by RJ Blain
I voiced my displeasure. Why would I, a wolf, make a promise to a human? I didn’t need anything she could offer me. Maybe she desired to be a wolf? I could understand that. The wild places didn’t have enough wolves. Humans encroached, spreading like some living plague, killing the natural, wild places of the world until nothing but the stench of metal, asphalt, oil, and gasoline remained. I bared my fangs. I didn’t blame her for that desire, despite the fact she was human.
I could change that. I regarded her like prey. Unlike a rabbit, she could fight me. She might even be able to land a blow, if she really tried. The other humans had managed. The sting of burns still marked my shoulder and back. It wouldn’t change the outcome. I could hunt her. She would fall before me.
Pack, my inner voice warned.
“Allison, stop that.”
I growled louder.
“Victoria Elizabeth Mayfield Hanover, do not make me get out of this car and kick your furry ass.” Samantha pounded her fist against the door. “Do you hear me? I’m not joking. I will come out there.”
My ears ached from the effort of flattening them against my skull. Did the human really think she could frighten me? The name, however, was worrisome. The part of me that shouldn’t exist reacted to the name. She knew the name. It was an old name, and the inflections the human female added gave it power, demanding respect and obedience. Samantha’s voice took on an accent, an old, lilting British accent that didn’t exist in the world anymore. It had been eradicated decades ago.
It was my name.
I shuddered. It wasn’t a wolf’s name, but I couldn’t deny that it belonged to me. Snarling couldn’t change that fact. I couldn’t deny it. I couldn’t even manage to tear my eyes away from the human’s steady, certain stare.
I had a human name.
“Come on, Allison. We have to go before that other wolf returns.” Samantha leaned out the window, edging closer to me. “It’s cold. I’ve got clean clothes in the back for you. I have to get this off the car before it freezes.” The human wrinkled her nose at the blood splattering the SUV.
My name was Shimmer. I was a wolf. I belonged in the wilds.
But I couldn’t deny that my name was also Victoria. I had too many names for any one wolf to have to bear. A few remembered me as Aurora, while others simply called me the Caretaker of the Seasons. I was Allison, too, but Allison was a lie among many lies.
The caged part of me broke free, and the weight of my human memories crashed down on my shoulders.
I didn’t belong anywhere in the world. Not among the wolves, and certainly not among the humans.
A cold wind blew, and I howled my grief.
Chapter Seven
Samantha watched me with the wary regard of a mouse cornered by a hungry cat. I didn’t blame her.
My wolf was restrained, but I wasn’t confident in my ability to keep her at bay. My wolf didn’t want to be caged again. I was human, but I couldn’t guarantee how long I’d stay that way.
At least I didn’t itch anymore. My eyes ached and burned, and my skin was red, raw, and stinging under my clothes, but I could breathe without sniffling or sneezing. The skin of my right shoulder and back felt tight, as though I suffered from a bad sunburn. I’d gotten lucky. If the witch had been any more powerful, I’d have real burns.
Samantha scrubbing the rabbit blood from her SUV broke the silence.
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
“The Inquisition will have your head on a silver platter if they find out you used someone’s true name on them,” I said, making a point of staring out the passenger’s side window. I couldn’t tell if my eyes were still wolf-yellow, and until they returned to their normal shade—or Samantha relented and got back in the SUV—I was better off keeping my gaze away from her.
I didn’t want to give my wolf any ideas.
“Oh. You remember that?”
My cheek twitched. There were a lot of gaps in my memory, especially around when I changed, but this time, my wolf and I both remembered. It was better than usual. This time I remembered most of what had happened. I swallowed.
I could still taste human blood on my tongue.
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
“You’re going to polish a hole right through your mirror if you keep scrubbing at it like that. I think it’s clean, Samantha.”
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
I buckled my seatbelt and burrowed into the leather seat. I rubbed at my arms and shivered, glancing at the empty ignition out of the corner of my eye. It made sense not to leave the keys in the car with a werewolf. I couldn’t blame her for that. I wouldn’t want to share space with me either at the moment.
The growling noises I was making probably wasn’t helping.
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
“Look, it’s not my fault there’s rabbit blood all over your tank of an SUV, Sammy.”
I flinched at the clap of cloth against the window.
Samantha halted her polishing. “You laughed about it. You sat there, tongue hanging out of your mouth, tail wagging away, laughing at me while that mutt of a gray wolf tried to shove a rabbit through my window.”
A wise witch feared a newly-changed wolf. A wise wolf feared an angry witch. If she finally lost her patience with me after all of our years together, I doubted she’d leave much of me left. I shrugged. “Pack shares with pack. I even saved you some.”
Squeak.
“You left its head next to my door. I have rabbit brains on my shoe.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed until my sides hurt and tears blinded me. Samantha slapped the rag against the window, spitting curses at me. When I managed to control myself, she jerked open the driver’s side door, reaching over me to grab a lighter from the glove box. She set the blood-stained cloth on fire, tossing it on the damp dirt road to burn down to ash.
“Hey,” I said, twisting around to face her. “At least I didn’t try to eat you this time.”
“This time,” Samantha snapped.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come back right away.”
