“Mom had it easy. She’s a precog. She knew everything would work out with Dad even before she met him. It probably helps that they can’t read each other’s minds. Plus Mom can foresee any problems.” Darinda made a one-shouldered shrug. “Works for them.”
“Obviously. You appear to have turned out all right. So what am I thinking?” he asked.
“The same thing you’ve been thinking since we met. How you want to get me into bed. You hide it better sometimes than others, but it’s always boiling just below the surface.”
“You’re an attractive, courageous and resourceful she, worthy of an alpha. Any male who doesn’t want you is probably neutered.”
“I guess that’s a compliment. Y’know, you’re pretty refreshing. Raw instinct and open honesty. I know exactly where I stand with you. I almost wish…” She cut herself off. Too much honesty could be as disastrous as too little, as her entire life had proven to her. “Forget it. It would never work.”
“We’ll never know unless we try.”
“We’re not going to try. Are you that sure you won’t be happy with Coraline?”
He was silent for so long she wondered if she’d insulted him. Finally he spoke. “You needn’t be concerned about my happiness. We weres have what you’d call a survival mechanism. When an alpha pair mates, they bond. Scent to scent, body to body, mind to mind. It allows the alpha pair to act as one in the ruling and protection of the pack. It only works between weres, not with other species. Coraline and I will be united in more than matrimony. I suppose love will come eventually. Isn’t that what you predicted?”
“I did?”
“My reading. The cards. You promised me true love and happiness. Don’t tell me that was all a sham.”
The cards, right. The King of Spades and the Queen of Hearts. “Of course not,” she said. “The cards never lie.”
“All right, then,” he said, and grabbed at the handle with both hands as Darinda swept around a bus. “This drive’s taking bloody forever. Are we there yet?”
Traffic thinned out as they approached King of Prussia, and dropped further still beyond the turnpike. Roderick took note of the exit she turned down, and groaned. “Valley Forge? Have I mentioned Colonial history isn’t one of my interests?”
“You’ve mentioned hunting. This is a national park. No gunning allowed. It’s overrun with deer. They’ll be bedded down at this time of day, but if you’re as good as you claim you are you ought to be able to scare one up. Just don’t tell me if you kill it. I don’t want to know.”
“Deer?” He perked up immediately. “You do know what’s on a man’s mind.” He shot a sudden, suspicious glance at the bag on the back seat. “You’d better not have a leash in there.”
“Um,” she said, and refused further comment.
As more trees and open space appeared by the highway, Roderick’s anxieties unknotted, replaced by a growing excitement. Darinda headed for the parking area below the Welcome Center and found a spot close to the restrooms. As she parked, she counted cars. Not jammed, like it would be on a weekend in this weather, but still pretty well populated. They’d have to be careful.
Roderick unhooked himself and ducked out of the car before she got her seat belt unfastened. He stood by the Toyota, nose in the air, quivering, eyes alight. The wolf had awakened and was seconds away from putting in an appearance. “Behind the restrooms,” Darinda said. “Make sure nobody’s around. And please try not to rip your clothes. I’m not driving you home naked.”
He hurried toward the fieldstone building. “Give me some credit,” he snapped back over his shoulder. His voice was ragged. Was that hair on the backs of his hands?
“Wait.” Darinda reached into the bag from Set A Spell. She held up a collar, a wide band of red leather studded with crystals. “Put this on.”
He stopped dead and bared his teeth at her. “Out of the question.”
“It’s not a fashion statement.” She lifted her wrist to show him the bracelet that clasped it, a miniature version of the collar. “It’s a tracking device. The crystals resonate with each other. It’ll tell me exactly where you are at all times. If you run into trouble, I’ll know it.”
He eyed the collar, unconvinced. “Not to mention it makes a perfect disguise,” she went on. “People see you running loose, they’ll think ‘wolf’ and panic. They see you with a collar on, they’ll think ‘dog’ and go about their business.”
“I don’t see any difference.”
