by T. F. Walsh
From a young age, most of my dreams had hinted at an event about to happen—such as Mila before her transformation, the police following us into Bulgaria. But there were the many silly ones too—me inside a chicken coop collecting rabbits and hiding them from the other wulfkin who salivated at the idea of eating them. Turned out, the next day, a truck filled with rabbits headed for slaughter had an accident not far from our circus, and the little bunnies got free, bouncing toward our trailers. Let’s just say, not many were returned to the truck. So why couldn’t I have had a vision about Nicolai and his capture, or Enre’s arrival?
Father would get Nicolai out, and soon. He’d have to.
Up on my feet, queasiness swam through my head. I’d spent ten minutes healing Enre last night, and afterward my strength was as drained as if I had run a marathon. A week ago, I’d rushed to a wulfkin who fell from the trapeze and missed the net, landing on her hip. Before I realized what was happening, I’d healed her. That knocked me out for two days. Father was convinced I’d slipped into a coma.
My ability had never been so instinctive, and my reaction time had been immediate. Previously, before I turned into a wulfkin, it usually took an hour to close a simple cut. Now, I had to wear gloves to avoid accidentally zapping myself of all energy. I blamed it on the recent Lunar Eutine when I transformed from a moonwulf to a wulfkin. Something inside me changed.
Once I selected clothes for the day, boots in hand, I was ready for a shower, breakfast, and a visit to the one person who might understand the meaning of my vision.
Outside, the sun gleamed, and only a splattering of clouds marked the sky—no sign of the rain that had drenched us last night. I hurried into the morning wind, inhaling the nippy air infused with pollution, wet soil, and humans.
Near the mess marquee stood two uniformed police officers with Father, who offered me a glance that said to keep moving. After a quick wash, I joined the pack for breakfast.
Around me, wulfkin stuffed their faces, barely saying a word. Usually, I couldn’t hear my own thoughts in this place. Considering the lack of woods or secluded parks in Ruse, no one had changed into wolf form, where they were free to run, in more than weeks. The burning itch beneath everyone’s skin was getting worse by the second.
A charge permeated the packed mess tent, the kind that required merely a single flick of a match for the whole place to go up in flames.
Enre limped through the entrance.
I stuffed the last piece of meat into my mouth. My pulse hitched to a dangerously high level, threatening to bring my wolf out. Last night, I had struggled to keep calm, but if I had any hope of playing him to uncover the truth of his visit, I had to control my emotions. Those were Father’s orders.
Sunlight cast a halo around Enre, though he was anything but angelic. He wore black jeans and a matching T-shirt. The spare clothes I stored in his trailer explained the extra tightness of his jeans and the fabric pulling across his chest. Wasn’t he cold?
Glimpses of my dream and how much I yearned for him shoved their way into my mind. Heat crawled up my thighs. Then, images of the bodies and Father from my dream surfaced. Shaking my head, I banished the vision, tucking it in the farthest recesses of my mind. If I stayed away from Enre, the dream couldn’t happen.
With his square frame and cocky grin, he didn’t care about the way every wulfkin studied him, females were eager to whisk him into their trailers, or the males were ready to tear him apart.
I ducked toward the plate of food when he scanned the room. Varlac were conceited, manipulative, and dangerous.
“This obviously isn’t a five-star joint, is it?" Enre asked, his voice flirtatious and loud.
A quick glance up revealed Enre was piling his plate high with meat. He turned and scanned the tent for a seat. No one moved at first. Then three of Father’s bodyguards marched toward him, shoulders stiff, spines arched, and expressions fueled by anger.
Enre grinned his stupid smirk. What was wrong with him? Did he know something we didn’t? Was the joke on us?
Silence saturated the tent.
“Thanks for offering your seat,” he said, using his chin to point to their table.
Damir stood inches from Enre. “If our food isn’t to your liking, then you can leave.”
Electricity sparked through the testosterone-infused air.
Damir’s arms twitched, and his posture curled forward. The grumble rolling from his chest revealed the awful truth—he was struggling to restrain his wolf.
