The grizzled man relaxed and scratched under the brim of his stained hat. "Good. Now let's get out of this cold, and I'll make sure your horse is well taken care of tonight. The rooms ain't fancy, but on a night like this—" He shrugged and gestured toward the door of the adjoining hotel.
The room was every bit as plain as the innkeeper had warned, and only marginally clean. It stank of a previous tenant's stale sweat and cigar smoke, fouling each breath she took.
Athena swallowed her distaste and set her small pack on the uneven floor. The sheets on the bed, while much mended, appeared reasonably tidy. Not that she expected to get much sleep.
She pulled the single, rickety wooden chair up to the window and watched the snow cover the street, the cheaply constructed buildings and the handful of wagons tied up in front of the general store. The few pedestrians moved hastily, anonymous figures with lowered heads and white-caked boots. Denver, and the comforts of home, seemed a million miles away.
Going back was another possibility she did not consider. The tightness in her stomach told her that her instincts were correct. She must get to the ranch. The two men she loved most in the world were in horrible danger.
In spite of her conviction that sleep was out of the question, her chin began to nod on her chest. She tried to eat a little of the bread Monsieur Savard had packed for the journey, but it was as dry and tasteless as sand. The small room felt like a cage—the kind of cage Morgan had described when he had spoken of her life—and the unthinkable idea she had rejected began to seem inviting. Only that final, lingering fear held her back.
She dozed fitfully in the chair. Out of the maelstrom of her imagination, a picture formed in stark black and white. At first all she could see was snow: snow on the ground, among the trees, in the sky, painting everything one sullen, lifeless hue.
Then she saw the black shape, lying in the snow—black fur, black tail, black muzzle. The eyes were open, but they did not see. The body lay perfectly still. No breath plumed from the open jaws. But there was one other color present in this ashen world… one vivid shade that wept in the snow beside the great wolf's head.
Scarlet. The color of fresh, bright blood.
Athena sat up in the chair, choking on a scream.
Only a dream, she told herself. But that was a lie. She had "dreamed" of running with Morgan as a wolf, sharing what he felt as he ran alone. Part of it had been real. What if this apparition, too, were real… or soon to be?
All her choices were gone. Morgan needed her, now, and there was but one way she could face the storm and make it through alive.
Shaking with reaction, she kicked her bag under the bed and pulled a wad of banknotes from her pocket, leaving them where they would be found by the innkeeper. The sun had gone down; few if any people would be on the street to see her leave or try to stop her.
She crept down the stairs, willing the other guests to remain in their rooms. The smell of greasy cooking hung in her nostrils, but the innkeeper was busy elsewhere, and she passed through the lobby unseen.
The snow continued to fall as heavily as before. Athena ran to the stable and made sure that Dandy had his blanket and oats. She had only one more favor to ask of him.
Hiding behind his sturdy bulk, she quickly stripped out of her clothing. First came the coat, and then the two layers of shirts, and then the cinched trousers. Icy wind whistled through chinks in the stable walls, curling around her bare flesh. But the cold was unimportant, as easily shrugged off as the shirts and trousers and boots.
She stood naked at Dandy's head, stroking his muzzle as much to comfort herself as him. He could rest at his ease, his care assured by the generous payment she'd left in her room. But she had a long way to go.
And that journey must begin with an act of courage she was not sure she possessed. Nor could she take that first step among the horses. Making a quick search of the stable, she discovered a small loft where she concealed her bundled clothing—no need to give the poor innkeeper more concern than he would already face when he found her gone.
Straw crackled under her bare feet as she crept to the stable door. She had no need to worry for the sake of modesty, or of being dragged away to an asylum for the insane. The street was empty of man or beast. Even the most recent wagon tracks had been erased. Yankee Gulch was dark save for one or two lights shining in windows, but her wolfish night vision made it seem almost as bright as day.
Wading through the snow, she circled the stable to the alley beside it. It was as good a place as any to attempt the impossible.