“I do. I see the difference between me getting a lecture on leash laws and you getting shot by a park ranger. You hired me to keep you safe, and I’m going to do that any way possible, whether you like my methods or not. Now buckle up, or we go home right now.”
His glower said it all. But he stomped back to her and snatched the collar from her hand and took it with him behind the restrooms. Darinda leaned against the trunk of her car and sighed. The witch’s manual had never covered this.
The sound of a car brought her head around. A rusty Chevy rolled into the parking lot with a bunch of kids inside. Teenagers, ditching school. Three boys and two girls piled noisily out of the car, all sandy hair and long limbs, ecstatic to be outside and loose on the world. They pelted at once for the low guardrail that ringed the parking area, hurtled it and disappeared. Darinda turned her attention back to the restrooms.
Presently Roderick reappeared, this time on four legs. He was wearing the collar and an angry expression. “Get over it,” she told him. He growled, but his heart wasn’t in it. The woods were too close and inviting. His tail came up and waved. Suddenly he bounced up on his hind legs and slurped his tongue across her cheek. Before she could react he dropped and raced for the far end of the lot. He vaulted the fence as eagerly as the teens had, without so much as a backward glance.
Darinda scrubbed slobber off her cheek. Damn wet werewolf kisses. “Have a blast,” she muttered. She rinsed her face in the ladies’ room, then went behind the building to gather up his clothes. These she folded them neatly on the back seat. The thin vibration on her wrist told her he was headed north at top speed. She chuckled in spite of herself and looked around for an entrance to a hiking trail.
* * * *
Darinda wasn’t about to go jumping fences, so she left the parking area by a side exit and strolled along the road it led her to. Not far along she came across a wide, gated track marked by an Authorized Vehicles Only sign. The tingle from her bracelet announced Roderick was running in a northeasterly direction, and the track seemed to aim that way. She left the road and turned up the track. Best to keep herself in his vicinity, just in case she was needed.
Within ten minutes she spotted three does, one with an early fawn. The deer seemed more curious than alarmed by her presence. They stared at her briefly, then moved on, unhurried, when she showed no inclination to attack them. She hoped Roderick would have equally good fortune, though without any fawns involved.
The track wound uphill. She climbed at a slow, easy pace. She found it difficult to walk steadily. Impressions from the wolf kept intruding on her consciousness. Roderick’s intellect didn’t change with his form, but emotions heightened and instinct roared to the fore. Witches were also beings of instinct and emotion. This included Darinda, in spite of her cool, controlled façade. If she didn’t watch herself, she might get sucked under by the riptide of sensations streaming into her through their link.
Just imagine what sex with him would be like. No, on second thought, better not.
Because the link distracted her, she didn’t even realize she’d caught up to the teens until she rounded a curve in the track and stumbled into the midst of them. Quite the embarrassing midst, too, as they’d wasted no time in shedding their clothes. Two of the boys and one of the girls were practically naked already.
They stared at each other for a long, awkward moment before Darinda averted her eyes. “Sorry, kids,” she mumbled, and hastily moved on. “Go about your business.”
“Hey, what’
s your hurry?” The boy still mostly dressed thrust himself into her path. “Stick around. The fun’s just starting.”
“Not my kind of fun. Anyway, I think I’m a little old for you.”
She tried to duck around him, but he kept jumping in front of her. That grin of his creeped her out. She lifted her hand slightly. Just tangle up his legs and be on her way, no biggie.
Until she saw the charm around his neck, and sensed the magic on it. She glanced at the others and discovered they all wore similar charms, and similar grins. It struck her how alike they all looked, like members of the same family. Or pack. Right down to the yellow eyes.
“Nice of you to stop by,” the naked girl said. “Saves us the trouble of hunting you down.”
The girl shifted form in a quick, smooth blur, becoming coyote between one breath and the next. One by one her kin joined her. The last boy was still wriggling out of his jeans. “Don’t worry about your teabag buddy,” he said. “We’ll get to him in a minute.”
