The Unraveling, Volume One of The Luminated Threads: A Steampunk Fantasy Romance

by Wanrow, Laurel

  On the trail of a mystery pest? And who was he to complain, being late himself? He glanced skyward, picking out Tracker, the brightest star above the mountainous ridge on the northern horizon. An hour past midnight. If the previous three nights were any indication, those pests already should have snuck into Maraquin’s section of fields. If they bit into the tomatoes like last night, the collective kitchen would be bushels low for sauce canning. Again.

  He passed the caged tomato plants drooping with ripe plum varieties. If Maraquin didn’t catch up with him, he’d start that additional section they were covering for an absent teammate, and then find her—

  Woof.

  He jerked around at Maraquin’s low bark and met her emerging from the tomato rows. Her robust wolf form rose onto hind legs and slimmed. Moonlight accentuated her bare curves, the best of them hidden beneath the thick hair spilling over her shoulders and chest. He averted his gaze, which each team member did out of courtesy, though they well knew each other’s bodies through their work routine.

  “Twice I heard and chased something,” Maraquin said, “but found nothing. You?”

  He shook his head without bothering to shift to human. Why report the same?

  “Drat. I know they’re in there, but don’t have the time to search with the extra section. Can you cover the cornfield without me?” When he nodded, she sighed and dropped to all fours. “I wish Owen would come back.” The last words became a snarl as she shifted to wolf.

  He felt the same, but what could they do? Owen had to take over the family harvest for his ill brother, and now faced the same battle eliminating these new pests.

  Maraquin shook her thick, silky coat and nimbly closed the space between them, a jump that brought her nose down to his. She licked the side of his round face, her tongue wet on the bare skin fronting his ear. He grabbed her snout in a playful bite, not sinking his canines. Fun, he was telling her, had to wait. She huffed a half growl of understanding and they separated.

  He’d see her after dawn, or not, depending on how their night went, and if Jac agreed. Alpha wolves were such a pain, and he was glad he didn’t have to answer to one. But Maraquin did. It wasn’t that he was that interested, just that Maraquin was sometimes available. Which was just as well. He’d never meet another female who’d match the one he’d lost.

  Eyes and ears alert, Daeryn bounded toward the cornfield. He’d race through it before meeting the next nocturnal team member on his rounds. The five of them had easily covered Owen’s absence until the pests showed up. Now their shameful inability to run down even one of the creatures revealed how much Wellspring had relied on the older fox’s decades of experience in outsmarting prey. If their team didn’t identify the species and pinpoint these pests’ habits, there would be no stopping the crop damage—damage occurring at the worst possible time, the peak of the autumn harvest.

  An hour past midnight and no new sightings of the mysterious species. He, for one, didn’t want to face the head grower in the morning without an explanation for why his workers were showing him bites in half the vegetable varieties.

  A faint vibration under his paws shook Daeryn from his thoughts. He turned its direction, north. Jac’s section. Seconds later, the tremor became a pounding of paws on dirt. Light ones. The animal wasn’t a wolf, but a fox. Terrent, the newest and youngest member of their team—sixteen to Daeryn’s twenty-one years—must have worked himself into a nervous wreck because Daeryn was late.

  But why was he running hell-bent? And from Jac’s section?

  Maraquin’s heavier footfalls beat through the tomatoes. Daeryn signaled his location with a chattering call. The red fox veered to him, with Maraquin appearing a moment later. Terrent skidded to a stop and shifted form in a fluid transition, spoiled when he promptly sat down hard on his ass.

  “Damn,” he gasped out, his breath harsh. “Jac ran me halfway to the stream chasin’ one of those black pest creatures. Stupid, I know, but there’s no telling Jac anything.”

  Daeryn shifted to human. Hell, what was Jac thinking, leaving Wellspring’s borders?

  “I shouldn’t have left her, I suppose, when no one knows what this creature’s capable of.” Terrent shook his head. “But I figured the rest of youse should know.”

  “The fool. Where is she now?”

  “Searching where she lost the creature among the outcrops on the woodlot at the Davies’.”

  Maraquin raced off.

  “She could be there or anywhere,” Terrent yelled after her. “If she found that creature, she’ll pursue it clear to Breakthrough Gap.”

