Well, that was gratifying, his relative lack of resistance to sleeping beside Angus—or it indicated a dangerous level of physical and mental fatigue. Either way, Angus was going to be here a few days. He could do with a rest, he supposed, and everyone told him he worked too hard.
So that afternoon and evening, he allowed himself to doze while he kept guard over the newest member of Wolf Town.
For four nights, Mala didn’t sleep. She paced, she read, she watched DVDs—and she called in sick. This was how she’d lost her old job, and she saw all the signs of it happening again. But she knew herself. She needed the week off to recover from the nightmare and the insomnia that followed. Finally on the fifth day after the nightmare—why were her nightmares all about murderous wolves?—exhaustion took over and she slept for twelve hours straight.
The waking wasn’t easy, like swimming through thick, difficult water towards the light, but she eventually made it out, back into the real world, and dragged her body off to the bathroom to shower.
She looked at the mirror and saw dark bags under her eyes—no mystery about the cause of that. Sometimes she feared being unable to pull out of those nightmares, being trapped in them forever. There was no way of being reassured it wouldn’t happen when she couldn’t even talk to anyone about the dreams and the terrors.
And this last time, determined that the boy, Caleb, get away, she’d stayed longer than ever before. It hadn’t mattered that it had all been a dream when, as it occurred, it had felt so incredibly real.
At that, a memory stirred from the depths of her latest sleep. It hadn’t been dreamless, and she shivered, unable to release her own gaze in the mirror. The too-skinny black wolf she’d saved had re-entered her dreams, briefly, the previous night. It was like that sometimes. After a sleep terror, her mind would return to the same creature. It had been a calm dream, thank God, no need for action—which always took a toll on her and she couldn’t afford more days off work. But this time, Caleb had been sleeping in a barn, and someone had been watching over him in a fatherly way. He was safe.
Safe.
Another shiver shook her, but good for once. Even if it was all a figment of her imagination, she desperately wanted that dark, panicked wolf to be safe. She couldn’t disengage but she had learned to control the nightmares by attacking the monster—and there was always a monster in these, to accompany the awful fear. Like Caleb’s father, intent on violence.
“In. Your. Dream.” She spoke to her mirror self, attempting to sound ironic. Get a grip, Mala. So you have alarming night terrors—that’s what her parents had called them when, as a child, she’d lie in bed keening until shaken awake by her mother. The point was—it was over.
For now.
She’d once talked to her counselor about her violent dreams, and the well-meaning woman had smiled, her manner condescending. The counselor hadn’t been impressed by Mala’s obsession with wolves either. She’d been more interested in the fact that Mala didn’t make friends easily and had a fraught relationship with her father.
Sure those things weren’t great, but Mala couldn’t manage to convey to this woman that what defined her, what made her what she was today, were the dreams. And the terrors.
After her little unplanned sabbatical, Mala had been back at work for a week, catching up on the paperwork and trying to ignore the resentment of her coworkers. She understood. They thought she was milking her sick days for all they were worth when they each had too much work in the office for too little pay. So she put in a few twelve-hour days, got her share under control, helped a couple of other women, took the fall for a mistake someone else had made, and stayed obliging when the boss was kind of an asshole about, well, most things.
If she was lucky, she wouldn’t have another nightmare for months or even a year. It had happened before, a long dry spell. Once she’d had sixteen months of peace and thought her dreams were over and she’d turned normal. She no longer believed that was a possible future for her.
Nevertheless her last dream, when the black wolf slept, was a good omen. She remembered the feel of the fatherly wolf beside him—clearly not his father, given the previous nightmare. This new, older wolf had felt good. Again she shivered at the memory of safety.
“Okay, Mala?”
Her face flamed at the idea her boss had been watching her. As if she could explain her crazy thoughts to him, or anyone.
“Absolutely fine,” she stated with as much self-possession as possible.
“Excellent.” He slammed down a pile of files on her desk with more force than necessary. He wasn’t violent, just dramatic, but it made her jump. “These are for you.”
“Thank you,” she said politely and took them, throwing herself into that work so she wouldn’t think about her dreams. Late in the evening, she dragged herself home.
When she fell into bed that night, she was exhausted but hopeful. It looked like she wasn’t about to lose her job after all. Competent help was hard to find, and she was competent—when not incapacitated. With that not entirely pleasant thought, she started to drift off to sleep. Good omen, she reminded herself, as she pushed away the fear of another night terror.
For all the good it did.
It was a type of waking—at least it felt that way—with the flare of fear like a beacon calling to her. A part of her wanted to ignore it. It was too soon and she was too drained, and the last time she’d see him, Caleb had been safe. But the flare was familiar and compelling, it was hers, and she couldn’t stop herself. She focused.
Her body fell away, and with it, her reluctance. She was dreaming, everywhere and nowhere, with only the boy’s fear her anchor. She arrowed in on Caleb, determined to find him, make him safe. And then she was with him.