I shot to my feet and weaved past the seats and unmoving wulfkin. Not here. Not with police so near. I had to stop Damir. No one else seemed to have any intention to end this.
Damir backhanded the plate out of Enre’s hand and shoved him into a food counter, sending cutlery flying off the edge.
Enre caught himself before losing his balance. “Such a waste of food.”
Outside the tent, the sound of voices increased, and the shadows of several figures made their way toward the entrance. The police. Father.
My muscles tensed. I pushed an empty chair aside to get closer to the commotion.
“We don’t want you here.” Damir’s body trembled as fur sprouted along his arms. His wolf form was breaking out.
Crap.
“Damir, no!” I was by his side, slapping my palms against his shoulder. “Don’t do this here.”
The silhouettes outside the tent drew closer.
No one moved to stop the potential fight.
I shot a glare at two guys as they bustled beside us and said, “Take Damir. Now.”
They each snatched an arm and yanked Damir toward the back of the tent, pulling him down to the ground. Half a howl spilled from Damir. One of the wulfkin smacked a palm over his mouth as Father and the officers entered the tent.
I feared my heart would break through my rib cage.
Several wulfkin were on their feet and intercepted Father and the officers at the entrance of the tent. They blocked their view inside, pretending they were done eating. Other wulfkin stood in front of the commotion, collecting their plates in slow motion as if also ready to leave. At least it blocked them from the action of Damir being pinned to the ground.
As if on cue, the crowd broke into loud conversation and fake laughter.
“All good in here?” an officer asked.
“My fault,” Enre piped up and started collecting the cutlery off the linoleum flooring. “Lost my footing, that’s all.”
Father’s brow creased, his gaze darting in Damir’s direction. “Clean up the mess.” He shook his head and guided the policemen outside.
Shit.
Two female wulfkin leapt up and cleaned the mess beside Enre, offering him sideways glances. My insides burned. Those girls needed some control.
Damir was on his feet, shaking off one of the wulfkin. “I’m fine. Leave me alone.”
I turned to Enre, and tingles spread through my chest as his bright blue eyes landed on me, despite my intentions to resist him. Why was he smiling?
This was my prompt to exit. I marched out, thankful for the fresh air and the distance between us. How the heck was I going to discover what he was up to if I couldn’t be in his presence for two seconds without my body betraying me?
I dashed away from the tent with its smell of steak, bacon, ham, eggs, and Enre. I trekked past the trailers, hearing only the buzz of car engines in the near distance. In the daylight, the fantastical ambiance of the circus no longer existed. Reality was harsh. The striped material of the main tent showed signs of overuse. Stretch marks and rips that were hidden in the darkness were highlighted in the sparkling sunshine. Mud splattered the hem and coated everything in its path, including my brown boots.
When I reached Sonia’s trailer and knocked, she answered in a soft voice, “It’s open.”
Inside, I stepped over a suitcase that had fallen away from the wall. I tiptoed around clothes, scarves, and handbags littering the floor. Sonia waited in one of two chairs at the table be
neath the window.
The translucent fabric covering the window pasted a violet tinge across her belongings, reminding me of a nightclub. Sorry, Sonia, it’s too early in the morning for discos—unless you’re Nicolai. The thought of him and his love of music turned my stomach into concrete.
He’d spent his first night in prison. Guilt gnawed at my insides; it was my fault. Despite being a moonwulf, my brother wasn’t the fighting type, and in human form, he had no special strength. Goddess of the moon, he won’t last in there. The other inmates would eat him alive. I understood Father’s concern about lying low, but his approach didn’t sit right with me at all. We should take action now. Waiting only opened us up to more problems.
“Girl, you going to stand there all day?” Sonia’s voice turned loud as she snapped me back to the here and now.
She sat at the table, both hands clasped around at least a dozen twigs, each about half a foot long. Balancing the ends on the center of the table, she let the twigs fall and studied the way the pieces of wood collapsed on top of each other. The majority crisscrossed each other, others rolled away from the pile.
