“You asked for me. I came.”
“You were always such a good girl, like your mother. I’m sure she’s in Heaven. I only hope I will follow her, but I couldn’t go until I told you my secret, which may keep me from joining her there.” She turned my palm up and traced the scratches. “Ah, but you may already know. My poor ragazzina, it will take more running before your hands are calloused enough that you will no longer feel it. We tried to prevent this for you. Your mother and I—you must have thought we were crazy—but in spite of it all, we failed.”
My heart beat a staccato rhythm in my chest, and I struggled to keep my breathing even. Memories crowded in—not the forbidden ones from the night I changed the first time—but others from my childhood. Games, rhymes, the silly little rituals parents have with their kids, the way Aunt Alicia always looked at me with an almost clinical interest before she warmed to me whenever we visited her… They all took on a sinister meaning.
“What did you fail at? Really, I’m okay,” I insisted, for both her and myself.
She turned her hands palm-up and guided my fingertips over the rough patches on the edges of her palms and the pads of her fingers. My mind struggled to put together what she was telling me— she had Chronic Lycanthropy Syndrome like me—and that my own genes had betrayed me in the face of Peter’s magic. But then something else intervened.
“I’m not like that anymore,” I said. “Something happened. I won’t change anymore.” The regret in my voice surprised me, and I blinked back tears. How is this possible? Is she like me? What does she mean, they tried to prevent it? And why did she wait until now?
“Impossible!” She spat the word at me. “There is no reprieve from this curse.” Then her brows came together. “I had hoped you would be spared. That’s why I kept my distance—words have power, and it was the only way I had to protect you.”
Her words made sense, but they also didn’t. I told myself that was because she was confused, that the heart failure had deprived her brain of oxygen, but I had to keep the conversation going.
“I wish you had told me.” My hands trembled, and heat radiated from my chest to my cheeks. I struggled to keep my tone even, to not betray my shock and confusion. “There was a wizard, and then I got shot with something while I was…changed.” The word wolf hung in the air between us, but if she wasn’t going to say it, I wasn’t either. It would make this insane conversation mean too much. “Now I cannot change.”
I kept my voice low in case an orderly or some other person came by and overheard us. It all still seemed crazy to me, and I’d lived it. No telling what someone else would think.
“But do you have your guardian?”
I closed my eyes and listened to that part of the mind where Wolf-Lonna had been, but it was like scar tissue and lacked sensation. “I cannot reach her.”
She said one of those words in Italian that my parents had always refused to teach me, and I couldn’t help but smile in spite of the lump in my throat that grew with the realization of this new loss. “Your friend Joanie,” she said. “She was studying things that will help it make sense for you.”
“She’s got the same problem,” I said. “She turns with the moon.”
She waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. “Not that part—the things that are making it happen, the parts of the soul. If you have lost your other self, you have lost part of your soul, and that is not good.”
“I don’t understand, and I need to.” Desperation tinged my tone, and I clutched the blanket so I would stop trembling. “Please save your strength. You have to hold on a little longer so you can explain all this to me.” I knew I was begging, but I couldn’t help it.
“We are not meant to understand all of it, ragazzina, only the parts God wants us to. As for me, I only hope he does not hold me accountable for what I did when I was not in control of my actions.”
“What did you do?” I felt guilty for my resentment and anger. She needed the comforting now. “Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been that bad.”
She shook her head. “That secret, it will come to the grave with me.” She patted my hand. “It was the other I needed you to know. The Padre Superiore said one per generation, and you are the only one. I hoped the price would die with me, but he was a strong one.”
“What are you talking about? Who is the Padre Superiore? What price?”
“I fear you will meet him without the protection of your companion.” She gripped my hand tightly and looked out of the window. “Ah, now that I have told you, I see your mother. She is as beautiful as the day she married your father, ragazzina.”
“What? Where?” I followed her gaze with my own, but all I could see was the room and the tulip tree glowing pink in the courtyard lights outside the window. A breeze made the branches shiver, and an answering chill crept down my neck. Then I felt it again, that sensation of a hand caressing my cheek like the night before.
“All I have is yours,” she gasped, and with one last squeeze, she died. If she had been in the hospital, the medical monitors would have raised the alarm, but here, there was only the sound of the oxygen compressor, which fell silent. Only the clock on the wall persisted in its steady ticking. I studied her face to see if she had gone happily, if she had, indeed, been able to follow my mother to Heaven, but her expression was neutral with no indication one way or the other. Hopefully seeing Mama was the indicator of what was to come, not a final goodbye. I closed my eyes to say a prayer for her, and I saw the lines of the interstate, the long eternal road. I struggled to stay awake, but the toll of the early start, intense emotions, and driving all day caught me.
The weight of Gladis Ann’s hand on my shoulder startled me awake. “It’s over,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I should have come to get you. You didn’t get to say goodbye.”
“I will be following her soon enough.”
I looked at her. “Why? Are you ill?”