  Daeryn raked fingers through his hair. Right, but if she had found it, Jac could also be in trouble. These pests weren’t the common mice, voles and rabbits they routinely caught, or the deer, wild boars or occasional escaped sheep they ran off. They had to check, but the folly of every team member charging into the woods stopped him.

  “Find Zar,” he said, then added, “Would you?” Ordering his co-workers wasn’t his place. “Tell him where we’ve gone. If we aren’t back in fifteen minutes, go ring the bell and rouse Miz Gere.” There, that should keep the team in the owner’s good graces for observing safety precautions.

  “All right,” Terrent grumbled. “I hate being at the bottom of this team, especially with no leader to follow.” The fox boy rolled to his feet and shifted.

  “No kidding,” Daeryn snarled back from mid-shift. But complaining wouldn’t help. He leaped away. His muscles bunched and stretched with each growing stride. If Owen had been here, Jac would have reported in, not taken the decision herself, as her alpha tendencies were more and more inclined to do these last two weeks. A leader would never allow them to waste this much energy on the foolish pursuit of a single destructive pest. Hell, in their experience, once a rabbit or two had success, more followed. For all they knew, another whole group of pests had entered Wellspring’s borders and was destroying more crops.

  Daeryn quickened his pace and raced up a long rolling hill. Alone, dammit. Every one of them was alone now, the team’s routine of patrols and backup totally abandoned. How long before they found Jac, returned and made a full rotation of the eight hundred acres? Long enough the usual farm vermin would have full bellies.

  He crested the rise, his lungs burning. Below, at the far side of the root crops, Maraquin’s large wolf form ran, tail up and nose to the ground, tracing Terrent’s scent. Or, more likely, Jac’s. Maraquin’s long-standing beta position to Jac went back to their home pack in the Wildlands shire, so their detection of each other was flawless. The wolf came to an opening at the woods’ edge and entered.

  Daeryn followed on the same path, one of the network all the animacambires used for excursions off-property. His sensitive ears picked out Maraquin’s paw beats, fainter, more distant than he’d thought they’d be. He bounded after her, autumn leaves scattering under his paws and filling his nostrils with their earthy scent.

  Fifty feet, a hundred, five hundred. The stream lay twenty times this distance away. Was Jac there? Closer? Farther? Safe? Daeryn stopped thinking and ran.

  Minutes, and a mile later, barking broke out ahead.

  Maraquin. Her vocalization had an edge to it, one that stopped his breathing for the endless moment it took for an answering bark.

  It rasped. Jac. Close. Alive. He shot forward, running with all his might. Maraquin barked again, and this time the return call came deep and strong—alpha-like. When Maraquin issued forth a series of growls and barks that could only be the telling off of her packmate, Daeryn slowed and filled his lungs.

  Hell, Jac was fine. Probably full of herself, returning from a needless search that expended everyone’s energy and left the property open to other invaders.

  By the time he caught up to them, the wolves were rolling in an outright fight, the beta Maraquin for once taking on her headstrong alpha. Leaves, dirt, fur and snarls flew in confusion. He couldn’t tell which was faring better, but he’d take a piece of that action. With a burst of energ
y, he raced forward and leaped. His nose verified the landing pad was some part of Jac’s anatomy, so he sank his claws and let loose a series of spitting cries and growls, a pissed-off message in any language.

  She froze beneath him, then tried to shake him off like water from a puddle. Daeryn clung, the muscles of his smaller European polecat form tight with the effort.

  I’ll show you—

  The heavy body, and whiff, of a lynx slammed them sideways—their teammate Zar. Daeryn landed with a jolt several feet away.

  Just as well. He rolled over and crouched up against a log, gasping.

  Apparently, Zar was even angrier than he’d been. The lynx danced a mean streak, pouncing, snarling and biting at the thick fur of Jac’s ruff and hindquarters. She twisted and snapped her heavy jaws at him, but between his agile moves and Maraquin’s worked-up anger, the fight raged on, bloodless, but just barely.

  Any longer and the integrity of the team might be damaged. Daeryn shifted and swatted at the nearest furry rump. “Break it up.”

  Maraquin rounded on him and growled, but sank on her haunches and shifted. Her thick, black hair fell across her face and shoulders, with the rest of her front hidden behind crossed muscular arms and the shadows of her bent knees.

