by Lee Killough
Arms pulled him back from the door. “Don’t,” Allison breathed in his ear. “We’re ready.”
He felt the others there. Current filled the passage.
Sunny’s voice came through the galley door. “You not only choose to stay totally ignorant and spend your life fawning on that asshole...”
“Where’s Rikki?”
Zane pointed at the messroom door.
As he did so, it eased open. A shadow slipped out. Voice almost inaudible, Rikki said, “There’s a window. Otherwise the only light is the freezer’s. She has her mother stripped naked and handcuffed to a shelf in there.”
“You don’t give a shit that the bastard and his shrinks made my life living hell! That’s that why all the schools were abroad...so you didn’t have to see me and think about me!”
In spite of himself Zane felt a surge of sympathy for Sunny. He certainly knew the sting of feeling like an inconvenience for your parents.
“No!” Deirdre cried. “We wanted to cure you...to save--” She screamed. “We did want to!”
“Evan and Rick are in position on the deck outside the galley,” Allison whispered. “Kerr, Rikki...you go into the messroom with Gina and Tom...but stay behind them out of the way.”
“I didn’t need curing! I was normal! You bloody well knew that! You knew and you never said a fucking word...to anyone! You robbed me of growing up in the family I should have had and let humans torture me!”
Deirdre shrieked.
Allison pointed at the messroom door. “Positions. Wait for me to move first.”
The shriek collapsed into a whimper. “Please please stop!”
Rikki led the way into the messroom, guiding Lovejoy and Sweet between the tables. At the door connecting to the galley, they pushed ahead. The blast of heat coming back at him warned Zane. Seconds later wolves crouched at the door.
On the other side of it Sunny said, “Why don’t you make me stop, Mum? Make me.” She raised her voice over Deirdre’s scream. “You can do it if you really want to.” Another scream from Deirdre punctuated the sentence. “Reach into yourself and for once in your miserable, gutless life, see what you are and--”
The crack of a splintering door interrupted her.
13.
Allison would have preferred just flinging the door open, but crashing through a locked one did make a dramatic entrance. It caught Sunny enough by surprise that she was still whirling around, silhouetted against light from the freezer, her ponytail swinging, as Allison shook off the wood fragments. Small wonder she had been able to sneak aboard the freighter. She wore a dark blouse and slacks. A dark blanket with more dark clothing on top of it lay on the floor behind her.
The open freezer door, Allison noted with satisfaction, filled most of the space up to the island down the center of the galley, blocking a quick retreat that direction. Drawers and bins under the island made it a solid barrier and Tom and Gina, coming through from the messroom, prevented any escape over the island. Rikki and Kerr filled the doorway behind them...Kerr wearing an expression of outrage.
But Sunny showed no sign of fleeing for the moment. She dropped a ladle she held into a stock pot at her feet and stared at Allison, then past her at Drew and Mike and under the pots hanging over the island to Tom and Gina. A grin spread across her face. “Soldier boy wasn’t kidding. There are more of you around. Only, I thought he said the lot of you are off somewhere for a hunting and sex orgy.”
Orgy? Well, Matt did make it sound that way. “Someone has to clean up the mess you’ve made.”
The grin vanished. A Shift halo rippled around Sunny.
Inside the freezer Deirdre called, “Whoever’s out there, please help me.”
The desperation pricked Allison. She hated having to ignore the plea. But dealing with Sunny came first.
She dropped out of Shift. “You can’t go anywhere, so relax and let’s talk.”
Sunny remained at bay. “I know you. You’re a copper...that one on the news...”
“Who’s hunting the wilding killer. And we found you.” Allison gave her a smile. “Let me introduce everyone.”
The others, too, dropped out of Shift, one by one, as she gave their names...leaving out only Rikki and Kerr. Tom let Evan and Rick in from the outside deck, though they remained in front of the door. A hint of halo lingered around Gina, along with the cold fury in her expression.
