by SJ Himes
Kane froze as Burke bounded into the room, the great chocolate brown wolf coming to his side immediately. Burke took one look at Kane’s face, and stilled, his lieutenant then turned to the Clan Leader. Heromindes was shaking, fully human hands covering his face, shoulders slumped, covered in sweat brought on by stress. Kane could hear other wolves approaching, and he prayed to the Great Mother that Heromindes was all right, not wanting anyone to see the Clan Leader in his current condition. Regret rose like bile in his throat, and Burke huddled against his hip, Kane’s fingers digging deep into his thick fur.
Heromindes was shaking, so hard as to fly apart, and Kane swallowed nervously. He may have broken the Clan Leader of Ashland. He wanted to vomit, feeling as vile and dirty as the humans responsible for tormenting the stricken wolves lying unconscious on the floor.
*Hear me, Heromindes, Alpha, and Clan Leader of Ashland. Hear me, and obey.* Kane risked this, risked destroying the Clan Leader in order to save him. He released the Voice, keeping its power restrained to thoughts along the link between himself and the other alpha, not wanting Burke or the other wolves approaching to be exposed. *You have your free will, your thoughts and actions are yours alone. Your strength is intact, your command and authority unchallenged. Hear me, and believe.*
It seemed eternity before Heromindes responded, Kane’s words echoing in his head, as Kane carefully released the Clan Leader from his influence. It may have worked, using the Voice to repair any damage it caused. Kane waited, hoping, afraid he may have ruined a fine leader and a good wolf through carelessness.
Heromindes dropped his hands and stood taller, as Ashland and Black Pine wolves poured into the apartment, stopped by the sight of the two alphas squared off, and the Suarez pack members drugged on the floor.
“Attend to their injuries, and summon another shaman. Get vehicles here, one for the prisoners,” Heromindes ordered, his scent quickly clearing of stress and fear. His eyes were a calm, gentle green, and Kane let go of his worry, relief coursing through his veins as the Clan Leader issued orders. Wolves sprinted to obey, some kneeling by the Suarez wolves, others turning and running back down the hall, jumping over the dead humans still on the floor.
Kane breathed, relaxing, Burke at his side doing the same. He would apologize later, alone, and he hoped Heromindes would be able to forgive him.
Kane moved aside as Heromindes made for the bedroom, where Sophia and River tended to the two cubs. He needn’t fear that Heromindes would kill the prisoners, not now. Whether Heromindes would try and kill him for his transgression was another matter.
Escaping the Past
“GLEN? CAN you stand?” Cat asked as Ghost paced the floor, ears pointed towards the front of the lab and the drive. He didn’t trust the trespassers not to return. They wanted him for some reason, and he didn’t doubt that they would be back.
“Yeah, I can stand. Give me a hand.” Cat put every muscle she had into it, and Glen still did most of the work getting to his feet. Ghost watched, worried, the blood seeping now instead of flowing freely from his human alpha’s head wound.
Glen watched him in return, thoughts clear on his expressive face. He was wondering about Ghost, but not afraid. There was no fear on his features, in his movements, and no trace of it in his scent. Ghost huffed, and pointed his nose back to the door, scenting, ears straining.
“They still out there, boy?” Ghost turned his head back to Glen, surprised. His human was watching him, a new understanding in the way he looked at the wolf. Ghost gave up trying to scent the trespassers and padded back over to his humans.
“They gone?” Glen asked again, and Ghost braved meeting his eyes. He dipped his snout, a wolf version of a nod, twice. Cat gurgled in shock, eyes round, but Glen just smiled, a small lift of his lips. “Good.”
“Go back to guarding the front, there’s a good boy.” Ghost glared at Glen, but he went, sitting in the doorway of the upstairs lab, muzzle pointed down the hall, ears and nose on high alert for a scent or sound that didn’t belong. He kept one eye on his humans, the other on the hall.
“Cat, grab our camping gear, our survival packs, all the emergency supplies. Sat phones, passports, everything. We’re buggin’ out.” Glen pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead, the other bracing himself on the table. “I’ll get the truck ready.”