  Zar shifted, too, but didn’t bother to cover his heaving chest or the rest of his body. He threw his broad, muscular physique aggressively back and forth, yelling between gasps, “What the hell? What the hell were you doing…taking off alone? Trying to get yourself…maimed? No one knows what that beast is capable of!”

  Jac’s upper lip curled, but no snarl emerged.

  Smart Jac, because any hint of her usual uppityness and Daeryn wouldn’t be able to stop himself from taking her on, big carnivore or not. But she didn’t give him an excuse.

  “We don’t—” Daeryn sucked a breath to steady his tone, to make his point sound reasonable. “We don’t run down every animal that crosses onto Wellspring.”

  “That’s right.” Zar jabbed a finger at her, nearly hitting the fur between her eyes.

  Jac flinched back, changed to human form nearly identical to her cousin Maraquin’s, and fell to a sit. “Fine. I get it.”

  “Do you?” Zar barreled on. “All a guard needs to do is run a beast off the farm property, same as every other beast who threatens the crops. Nothing more. If Owen were here, he’d have your hide for this foolish lark.”

  “No, he wouldn’t,” Jac said. “This beast is different. It must be foreign, from Outside the Basin.”

  “You don’t know that,” Zar spat out. “By the Path, no one of us can properly identify the variety of life—animacambire, planta or just plain creatures—lurking in the back bowels of Blighted Basin.”

  Jac jumped to her feet and snapped, “Would you let me finish?”

  Daeryn stepped between them. “Let her talk. This team isn’t pack. With Owen gone, we’re equal members and have to hear each other out.”

  Between his mustache and beard, Zar’s lips twisted like he’d scented carrion.

  But Jac dipped her chin to him in a rare show of appreciation. “You didn’t see what I saw, so you can’t fault me for running down the one I finally found. It’s bad. Tonight those pests didn’t just bite up some vegetables. They’ve gnawed the stalks at the base and destroyed an entire row of acorn squash.” Jac waved her arm this way and that, her excitement from the chase still evident. “The teeth on those things must be as sharp as axes.”

  The four of them remained silent. This was bad. A few of these beasts, over a few nights of cutting through plant stalks, and Wellspring Collective wouldn’t have a viable crop left. Or sales…or cash…or workers.

  “This proves it can’t be sentient,” Jac said. “Nor an animacambire. Only a ’cambire gone bad pulls that kind of crap, ruining a crop so the plants die and the vegetables can’t ripen.”

  Daeryn swallowed. “Can’t be a bad ’cambire, or even a small pack of ’em,” he said. “Not when every farm north and east of here reports them. The entire north half of the Farmlands shire.” This was what ruined farms, like Owen had said the hare invasion of ‘39 did when the whole valley almost starved. Drove farmers and their hands to town jobs, and Outside. Many of them didn’t return. After nearly three years, Daeryn wasn’t just a hand, but a vested collective member. This farm was also his, just as it belonged in part to Jac, Maraquin, Zar…all of the longtimers.

  If Wellspring went under, he wouldn’t just be seeking a new position, but a new home.

  Jac sank down onto a log. “You lot should be thanking me. I ran that thing right off the property, tail between its legs, then chased it farther than the beast ever took it into its head to run on those short legs.”

  “’Cept it doesn’t have a tail,” muttered Zar. Now calmer, the man in his late twenties had returned to his usual sparse remarks.

  “But you didn’t catch it.” Daeryn wasn’t asking. He knew. Otherwise, she’d have the body. And they needed that body to figure out what it was. To stop it…them.

  Jac glared at Zar before glancing around. “Got a better look though. It has a rabbit’s bulkier body with the agility of a stoat. I’d guess a cross, but it’s furrier than either, making it hard to pick out the features. And it escaped down a burrow.”

  “Great,” Maraquin said. “So they’ve made dens—”

  “No.” Jac shook her head. “A rabbit burrow, one with the faintest scent of something I’ve never smelled.” She jerked her thumb northward. “Come on.”