With each name, Allison eased along the island. Finally she could see into the freezer... and understood Kerr’s reaction. As Rikki said, Deirdre stood naked and handcuffed in the freezer... whimpering, shivering, blue...with arms stretched back over her head, the handcuff chain running around a pole supporting the freezer shelves. Blood trailed down her arms from where the handcuffs had abraded her wrists. Blood and ice matted her hair. Blood covered her face like a mask, some of it clinging in clots. More blood splashed her breasts and dripped down her belly and thighs. Thrown at her ladle by ladle from the stock pot, obviously. The source of the blood hung from shelves on the other side of the freezer...another victim...a stocky man in a pair of baggy boxers, strung up by his feet, his throat slashed.
When Deirdre’s eyes met hers, terror replaced entreaty in the other woman’s face. Squeezing her eyes shut, Deirdre began whispering frantically. Praying for Divine deliverance.
Sunny seemed oblivious to her. “You’re all cops?” The Shift halo rippled around her.
Just like a juvenile...all reaction, no thought. Allison kept smiling and stretched her arms sideways. “Relax! I told you, I only want to talk.”
The heat waves disappeared. Sunny eyed her warily. “About what?”
“Gary, for starters,” Gina snarled. “That’s the officer you killed at the Hilst house and sunk in the bay with his car,” she added harshly when Sunny looked blank.
“Was he one of you, too?” Sunny glanced from Gina to Allison and shrugged. “I didn’t know. I just knew he was a cop. I’d seen him and you and others around those North Bay bars...obviously watching for me, then he was at the house, in my way.” She smiled. “I play a cop sometimes. Americans are suckers for a foreign accent and saying I’m this Brit cop on holiday really hooks the fish. I’ve even had a couple ask me to handcuff and search them. Nicking the warrant card and handcuffs from that film crew using Swansdown Hall was just an impulse...but they’ve proven quite useful.”
“Speaking of which,” Allison said. “I’m taking the cuffs off your mother.”
The smirk vanished. “I’d leave her ‘til she freezes or rots!” Sunny glared over her shoulder at the desperately whispering woman. “You know what she did to me? She screwed some Italian werewolf when she and dickhead delivered a yacht there, but when he--”
“We know how terrible your childhood was,” Allison said. “We can help make up for it.”
That startled Sunny. “What?”
“What!” Kerr echoed.
Allison ignored him. “You grew up without a clan or people who understood you. Now both you and your mother can have them with our clan.”
Outrage and indignation filled Kerr’s intake of breath. “No! You can’t just forget these murders!”
She bent to peer under the pots at him. “We’re not. But think what’s she’s gone through. Think of her in a cell...or in court.”
She could see in his eyes that he did. For once Allison appreciated that imagination. He still frowned. “That doesn’t excuse murder!”
No...but how did she explain to someone from a species that bred like rabbits how precious every member was to her people?
“They were only humans,” Tom Sweet said.
Just what she needed, him opening his mouth!
Kerr turned on him. “What about Golden?”
“Yes, what about Gary,” Gina growled. The halo rippled around her.
This needed to be headed off before it turned ugly. “What about Deirdre?” Allison started into the freezer, fishing for her handcuff key.
As she reached for Deirdre’s hand
s, however, the closed eyes flew open, dark with panic. Deirdre screamed piercingly and kicked out with first one foot, then the other. “No! Get away from me! Get away, get away, get away!”
“I just want to help you,” Allison said.
Deirdre continued flailing her feet, screaming, each scream rising closer to hysteria.
Sunny snorted. “I told you she’s a stupid cow.”
“Let me try.” Kerr slid over the island. He raised his voice above Deirdre’s screaming and eased into the freezer as Allison backed out. “Deirdre. Deirdre! Hush. Take it easy.”
Gradually she quit screaming...quit kicking. Relief flooded into her face. “Help me.” Her voice dropped into a hoarse whisper. “Don’t let them near me.”
“I won’t.” His voice almost crooned. “I promise. Now let’s get these off, okay?” He unlocked the handcuffs.
She grabbed his coat lapels. “Take me away. They’re Evil. Creatures of Satan. We have to escape.”