He didn’t know where he was, strangely enough. All he knew was confusion. After a few moments of blindness, she settled in to look for him, used his eyes to see until he could calm down and see for himself. It was then, observing his bare arms, she realized with some shock he wasn’t an actual wolf.
She always dreamed wolves, and her surprise reached him.
“I am a wolf,” he told her, and the statement settled him, like he was returning to know himself. He took stock of his situation.
He was in a room, the door not shut, the house quiet, and he breathed in, scenting the presence of two others and trying to figure out how to hide from them.
“I know them.” With this thought, relief swept through Caleb. He did not have to hide.
She waited, letting him sort through his uncertain knowledge, not understanding how he could lack such basic information.
“These two people, they’re not strangers. They’re kind to me.” His confidence built with these assertions.
The worst of his panic had ebbed but, just in case, Mala began to fashion a weapon. It would be a weak blade, nothing like the one that had felled his father, because the boy carried none of that intense terror she required to make it strong. But a defense of some kind might come in useful.
“No weapon.” He hunched at the idea, and straightened again. The next thought was defiant; he expected her to contradict him. “These are my friends.”
She paused, the shine of her work in her hands, and she recalled that he’d felt safe in that barn.
He remembered too, and with that memory her work became futile. She only ever attacked the monsters, not friends, not kindness. She let the weapon spread thin, then dissolve.
“I’m glad,” she told him.
The last of his fear dissipated, a wary hopefulness taking its place, and her heart hurt for him as she sensed his desire to belong here. She looked out through his eyes once more, and he was staring at a beautiful painting. Three wolves were running up a snow-covered hill, the full moon shining down on them. It made him happy to see it, to recognize himself in the picture—not him exactly but creatures like him. She concentrated, wanting to remember this painting, as if it could be a marker of sorts for her. A way to locate this place, if it was
a place.
It became critical that she ask.
“Caleb. Where are you?”
He frowned, thinking about the bedroom and the house.
“What city? What town?”
His brow cleared, his confusion now gone, and she could feel him smile just a little. “Wolf Town.”
She held on to the words, praying she’d recall them once she left this dream. It seemed important.
“I can’t stay,” she told him.
He nodded once, unsure what to make of both her presence and her leave-taking.
“But you stay, Caleb. Stay with your friends.”
Chapter Two
Angus had slept too much this past week. He’d remained with the pup, in wolf form, until he could be coaxed into Angus’s house. It took another night to get the black wolf into a bedroom, the one he would be staying in for a while. Once that was done and Angus was able to carve out some time alone, he shifted back to human. When he came to after that shift, there was the feeling of rightness in his bones. He enjoyed being wolf, but unlike some, not for too long, and he always missed human activity. Jancis had gone to sleep so he couldn’t chat with her. Instead, Angus read the mail that had piled up in his absence.
Mostly email, and mostly business related. The government liked that he’d started a business up in northern Ontario, but they also liked electronic paperwork. No question about what he’d be spending tomorrow on.
But first he wanted to touch base with Trey Walters and find out if he’d heard any rumors of runaway teenage wolves. Despite being retired from the FBI and from other ghost agencies Angus didn’t want to think about, Trey had more contacts in the shifter community than anyone Angus had ever met. He had just typed in a brief greeting when he went still.
The noise was subtle, but there. After a few minutes, he determined the movement was of the two-legged kind, which made Angus smile with something like relief. This pup was not feral, not when he turned human so easily. Angus had prepared himself for having a wolf in the house for any number of days.
He remained seated a bit longer, giving the boy time to compose himself after a shift, as the confusion of a new place in someone so young might be an issue. Then Angus walked down the hall to meet the stranger he’d brought into his home.
At the sight of Angus in his doorway, the boy started. Angus kept his expression calm, his stance relaxed, and observing that, the tension in the teen’s body eased.
Scruffy was the first word that came to mind. The beginnings of a beard, not amounting to much of anything as yet, and hair that had been hacked away by God knows what and not recently. He wore the clothes Angus had left in the room, not his, but still too big on the teen. Baggy.
Soft, uncertain brown eyes blinked up at him from the boy’s slight frame, and something in Angus melted. No one was taking this wolf from him, unless it was in the young man’s best interests.
“Welcome to Wolf Town. I’m Angus.” He held out his hand without stepping forward, making the boy come to him.
His newest ward pulled in a breath, as if steeling himself, before he approached Angus to take his hand and shake, all the while eyeing him. Waiting for… Well, Angus didn’t want to think about what the boy was waiting for.
His hand was too cold for a werewolf who’d shifted recently. Shifters gave off a huge amount of heat after the change. So he still wasn’t eating enough, despite his last week with Angus. Time to remedy that. Jancis had been buying out the store in their absence, knowing they’d be famished by the time they were humans again. Eden had also sent food over once she’d learned of their newest recruit. She had a soft spot for lost adolescents, given the sad fate of her own boy.
“Come on to the kitchen,” Angus told him. “You’d better eat something.”
His visitor nodded, and Angus turned away and listened while the boy followed him. He opened the fridge and pulled out a number of containers before deciding microwaved meat stew was the best way to supply his ward with immediate heat, energy and protein.
