by Debra Dunbar
Why did he look so sad at that idea?
“Please? Just try a few of them, okay?”
She sighed, unable to resist when he looked so earnest and enthusiastic. “I will try.”
He took both of their plates into the house and returned with a tray. On it were an assortment of metal objects.
“This one first, because I think you’ll be okay with it.”
He held it out to her and she reached a tentative finger to it, tapping the surface of the disk briefly. When she felt no burn from the contact, she touched it again, this time for a few seconds.
“It’s bronze. Now let’s try brass, which is an alloy of copper and zinc. Bronze is copper and tin.”
She touched the brass with more confidence. “So I’m fine to touch bronze, brass, and therefore copper, zinc, and tin?”
He nodded. “Now gold. And this one is silver. Werewolves can sometimes have problems with silver. A lot of us get hives with repeated contact, a few blister and scar like you do with iron.”
She handled both with no problem. “Can you touch the silver?”
He laughed. “I’d rather not because it makes my hands itch. Sometimes I’ll grab something silver by accident and need to go take a Benadryl. Brenda obviously didn’t have any problems with the metal since these are her necklaces.”
She nodded, then inhaled sharply as she saw the other items on the tray. “Those are iron?”
“Nothing pure iron. Some steel and alloys. We’ll start you out with this. It’s a chrome plated brass fitting. If you can touch this, then most bathroom fixtures are okay.”
She exhaled in relief when her fingers brushed the metal with no pain.
“And now stainless steel silverware. It’s iron, but has ten percent chromium to keep it from corroding.”
She touched the fork and yelped, yanking her hand back. There was a round blister on her thumb that ached like she’d been bitten by something poisonous. “Ninety percent iron is too much.”
He grimaced. “Sorry. The chromium coats the surface, so I’d hoped that would protect you from the iron. Let’s try this one.”
“No,” she shook her head. “I can tell you right now that I can’t touch that.”
He picked up the hammer. “But you’re okay sitting a few feet from it, right? If you put a towel over your hand, could you touch it? Gloves?”
“I don’t know. Maybe? It bothers me being this close to it. It’s like standing next to a very hot fire. You know that one wrong move and you will be burned.”
“As bad as I feel that you are so affected by a metal that’s pervasive in our everyday lives, I have to admit this kinda makes me glad. Your ex-boyfriend is hardly likely to take over the world when Billy Bob can kill him with a screwdriver.”
She laughed. “I’m sure he hasn’t realized the incredible disadvantage of this sensitivity. He probably sees it as an inconvenience, and I’m sure the humans he’s working with are scurrying to keep everything iron and steel away from him. Talligie is like that. He’s a high lord and people just fall to do his bidding by nature.”
“And did you fall to do his bidding?” He dark green eyes were intense, as if the answer to this question was of the utmost importance.
“I thought I loved him. When you love someone, you do things to please them. He never had to command me to do anything. In fact, that would have sent me packing. Instead he just smiled and said it would make him happy, and I did it.” She snorted. Weak fool. How could you have been so blind?
Dustin turned a dazzling smile on her. “It would make me so happy if you did the dishes this morning.”
She laughed again. She’d had more laughter in the last week then she’d had in decades. “I believe the human saying is ‘go stuff it’.”
He grinned. “That’s my girl!”
Was she? Was she his girl? Because sitting here on the porch, chatting, she definitely felt like she was his girl.
“And now that I’ve made my feelings clear, I’m going to help you do the dishes, and then we can leave to go into town.” She stood and something caught her eye again over by the woods, something shiny that reflected the light. Something that most definitely hadn’t been there yesterday.”
“—if so, I’m game. Hello? What are you looking at?”
She’d completely missed what Dustin had said. “Over there. Do you see that in the woods? A prism or something.”
He stood as well, she felt the tension radiating off of him. “I’ll go check it out.”
“No, we’ll go check it out. Remember, we have complementary powers, like the Amazing Twins people.”