“We’re what? Glen, we need to call the police!” Cat exclaimed, red hair frizzy, her hands making knots as she ran her fingers through her hair over and over. “You need an ambulance!”
“And tell them what, babe? That we had two scientists kill two conservation officers, assault us, drug and try to steal our wolf, who turns out is something called a shaman and isn’t really a wolf at all, and who can apparently do magic and communicate like a person?” Glen asked, exasperated, clearly in pain. He wasn’t yelling though, and Cat stood still for a long moment, mouth hanging open, staring at her mate. Ghost huffed loudly in amusement, tail thumping on the doorframe as he contemplated Glen’s easy acceptance of the situation. He was a fine alpha, for a human.
Cat snapped out of her daze and blinked a few times. She closed her mouth, and nodded, running from the lab towards the rear door, where their den was and their camping gear.
“C’mon boy, let’s go get the truck started,” Glen walked up to him, and Ghost stood, bracing the big human with his shoulder. Glen dug his fingers deep in the fur on Ghost’s shoulders, and the wolf walked Glen down the hall, to the stairs. They went down slowly, Ghost stopping at the front door once they hit the bottom, scenting for danger before guiding Glen out. They both avoided the body left beside the drive, freezing in the harsh winter wind, blood no longer flowing from the bullet wound in the center of his forehead.
Glen appeared to be regaining strength with each step, the frozen gravel crunching under his boots as they made for the garage. Ghost bolted ahead, nose to the ground, sniffing for trespassers, but there was nothing, just the days old scent of Cat and Glen, and the crunchy sweet smell of squirrels. Cat had a feeder that she stored in the garage during the winter months, and it drew in the giant rodents even when it was empty. He shook off the desire to follow the tempting scent, and met Glen at the door to the garage, keys jingling in his hands. The large steel and concrete barn that acted as the sanctuary’s garage was as chilly on the inside as it was outside, and the smooth concrete made his paws ache from the cold.
“Ghost, go check on Cat, get her moving,” Glen ordered him as he turned on the sanctuary’s truck, a silver and black vehicle nearly as old as Ghost, which Glen lovingly referred to as ‘his baby’. Ghost cocked his head at the human, still wondering at the ease Glen had in addressing him not as an animal, but a thinking person. Ghost didn’t argue this new change in their dynamic, woofing softly, and he sprinted from the garage as the big truck roared to life.
Ghost paused at the top of the drive, scenting the wind, looking for hints of the trespassers. He couldn’t smell anything, but the wind was blowing in the wrong direction; they could be coming back and he wouldn’t know until they were close, with more members of their pack. He dashed through the burnt and broken front door, and ran up the stairs back to the lab. Cat was running around, dropping gear bags and backpacks in a pile near the door, before running back through the rear door of the lab, to where the humans had their den.
“Can’t carry all of this… Oh! Ghost, you startled me, bad boy.” Cat scolded him absently, running her hands through her red hair for what must have been the hundredth time, ticking on her fingers a list of everything she thought they might need. Ghost wasn’t sure what buggin’ out meant, but it seemed to involve a camping trip of some kind. It wouldn’t be the first one he’d been on with his human packmates. Ghost eyed the pile, many of the bags as big as Cat, and heavier.
Ghost grabbed the nearest bag by its straps and pulled it from the pile, carrying it in his jaws. He dropped it in the gravel of the drive just as Glen parked
the truck, engine running. He and Glen ran back inside, the human slightly unsteady, but moving fast enough. Together they carried the packs downstairs, Glen even dropping a strap around his neck before handing him another to hold in his jaws. Ghost grumbled around the fabric but followed his human alpha, the bags bumping on his chest and forelegs.
“Glen….. What about the body?” Cat asked as they rejoined her upstairs, holding an armful of coats, staring down at the other dead conservation officer where he was slumped partially propped up on the wall, eyes staring, dulled by death. Blood was pooled under him, and Ghost grumbled, annoyed at the blood he just noticed on his paws from where he walked through the puddle several times leaving prints on the white and black tiles. The trespassing alpha named Remus had dropped the other body beside the front door, and Ghost had regained consciousness and chased them off before the other body could be moved.