Not impossible. You did it once, easily. When you were hardly more than a girl, you couldn't imagine a life without it. Or a life without the use of your legs.
Now you have your legs again. Claim the rest of yourself, Athena. For Morgan's sake.
She closed her eyes and willed.
Nothing happened. She stood on two weak legs, her loosened hair lashing about her face. It would be so easy to give up and admit defeat.
I cannot. It has been too long. My body does not know how.
She sat down in the alley, burying her face in her hands. Better to just lie here and let the snow cover her up. How could she help Morgan—she, who had lived a soft and easy life, believed herself so important, and yet had no real courage to face a true challenge when it came?
Who was she, to think she had the power to save him?
She flung her head up and stared at the falling snow. That same snow fell on him now, in a place where he might lie dying and alone.
She clenched her fists and pushed to her feet. She remembered what it had been like when Changing required no more than a thought. She remembered racing through the forest up at the ranch, borne to ecstasy on a hundred smells and sounds even her superior human senses could not detect.
Above all, she remembered running beside Morgan, wolf with wolf, utterly free.
A peculiar frisson swept through her body. It was as if every muscle, every bone, every nerve twisted inside out, yet there was no pain. A mist rose about her like a silken veil, untroubled by the wind.
She threw up her arms and gave herself to the Change. Life flowed and shifted. Her sight altered, taking in the world from a vantage much closer to earth. Scents and sounds burst in upon her senses like a tidal wave.
For a moment all she could do was breathe, struggling to manage the overwhelming assault. Gradually what seemed so alien became familiar, as natural as walking had been before the accident. She took a step on four wide paws. Her hind legs trembled, the lingering remnant of her lameness, but they carried her out of the alley, first at a walk and then a trot and a gallop.
She ran down the deserted street and to the shacks at the outskirts of town, past the mine and the tailings and waste of man's grubbing in the earth. The forest called to her, and the mountains, with songs only one of her blood could hear.
Instinct pointed the way to Long Park when no trail remained for a human being to follow. Instinct, and a very human emotion called love.
Athena howled defiance into the blizzard and ran as she had never run before.
Niall had come this way. Morgan sniffed at the ground, detecting the odors buried under a layer of newfallen snow. Any tracks Munroe had made were long gone; if he were not dead already, no human born could find him.
But a werewolf could. And Morgan planned to do so, setting aside his hatred of the man he hunted. For Athena's sake.
He almost felt Athena beside him, bounding over frozen creeks and through thickets of serviceberry shrubs. But she was in Denver now, safe and warm where she ought to be.
He sat on his haunches and chocked on a howl. The last words he had spoken to her had been filled with cruelty and bitterness. That was her final memory of him—angry, hating, blaming her for being what she was instead of what he wished her to be.
She had not made the same mistake. She had understood that he wouldn't go with her. Perhaps that was why she had asked.
Damn you, Athena Munroe. I will
find your precious brother. And then you must let me go. Let me go, do you hear?
His growls flew away in the wind. Tensing his muscles, he leaped up and over a snowbank and followed the trail of scent. No other animals were foolish enough to be abroad; the forest and park looked as they must have done before the first intruding human had walked in these mountains. Peaceful. Still as death, or forgetfulness. A sweet offer of ending he could not accept.
A few hours before dawn, he found his quarry. Niall crouched in the partial shelter of a fallen tree, his coat drawn up over his head. There was no sign of his mount. Morgan smelled the ash where he had tried to start a fire, but no flame could survive this gale.
Morgan stalked closer, ears flat to his head. He heard the ragged sound of Niall's breathing, felt the warmth of body heat—alive, then. He shook off savage regret and drew closer.
Niall's head jerked up. His brows were frosted with rime, his skin nearly blue. He tried to move, feeling in his pocket.
Morgan dashed in and seized Niall's wrist between his teeth, tasting leather and sheepskin. Munroe's smell was rank with fear and exhaustion. He met Morgan's gaze, and the last spark of fight went out of him.
