Code of the Wolf

by Susan Krinard

  Frances looked away, sighed and began to climb off the bench.

  “Oh!” she said, reaching inside her shirt. “I forgot!” She squirmed uncomfortably and pulled out an envelope. “When we went into Las Cruces last time, I went to the post office. They had something for you, but I forgot to give it to you, and then I got sick. I’m sorry.” She passed the envelope to Serenity and beat a hasty retreat.

  Serenity stared at the nearly illegible address on the battered envelope. It was muddied, smeared and dog-eared, but whoever had sent the letter had known her name and enough about her current whereabouts to send it to Las Cruces.

  No one in New Mexico would have reason to contact her by mail. She had no friends outside Avalon, and only business acquaintances in the Mesilla Valley. This was obviously a woman’s writing, which made it all the more peculiar.

  But she didn’t want to think about it now. She tucked the envelope inside her vest and was about to get up when Caridad sat down beside her.

  “Well?” the other woman said. “What has he done to upset you now?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You cannot deceive me, my friend. Your face is as white as a Federale’s bones.”

  Serenity knew better than to avoid Cari’s eyes. “Mr. Constantine has been very helpful.”

  “You mean by shooting that cabrón Leroy? Such a quick death was too good for him.”

  Sudden shame burned Serenity’s skin. “I was wrong about Mr. Constantine,” she said. “I believe he can be trusted.”

  Caridad snorted. “Forgive me if I do not trust him.”

  When Cari made up her mind, it wasn’t easy to change it. She would probably object more strongly than anyone to Serenity setting out with Jacob. But she, unlike Frances, knew a little of Serenity’s past, though much less than Zora. She would be the first to understand why Serenity had to go.

  Serenity told Caridad about the meeting, and the Mexican woman narrowed her dark eyes. “What goes on between you and Constantine? I saw you in the yard.”

  “He was…comforting me, that’s all.”

  “Comforting.” Caridad’s frown deepened. “I warn you, mi amiga. Stay away from him.” The former bandida left with a shake of her head.

  A half hour later, after she and Nettie had helped Helene clean up, Serenity sat down at the kitchen table with a sheet of paper and began to draw.

  Every line she set down was agony. If Aunt Martha hadn’t worked so hard to teach her to sketch, she might have been spared this. But she was good, and the pictures formed quickly.

  She finished just before the time she’d asked the women to meet. She went to the bunkhouse, more than a little worried now that she had so much to explain. She waited at the front of the room, while Jacob took a position by the door.

  Perhaps Frances hadn’t kept Serenity’s secret, for there was an air of expectancy among the women, low murmurs and worried frowns.

  Straightening her spine, Serenity began to speak.

  First she told them what had happened to her parents. They became very still as she explained how long she had waited for the right time and circumstances to seek the outlaws, and why she was leaving with Jacob. Caridad and Changying were clearly not happy, and there were little cries of protest and dismay from the others. Zora, who stood far back in the room, showed no expression at all.

  Victoria was first to speak up. “I understand why you want to go,” she said, “but shouldn’t you let Mr. Constantine go alone? If he is willing to look for them—”

  “I would never send anyone else to bear the responsibility,” Serenity answered, meeting the blacksmith’s troubled gaze. “Mr. Constantine has agreed to help me find these men for a fair price, and I believe he will succeed.”

  Jacob stirred behind her. They hadn’t discussed an actual price yet, but she had already planned to pay him generously for his assistance. To do less would always leave doubt as to how she planned to recompense him for his trouble, and after the incident in the stable, she never wanted to face that situation again.

  “What about the ranch?” Michaela asked.

  “I will not be gone more than a few months,” Serenity said, praying that was true. “We will finish the branding, and everything will be in order before we leave. I know that all of you can manage the work to be done for the remainder of the summer. Caridad, if she agrees, will take my place as boss.” She looked at the Mexican woman. “Is that acceptable, Cari?”

  Caridad jumped to her feet. “And what if you do not return?”

  Changying joined her. “If these men would kill your family,” she said, “they will kill you just as quickly.”

  “Not while I’m with her.” Jacob moved to stand beside Serenity. “I know what these men are like, and how to handle them. I promise you that Miss Campbell won’t be exposed to any unnecessary danger.”

  Serenity knew that he really believed what he was saying. And she would let him keep on believing it until the last possible moment.

  Caridad glared at Jacob and folded her arms across her chest. “I see no reason why we should let her go alone with you,” she said. “I will come. Another can be boss.”

  “No,” Serenity said. “You are our best shot, along with Zora. You’ll be needed here, if only to protect Avalon from the ranchers who would be pleased to take it from us.”

  “They won’t bother us again after the last time. We got rid of them fast enough.”

  “What about outlaws like Leroy?”

  “We will see that it becomes known how he and his men died when they came here,” Caridad said.

  “I would still be grateful if you would stay.”

  Even Caridad could recognize defeat. “Very well,” she said. But there was no relenting in her dark eyes when she looked at Constantine.

  “If you fail or betray her in any way,” she said, “we will find you.”