“Leave him. Nothing we can do for him, or his partner downstairs. We need to go, and now.” Glen put a hand on her elbow, and guided her from the lab, helping her step over the blood. Ghost crowded behind her legs, keeping her moving forward.
“What about the wolves? The puppies?” Cat asked, tears in her voice, and Ghost sensed she was at the end of her resolve.
“We can call one of the summer interns to come up here and take care of them, or we can contact the police after we’ve gotten some distance between us and the sanctuary. We gotta go babe, we can’t take them with us.” Glen and Ghost between them managed to get a very flustered Cat into the truck, and Ghost ran in front of Glen before he got behind the wheel.
He sat, and put a paw on Glen’s thigh, and he stared up at his human alpha, silently asking him to wait. Glen met his eyes, and while Ghost could not actually speak to the human as he would to a wolfkin alpha, his human seemed to understand. Other humans would not care for Ghost’s cousins, not as his human packmates did. The sanctuary wolves would not be safe.
“You have five minutes buddy, make ‘em count,” Glen told him softly, and he hopped up into the truck, shutting the door.
Ghost ran around the building, and went straight to the wolf run, the high chain link fence gate locked securely, the snow deep and untouched. He pounded through the snow, and sent his will out ahead of him, listening to the tumblers in the lock spinning as he approached. The lock fell away as he reached the gates, and he reared up, slamming both front paws on the fencing. The gate groaned as it opened wide, the bottom bar scraping through the heavy wet snow as he pushed it.
Ghost howled, calling. He could sense them near, the wolves of the sanctuary pack. A heartbeat of silence, then they answered, the deep call of the female alpha of the pack closest to him. She flowed over the snow, soundless, smelling of pine sap and blood from yesterday’s butchered meal. She was a large black and brown wolf, her thoughts a warm swirl of gold and green, none of them word based like his, but a mix of emotion and desires, and an entrenched wariness that he understood well. He was bigger, faster, more powerful, yet not alpha, and it left her confused.
A shadow of a star burned in her heart, and Ghost called to it with the vibrant star that shone inside of his own, pulling her forward. The pack came at her heels, a half dozen elusive wraiths that kept their heads low, tails tucked. They were shy with him, wary, not as brave as their matriarch.
Her eyes were a deep orange, startling and pure. She kept her head up and tail out, supreme in her domain. Using instinct and a half-practiced technique formed over the course of the last fourteen years, Ghost sent the pack matriarch a series of images, a deep-seated need, of towering pines and mountains, far from humans and their roads. She blinked, slowly, as he repeated the urge to her to run, to lead her wolves far away, away from humanity and their traps and guns. He gave her what he could, the knowledge of what to avoid and what to hunt, tugging at the edges of her mind, filling it with what he knew of surviving in the wild, calling to her own instincts. She had been born behind this fence, years after he was found and brought here as a cub, and she knew nothing of the wild. So he dug deep, looking for the memories that weren’t, the instincts that could never be tamed, and pulled them to the light.
As Ghost withdrew, he heard in his head the lonesome cry of an ancient wolf and felt the thunder of paws on rich black earth. The female wolf shook her head, as if she heard the same call. Ghost backed away and ran to where the puppies were kept, the female on his heels. Again he sent out his will, so easily now, and the locks popped open. They heard them coming, little yips and cries greeting Ghost and the female. Three cubs poured out from the warm wooden den, awkward little bodies almost six months of age, all from the same litter of a slain pack. Cat had saved them before local cattle farmers put them down, flying all the way out to a place called Montana and back.
Ghost opened the door of the puppy pen, and they tumbled out into the snow, their coats thick despite their age, and the cubs mobbed the female. She gave him a look that transcended species, exasperation and a grudging affection. Ghost sent her a wordless entreaty, and she answered him by nosing the pups, guiding them towards her pack.
A horn blared, and Ghost jumped, startled. He sent the wolves of the sanctuary one last look, as they slowly made their way out of the wolf run, north towards the tree line. The cubs bounced through the snow, the other females of the pack taking cues from the matriarch, surrounding the little ones. They left, not once looking back, and he felt a faint echo of longing, a part of him wanting to follow.