“Not exactly.” She looked at my aunt and then said with a relieved sigh, “Do not fear, ragazzina, she is at peace. Let’s go back to the house, and we can talk more there. The staff here will make the necessary arrangements with the funeral home. She had prepared for everything.”
“Shouldn’t there have been a doctor?” I asked. “To confirm time of death?”
“There was one,” she said. “A nice young man with reddish hair and eyes like the ocean. He just left. She died at midnight.”
The clock said twelve fifteen, so I had only been asleep for a few minutes, but I felt alert with all she had told me and the strange feeling of simultaneously being hollowed out by grief and full of confusion and fear with what I had learned.
She turned and left the room, and I followed her. This has gone from strange to very strange. Max couldn’t have found me, could he?
The lights flickered in the hallway, and my breath caught. I didn’t see any staff, just Gladis Ann’s broad back ahead of me. All the doors stood closed, and nothing stirred or moved. The plaster walls of the old house seemed to bow and wiggle when my eyes moved away from them, as did the white molding.
“Slow down,” I panted. “Please! You’re leaving me behind.”
“You must hurry,” she said and turned her head, although she kept moving. Her formerly black hair was now streaked with white.
“What’s happening?” The blinking of the lights increased in frequency until it was like we moved under a strobe light.
“We are not the only ones to say goodbye, and I must protect her.”
I followed her outside, but once she passed through the door, she disappeared.
“Gladis Ann?” I asked, but the night had no answer. “Where did you go? Come on, this isn’t funny. Who are you protecting?”
The white columns of the antebellum mansion glowed in the lights, which flickered. I searched every corner of the parking lot, but I didn’t even see my aunt’s large blue Buick, which Gladis Ann had ferried her around in. When I tried to call her number
, I got the cheerful message that the number had been disconnected or was no longer in service.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked out loud, hoping someone would answer. No human voices came out of the shadows, but I heard the howl of a wolf, which was joined by others all around.
There are no wolves in Georgia! Are there? The howls grew louder and closer, interspersed with occasional yips and other noises. I couldn’t tell the direction they came from, only that they seemed to be all around me.
“Gladis Ann, where are you?” I hissed. “Do you hear that?”
A cold breeze made every hair on my arms stand on end, and I finally heard her. “Get in your car and run away, ragazzina. That is the Padre Superiore, and he will be unhappy to find her already gone.”
My car seemed miles away although it was only twenty feet across the parking lot, and nothing stood between me and it. I darted forward, but a shadow with glowing yellow eyes blocked my way. It moved too quickly for me to get a good look at it, but every time I moved toward my car, it jumped in front of me and snarled. I bared my teeth at it, willing and hoping to change, even to spirit-walk, but nothing happened.
A low chuckle caught my attention, and I looked behind me to see a man in black monk’s robes glaring at me. Although he wore the clothes of a religious man, he had the air of a predator.
“You gave up your gift, ragazzina,” he said, and he sneered through the only term of endearment my aunt had ever called me. “It cannot help you now.”
“Why are you hunting me?” I asked. “I haven’t done anything to you.”
“We hunt witches and wizards, and you have the mark of two on you. Plus, your family owes me a debt.”
My palm where Peter had kissed me that first day and my foot where Max had marked me both stabbed me with pain, and I crumpled to the ground. The monk walked toward me, and he cradled his left arm against his chest. The shadows around him thickened and resolved into a pack of wolves that slinked alongside him.
“I accepted neither of these marks willingly,” I told him. “And I know of no debt.”
“It matters not. You were close enough to them for them to have the opportunity, which means you are a weak-willed woman ruled by her passions, especially lust.”
“If you had any idea how long it’s been,” I grumbled.
“This is not the time for your insolence!” He towered over me and bared his teeth. “I will end your life now, and then we will be free.
“Free of what?”
Chapter Eight
The pain in my foot subsided, and a warm glow suffused the parking lot. The monk covered his eyes with his right hand and revealed his left hand was not human, but rather a wolf’s paw. The shadows that had been circling me fell back when Max appeared beside me. He wore an immaculately tailored dark blue suit and white Oxford shirt open at the collar, and he carried a flaming torch. The light sparked off his reddish-brown hair.
“Can’t stay out of trouble for one day, can you?” he asked. He slanted his torch toward the monk, who shrank back but watched him with glittering eyes.
“Get that witchfire out of my face, wizard,” he snarled.
“Leave this woman alone. Her battle is not ours.”
“Her family owes me a price. I will collect it, if not now, then later.”
“You know the rules.”
“Aye,” the monk said. “But she does not, and it will be her ruin.” He bared his teeth, and then he and the other wolves dissolved into the shadows.
Max held out his hand, and I took it so he could help me to my feet. The throbbing in my palm ceased with one last little tingle.
“Thank you,” I said. I tried to stand, but my legs wobbled and I couldn’t find my balance. He supported me with one strong arm around my waist.
“Encounters with the Benandanti can do that,” he said, “especially when they’re not the nice kind.”
“Are there nice ones?”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “Didn’t you know…” He shook his head. “They reveal themselves in their own time.”
