by KL Mabbs
He put his hand on his chest. “Michael.”
She put her hand to her chest, noticed the cloth, now, pulled at the shirt, and then ripped it off as if it were paper. A growl followed her actions.
“Shirt.” He pulled at his own.
She looked at the shreds of cloth on the floor, her nose scrunched up in disgust.
“Not buying it, eh?” Michael’s eyes strayed, briefly, and then returned to her eyes. He got up, went to the plate of food, and held it out. “Food.” He picked up a slice of roast and small piece of bread and ate them. Then held the plate out for . . . “Faelon,” he said.
Did her skin just ripple? And her eyes flash? Michael didn’t know for sure, the reaction had been so fast.
Boyen would have liked the Irish reference though, and he couldn't stop thinking of her as the wolf he had expected to find in that trap. “Here, eat.” Michael pushed the plate in her direction. She hesitated, and then pulled the plate to her lap. The meat held her attention for the next few minutes while he stared. Faelon was leggy, long limbed. And she held herself with an unnatural grace. He kept trying to hold off the suspicions intruding into his mind.
Here in the Rocky Mountains, the First Nation legends took on a new meaning. That first winter, he would have sworn an Aboriginal man had shimmered into the form of a grizzly. It was so real he used the idea for his first book, Shaman’s Curse. Mostly he knew it was a trick of the light, something kicked up by the Aurora Borealis. But Faelon didn't look Aboriginal and some part of him was less convinced of visual trickery with every feral movement she made. Tales of untamed children aside, something was special about her. It just wasn’t likely that she could have survived in the wilderness for the twenty years of age she looked—not this way. She was perfect, undamaged, ready.
The meat finished, Faelon rose to her feet in one smooth movement. Michael found her precise motion scary, his heartbeat changing. Excitement coursed through him when he realized just how long the curve of her leg was as it met her hips. God, what was she?
Michael walked to the door and exaggerating his movements again, showed Faelon how to work the door. As soon as he did, her stance changed. Her ears shifted forward and her nose went into the air.
“God. I just lost you.” She ignored him this time. Didn’t repeat the words or watch his face in that curious way. And suddenly Michael felt lonely, something that didn’t happen when he was in this retreat, writing, for the winter.
“Outside.” He used a motion to show the entire world, hoping she couldn’t read the sadness in his voice.
As she walked past him, her eyes took his. “Outside,” she growled.
Michael was sure the previous dominance wasn’t in play here, somehow, but he kept her stare for as long as possible. Then she was outside, crouched down into a loping run that shouldn’t have been possible or looked as graceful on a human body, but it did on hers. Her legs had a fluid range of movement that a child might be able to duplicate, for a moment or two.
She ran into the clearing in front of the house and stopped. Trembling. Faelon’s pink skin turned silver under the moonlight, as if an ethereal force drove her, like magic catching fire. Michael waited. He had the feeling that something should have happened. That Faelon expected it the same way she breathed in the night air. As if the night should shimmer with enchantment, or the world shift into another realm, like his books told of—but it didn’t.
And then she cried into the night, lifted her voice to the moon and the saddest sound he had ever heard pierced the still cold air.
His heart broke, like glass, shattering over ice.
Chapter 2 Faelon
Faelon remembered being a cub. The warmth of the den, the scent of her parents, the subtle pad of their footsteps as she groped in the darkness hungry for the nipple that would feed her the sweet taste of milk. And later, the smell of blood, sharp and piercing to her new senses, and then the taste of meat, the hot blood and flesh raising a growl in her breast.
But it was the safety she remembered the most.
Before she opened her eyes and the world changed. When that happened, the bitch that was her mother came into focus, her fur as dark as the den that surrounded them. And her sire, his fur pale, his girth towering over her and the bitch. And when he walked on two legs, his skin was as pink as the bitch’s nipple that fed her.
Faelon woke to sunlight that wasn’t too bright for her eyes, and smells that assaulted her nose—harsh and unnatural. Sounds hummed in the background, nothing like the soothing murmur of insects or wildlife. She tensed, springing into a leap that carried her over the male, her teeth almost brushing his throat and her knee striking him across the jaw. Water splashed. She wheeled in midair so she could face this two-legged animal. Man. That’s what her sire had called him. The male reacted, rolling over into a crouch and locking his stone-coloured eyes to hers.
And she stopped. Her heart pounded in her chest, her ribs ached, and the instinct that had been driving her settled into place along her spine and through her limbs, resonating with the beat of the earth under her paws. She stared at him, the heat building up, flushing through her pink skin. Her eyes flared and the skin around her nose crinkled up. She opened her mouth letting the desire flare over her tongue.
She blinked, the weight of her instinct settling, waiting. Another need took her and she lapped at the water on the ground, not losing sight of the man’s eyes nor the strength that radiated from them. He was worthy of being a mate. A wolf would have taken her right there, sunk his teeth into her back, and forced her into place. But Faelon knew the body language this man spoke, saw the interest awaken in his eyes, and smelled the lust on his skin.
He stood up, slow and cautious; the same way he had approached her when the teeth in the earthen basin out in the hills had broken her skin and separated the fur from her hind leg.