A minute ought to be just time enough. She shoved at him with her air spell. He staggered, but was not hurled aside as she expected. She whirled to block the advance of the rest of the pack. They hit the wall of solid air, poked and prodded at it, grinned coyote grins at her, and kept coming.
“I see you’re catching on,” the still-human boy said as consternation dawned on her face. “Don’t bother with your magic, because it won’t work. Not with us.”
But a fist would, and did, when delivered with all Darinda’s force into the coyote boy’s nose. “Do no harm” did not preclude self-defense, and growing up with a feisty brother had its advantages. He lurched backward. She kicked his legs out from under him and got three long strides worth of head start before the pack leaped after her.
Okay, now what? She’d never outrun them. She flashed her frantic gaze across the trees while she ran, searching for a branch low enough to swing up onto. She spotted a break up ahead. If she could get into the open, someone might see her. If only she knew a flight spell. Where was Peri’s pixie dust when you really needed it?
And Roderick. If the coyotes got her, what would happen to Roderick?
She’d almost reached the end of the track when the coyote girls hit her from behind, one on her back, one against her legs. Darinda went down in the dirt. The pack swarmed over her. She thickened the air around her into a shield. It slowed but didn’t stop them. The charms that hung from their furry necks negated her defenses. How? Only Peri and Paul knew her personal signature.
One of the boys sat on her chest. The others ringed around. Abruptly the whole bunch blurred back to human. The boy pinned her arms to the earth. He glared down at her. His nose was bleeding. “No biting,” he ordered his pack. “This has to look like a human did it. Who brought the knife?”
Silence. Toes dug into the dirt, gazes slid aside. “C’mon,” the boy said, “didn’t anybody bring the knife?”
“You’re in charge, you should’ve—”
“I thought Mimi—”
“And how am I supposed to hold it? It’s silver, you fuzzhead. I’m not carrying that in my mouth.”
The boy on her chest snarled a curse. “You didn’t think this through very well, did you?” Darinda said. “How about you let me go? We can do it again another time, when you’re better prepared. At least tell me why you want Roderick dead. Or me, for that matter.”
“Witchy, we don’t give a hump for either of you. We just do what we’re paid for. C’mon,” he said to his cohorts, “somebody has to have some ideas here.”
The pack looked at each other. “Drown her?” another boy suggested.
“Yeah,” his brother piped up hopefully. “There’s a river maybe a mile, two miles from here.”
“Next to a road and a hiking trail, where any passing monkey could see us,” Darinda’s captor said. “That’d go over real big with the primate police. C’mon, who’s got a brain here? Anybody?”
Darinda had a good idea and her breath back. She used it in the banshee scream. The boy was knocked right off her chest. The others reeled back, hands clapped to their ears, adding their shrieks to hers. None went down, like they were supposed to, or fell unconscious, as she’d hoped. She’d have to settle for stunned.
She scrambled up and made a desperate dash for the break. A field lay beyond. The top of the Washington Memorial Chapel towered over the trees, marking the site of Route 23 and the walking path, with its bikers and joggers and drivers with cell phones who would see her and come to her aid. As she ran she thought at Roderick, Stay way, stay away—
She’d almost reached the break when a coyote tripped her up. It jumped on top of her and snarled in her face. The charm it wore swung before her eyes, a quarter-sized amulet on a brass chain. A thread of dark crimson hair had been braided through the chain.
Hair. Great Goddess. Her mind leaped back to Kelly Drive and the attacking were’s jaws in her hair. He must have gotten strands of it tangled in his teeth. Any halfway-talented witch could whip up individualized counterspells with something as personal as hair.
They could kill her, and her magic wouldn’t stop them.
But it was worth a try.
She opened her mouth for another scream. The coyote rammed its paw into her mouth. She bit down as hard as she could. The were yanked its paw free and rolled away, with a series of alternating yelps and crude coyote curses.
Small victory. The rest of the pack swarmed over her. Stall them, she thought desperately. Surely someone had heard her. Banshee screams carried for miles.