  They all shifted, and Jac led them a couple of hundred feet around a rock outcrop and down a dry ravine. To Daeryn’s polecat nose, the burrow in the bank was exactly as she’d described: overwhelmingly rabbit, but with a trace of that other scent lurking around the damaged crops, that…something else.

  Maraquin snorted the air from her nostrils, took another whiff, but shook her head when she changed. “I smell it, but have no idea.”

  Zar backed from the hole, looking the most puzzled. “This sounds stupid, but it reminds me of my old granny’s house.”

  “What?” Jac said. “Your gran lived in a rabbit warren?”

  The group broke into laughter, albeit nervous laughter.

  He shrugged. “I weren’t more than a kitten when she died, but I practically lived there. Would rather not of, with her always shovin’ us aside with her broom, cleanin’ each dropped crumb. Had floors you could eat off of.”

  “That beast is long gone out a second or third burrow exit.” Daeryn waved toward Wellspring. “We’ve left our jobs unattended far too long.”

  Jac rolled her eyes. “Terrent will have picked his fox tail bare—”

  “Damn.” Daeryn started to change, then stopped to tell them, “I asked him to fetch Miz Gere if I didn’t return in fifteen minutes.”

  “I suppose I’ll have to explain why we’re off-property.” Jac stomped her foot.

  Zar snorted. “Not that it was your idea to ignore her policies, or our safety procedures, or any common sense—”

  Daeryn didn’t wait to hear the rest. He dropped to all fours and started running.

  Chapter four

  The chug, chug, chug of the steam tractor reached his ears long before Daeryn broke out of the woods. Too late. Terrent had probably scampered for help the minute he’d told Zar where they’d gone. But news of the most recent way the sharp-toothed pests were damaging crops should distract Miz Gere from the nuisance of being woken and the team hunting off-property.

  Daeryn emerged just when the tractor’s engine shut down. The dying sound marked the location up the hill—

  He groaned. More than thirty farmhands swung lanterns over the northern fields. Terrent had brought in a damned search party. With lights. Every pest in the place should have fled by now. Daeryn certainly wanted to. Better than facing Miz Gere. Likely she was the tall figure rising from the seat behind the driver, but he couldn’t make out her face. Or attitude.

  “The team’s back!” a man called. “Over at the tu
rnips.”

  Wellspring’s dayworkers converged on Daeryn, mainly growers, but also the three diurnal guards. He blinked in the lantern light, the flashes of color at the edges of his nocturnal vision blinding him. He halted. The rest of the nocturnal team caught up, their nervous excitement besieging his other ’cambire senses. Beside him, Jac growled, as did Maraquin a second after her alpha.

  Calls rang out. “Is everyone accounted for?”

  “Any injuries?”

  “What’s this creature look like? Who caught it?”

  “They’ve all turned up, Mistress Gere,” shouted the leader of the day guards. “No one’s limping, so I’d say we’re done here.”

  Daeryn put his head down and shoved between several human legs. He wasn’t shifting while surrounded. The others followed, and together the team stalked up the dirt road to meet the tractor and Wellspring’s owner.

  Miz Gere must have dressed quickly since she wore her split trouser-skirt and gumboots, but the high collar of a flannel nightdress peeked above her woolen wrap. Instead of being pinned in a roll, her brown hair fell down her back in a braid. Still, she acted her usual formidable self while scanning their group, taller than most of them even if they’d been in human form. Her gaze lit on the dark-furred wolves, Zar’s wide whiskered face, then came to rest on Daeryn, her brow raised in the same implied question she’d posed to the others: How are you?

  Daeryn nodded.

  “It’s late,” she announced. “Growers, return to your beds. I’ll fill you in during the morning report. Day guards, please remain.”

  A few of the growers persisted with questions about the crop damage. A mistake.

  “What can you do now?” she snapped. “Morning is time enough, and I want this team back on patrol as soon as possible. Now go.” She took a breath and waved to the night team. “Robes are in the cart.”

  The males hung back to let the wolves grab clothes first, then trotted to the cart behind the tractor. Rivley Slipwing, a tall, lean fellow, sauntered up as Daeryn tied his sash. Of course his best friend, and a fellow ’cambire, had responded to the call for help. He’d probably remembered the robes for when they’d be surrounded by humans. Daeryn wouldn’t have expected less, and would do the same if their positions were reversed.