He had one more shock to face. Morgan released him and backed way, shaking the foul scents from his coat. It was almost a relief to Change and find his senses dulled, as they always were in human shape.
Munroe exhaled a great cloud of steam and tried to sit up. "You," he said hoarsely.
"Yes." Morgan crouched on his heels. "I've come to take you back to the ranch."
Munroe laughed. "You have come to… save me?"
"I would just as soon let you die here. But there are two who care for you, and it is for their sakes that I came tonight."
"Two?" He shivered and tried to adjust his collar with frozen fingers.
"Your sister, and Caitlin."
"Caitlin." He shifted again and fell back. "Is she all right?"
"She and the others are safe."
Niall closed his eyes. "You found them?"
"Yes. Your men said that you went out to look for them after the storm began. That earns you the right to live."
"The right to live," he echoed. "And what gives you the right to judge me, Holt? You, who murdered your own father?"
Morgan felt no surprise. He'd lived too long among men to keep such secrets indefinitely, and no one had better motive to uncover those secrets than Niall Munroe.
But Munroe's accusation did not touch him. It was as if
Athena's brother spoke of another man, summoned memories of another life.
"You do not deny it," Munroe said. He sat up, emboldened by Morgan's silence. "Not that it would do you any good. I blame myself for not having discovered it long ago. The only thing I don't understand is why you were not hanged."
"Then there is something about me you don't know."
"That you claim justification for patricide?" He laughed again, teeth chattering. "A man capable of that could do anything. But you are not a man, are you? You're a beast that thinks nothing of killing."
"A beast like your sister."
"No!" Munroe scrambled to his feet and leaned on the fallen tree. "My sister cannot help what she is. I will not let her give in to the monstrous heritage her mother imposed upon her." His eyes glazed. "I knew she was evil the first time I saw her in my father's bed."
Morgan became aware of his body again. "She?"
"Gwenyth Desbois. The bitch who seduced my father and stole his love for my mother." Munroe's teeth flashed white in the rigid oval of his face. "I saw her Change long before Athena learned how to twist her body into an animal's. And my father knew. He knew what she was, and wanted her anyway. He forced my mother to raise Athena as her own—"
"And you hate Athena for that. You've hated her since she was born."
"Shut up! You know nothing about it, what it was like to know what she was. I would have kept it from her, let her live an ordinary life. But our father told her everything when he thought she was old enough to understand. He ruined her." He slammed his fist against the tree, shaking snow from the dead branches. "And you—you will destroy her completely. That's why I must stop you just as I stopped her mother."
Morgan cocked his head. "What happened to Athena's mother?" he asked softly.
"I was eight when I first saw them together. My mother didn't know. She didn't find out for years. And I was too young to do anything then. But when I was twelve, I got rid of the bitch, and Father never knew."
Twelve. Two years younger than Morgan had been when he'd left home forever, vowing to find his own father and bring him back to California. He had abandoned his childhood by the time he was fifteen.
At eight years of age, Munroe had seen his father in bed with his mistress. Four years later, he had gotten rid of her. The ugly pictures that formed in Morgan's mind came from the darkest of places within himself: images of a boy with a revolver, a woman begging for mercy, the terrible finality of a gunshot.
A gun, a knife, poison—it didn't matter. Niall was too clever to implicate himself in Gwenyth Desbois's death. It wasn't easy to kill a werewolf, but it could be achieved by someone with knowledge, resolve, and sufficient hatred.
"I had to do it," Niall said. "I had to set my father free and restore my mother's honor. It was the only way."
Hatred was a ruthless master. It could make a boy, or a man, believe that whatever he did was justified. It could convince him that his reasons were pure and good and unselfish.
The boy had stood there with the gun and listened to the pleas. He had seen the upraised hands, the hollow eyes, the quiver of the lips. He had aimed, so carefully. One shot was all it took.
"You see why I must stop you," Niall said, his voice very far away. "There is just enough human left in Athena to be worth saving."