One of the coyote girls had gone human to suck on her bitten hand. Suddenly she brightened. “Hey. Hey! I got an idea.” The girl turned coyote again. She hopped on top of Darinda and thrust her hindquarters against Darinda’s face. Darinda’s mouth and nose filled with coyote fur, pressing down on her like a shaggy rug, cutting off her air.
“Hold her down!” the boy she’d punched shouted. The whole pack fell on her, pinning her limbs with hands and paws and bodies in both forms.
Darinda thrashed and shoved and flailed but they had her outnumbered and outmuscled. She tried to bite. The coyote only pressed down harder. No air at all seeped in by now. The world went gray around the edges.
She was going to die, smothered by coyote fur, and there was nothing she could do about it.
* * * *
Darinda hadn’t misled him. These woods stank of deer. Roderick literally stumbled over a buck bedded down inside a thicket. Fat and complacent in a world of no predators, it flicked its ears and blinked at him before his scent identified him and its atrophied instincts reminded it wolves were a threat. It sprang up and bounded away. Roderick leaped in pursuit.
Fat and complacent it might be, but it was also fast as all hell. It led him on a zigzag chase through the trees, out of the trees and across a segment of field, then back into the woods again. Roderick raced doggedly after it. Twice he got close enough to snap at its haunches and had to dodge flying rear hooves.
Lycaon love it, how he’d missed this! The hunt, the chase, the promise of a fresh, steaming kill. This was what made being a were the most wonderful thing in the world.
He had no intention of bringing it down. It would take a pack for that. That didn’t mean he couldn’t indulge in a spot of fun.
The buck put on a burst of speed and left him in its dust. He slowed to a lope, then a trot, then at last to a stop, panting heavily. Bugger, he was out of shape. Lucky his kind didn’t have to feed themselves on their own kills any more. He’d be scrawny as one of those bloody coyotes if he had to rely on that.
A couple of hikers spotted him and pointed. The girl went, “Here, boy,” and made kissy noises. Roderick trotted into the trees.
Back in the woods he scared up a rabbit. He lunged for it. His jaws closed over its spine and snapped shut before his brain caught up with the action. Hot blood and vital juices gushed into his mouth. For a moment he became pure wolf, master of the forest, bane of the weak, reveling in the kill.
Only for a moment. He sat and stared at the dead bunny lying between his forepaws. Now what? He wasn’t even hungry. All that pasta last night. Instinct had got the better of him. Bloody wasteful. Where would the wolf-folk be if they went around killing everything just because they could?
He could, he supposed, take it back to Darinda. Lay it at her feet like a good were provider. Proof of his mighty male prowess. And what would she do with it? She was an herbivore, for pity’s sake. In a day and age long past, she would have been prey.
He snorted at the thought. Not Darinda. Even with the vegetable reek wafting off her, she still didn’t smell like prey. She didn’t smell like any she he’d ever dallied with. She smelled, were he to admit the truth to himself, downright delicious. Absolutely right.
It had to be the magic in her. That same magic had drawn him across an airport terminal to gaze into her eyes. He found their non-were blue fascinating. They could go sky-rich with joy or roiling and dark with annoyance, like the sea in a storm. He liked to provoke the annoyance. Her true spirit showed then, the wolf that lurked beneath the witch, that met and matched his own so perfectly.
Perhaps that was why he insisted on behaving like such an absolute git in her presence.
Irritated, he scratched at his neck, at the collar. Lycaon, would you look at him. Collared like a dog. Because she said wear it. Because he trusted her, as he trusted no wolf, and wanted her, as he wanted no other. When had all that happened?
And what was up with the thing? It burned against his skin. Burned like terror.
A scream blasted across the landscape, loud as a siren in spite of the distance. Roderick’s ears stiffened. He knew the scream and the voice inside it. He’d been standing right next to her when she’d loosed it last. His ears had rung for nearly an hour.
Darinda. She was in danger, fleeing and afraid for her life.
The collar told him her location and precisely where she was headed. He was on his feet and running before the thought ended, faster than he’d run after the deer, this time with killing in his heart.
A London Werewolf in America Page 16