by L. A. Banks
“Then we’re gonna turn over those stones one more time.” She spun and looked at Doc’s dejected expression. “We’ve never had pure, uninfected Werewolf blood in the lab before, right? We didn’t even know the species existed thirty years ago—not till earlier this year. I got infected and fought it off, just like Hunter eventually fought it off, just like you did, as well as your mentor had in the past. My instincts say we’re on the verge of a cure . . . have to be. And during the last UCE Conference, what got the Vampires expelled was that they’d sent in an assassin to hit General Donald Wilkerson. We learned then that they didn’t want a vaccine to be widely distributed that could make the taste of human blood so offensive; Vampires would begin to starve to death. Even money says this is part of the issue. Power. Resources. Territory. It all fits the profile of vampirism.”
Doc nodded and then rubbed his palms down his face. “It would be an effective strategy to get the wolf packs fighting with each other, huge Federations at war . . . makes it easy to call for an all-out wolf hunt to quell the violence. They get back in power, based on all you’ve told me about how this council works. Meanwhile, any chance of developing a cure is diverted. Humans are more focused on wiping out the scourge than developing vaccines or genetic medicine—forget harmonious living when there are monsters threatening mankind. Meanwhile, the Vampires continue to feast, unrestrained. It’s a beautiful plot, strategically brilliant.”
Sasha walked in a circle, nerves strung tight. “All I need is evidence to bring to the UCE to stop a wolf hunt, as well as to avert a war. The Federations still don’t fully trust each other—you saw that very fragile peace out there in the bayou. Shogun and Hunter have to sit down at the table together to show a unified front . . . but that means Shogun has to heal.”
“It also means Hunter has to heal, Sasha,” Doc said quietly, his gaze containing empathy. “He’s been shot in the heart with a silver bullet.”
She looked away. Doc didn’t have to tell her that she’d been the one to pull the trigger.
“I know . . . ,” she finally said in a subdued tone. “I wanted to give Silver Hawk a chance to have the private talk with him about his mother and his heritage, first.”
Both she and Doc knew it was an evasive tactic, but he was good enough not to call her on it.
“They’ve had that talk,” Doc said gently after a moment. “Now it’s time for you two to have one.”
“It’s time for you and me to have one,” she said, staring at Doc as new tears brimmed. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why foster care?”
“So they wouldn’t know,” he said just above a murmur, holding her gaze. “Sit with me, Sasha. Don’t stand across the room like you’re ready to bolt. If I’d let them know what I’d done, and what was in my DNA spiral, I would have been taken off critical research . . . they would have studied me like a lab rat. Human thinking is so ignorant. Then there would have been no way I could have worked on cures, could have continued what I had to do. I would never have been in a position to protect you from madmen like the late general. Fear creates this ignorance we struggle against in the human condition; power madness and glory seeking magnifies it.”
“But I missed grandmothers, aunties, family, connection . . . all because . . .” She covered her mouth and choked back a sob. “Dad, I just wish I had known.” Her statement was simple, nonjudgmental, and filled with old pain that had never really gone away. Hurt had dissolved anger, and she couldn’t even pull back as Doc rushed to embrace her.
“Oh, Sasha, Sasha, my sweet pea . . .” Doc’s warm hug finally made the tears fall, and she put her head on his shoulder. “Child, I was your shadow . . . I was coming for you, wherever they’d taken my baby girl. I was never going to let them take you from me.”
“What were my people like? My grandmother, all those I missed?” she whispered thickly into the warmth of his shoulder.
“Your grandmother, my mother, was a tall, dark-skinned beauty. They say her grace captivated my father, your grandfather, from the very beginning. I inherited his Shadow resistance to the virus. I had enough proof of that, knew I could fight it off . . . so that’s why I made you from me and no one else. I had truthfully hoped you’d be a flawed Shadow like me—unable to shift so you’d appear normal, be human enough to always blend in . . . just have the instincts. I didn’t know what a majestic gift the inner wolf was until I saw it in you. I had been brainwashed, prejudiced, by my own human condition . . . forgive me, daughter. God forgive me.”
“I just wanted to be like every other kid, every other person . . . For so long I knew something was wrong with me, but nobody would just tell me the truth.”
“That, among many things, is one of my deepest regrets.” Doc buried his face in her hair as he hugged her harder. “Don’t you see, that’s why I used my DNA . . . that and because I loved your mother so, but would never violate her marriage or her trust—or my best friend’s trust. They were gonna make you, one way or another. I wanted you made with a fighting chance at being so-called normal . . . human. You were never just a lab experiment to me. Ever.”