“Don’t I know what?” I asked and stepped away from him. “I don’t know anything. This whole world of werewolves and wizards and ghostly monks is new to me. I was just barely getting the hang of the werewolf thing when it was stripped away.”
“As I told you, all you have to do is accept who and what you are, and you’ll get her back.”
A warm tropical breeze stirred around me, and I smelled the ocean. “As you told me in my dream,” I said. “Seriously, what are you? Why do you keep following me?”
He looked around. “Let’s go to your aunt’s home. I suspect we’ll find more answers there.” Then he spoke again, but it sounded like he talked to himself. “My superiors didn’t know just how clueless you would be. Otherwise, they would not have limited my orders to watching.”
We got in the car, and I turned out on to the highway.
“What superiors? What are you supposed to be doing?”
He turned to face me. “You do not know what an exquisite, rare creature you are?”
Rather than his words being romantic, they sounded more clinical, like I was a specimen to be put under glass. “Gee, do you say that to all the lady werewolves you meet, or just the ones you can get to appear in your dreams in bikinis?”
He laughed, and I got a glimpse of his very white teeth in the darkness, which seemed determined to swallow up even the minor illumination from the car’s dashboard.
“That wasn’t my dream, but rather a place I created in the Collective Unconscious to have meetings.” He drummed his fingers on his knee. “Someone found it who shouldn’t have, which means I have not been the only one watching you.”
“Okay, that’s even more creepy than being spoken to like I’m a museum piece. What the hell are you talking about, Max? If you don’t tell me, I’m going to dump you out on the side of the road and not look back.”
“Are all our conversations going to end up with you threatening me for answers? At least it’s not evisceration this time.”
I kept my face forward but side-glanced at him. “That depends. Are you going to start giving me some? How did you get here—or to the hospice home—anyway?”
“That one I can tell you. The same way the wizard Peter Bowman came to the house a couple of days ago, which is also how you were out dancing while you were sound asleep.”
“Wait…what?” I was saying that a lot lately. His answers made sense from a vocabulary and grammar perspective, but my mind just wasn’t making the leap. “How could I be in two places at once?”
We turned into the gravel drive that led up to my aunt’s house, a cedar-shingled Victorian, complete with round gables and a wraparound porch. My mother had always said it looked like it couldn’t make up its mind whether to belong to a good witch or a bad one. After my earlier conversation with my late aunt, I suspected there was a good reason for that since she couldn’t seem to figure out if she was good or bad, either.
I stopped the car and squinted my eyes shut so the tears that were fighting to come out wouldn’t.
“You said you weren’t close,” said Max, “but there will still be grief.” He patted my hand. His touch sent warmth up my arm, and the spot where he’d marked my right foot tingled.
“You’re using magic on me,” I told him. “If it’s grief, it needs to be expressed. The only way through it is through it.”
“Yes, but you’re trying not to. It’s only a little spell of warm comfort.”
I yanked my hand away. “Well, stop it. I’ll deal with this on my own.” I opened the door and stood in the chilly air, imagining the house as it had been the few times my parents and I had visited here as a child.
He got out of the car and stretched. His presence grated on my already worn nerves, and I had to will my teeth not to clench. How dare he use his magic on me? That never ends well.
“Go away,” I told him. “You’re not going to give me any information I can use, and the l
ast thing I need is for you to complicate my life with more magic I didn’t ask for and don’t want.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was only trying to help.”
His apology brought my shoulders down from their tense position by a fraction of an inch. “Why are you here, Max? Seriously, I can handle things on my own.”
“Like the Padre Superiore back there?” He snorted. “You’d have been dog food or worse if I hadn’t saved you. He would have driven you to do something stupid that would have ended your life, and then he would have claimed your soul for his pack.”
“Right, I get it. Wolf monks are bad. I’ll look out for myself better next time.” Then I remembered why I had been running in the first place. “Did they get Gladis Ann?”
“No, she’s gone to join your aunt. They only hastened her journey.”
“They killed her?”
He rubbed his temples. “Let’s go inside, and I’ll explain some basics to you. It won’t count as interference if it’s information you should already have.”
“Finally you’re going to do something useful.” I found the spare key in a vase by the front door and let us in. Even though a decade had passed since I’d stayed with her the summer after my parents’ deaths, Aunt Alicia hadn’t changed a thing. I made tea for me and Max on the old gas stove. We sat at the kitchen table, hands wrapped around our mugs since the heater was taking its sweet time to kick in. Finally, the temperature was comfortable enough for us to talk face-to-face and for me to focus on getting some answers.
“Okay, talk,” I said. “Start with the basics.”
“Your friend Joanie knows all this,” he told me with a sigh. “She should have taught it to you.”
“Well, she’s been a bit busy, and we weren’t talking much for a while.”
“You do know that each person has a body and a soul, correct?”
“That’s what Sister Appassionata told me, yes.”
“Sister Appassionata, really?” he asked with a grin that sent heat down to my soles. I remembered he’d seen me in a bikini. “What else did she teach you?”
Long Shadows: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 2 Page 7