He wouldn’t mind some himself.
“Tell me your name.”
He knew the boy was scared to speak. It happened sometimes, this idea that staying silent made you unnoticeable in the pack. But he responded to Angus’s command and cleared his throat. “Caleb.”
A sturdy name and the tone was more confident than Angus had expected. Deeper voiced too. He might be older than the very young teen he looked.
“Well, Caleb, I’m pleased to meet you. I want you to know that you have a place here.”
“You’re the alpha?”
Angus wasn’t crazy over that term, though he used it to describe himself. Taken from real wolf packs, misunderstood, misused by those in power… Okay, now was not the time for that rant. “I’m in charge of a number of things around here, yes.”
The microwave dinged, and Angus pulled out the steaming bowl and placed it in front of Caleb. Once he had a spoon in hand, he started vacuuming up the stew, and Angus reached for more food to feed him.
After twenty minutes of brisk eating, Caleb slowed and took on the expression of one who’d eaten too much too fast and needed to sleep. But first, Angus had a few questions.
He set his own empty bowl aside and looked across at Caleb, who immediately froze. Angus wondered what he read in his face, for the set of Caleb’s shoulders implied he was waiting for the other shoe to drop now that he’d finished eating and drinking.
“Where are you from?” Angus asked.
Caleb blinked rapidly though he didn’t cut his gaze away from Angus as he might have expected a small battered wolf to do. Alpha or no, Angus tended to force his way upon people.
“You don’t want to answer that?” Angus surmised.
Caleb firmly shook his head.
“All right. Is that because you’re protecting someone?”
“Sorta,” he prevaricated, then chewed on his lip.
“So you feel it’s safer…”
“If no one I know is notified.”
“Because?”
The shoulders slumped and Caleb swallowed. While Angus felt a little guilty, he let the silence weigh on his guest until Caleb admitted, “He’ll hunt me down again.”
Angus straightened. “Hunt? Who hunts you?”
Caleb’s eyes shone with angry fear.
“No one hunts you while you’re here.”
“No one can stop him.”
Angus smiled and he knew it was ugly. “I like a challenge, Caleb. I’m in charge, and I say I can stop him. So.” Angus clasped his hands together and rested his chin on them as he gazed at Caleb, determined to protect this boy. “Who am I challenging?”
The words came out on a hoarse whisper. “My father.”
The next day, despite feeling completely drained, Mala dragged herself to work. It hadn’t been a nightmare last night, not really. Yes, the beginning of the dream had had all the markers, with its beacon of fear that seemed to draw her into a frightened wolf. Except that had been a teenage boy, not a skinny black wolf, even if he’d carried the same name of Caleb and felt like the same person in a different body.
Well, dreams weren’t supposed to be logical, were they?
Hollow comfort, since she always felt, against her better sense, that her dreams were different. That they meant something. Her mother had sneered at her once while Mala tried to explain. How special do you think you are, darling, that no one else has dreams like you do?
It had hurt, that sneer, even if from a distance Mala recognized her mother had been trying to steer her away from taking the dreams too seriously. As if that would solve her problems.
Yet, this last dream had been different. There’d been no live wolves, only three in a painting. Could it have been an ordinary dream? She hadn’t had to take control of the situation, she hadn’t had to defend anyone. The new dream-Caleb had been human and had friends, and once that point became clear, Mala had floated away, her last memory that painting for goodness’ sake.
A normal dream, she longed for those. She probably did have them, even if she didn’t remember.
It was hard to focus that day, her energy remained sapped and her attention scattered. She must have acted off or sick or something, because late in the workday her boss abruptly sent her home early, and followed that up with a phone call that informed her she was being let go. The gist of it being that erratic behavior, despite some hard work, wasn’t going to cut it with him.
Numbed by the dream or by imminent unemployment, she simply hung the phone up on its cradle, incapable of arguing back. God knows, she knew about erratic behavior.
She stared blankly into space, and that old question that never quite left her came at her. What was she going to do?
It had happened again. But she would deal. Though each time, as she grew older and the number of jobs she’d been released from increased, it became more and more difficult to find employment.
How ironic that she wanted to sleep, given that sleep brought her to such terrible places. Though she might be safe today, since the dream boy-slash-wolf had been safe. Sure, it was all in her mind, but so what? If he was safe in her mind, sleep might bring her peace tonight.
And tomorrow? Well, she didn’t care if she was loopy. She was too far-gone to let it matter anymore. Tomorrow, she was going to investigate the existence of a place called Wolf Town.
Where dream-Caleb lived.
The name of the town was vaguely familiar. But if Wolf Town was from subconscious memory, or if it didn’t exist, her investigation would do no one any harm.
And if it did exist, she was going to gather the last of her resources and visit the place. She had this idea, and it made her shake inside, that she could meet Caleb and he could explain everything to her.
It wasn’t true. She knew that. No one was ever going to explain anything. Not since her father had told her she was too stupid to understand there was reality and there was fantasy, too stupid to identify the line between them.
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