  Jacob inclined his head. “I hear you, señorita.”

  When Cari sat down again, Serenity explained something of what she and Jacob had discussed. In spite of her reassurances, the other women continued to show concern, ranging from Caridad’s outright rebellion to Changying’s troubled glances. Several of the other women gathered around Serenity to ask questions, and express their doubts and worries.

  When the last questions had been answered—as thoroughly as she was willing to answer them— Serenity wished Jacob a good night and wearily returned to the house. She knew she should have felt more relief because she was finally able to put her long-deferred plan into action, but she couldn’t erase the thought of Jacob’s transformation from her mind. She was keeping big secrets from him, and she couldn’t predict how he would react when she admitted the truth about what had really happened to her at the hands of the men they hunted.

  How could she ever tell him, given what he was? Would he be shocked? Would he pity her as a victim of circumstances beyond her control?

  Because she was not a victim, and she wouldn’t let any man, not even a werewolf, turn her into one again.

  Passing through the short hall, Serenity walked by Helene’s closed door and paused to look into Bonnie’s room, staring at the bed where the other woman had so recently lain. She stayed there for a while, then went on to her own room.

  She sat on the bed and pulled the letter from inside her vest. The paper felt brittle under her fingers as she broke the seal and opened the envelope. The letter was dated over three months ago, and the salutation…

  Serena. She closed her eyes and let the letter fall into her lap. No one had called her that since before the attack. It had been her father’s pet name for her, and not many people had ever used it. All but a handful were dead.

  Slowly she picked up the letter and began to read.

  For a long while afterward she sat with the paper crumpled in her fists, listening to the unspoken words rattling inside her head like brittle tumbleweeds.

  …hope we have found you… We have returned to rebuild… Come home to us. Kind, gentle words fro
m people she had loved until that horrible day. That day, and all the days after, when she had convinced herself that the outlaws would never have attacked if only Aunt Martha and Uncle Lester and the others hadn’t left her parents to return to the home settlement in San Antonio.

  The sensible part of her mind knew it wouldn’t have made any difference if they’d remained. Quakers were taught not to fight their enemies. The outlaws would probably have killed every last one of them.

  But their decision to abandon the settlement near Kerrville had haunted Serenity for too long. She had no use for Quaker ways now, not for peace and humility and turning the other cheek. Undoubtedly the Friends would accept and welcome her if she went “home”—until she told them everything that had happened. They would lecture her with heartfelt sincerity about forgiveness and rebirth into a new and better life. They would try to shepherd her into a fold that could never again contain the black sheep she had become.

  It was past midnight when she dropped the badly wrinkled letter into the bottom drawer of her chest and began to undress. But there was no hope of sleep. Two hours later she was dressed again and outside, her sketches in hand, wondering why she thought seeing Jacob at such an ungodly hour would make her feel any better.

  In fact, it was downright dangerous. But talking to him about their hunt would take her mind off her aunt’s sweet, unwanted sentiments and the life she’d forever left behind.

  Only when she was standing outside the barn door did she recognize her own foolishness and start to turn back toward the house. But it was too late. Jacob had already appeared, barefoot and dressed only in his trousers, waiting.

  “Something wrong, Miss Campbell?” he asked softly.

  Serenity turned back quickly and showed him the handful of papers. “I’ve finished the sketches, but they can wait until morning. I’m sorry to have woken you.”

  “You didn’t wake me.” He rolled his shoulders and lifted his head as if to smell the air. “I was thinking of going for a run.”

  As a wolf, he meant. She shivered in spite of herself.

  “Then you want to look at these sketches now, or in the morning?”

  His eyes caught the moonlight as they met her gaze, reflecting red behind the gray and gold. “Might as well do it now,” he said. He stood aside to let her precede him into the barn, where he lit the lantern and hung it up beside the door. Serenity handed him the first of the sketches. He spread it flat against the wall. His long fingers arched, curled, tore into the paper as if it were woven of air.

  “Do you recognize him?” Serenity asked, her heart tripping wildly.

  “I’ve seen him,” he said. “He’s a Renier.”

  So he knew them. Maybe they’d been acquaintances, or even friends. Maybe he’d ridden beside them, on the wrong side of the law.

  But those thoughts were crazy. They had to be.

  Very carefully, Jacob smoothed out the irreparably torn paper. “You have more?”

  She took the first sketch away and gave him the second one, hardly daring to breathe. He glanced at it, returned it to her and nearly snatched the third one from her hand.

  “All Reniers,” he said, dropping the last sketch to the floor. “They’re one of the biggest werewolf clans in the West.”

  Serenity closed her eyes. “How do you know them?” she asked.

  He was so quiet she thought he’d left the barn. She opened her eyes again to find him bent nearly double, shrunken in on himself like an old man. “I know of them,” he said, straightening quickly. “Every werewolf in the West knows of them. They have ranches and property all through Texas and the Territories, and they’re not friendly to outsiders.”

  “You mean they hate ordinary people?” she asked.

  “And other werewolves.”

  “But they aren’t all outlaws?”