My friend sighed, stomping out the ashes until nothing but dissipating smoke remained. “Frankly, I’m surprised and impressed I didn’t have to tranquilize you. But really, Allison? Rabbit brains?”
I sat straight. The gray wolf had tried to feed Samantha without me having to intervene and teach him the difference between a human pack mate and prey. “Shit.”
Samantha froze. “What’s wrong?”
“That wolf was tame.” How could I have not known? How could I have forgotten? I really was getting old. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the more blurry memories of arriving at the SUV.
No, we had been led to the SUV. “There was someone with a dog whistle. It wasn’t you, right?”
Samantha’s face paled. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
I was glad looks couldn’t kill, because Samantha’s gaze would’ve lit me on fire and burned me to cinders if they could. “Are you serious? Why in the hell didn’t you tell me earlier?” Samantha kicked at the remains of the towel until it was buried beneath a layer of wet leaves and dirt. She jumped in, slamming the door so hard the SUV shook. I grabbed for the handle above the window on my side.
She turned the engine over and tore off, tires kicking up debris. The SUV bounced through the rough woodland trail. When she hit the asphalt of the highway, rubber squealed.
“Damn it, Sammy!”
“I thought you had found yourself a wild wolf and thralled it!”
“I’m pretty sure wolves have been extinct around here for at least fifty years,” I mumbled.
“Have you lost your mind? Were your brains addled in the woods, Allison? What were you thinking? No, wait, excuse me. Obviously you weren’t thinking at all! Who else would have a tamed wolf? You know better. You know better, and you almost walked right into their trap.”
Shit. The Inquisition. I slumped in my seat, slapping at my forehead. “I’m so stupid.”
“Yes
, yes you are. Is there anything else you haven’t told me?”
I groaned. While the memory was a little hazy, I remembered the circle of witches and their focus crystal. I drew a deep breath before telling Samantha.
“Did you kill anyone?”
“I don’t know.”
“If they were Inquisition witches, we’re both dead. You know that, right?” Disgust laced Samantha’s words.
I pressed my temple to the cold window. The rain fell harder, obscuring my view of the trees with their changing colors. “Take heart, old friend. They’ll kill you first.”
“And what about you, Allison? What will they do to you?”
I smiled. “Don’t worry. Wolves are tough.” I didn’t have the courage to tell her that Inquisition would torture me for years before killing me. I couldn’t even hide in the wilds as just another wolf among many anymore.
So far as I knew, my species had gone extinct over a hundred years ago. Then again, there were a lot of ghosts wandering the world without humanity knowing about them.
What was one more?
~*~
I was more than half asleep when Samantha’s phone rang. I wondered why people still called it ringing; Samantha’s phone played some annoying, upbeat hip-hop song I expected from a teenager rather than a seventy-something year old witch masquerading as a thirty-something, divorced mother of two. Cracking open an eye, I glared at the dashboard.
The sun shining in my eyes and the bright blue lights of the radio informed me it was a little after one in the afternoon.
“Samantha speaking.”
Peter’s voice barked out of the stereo. “Where’s Allison?”
“She’s asleep next to me. What’s up?”
“What the hell happened last night?”
“Peter, you’ll wake her up if you start shouting.” Samantha’s voice softened. Only the deaf, dumb, and stupid could miss the warning in her tone. Until I found out what Peter was calling about, I would continue pretending I was asleep. “What are you talking about? We were up near Slide Mountain in the sticks. You have my GPS. Check it.”
I forced myself to keep still and draw slow, even breaths.
“You weren’t in Baltimore?”
“What? No. The limo dropped Allison off at the Plaza near nine. I picked her up around one. We hit a Walmart on the way up to Slide.”
I could hear Peter tapping away on a keyboard. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“What’s going on, Peter?”
Peter’s silence woke me up all of the way. I jerked upright, the seatbelt locking and digging into my throat. Samantha glanced at me. I put my finger to my lips.
The hazards clicked several times before I realized Samantha was pulling the SUV off the interstate to the shoulder. “What’s going on, Peter?” my friend repeated, deep lines appearing across her brow.
“I’ll call you back in ten.” Without giving Samantha a chance to reply, Peter hung up.
It didn’t take a genius to realize something wasn’t right. Even my human nose could pick up Samantha’s anxiety. I stifled a yawn. “What was that about?”
“I’ve no idea, Allie.” The witch leveled a glare in my direction. Samantha’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “What have you gotten me into? Peter’s never acted this way before, not even when you pulled that corporation buyout two years back.”
I wisely kept my mouth shut. The buyout had sent both us scrambling across the globe to secure the deal. Materializing the funds of over a hundred of years of playing the money game hadn’t been easy, at least not without getting caught. Two years later, and I was still spending far too much time untangling the mess of foreign accounts. Each one had been used to cover the originating owner of the hundreds of millions needed to make the acquisition of the European law firm, which I had merged into my developing American firm.
Still, my past and future selves benefited from the effort. The fragmentation of accounts had let me create new identities, faking births of women I would eventually become while phasing out those too old or otherwise no longer of use to me.
