided, pausing to glare at us.

  “It’s true,” my sister mumbled, lowering her eyes to the table.

  “It may be true, but that doesn’t mean you have to say it,” he complained.

  By my father’s admission, the round went to Richard.

  “I’ll check the alarm,” he snarled, prowling in the direction of his office on the other end of the house.

  “Ten bucks says he slipped outside,” my mother said once our father was out of hearing range.

  “Fool’s bet,” I grumbled, wondering if it was possible for Richard to have given us the slip. “The attic!” I blurted, diving away from the table to sprint up the stairs.

  Of all of the places in the house, I hated the attic the most. In order to access it, I had to get on a chair. I was too short to reach the chain, and the folding stepping stool left it two or three inches out of reach. I grabbed the chair from the guest bedroom on the third floor, positioned it under the hallway access panel, and climbed up. I gave the chain a yank.