He ran, satisfied, mind now dedicated to his own pack. His humans. They were all he knew, all he loved, and he belonged with them. Ghost cleared the side of the building, and he ran to the truck, the side rear door of the extended cab open. He flew into the back, claws scrambling on the cloth seat. Cat reached back, yanking the door shut as Glen hit the gas. The cab was warm, and he immediately felt overheated, his dense coat adequate outside but stifling in the truck. He panted, eyeing his humans as they left behind the sanctuary. Ghost dropped his head on the shoulder of the driver’s seat, snuffling at Glen.
“Cat, turn on the radio, listen in on official channels, see if anyone called in a disturbance at the sanctuary. Our guests might be coming back,” Glen murmured, driving fast on the icy gravel road, handling the large vehicle well despite the conditions. Glen pushed Ghost’s nose away from his face, and he snuck a quick lick in before he sat back.
“Where are we going?” Cat asked, clicking on the radio over her head, scanning the channels.
“They were after Ghost. Willing to kill us, and anyone else in their way to get him. He’s obviously not a regular wolf. I’m thinking they knew that, from the moment you sent in the DNA samples.” Glen continued to drive, barely slowing the truck once they hit the paved highway, heading south. “He was young when we found him. Every young thing has parents, family. I’m thinking we messed up big time all those years ago when we found him by the river.”
“He was just a cub, a baby. Of course we took him,” Cat complained, glaring at Glen. “We thought his owners dumped him.”
“I’m thinking he was lost, Cat. Like any other kid, lost in the woods, happy to see grown-ups, even if they weren’t his grown-ups.” Glen stressed the last words, looking briefly at Ghost in the rearview mirror. Ghost sat back up, and nudged Glen’s head behind his ear, licking him happily. Finally, his humans understood. Glen gave him a smile, tinged with a strange joy, and sadness. Sorrow, even.
“You’re talking like we kidnapped him,” Cat said harshly, eyes wide, staring hard at her mate.
“Cat—we did.” A long, heavy moment of silence settled in the air between them all, and then Cat slumped back in her seat, rubbing her face.
“So how are we supposed to find his family? I’m guessing that’s the point you’re getting at? How are we supposed to find them? We can’t go around asking people if they know of any sentient wolf packs that may or may not have lost a cub fourteen years ago.” Cat demanded, sounding stres
sed.
“We’d heard rumors of wolves in the area for months, Cat. Months. That means there were wolves there at the same time we found him. His species was there, I know it. We’re going back to where we found him, Cat. We’re going back to Baxter State Park.”
Ghost whined loudly at Glen’s declaration, heart pounding so hard surely his humans could hear it. He did not know the name of the place where the gathering happened, but he remembered that it was a special place, one the packs…..no, the Clans traveled to every few years. If it was a wolfkin place, then there must be wolves there sometimes, if not all the time. He remembered a dark haired woman telling him that he was a newborn the last time the gathering happened, and was too young to go. He knew he was five summers old when he fell in the river, and if the gathering happened once when he was born, and again when he was five summers old…..
He may not be able to remember numbers all that well, or do something Cat called math, but he had toes, and could count as high as the ones he had. A gathering was coming. When the spring rains dried and the earth was warm through the night, the gathering would happen. The Clans would return. His mind was awash in memories, half-formed and chaotic, his heart pounding, and his nerves tingling. Words barely remembered tumbled in his head, and he lay down on the seat, whining softly.
Family. Pack. His Clan.
Black Pine.
Home.
A Long Way Back
“Sir, we have seven of the Suarez wolves. Thirteen are still missing. No sign of the traitors.” Kane spoke to his Clan Leader, the webcam’s image indistinct enough to grant him some buffer between himself and what he was certain was a look of extreme displeasure on Caius’ face. The ultra-powerful netbook was braced precariously on the center console of the SUV, and he held it in place with one hand, the other on the wheel, watching over the screen as the Ashland pack handled the scene.