“Wonder Twins. Okay, but stay here a minute while I get the rifle. If that’s your ex-boyfriend, then I’ll apologize in advance for being a little trigger happy.”
“Stop calling him my ex-boyfriend.” But Dustin had left and she wasn’t sure he’d heard her.
Dustin insisted on leading the way, the gun at his shoulder. Halfway there he lowered it. “I don’t smell anything fresh, but someone was here and it wasn’t an elf, it was a human.”
A neighbor checking on the werewolves who had owned this cabin? Or one of the hunters, dropping by to see if there were additional werewolves here to kill. Her wards had been undisturbed, so whoever he’d been, he hadn’t ventured beyond the woods.
Gwylla edged past Dustin to the mirror hanging from a tree branch that swayed in the light breeze and caught the sunlight. Hanging from the bottom of it, like a wind chime, was a glass tube etched with runes.
“Should you touch that?” Dustin asked, putting out a hand to stay her as she reached for the tube.
“I can see the magic. It’s a simple spell that keeps anyone but fae from opening the glass tube.” There would be a scroll inside. And there was only one being in Alaska who would be leaving messages that were clearly meant for her.
“That doesn’t reassure me one bit. If your ex-boyfriend sent that, it’s liable to explode when you open it.”
Except Talligie didn’t want her dead. Not yet, anyway. “It won’t explode. And stop calling him my ex-boyfriend. Call him Talligie.”
“I don’t want to say his name,” Dustin growled. “Can I call him Jerk Face instead?”
She snapped the tube off the branch and twisted the top. “Jerk Face is acceptable. See? No explosion.”
“Well, that’s a relief since I’m standing all of six inches from you. What’s it say?”
She unrolled the scroll. “That he wants me to come back to him. That he’s sorry. That he’ll alter his plans for world domination if I’ll just come back to him. Etc. Etc.”
That wasn’t what the scroll said, but she wasn’t about to tell Dustin that Talligie had threatened to kill “her wolf-man toy” and exterminate all of the werewolves unless she returned. Stupid elf. In all the years they’d been together, hadn’t he realized that threats never worked with her?
“Why am I thinking that you’re lying and that what’s on that scroll is more stick than carrot?”
She rolled the scroll up, then set it on fire, watching it burn to ash in her fingers. “Because you are a very perceptive wolf-man. He does want me back. And neither stick nor vegetables of any kind will convince me to rejoin him.”
They watched the scroll burn until the embers were gone, the smoke had drifted away, and she brushed the ash off on her pants leg. Then Dustin put his arm around her shoulder, keeping pace with her as they walked back to the house. “Good. Because I’m not going to let you go back to Jerk Face in some noble attempt to sacrifice yourself for the good of others. You’re mine, remember? Bond and all that stuff?”
It was the first time he’d acknowledged it. The first time he hadn’t seemed angry or upset about it. The thought brought a smile to her lips and made her snuggle into his side. “Yes. Bond and all that stuff.”
Chapter 14
Gwylla cleaned the dishes and tidied the house while Dustin went outside to pay his respects at the little grave he’d made for his friends.
She watched him outside the window, a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach when she remembered what they’d found when they came into the house. Dustin had been so distraught.
These people had killed his friends. They’d tried to kill him. And for that they’d pay with their lives. But first Dustin needed to contact his other werewolf friends and make sure they were safe. First she had to deliver him to this Alpha who would take care of him and protect him while Gwylla went to find the elf responsible for this whole mess. Then after she found him, she’d do what she should have done months ago and take Talligie’s life.
But she couldn’t think of that right now. Now she needed to be sharp and ready to protect Dustin as they walked to the nearby town and tried to find a human communication device. And maybe a conveyance that would allow them to travel faster than a walk or jog.
She still wasn’t at full strength. And putting up the wards last night hadn’t helped. She could only pray to the Lady that she didn’t encounter these hunters until she was strong enough to deal with them, to protect not only Dustin, but herself.