He let out a hard breath as he stroked her back. “They say my mother was a fighter, a loving, high-spirited gal who could see things.” He paused as though the memory was more painful than he’d realized, and then he let out his breath in shuddering increments. “I never got to see that part of her. They’d caged her like an animal in a mental institution, because she wouldn’t stop telling stories about the wolf people. In her last days, when I went to see her, she was broken . . . they’d institutionalized her long enough and given her enough meds that it finally stole her spirit. Imagine what they did to a poor, supposedly mentally ill young black woman in Jim Crow Louisiana. They weren’t kind to the wealthy, so can you imagine the conditions she’d endured?”
“Oh, Doc . . . ,” Sasha murmured, now hugging him to lend support rather than absorb it.
“Then one night,” he said in a sad, far-off voice, “she just slipped away peacefully. Silver Hawk came to me, then . . . I was just a young man. He said that Wolf Shadow had come to escort her to the shadow lands. He was Silver Hawk’s best friend, my father, and it’s how we gave Hunter his wolf name.”
“You’ve been friends for that long,” Sasha said quietly.
It was more of a statement than a question as the longevity of the relationships began to sink in. She now better understood why Doc was probably there when Hunter was born. It made sense that he’d want to be close at hand when Silver Hawk’s daughter delivered—only no one had expected the camp to fall under attack.
“If your father and Hunter’s grandfather were best friends, I understand the connection . . . the research, how you as the son of his friend would have a bond.” Sasha shook her head even as Doc hugged her. The pack loyalty was staggering.
“It all goes so far back, baby girl,” Doc said in a slow rumble of emotion. “Wolf Shadow, my father, aka Storm Walker when in his human form, had tried to keep Shogun’s demon-infected mother from eating Hunter’s mother’s remains. He died from the battle. Severe blood loss. Silver Hawk told me that my father’s spirit had come to my mother at her deathbed in the hospital so she wouldn’t die alone, and to carry her to the shadow lands . . . and to atone for leaving her—and me. He did love her, but he just couldn’t reconcile her humanity with his wolf or the traditions and taboos of the pack. Hunter’s grandfather and I have sat in many a sweat lodge together, discussing all this to bring us both peace through understanding. Silver Hawk and I have been fast friends ever since.”
“I can see that,” she whispered as Doc pulled back to meet her gaze.
“Silver Hawk gave me the yen for medicine . . . said I had a purpose to fulfill, a calling to answer. A destiny. Once I saw you, I knew that was true. He also showed me that my mother was anything but insane.”
Sasha looked up into the exhausted face and eyes that had always been there for her. So much bloodshed and violence; so many lives shattered from hatred . . . S
hogun’s mother had also killed her grandfather, not just Hunter’s mother. She now understood the explosive nature of it all—history was a time bomb. But anger had fled her, deep sorrow filling the void as she touched her father’s cheek. She stared into the eyes of an imperfect man who’d tried to do his best in an imperfect, very human world.
“She’s happy, Dad. I saw groups of people in the shadow lands . . . Mom, too. Hunter took me there. We went together before the conference. I saw people whom I didn’t recognize on a porch in New Orleans . . . they were all smiling at me. They invited me in. My mother was sitting in a rocking chair. A tall, dark, beauty was in the screen door, and she waved at me. I think that was Grandmom.”
“That was my mother’s house in New Orleans,” Doc said, allowing tears to fall without censure. “That was her, in the screen door. That was her rocker. Promise me, when I die, that you’ll take me there to the shadow lands . . . I want to be with my people, and I’m so very, very tired, Sasha.”
“I promise,” she said quietly. “But that won’t be for a very long time. We have lives to save and people to help. Don’t quit on me now.”
“All right, baby. For a little while longer.”
He closed his eyes as though trying to see the images that had been in her mind, and they stood that way for a long time, just holding each other, not talking, but feeling. Now so much of it made sense. Missing pieces to her life’s puzzle began to fit, just as smiling spirits fit with Doc’s description and the images that flitted through her mind. His people, who were also her people, were in that rowdy, love-filled house. She’d been surrounded by spiritual protection from the moment she’d been conceived—and it didn’t matter how she was conceived, now that she knew she wasn’t a throwaway child. She’d meant something to many whom she’d never even met . . . meant so much to the man hugging her, who’d devoted his life to protecting her from those who would have done her harm.
CHAPTER 15
He’d been there and couldn’t listen to the suffering any longer. It grated his soul, knifed his gut, was like a scraping down his skeleton—the howls of a Turning man.
Hunter called for an escort. Four archers immediately came. They said not a word but watched him warily. He understood why. Wasn’t offended in the least. No one was above suspicion when so much clan leadership power hung in the delicate balance between injured parties.
The long, somber walk and endless corridors gave him time to think. He watched silently as stone doors were heaved open, silver-coated iron gates unlocked, and a labyrinth of passageways cut into granite beneath the castle revealed themselves. Every fifty yards, alert guards with silver weaponry hailed his escorts, keeping a hard line of vision on him. Another baleful howl made the hair stand up on his neck as they entered the formal dungeon chambers.