  He had hardly touched on the relationships between werewolves when he’d explained about them, but she knew that wolves were very protective of their territories. Violently so.

  “They aren’t all outlaws,” he agreed, though his voice was clipped and strange. “But there are connections and alliances among all the Renier families, just as there are among humans. The men we’re looking for might have found shelter among their own.”

  The biggest werewolf clan in the West. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of beast-men.

  He must have sensed her alarm, for he gave her a probing look. “The Reniers, like most werewolves, have to live among humans. They won’t want to acknowledge killers among them, and they might not take much trouble to protect fugitives.” He pressed his lips together. “Still, we won’t draw attention to our search.”

  His speech had given Serenity time to recover again. “Do you know where we might find them?”

  “They could be anywhere,” he said. “We’ll begin just as we planned, with the town where you said the outlaws were seen not long before the attack.”

  Which had been her lie. And now, when it was too late, she realized the difficulty returning to Bethel might place her in. Someone was bound to recognize her as the girl who had crawled through a dust storm to find sanctuary at the Morgans’ home. What if the old couple were still there?

  She would have to hope that she had changed enough so that no one would connect her with that pathetic, beaten girl.

  The girl she would never let Jacob Constantine see.

  Serenity bent to pick up the sketch Jacob had dropped. “We never finalized your payment,” she said. “I meant it when I said I can afford to give you whatever you ask.”

  “I don’t need your money,” he said. “If they’re killers, they’re probably wanted by the law. There’s bound to be a reward when I take them in.”

  But he wouldn’t get that reward, not unless it covered the dead as well as the living.

  “At least I’ll pay for our traveling expenses,” she said. Suddenly she was eager to get away from him, from her heightened sense of him, his scent and the lethal power of his body. “We still have a few hours to sleep before morning. Now that Frances and Judith are well enough to work, we should be able to cover the range more quickly than we expected.”

  Jacob seemed deeply preoccupied, though his final glance as she left held a wealth of meaning she didn’t know how to interpret. She slipped out and walked slowly back to the house.

  She wasn’t surprised to see Changying waiting for her on the porch.

  “Revenge will not cure your unhappiness,” the Chinese woman said as Serenity reached the door.

  “I don’t want revenge,” Serenity said. “I want—”

  “Justice, as you did with Leroy?”

  The deep compassion in the other woman’s eyes was more than Serenity could endure. She mumbled a vague response, went inside and returned to her room.

  This time her mind and body were exhausted enough to let her sleep, but her dreams were laced with glittering yellow eyes, sharp white teeth and a voice that spoke the same words over and over again:

  “Killing doesn’t know any barriers between race or blood.”

  The barrier between her and Jacob was high indeed. But as long as she never forgot what he was, as long as she kept her distance, she would be safe until she didn’t care about being safe anymore.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THEY RODE OUT on a warm June morning, an hour before sunrise. The season’s most important work was done, the ranch was well stocked with supplies, and the other women were as prepared as they would ever be.

  Jacob watched from the saddle as Serenity made her farewells. Most of the women seemed resigned to her departure, but a few of them—Changying and Caridad, in particular—didn’t much trouble to hide their true feelings. Zora had been as stolid as usual. She and Jacob had hardly exchanged a word since their conversation in the stable, but Jacob had been sure that she’d resolved any problems between her and Serenity.

  Unlike the women, Jacob had to conceal his thoughts and emotions. He couldn’t let Serenity so much as guess what was going t
hrough his mind. Until he’d done what he had to do, the last thing he wanted was for Caridad or Victoria or one of the others to decide he couldn’t be trusted to look after Serenity and her interests.

  Can you? he asked himself as Victoria gave Serenity a hard embrace. He could still hear Caridad’s challenge: If you fail or betray her in any way, we will find you.

  The threat didn’t bother him, though he didn’t doubt that Caridad would try to kill him if anything happened to Serenity. He didn’t plan to expose Serenity to any danger at all.

  But he would betray her.

  The voices of the women faded from Jacob’s awareness. He stared blindly at his gloved hands resting on the saddle horn. If there’d been any other way, he would have taken it. But there wasn’t. Serenity had done everything possible to make him believe she accepted what he was, that the Change hadn’t affected her deeply. She’d spoken calmly and allowed him to take her hand. Few humans could do as much, let alone one whose family had been killed by werewolves.

  It was her need to show him just how unafraid she was that had made her insist that they keep working as partners. She’d neither kept her distance nor given any indication that she so much as remembered their kiss, which should have made him glad. It would make things so much easier later.

  But the constant ache of desire, the wanting that had come on him so hard and quick in the barn, made it impossible for him to ignore her as she pretended to ignore him. The smell of her, her constant nearness, the flex and bend of her body on her horse…all those things kept him aroused when that was the last thing he wanted to be.

  So he’d worked himself to exhaustion every day in hopes he could get some relief in sleep. There hadn’t been much. He’d ended up spending most nights running, though even that hadn’t helped. He was weak, and finding out he was still subject to that kind of weakness had been a hard lesson to learn. Just as it had been hard to realize that the vengeful creature inside him hadn’t been extinguished.