“Shhh, shhh.” He wrapped an arm around her. “Everything will be all right.”
He picked up the clothes and blanket and half led, half carried her past Sunny and Allison toward the end of the island. Drew and Mike stepped aside to give the two of them room. After helping Deirdre into the blouse and slacks, Zane wrapped the blanket around her. She clung to him, shivering so violently she shook him, too.
Sunny scowled at him. “I can’t believe you let a human run around with you.”
Allison kept her sigh mental. They had so much work to do with this girl. The mother, too. So much damage to repair! The people who deserved dismemberment were that couple in England.
“Don’t mind him,” Tom said. “He’s a dead man walking.”
Kerr stiffened.
Sunny grinned. “Cool. Are you going to hunt him in a pack?”
Allison glared at Tom. “Whatever happens to Kerr is my responsibility and no one’s going to hunt him!” She switched her gaze back to Sunny. “You’ve got a lot to learn. Except under specific and limited circumstances, which will be explained, we don’t hunt humans.”
Sunny snorted. “What kind of crap is that? Humans wouldn’t have horror stories about werewolves if we didn’t hunt them.”
“Yes, we’ve killed them in the past.” Allison kept her voice patient. “They’ve killed plenty of us, too, and most has been from competition for territory and food. Because you haven’t had a clan upbringing, and maybe because of all the anger in you, you’re confusing rivals with prey.”
“Don’t play shrink with me!” Sunny’s eyes darkened. “I know all the patter! And no fucking way I will ever listen to any of it again! The truth is, you’re just pissed off because I came in and made a mess in your territory. Okay, I can relate to that.” She shrugged. “How was I to know you were here? I don’t know why you didn’t just cover up the evidence so the humans wouldn’t know about it. That’s what you do with your own kills, isn’t it? Isn’t that why you pretend to serve and protect?”
This girl was going to take so much work. Instead of answering, Allison said, “We’re going to send you and your mother to a ranch we have. Clans from several cities are there this week end. They’ll start teaching you the things you need to know. You’ll have the chance to hunt appropriate game. Deer, wild boar or--”
“‘Appropriate’ game?” Sunny sneered. “That sounds like a weasel to me. Like you’re afraid of humans. Is that it? You don’t have the guts to take them on even though you know we’re superior predators?”
Around the galley...by the door, across the island, back by the door to the outside deck, Allison saw faces tighten. Current crackled around her. Deirdre whimpered and Kerr tightened his arm around her.
Allison fought her own tension. Of course the girl was not going to see reason at this point. “Let’s just say our long-term strategy doesn’t involve the stupidity of a frontal assault on a force that vastly outnumbers us.”
Sunny’s lip curled. “Long term strategy? If this is what clan life is like, cowering in fear of bloody humans, you’re welcome to that useless piece of shit with the human. You deserve her. But I’m not fucking interested.”
The surging current left the air suffocating. Deirdre peeled loose from Kerr and sank down behind the island, whimpering.
All right...enough. Time to make the stakes clear. Allison put steel in her voice. “You’d better be interested. We want to give you the chance at the life you should have had, but if you won’t come in...we’ll treat you as rogue and eliminate you.”
At the edge of her vision she saw Kerr, turning to reach for Deirdre, freeze.
Sunny flung up her head, expression defiant in the light coming from the freezer. “We?” She glanced around the galley. “Or is it just her who doesn’t want me doing what I bet you’d all like to if she didn’t have you bitch whipped?”
Tom Sweet’s eyes flared.
“Egg us on, shit for brains,” Gina growled. “You owe me for Gary.”
“All right, we’ll make it a group decision.” Allison bit off the words. “A jury of seven, if you will.”
“Eight,” came Rikki’s voice.
“Nine.”
Allison looked around in surprise at Kerr, and, oddly, a sense of satisfaction. Her partner was as gutsy as a volke.
14.
Why the hell did he do that, Zane wondered. The words seemed to come out of nowhere.
The others wheeled toward him...astonishment on some faces, others furious. While Allison almost smiled.
Sweet snarled, “You keep out of this. You don’t have any business even being here!”