Sonia’s dark-blonde curls were pulled off her face with a headband. She wore no makeup or her usual fake gypsy jewelry reserved for the circus customers.
“Have a seat.” She spoke without taking her eyes from the pile of sticks in front of her, her head tilting from side to side.
Taking a chair at the table and kicking aside a boot, I reconsidered telling her about my dream with Enre. The more I replayed the vision in my mind, the more I was convinced it was me lusting over him. Heat radiated down my neck at the thought of telling Sonia that I’d turned into some horny nymph.
“What do you see?” No matter how many times Sonia read my future, my insides still fluttered.
“He’s at the circus for you.”
“The Varlac?” I slouched into the chair, arms folded across my chest, fire scaling my cheeks. “I doubt it.” Not the first time the twigs would have been misinterpreted.
“You’ll bring a change out in him. How exciting.” She flashed me a cheerful smile.
A thousand possibilities swirled in my head, but none of them made any sense, except the one where I hated being paired with Enre. “What does that even mean?”
Sonia inched closer. “The universe has a sick sense of humor. It shows us only snippets of events. You know that.” She twisted in her seat and retrieved a pack of tarot cards from the bookshelf behind her. The top card had a brightly colored parrot painted on it. She sighed, stashed it back on the shelf, and continued to fumble through her numerous other decks.
“That’s for the tourists.” She spoke with her attention still on the bookshelf. “Anyway, what about you? Had any dreams lately?”
I licked my lips, deciding not to share the memory of what Enre had intended to do to me in the dream. “Not much.”
“So you dreamt about him? The shake of your head says no, but your tone tells a different story.” She giggled, a piercing laugh, as she retrieved another pack of cards, the backs printed with a kaleidoscope of colors in a diamond patchwork design. “Weeks ago, I told you a visitor was coming.” Sonia settled in her seat to face me.
“But what does that have to do with me?”
Her gaze drilled into me once again. “I’ll show you.” With a swift flick of her fingers, she dealt the cards, flicking each abandoned one behind her or onto the floor.
“This one”—she placed a card in front of me and pointed to the man strung upside down by one foot from a tree—“is about being stuck, and this applies to the pack. Our situation.”
The memories of me dangling from a tree, the dead bodies, and Enre’s arrival replayed in my mind. Words refused to leave my mouth. I longed to tell her everything, but if I said anything aloud, it would make the situation real. Saying nothing kept the vision a silly dream … especially the part about my father being dead.
“And this.” Sonia held up another card, showing a great tower crumbling from a fire. “Is change coming whether we want it or not. For all of us.”
“What about Nic?”
“I’d say he’s part of the destruction, unfortunately.”
My body shivered. I didn’t like change, especially when destruction was used to describe it.
Reclining, Sonia reached across the bed and grabbed a snake-patterned handbag. She retrieved a small mirror and lipstick and painted her lips as if she hadn’t just proclaimed an omen hung over our pack. Puckering her mouth, she stared at herself sideways in the mirror, running a finger down the length of her especially large nose.
“When are you going to settle with a wulfkin?” I asked.
She laughed and stuffed the makeup into her bag before flinging it onto her bed. “Oh, I don’t need another boyfriend. I have lots of male friends in my life. I prefer it that way. And don’t change the topic. Your path and the new wulfkin’s are intertwined.”
“But he’s a Varlac, and I don’t want to talk about him.” I huffed and pressed farther into my seat.
“He’s still a wulfkin, regardless of his family’s actions.”
I rolled my eyes at the implication that Enre might be here for anything but evil. “Then why doesn’t he tell Father why he’s really here?”
“Girl.” Sonia reached across the table and clasped my gloved hand in hers. “Remember what you told me years ago when I refused Jay’s advances? To look past my prejudices, to give the wulfkin the benefit of the doubt.” She released my hand and flicked a loose strand of hair caught in her eyelashes.
“Yeah, and you never listened to me,” I said. “You ignored him, and he left our pack because he couldn’t accept your rejection.”