Part of me envied Samantha. Witches, at least, were still human, living out a normal life and dying as nature intended. While some managed to defy the passage of time, they were few and far between. Maybe witches were smart enough to understand the true burden of watching so many be born, live, and die in an endless cycle, unable to be anything more than a continual bystander of their own lives.
I tired of reincarnating myself so I could move through a society set on turning my kind into the fodder for horror films and paranormal romance. A shiver ran up and down my spine.
“Allie?”
I shook my head. “Trouble as usual, I suspect.” The degrees varied, but that didn’t change the fact I was a walking, talking magnet for disaster. “Hey, at least I don’t ask you to come on vacation with me anymore.”
Samantha snorted. “Don’t remind me. I just don’t heal like you do, Allie. I still have scars.”
Vacationing in Saigon hadn’t been one of my better ideas. Sammy had been a young witch, then, frightened of what she could do. I’d been an old wolf needing something beyond the safety America provided. Neither one of us had expected the months we had planned to deteriorate to war. I winced. I had my scars, but time had faded them. Hers wouldn’t vanish, especially not the long line across her side.
I had almost lost her that time.
Swallowing back the lump in my throat, I settled with shaking my head. If I had a penny for each and every time I’d gotten involved in something too big for me, I’d have enough to buy therapy. What could I tell a shrink, anyway?
Not a whole lot, that was certain. At least, not a lot without getting locked away for life. They’d throw away the key. If they were smart, they’d equip me with a werewolf-proof straight jacket before burning my file and conveniently forgetting where they’d stashed me.
“Oh stop looking like I’m going to toss you to the curb,” Samantha snapped, punching the button for the hazard lights. The tires squealed as she merged back onto the interstate. “There aren’t many people on Earth who would jump in front of a grenade for me, so I’m keeping you around.”
I winced. Those scars hadn’t faded for me yet, not that I showed my back off to anyone enough for them to find the pockmarks where shrapnel had tore its way through me. “I should’ve forced you to leave earlier.”
“The Inquisition had your number, girl. I wasn’t going to leave you there alone.”
If she had left me in Saigon, things might have been a lot different for the both of us. One more mad wolf in Vietnam wouldn’t have made any difference. “I cost you six months.”
“And a lovely bracelet of scars on my ankle, too.” To my surprise, Samantha laughed. “We did some good, once you came to your senses. Witch and wolf. We made one hell of a team.”
That we had. But, I couldn’t push back my regrets. “Saigon was bad.”
Samantha nodded. “I still flinch when I hear gunfire.”
“You and me both,” I replied, hoping my friend didn’t notice my lie. It wasn’t easy making a silver bullet capable of taking down a werewolf, and fashioning one out of silver old enough to kill me was expensive at best. When someone came after me with that sort of ammunition, the Inquisition would be holding the gun.
The phone rang.
“Keep quiet,” Samantha hissed before answering. “Peter?”
“The credit card panned out and Walmart has security footage of Allison in your SUV. The Plaza’s cameras show her arriving and leaving the hotel. She’s clear.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look, I can’t talk for long. Let Allison know I can’t send a double of her out of the country. Not now.”
Samantha wrinkled her nose, nodding in my direction.
“I’m awake, Peter. What the hell is going on?”
Peter sighed, a gusty noise so strong it made static burst from the speakers. “You need to trust me, okay?
Get somewhere quiet and remote and sit tight for a while. Both of you. Disappear while you can. I’ll cover for you, Samantha. Allison, you’re on your own for this one. I’m sorry. The best I can do for you is issue some cards, but I don’t want Samantha involved in this anymore.”
I closed my eyes, drawing a deep breath, reminding myself it was an expected severance. My kind didn’t last long among humans—even witches. Just because I didn’t want it to happen today didn’t mean it wasn’t my reality. When I spoke, I surprised myself with how calm I sounded. “What happened?”
Peter sighed again. “A lawyer in D.C., one Alan Oleran, was found dead this morning. A reliable witness claims he saw you there with a big dog. You’ve been accused of murder, Allison.”
“But that’s impossible.” Samantha’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. “Absolutely impossible.”
“Why?” Peter asked.
I couldn’t tell if he was curious or surprised.
At least Samantha was easy enough to understand. The scent of her rage overwhelmed every other scent in the SUV.
“Allie, if you’ve forgotten, is allergic to dogs, Peter. Just ask for proof from her doctor. She’d never, ever, under any circumstance, go anywhere with a dog.” The clipped way she spoke the words kept Peter silent. Samantha reminded me of a caged bear poked with a stick one too many times by its handler. “How long do we have until the cops try to pick her up?”
“I mean it, Samantha. Don’t get involved. Allison, you have four or five hours, tops. I’ll tip them off about the dog allergies. How bad are they?”
“They’re bad,” I replied. I couldn’t tell him most of the truth, so I settled with what the doctor prescribed. “I carry an epi-pen, pills, and an inhaler, all doctor prescribed. The pharmacy charges are on my card.”
“Good. That’s easy to trace, then. That’ll help a lot. Samantha, I expect you back in New York by tomorrow morning.”
Samantha was smiling. I felt my brows rise. Whatever the witch was planning on saying, it wasn’t good, and I didn’t dare stop her.