He had enough of that attitude, Zane decided. He unhooked a pot so he had a clear line of sight to Sweet’s face. “The hell it isn’t my business. This is my case and you might not care about the victims she terrorized and butchered, but I do. I speak for them.”
Sweet thrust his face between the pots. “Over my dead body is any human--”
“Don’t make me go that far,” Allison broke in. “Zane’s right...he’s earned his place here. He stays. Unless you care to challenge my authority?”
Silence came down on the galley like a hammer. Even Deirdre stopped whimpering. The creaks and groans of bulkheads and drumming of rain on the deck outside reassured Zane that he had not suddenly gone deaf, while static crawled his skin and every pair of eyes watched Sweet intently.
After a long moment, Sweet stepped back, shaking his head.
And Zane realized that Allison had used his first name.
She turned back to Sunny. “You see? Politically and emotionally, Tom sides with you, but even Earth Now puts the good of the clan first.”
Zane had seen that not all of them felt the same toward humans, but hearing they had what sounded like a volke version of white supremacists sent a chill down his spine.
Sunny glared around in contempt. “Bleeding wimps, the lot of you. I can’t believe you’d kill one of your own over a few fucking humans.”
Allison gave Sunny a cold smile. “My great-grandmother was the only survivor of a clan slaughter. After brooding about it for a hundred and fifty years, she decided to go back to the village for vengeance, no matter what the consequences to the new clan there. The only way to stop her was kill her. So her daughter, my grandmother, did.”
Zane’s breath stuck in his chest. Honora killed Thérèse?
“If we’ll kill our own family members for the good of another clan, do you imagine we’ll hesitate at a stranger who threatens ours?”
Sunny clenched her fists. “It’s always the same, isn’t it,” she said bitterly. “First I was supposed to be what my so-called parents, therapists, and teachers wanted me to be. Now you expect me to make myself into what you want.”
“No,” Allison said, “into what you claim you want...to join the family you attack your mother for denying you.”
Sunny stared hard at her, then smiled wryly. “You’re right. So...what do I do? We start with this Gathering, you said.”
No r
eal surrender came that easily, Zane reflected. Not when anger like hers had festered for so long. Silver and Bliss were drifting from the deck door toward the food preparation island, but otherwise he noticed little easing of the tension in the galley. Static still slid around his skin.
“It may be a little overwhelming,” Allison said, “but it’ll certainly plunge you into clan life.”
Zane tuned out. Like his stay with David and Susan Martinez, after the initial shock, she ought to love it. Her genetic predisposition for pack life should kick in. Very nice for her...but what about justice for Demry and the others? Anger filled him. Kakashvili hung right there in front of them in the freezer. Even if they overlooked the human tragedies to add to more members to the pack, what about retribution for Golden? Yet...the alternative felt equally unacceptable. After his own brush with cold-blooded execution...maybe only postponed...he did not wish that even on Sunny.
Deirdre’s situation disturbed him, too. How did they expect her to fit in when the very sight of her own kind terrified her?
Where had she gone, anyway? Looking around, he spotted her crouched back by the ovens, totally covered with the blanket and almost invisible. Zane walked over and dropped to one knee in front of her. “Deirdre, what are you doing?”
She peered up out of the blanket. With the crust of blood darkening her face, only her eyes showed, pale holes in the shadows. “So much Evil here,” she whimpered. “Feel it, feel it.” She hugged the blanket tighter around her. “We have to escape. Help me. I lost my crucifix. We have to save ourselves before they damn our souls.”
Deirdre sounded close to the edge, if not falling over it. “We’ll go very soon. I promise. Okay?” He patted her shoulder. “You hide there and wait for me.”
“Hurry.” She disappeared under the blanket again. “Evil. We have to escape.”
Tension had heightened, he realized, straightening and turning.
Much of the increased current came from Sunny. Her fists had clenched again. “Mentoring? You mean supervision, don’t you?” Her voice rose. “This household the clan chief sends me to will be watching me every minute, won’t they? I’ll be a prisoner. Just like at my schools!”