Sonia exhaled, loud and exaggerated, with the bridge between her eyes creasing. “Semantics and irrelevant details. What matters is whether you’ll take your own advice.”
“But … ” My voice vanished.
“Of course, you’ll resist what’s coming, and I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.” She smiled and climbed to her feet, brushing down the fabric of her tiger-pattern leggings. “But don’t ignore your dreams. They are trying to guide and protect you as they did your mother and grandmother.”
“Little good it did either of them, especially my mother. Why didn’t she foresee her death and stop it?” The words had crossed my lips before I could put a lid on them.
Sorrow tunneled behind Sonia’s gaze. She stepped closer and dragged me into her arms, squishing my face against her ample bosom. In a strange way, her calm washed over me and reminded me of my mother: her love was fierce and heavy-handed, but soothing and reassuring at the same time. I shut my eyes, and for those few seconds, I pretended my mother embraced me, rubbed her palm down my back, and told me everything would be all right.
I pried free from Sonia’s embrace, no longer in the mood for comfort. “Thanks.”
“What happened to your mother was tragic, but don’t let it dictate your life. We can’t stop the fate of death, no matter how extensive our gifts. Your grandmother died when her twin was killed by another pack. That was also an injustice, but it’s life. I love you like my own sister. I only want the best for you.”
“I love you too.” With that, I made my way toward the door, unable to stop the prickling sensation spreading across my skin.
“Oh, a few of the girls and I are going into the city to pick up some things for the show. Join us. It’ll be great to get away for a while.”
As I glanced over my shoulder at Sonia, who was plucking an outfit out of her closet, I thought about how shopping was the last thing I wanted to do. “Thanks, but I’m not in the mood. Have fun.”
The first trickles of rain fell, and within several steps, it poured. Damn. I ran all the way to Mila’s cage to feed her breakfast.
My mind refused to stop replaying yesterday’s events and Nicolai’s capture. Perhaps it was up to me to do something about his situation since no one else seemed to be taking it seriously.
&nb
sp; CHAPTER SIX
ENRE
The sign, Novac Brothers present the Moonlight Circus, hung at an odd angle from the main entrance to the tent.
Someone ought to fix that.
The front of the circus was the only location empty of wulfkin. Probably because it overlooked a busy, main road.
Shoving my hands into the pockets of my jeans, I kicked an empty beer can and reminded myself I had nothing to prove. I needed to discover Maxim’s plans and stop him if they involved slaughtering my pack family in Transylvania. Sandulf was adamant that Maxim planned to take them out. But now the danger of Nicolai in prison weighed heavily on my shoulders. If he transformed while in custody, it spelled catastrophe for all our kind. And I wouldn’t sit back and do nothing about it.
Two police cars edged onto the grounds and parked in front of the tent, near me. A third unmarked car nosed in behind them.
Four officers climbed out and ambled toward the tent, one nodding in my direction. I returned the gesture; it was what humans did.
A female with dark hair emerged from the unmarked car, and I recognized her from the previous night when she had interrogated Maxim about a missing girl. She didn’t follow the police officers, but rather scanned the area. When her gaze landed on me, she approached me, as if my presence was an open invitation.
She appeared young, maybe in her early twenties, but a rawness existed in her. Strong footsteps, body as fluid as a panther. If I hadn’t been looking her way, she’d have easily sneaked up on me. Even the faint scent of perspiration could be missed on the breeze.
Standoffish, surreptitious, and menacing. No human ever raised the hairs on the back of my neck this way. She prowled closer, arms stiff at her sides. Even the way she wore tight black slacks and a zipped-up leather jacket screamed predator. She retrieved a wallet from her pocket and flipped it open to reveal an Interpol badge and identification: Kalina Watts.
“You’re new here.” She cocked her head in a way that told me she knew it for a fact. The sun hit three healed scars on her neck, mostly hidden by her jacket collar. She’d been in a few fights. That much was obvious. “Visiting someone at the circus?” Her words flew fast, stating facts with the haziest wisp of an accent I couldn’t pinpoint. Maybe Russian.