It was late morning by the time they set out, and not quite noon by the time they walked into town—if the place could even be called a town. The houses were spread far apart, with a few hotels and tourist shops clustered near the park information center. Dustin headed toward the information center, then spoke for a while with one of the humans wearing a brown shirt and pants with an official looking patch on the collar while she went over to look at the informational items stacked on a shelf beside the door.
Dustin had no money. And of course Gwylla had no money either. If he’d have thought about it, he would have checked to see if there was even a jar with change in it at Brenda and Mark’s place.
“Someone shot you?” The ranger gave him an odd look. “And you hiked fifty miles through the park to get out?”
A year ago he wouldn’t have hesitated to tell the guy that he was a werewolf, but right now Dustin was wary and suspicious of every human he met. But beggars couldn’t be choosers. It was time to be up front with the guy and hope he didn’t pull a rifle out from behind the counter and shoot him dead.
“I’m a werewolf with the Swift River Pack. I flew Brenda and Mark Edmonds from Anchorage to their home and was returning when I saw an overturned truck, and two guys on one of those little service roads. The one guy looked injured, so I did an emergency landing and went to help them. They shot me.”
“They shot you?” The guy repeated, still with the odd look. “Why?”
Here went nothing. “Because there are humans who are hunting shifters. They killed at least one grizzly and shot two werewolves in Kenai. Evidently these guys were using a trap to draw me in, and they shot me.”
Still with the odd look. “But don’t you guys just shrug off gunshot wounds? I’m sure Mark told me one time that it hurt like heck and took a day or so to heal all the way up, but bullets weren’t a big deal like they are to us.”
The guy knew Mark. Oh no, he was going to have to tell him that Mark and Brenda were dead.
“These aren’t normal bullets. They have a special coating on them that makes us shift to our animal form, and hinders our ability to heal. Unless we have someone nearby who can quickly get the bullet out and provide medical attention, we’ll die.”
And now the guy didn’t have that odd expression, he seemed interested? Curious? Either way, Dustin didn’t like it one bit.
“So these bullets make it so you’re just as vulnerable as us humans. Huh.”
“Except they also cause us to shift into our animal form. Then the hunter can take our pelt or drag our bodies off to a taxidermist and hang a shifter head in his living room. Somebody who shoots you while jacking your car doesn’t hang your head on the wall afterward.”
That was probably a bit harsh, but at least the ranger no longer looked curious. Horrified was a much better expression, one that mirrored how Dustin felt about the situation.
“That’s…that’s freaky psychotic serial killer stuff right there. How did you get away from them? It’s not like there’s a hospital in the middle of the park or something.”
Dustin pointed to Gwylla who was looking at a stack of brochures. “Her. She’s got…medical training, and happened to be nearby.”
He looked at the sidhe. “Is she one of those elves? I’ve only seen them on television, although I heard they’re on some island getting trained to work with us or something. As long as they don’t take my job, I’m okay with it. Although the guy that I saw seemed to be a bit of a pompous jerk.”
Dustin was sure that the ranger hadn’t meant to insult her. Either way, he needed to talk less about elves and more about borrowing the guy’s phone.
“When I was well enough to travel, we left the park and went to Mark and Brenda’s. But the hunters got there first.” He paused to let the words sink in. “They field dressed them in their own kitchen and took their bodies.”
And now horrified wasn’t a strong enough word to describe the expression on the ranger’s face. “Mark and Brenda are dead? Murdered? By these psychos?”
“Yes. That’s why I need to borrow your phone. I need to call the Alpha at the Denali Pack to let her know what happened. And I need to call my Alpha, too. He most likely thinks I’m dead. I was supposed to be back nine days ago.”
The ranger slid the phone over to Dustin, his hand shaking.
The first thing he did was call Moira, the Denali Pack Alpha. As desperate as he was to let Jake know his status, and that his plane was destroyed, it was more important for Moira to be aware that two of her wolves had been murdered.