She bared her teeth.
He barked at her. “EasyI’mnotgoingtohurtyou.”
The sound ran together the way a creek rumbled over boulders or fell from a mountain. She knew the noise, but it had been such a long time.
“Lookhere.”
Movement in the air, drawing her attention.
He held his paw in an odd way and showed her the water, drank a small amount, then set it in front of her. Why couldn’t he lap it from the ground like a normal wolf?
“Hereyourturn,” he said.
She raised her paw—what should have been her paw—and knocked the water over.
“Yourturn,” She growled. The sound from her throat was rough, nothing like what her sire had barked at her those first two seasons.
The man fell over.
“I’llbedamned.”
She looked at him, these sounds making no sense to her. Then he put his paw to his body.
“Michael.”
That was a name. Her sire called himself Simon when he went on two legs. She put her paw to her body; felt a softness that wasn’t fur, cutting her flesh off from the world, culling her senses. She pulled at the not-fur and heard it rip, felt it tear across her back as she flung it from her shoulders.
“Shirt,” Michael said.
She didn’t know that sound—that word. But the flesh of her nose crinkled at the thought of keeping it close to her body, losing her senses in exchange for . . . she saw no purpose for it. The warmth of her body was enough. In this den, she was almost too hot.
He barked again, bringing another need to her attention and the smell of flesh filled her nostrils. Meat, but like nothing she had smelled before, and no blood.
“Food.”
And then he named her. “Faelon.” And a shiver ran down her spine where her normal fur would have rippled in recognition to his voice, to the need he put there just by saying her name. Faelon.
Mate.
“Here, eat,” he said. The words fell into place with her needs. He took a bite from the meat and other food on the plate, showing his ascendancy, and then shared the rest with her. It was gone in momen
ts, not enough. She stood up in one movement, Michael’s eyes following her, the questions in his eyes matching the curiosity in her own.
He moved to the edge of the den slowly, and part of the den wall fell open to his touch.
“Outside.”
The natural scents of the world flooded into the lair, pushed by the wind that caressed her bare skin, seeping into her pores and the other senses she relied on so much. It left an ache in her. Another need that drove her.
Did Michael feel it, sense it the way she did?
She took his eyes as she walked, the fierce brown drawing her in. “Outside.” She saw the invitation take hold of him as he followed her. Faelon went to all fours, running into the clearing under the silver light of the moon. She stood up, trembling, and willed herself to become the wolf she had always been. Would he follow her?
Her muscles ached and hot blood flowed, flushing her skin pink under the silver of the moon, the magic of the world and the beat of the earth under her feet. Everything was as it should have been. Except her.
A cry built in her chest, a pressure that filled her throat and then burst from her as if lightning had exploded from her. The sound was everything that she was: the fierceness of her nature; the death of her parents; the wounds and victories of her three short years of existence; her need for Michael. All of it telling the world her pain.
Telling Michael.
Chapter 3 Hillman
Gerund Hillman was, as a boy, terrified of his father, as well as seeing him as a hero. Like most boys. He knew by the age of thirteen that power was what most adults wanted, and that only a few had it. His father fit into that category. When he told people to do things, they did them. If, for whatever reason, they didn’t, Gerund didn’t see them again. He didn’t know if they left from shame or guilt, from not being able to please his father, or if he made them go away or what. But they disappeared. Everyone, but his mother.
She stayed. She accepted the demands placed on her by his father. She didn’t fight him or argue with him. Gerund saw them hold hands and even kiss. And when Gerund’s father wasn’t around, she would smile at him. Touching his hand or brushing the dirt from his lean cheeks, combing back his dark hair with her fingertips. That didn’t happen in front of his father though. For a long time he didn’t understand why that was. Then Gerund figured it out. Jealousy. Father had power, he told people what to do, got the right behaviour out of them. But he didn’t make them feel, or stop them from feeling. He couldn’t. He could punish them though. The day Gerund was accepted into graduate school was the day he found this out. The hug from his mother was the best he’d ever received, because it was in front of his family and friends. The beating his mother received was private. Like all of them. All of the ones he hadn’t noticed all his life because that was the kind of power his father had. The kind of deception his mother practiced. And when he finally realized it, the how and why of it became clear too. It was in the way they spoke and in the leverage they applied. For his father, it was about the things he could take from people. For his mother, it was the way she could make people forget about what had made them angry, by doing everything right.
But Gerund found out where the real power was when he passed his graduate classes in business management. Real power was held by whoever controlled the money. So when it came time to take a job he made sure it was with an organization that could take control – from people, and from economic situations. And it didn't hurt if the company could hide its true nature. Working for Blackwater was the perfect place to gain the power he sought.
The pursuit of power consumed Gerund, and his choice in working for Blackwater paid off. That’s why when he answered the phone he could say what he needed to make people know he wasn’t pleased. He answered the phone with a curse. “It’s fucking three in the morning.”
“Yes sir. It is. I was told to notify you, sir, when there was only one left. Jackson Huer died this morning.”