Morgan saw the gun in Niall's hand. He knew what it meant, and what it would take to stop his enemy. A gathering of muscle and sinew, a leap, a single blow, a clean snapping of the bones in a human neck.
Another murder.
Niall fired. The bullet seared Morgan's side, a startling instant of pain that seemed less real than the calm indifference of his thoughts. He staggered. A second bullet grazed Morgan's temple.
For Athena.
He fell. Blood steamed in the snow. Morgan felt his body laboring to heal the wounds, but he let the blood flow and the pain wash over him. He willed his heartbeat to slow, his lungs to cease their struggle for air. He closed his eyes.
Niall's presence was a faint warmth above him. He waited for a third shot, but it didn't come. His body absorbed Niall's kick without reacting. Cold metal pressed into his jaw. He stopped his heart just as Niall's fingers sought the pulse at the base of his neck.
"So easy," Niall murmured. "You didn't even fight, you bastard. Why?" He lurched up and away, his movements receding with Morgan's awareness. "Damn you. Damn you to hell."
Chapter 20
Athena knew the way. As a woman she might have become lost, but the wolf could not be confused or misled by distorted senses. She ran without pause through the storm, and at the coming of dawn she knew she had reached Munroe land.
She could not have said what made her stop so close to her goal, with the scents of woodsmoke and horses and humanity thick in her nostrils. The place was very much like any other in the park, where evergreens grew thick at the edge of a meadow. No animal or bird broke the silence. But she stopped, her fur bristling and her ears tilted to catch the sound of a voice.
Morgan's voice. And she realized what it was that had halted her. The wind had gone still; the cacophony of a thousand scents, tangled by the storm, had settled back into a gentler song. And one subtle note rang sweet and beloved among all the others.
Morgan. She turned her muzzle toward the scent, all her weariness dropping away. Morgan was here, very close, perhaps behind the next stand of firs.
She raced across the meadow, leaving a deep gully in the snow behind her. Halfway across s
he slowed, and her hind legs began to cramp and seize up with pain that shouted in her body like a warning of doom.
Wrong. Morgan's scent was wrong. What had seemed a pure, sweet melody was tainted. Mingled with Morgan's scent was another she knew as well as her own, and a third she recognized and feared above all others.
Niall had been here, or very close. And either he, or Morgan, had shed blood.
Not even the pain in her legs could slow her now. She forced her muscles to obey and leaped up, broke the surface of snow in her descent and leaped again. The edge of the meadow loomed ahead. She clawed her way onto a jutting boulder and entered the cover of the trees.
The smell of blood grew thicker, Morgan's scent stronger as Niall's faded. Athena's paws hardly touched the ground. In a small clearing, protected from the worst of the storm, she found him.
He lay on his. back in snow melted by his own blood, limbs twisted and dark hair thick across his face. The ground all around him had been trampled by booted feet. Niall's boots.
Niall had been here. The sharp tang of metal and gunpowder played counterpoint to the stench of blood. No mist of breath rose from Morgan's parted lips.
Athena covered the remaining distance in a single jump. She lost her balance, fell to her side, and scrambled the last few feet on shaking legs.
Morgan lay unmoving. Athena nudged his chin with her muzzle and snarled in his face. His skin was cold. She clawed at him frantically, heedless of the scratches she left on his bare skin. His chest didn't move. She grabbed his arm between her teeth and tugged him this way and that with small, despairing whimpers.
Only then, when every attempt had failed, did she sit back on her haunches and howl. Wolves could not weep. But she was also human, and humans possessed a strange and foolish quality called hope.
Hope gave her the strength to Change. Hope kept her heart beating as she lay atop him, spreading her arms and legs over him like a living blanket. Hope warmed her breath as she kissed his unyielding lips.
"Be alive," she whispered. "Damn you, Morgan, be alive." She pushed her fingers into his hair and lifted his head as if he could see the determination in her eyes. "Are you going to give up, after fighting the world with every breath? Is this how it ends? Well, you've underestimated me for the last time, Morgan Holt."
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