He got her voicemail and hesitated, uncertain if he should leave this kind of news on a message or not. It might be a while before he had access to a phone again, and Dustin had an uneasy feeling that more wolves might be targets, so he left the message, noticing that the ranger looked rather ill as he detailed exactly the scene at Brenda and Mark’s house as well as where he’d buried their remains.
Then with an apologetic glance at the ranger, he dialed Jake.
The phone rang and rang. Dustin started to panic, wondering where everyone was, if he was the only werewolf left alive in a horrible Mad Max post-apocalyptic scenario. He nearly passed out with relief when he heard his Alpha’s gruff voice on the phone.
“It’s Dustin. I’m alive.” That seemed the most important thing to get out there. Jake wasn’t the sort of Alpha who liked long monologues.
There was a shout from the other end of the phone that nearly took Dustin’s eardrum out. “I sent a team northeast looking for you,” Jake told him. “I’ve got three guys on the ground in Denali with Moira’s approval combing the mountains. You nearly gave me a heart attack, Dustin.”
He couldn’t help the shiver that ran through him. Jake was so…intense. Sometimes having him as an Alpha was like holding onto the bare end of a live wire. But in spite of the tension crackling across the phone line, Dustin knew his Alpha well enough to understand the subtext. He was valued—highly valued. And Jake had been unsettled, no he’d been scared, by Dustin’s disappearance.
“I saw an emergency on the ground and landed to help,” Dustin told him. “But it was a trap. They shot me. I ran for it, but by the time I was healed enough to go back, my plane was trashed and everything was gone. I had to sort of hike out and borrow a phone. And Brenda and Mark were killed, their bodies taken as trophies.”
It was a lot, and Dustin hoped he’d conveyed it in a succinct manner. Short and to the point was how Jake always wanted his reports.
There was a silence that seemed to stretch on for hours. Dustin shifted his weight, feeling like all the blood had rushed out of his body. He noticed the hand holding the phone to his ear was shaking. He should have been dead, like Brenda and Mark. It was only sheer luck that he was here alive, talking to his Alpha on the phone.
“Why aren’t you dead?”
Dustin knew his Alpha well enough to know that Jake was shocked he’d been
shot with one of the magic-tainted bullets and survived, and this was Jake’s rather brutal way of expressing that disbelief. And relief.
“I…., um…” Dustin looked over at Gwylla who was still looking at brochures, although he was pretty certain she’d heard every word of the conversation. “My wolf took over and I ran, and through some miracle I managed to wind up being found by a healer before I died.”
Yet another long silence stretched across the phone line. “A healer. On the edges of Denali Park, which is six million acres big and filled with the highest mountains in Alaska. No one lives there. You can hike for days and not come across a human or shifter, but you managed to find…a healer? What was he, a trauma surgeon like Brent’s mate Kennedy? And he was hiking or mountain climbing nearby?”
Dustin shot another glance at Gwylla. He was reluctant to tell Jake about her. Why? He’d always been open and honest with his Alpha about everything, but he didn’t want anyone to know what Gwylla was. Was he trying to protect her? Or was he trying to protect Jake?
“It was a one-in-a-million thing,” he confessed. “She’s…she’s a fae. Otherwise I think I’d be dead because I was shot twice and I’d lost a lot of blood when she found me.”
“An elf saved you?” Jake sounded incredulous. “The magic on the bullets is from an elf. Those angels of Brent’s ID’d it, and he had it confirmed by some mage in Hel who is supposed to be working on an antidote. Do you think she’s the one who made the magic on the bullets? Or knows who does?”
A lot had happened since he’d been shot. And he really, really didn’t want to discuss all this with Jake over the phone. Or at all.
“I wanted to let you know I’m alive and I’m in McKinley Park at the visitor center. I’ve got no money and no phone, and I’m wearing borrowed clothes. Can you send someone up to get me? And one other person. Then I’ll tell you everything that happened and what I know in detail.”