Hillman was attentive now. He’d researched his newest client, one he’d kept private even from Blackwater’s upper crust, and found nothing. Not a scrap of information anywhere. That was impossible of course. Nobody went unrecorded today. The people his client wanted to talk to, however, that was a different matter. Michael Scott and his men, Boyen, Huer, and Ariyan had stopped a war that was slowly eroding the social-economic structure of the Middle East, and the world. Coverage of them existed; he had his P.A.C. working on pulling everything it could find—all existing video, audio, and paper files. Hillman’s research had even found a satellite feed that showed some remarkable footage of Lieutenant Ariyan, son of General Samantha Ariyan, Liaison to the Warsaw Commons, the U.N., and the Stockholm Accord. They were peacekeeping organizations that stockpiled and distributed the world’s oil reserves.
Then something happened that peaked Hillman's curiosity, drove him to give the order to monitor the men more closely. The feed had disappeared, gone without a trace. Nothing. As if it hadn’t been there in the first place, except that Gerund had seen it. Since the client ordered the contract, Hillman had been trying to find out what that feed meant. Why it had been covered up? It had to do with Captain Scott, his men, and the war. His instincts said it related to the death of General Ariyan’s son. He just didn’t know how. None of which had anything to do with his contract with the private client.
But why was all of it so high profile three years ago and now it was forgotten, even by the newsies?
“And the interrogations?” Gerund said.
“Without a hitch. The gas took; the client went in, spent his hour. We got notice and dosed them with the antidote.”
“The ones the client supplied? No deviations?”
“None, sir. Just as the contract stated. And no one in or out of the area during the meets.”
“And they were alive?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Michael Scott?” asked Gerund.
“Writing his next best seller.”
“Wintering in the Rocky Mountains.”
“Yes, sir. His third since he retired.”
“Anything else?” said Gerund.
“It’s his doctor. There are records stating that he treated Michael Scott for altitude sickness.”
“He winters at twenty-four hundred metres. That’s not unusual.”
“Yes, sir. The doctor wasn’t in town that day. He was at a conference.”
“Poison?” said Gerund.
“We think so, sir.”
“Bit ass backward isn’t it.”
“Sir?”
“Not talking to you. Get a satellite swinging over the Rockies. I want pictures, and sound. For the client,” said Gerund.
“Yes, sir.”
“And the doctor?”
“We don’t think he’s in any danger. He reported the discrepancy to the medical advisory board. Our peripherals kicked in. People related to the contract.”
“I know the protocols, I set them up. What’s your name?” Hillman heard the man on the other end of the line swallow, a sharp gulp to the phone’s sensitive pickup.
“Timothy Hardwick, sir.”
“File for a bonus—on my desk in the morning.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The agent hung up and wiped the sweat from his brow. The last man to bother the boss in the middle of the night hadn’t been seen in months. And there weren’t even any rumours to judge what had happened. That scared Timothy more than anything else did. Gossip was king in most branches of the government. Blackwater was no different in that way. But the punishment . . . Timothy knew when to keep his mouth shut and his teeth clamped.
Chapter 4 Michael
The boy and his father stood over a grave. A granite angel, her wings poised to fold or fly, tears coursing down her cheeks, rose up from the pedestal that held Rebecca Scott’s name and the remains of her body. The man’s face was seemingly as carved as the angel, though his eyes said something different. The son could see that, the regret in the stone face d
ifferent from the pain that dragged at his father’s heart. The boy controlled his quivering lip as he looked to his father, but tears still leaked from his eyes to drip on the suit that barely fit him anymore.
“Did she have to die, Dad?”
“Everyone does, Son.”
“You could have stopped her.” A hint of anger seeped into the boy’s voice.
“Then she wouldn’t have been the woman I loved, or your mother.”
“I’m going to join the army. Be like her.” The resolution in the boy’s words was firm, even though his voice cracked at the moment he said them.
“Then we have a lot of work to do. An IED isn’t easy to avoid.” The father didn’t hold back the thought or the words. His son already knew how his mother died.
“Tomorrow.”
“No, next week is soon enough.” The man’s voice softened. “We need to feel this.”
Michael’s heart shattered in the depths of Faelon’s cry as he stared at her under the moonlight. This was the woman he had always wanted at his side. Her strength, her presence, and her beauty called to him—had been calling to him since he had met her. That need woke other things in his soul, loss and longing coming together. Michael answered Faelon’s call. He raised his voice to the sky and screamed it out to her. Screamed out everything he was: the death of his friends; his missing father; the confusion at the end of the war; his emotions, past and present; all of his needs; his need for Faelon. All of it went into his cry.
When he walked over to her, drawn in a way he couldn’t explain, Faelon’s scent filled his nostrils—pine and wilderness—feeding his heart, building it into something stronger. More capable.
He sniffed, leaning into the woman that couldn’t be. His shoulder touched hers, their cheeks met and her breath burned his neck. His arms wrapped her up of their own accord and he pulled her into an embrace, softly, a caress of movement that wouldn’t scare her away. She settled her weight against him, her chest pushing against his, her hands questing past his buttons and over his skin. A laugh escaped her throat, and a look of surprise crossed her face. But it didn’t keep the laugh from coming back, or her hands from warming his skin.