One massive cell carved into the granite cavern and gated by silver-coated iron bars stood on either side of a twenty-five-foot expanse. In the center of that, guards amused themselves with cards at a small table laden with silver coins and ale. But the moment they spotted Hunter, they jumped to their feet and gathered up their weapons.
“It’s all right,” one of the escorts said. “This one is a head of state—just wants to visit with the howling one . . . to maybe help him. They’re brothers.”
Shoulders relaxed, heads nodded in agreement, and then guards sat back down—but remained watchful. Hunter looked at the empty cell.
“Where’s Lei?”
One of the guards at the table shrugged. “She pissed off ’er brother and was making ’im crazy—so we moved her to a locked room on the other side of the castle. Made him calm down a bit, till he ate.”
Even though he hated Lei’s guts, relief wafted through him. If she hadn’t Turned or been injured, that was one less thing for the Southeast Asian Clan to blame him for.
“You came to gloat?” Shogun said between his teeth, staying clear of the bars but rising slowly from a hidden position behind overturned furniture.
For a moment, Hunter just stared at him. That was all he could do. Shogun’s hair was long and clotted together, as though trying to dreadlock. A thick beard covered his face and was beginning to spread over his chest and forearms. His eyes were a sick yellow-amber, and elongated upper and lower canines distorted his face. His hands were huge like his shoulders and chest had become, his fingers gnarled as though stricken with arthritis; yellow nails were razor-sharp.
Wild tufts of hair covered his knuckles, and the sour stench that wafted from his sweaty body almost turned his stomach. He watched as Shogun struggled to stand up tall and then stalked away. Hunter’s eyes remained on the knotted spine that curved his back, hunching his shoulders. Deep remorse ate at him and stole his voice. He wrested it back as Shogun turn toward him and growled.
“I didn’t come to gloat. I came to apologize to you for this . . . I’m sorry.”
Shogun’s chuckle created a low, demonic sound in the cavern. “Why be sorry, brother? You will rightfully head both Federations after they put a silver slug in my skull tomorrow night. You get the title and the woman.” He looked past Hunter’s shoulder to the gaping retinue of guards. “Give this man a drink so he can celebrate an almost bloodless coup!”
Hunter turned to the guards. “Did you feed him?”
“Yeah,” one of them said with a shrug. “All the prisoners got pheas—”
“Raw meat!” Hunter thundered. “A goat from the village outside, a damned deer from the bayou, a cow from a local farm—warm, still twitching—did you feed this man tonight?”
Two guards stood as the others looked around confused.
“If you doom my brother to death I’ll hold you all responsible!” Hunter shouted, sending guards running.
“Why, brother,” Shogun said in a dangerously low tone. “I didn’t think you cared.”
“I do,” Hunter said, going close enough to the bars to speak to Shogun without being snatched.
“Why?” Shogun growled.
“Because you were never supposed to be infected.”
“That’s what they all say,” Shogun snapped, and began pacing.
“I smelled demon-infected she-wolf in the bayou . . . Lei, Dana, had been there with your mother’s scent. I am no liar.” Hunter’s unblinking gaze met Shogun’s. “I thought they were after Sasha.”
“I thought you’d infected her,” Shogun said between his teeth. “I wanted to find her myself . . . wanted to be the one to end her misery if you had—and then I was coming for you.”
“As well you should have—if I’d done that to her. But you saw for yourself tonight that I hadn’t.”
Shogun paced away from the front of the cell.
“Then, out of nowhere, in a pile of leaves and mud I found your clothes.”
Shogun rushed the bars and then backed off. “Impossible! You lie!”
Hunter shook his head. “Khakis wrapped in plastic . . . hers was a T-shirt, green, and matching sweat pants that said CHAYA.” He moved closer to the bars than advisable and kept his voice low. “How would I know what you were wearing when you were with her if I’m lying?” Hunter banged on the bars. “Think, man, even in your condition . . . I know in my soul you weren’t out there in the bayou with her—so somebody is playing games!”
Shogun circled the cell’s interior, growling. “We were at the tea house . . . miles from where you found them.” He looked up at Hunter. “I had thrown them in the trash. I would never disrespect her like that or break her heart by throwing what happened in your face . . . if it’s any consolation, she did that for you—not for me. She wanted a vial of my blood to save you. I wanted her, and made her have tea with me.” He shook his head and laughed bitterly. “She did. And I never laid a hand on her.” He looked at Hunter. “On that, I am no liar, as you say. So rest easy, my brother. Werewolves don’t so much care about the fine point . . . we don’t split hairs on the subject like Shadow Wolves.”
“None of that’s important,” Hunter said, staring at the r
ough-hewn wall. “The alliance is at the core of it all—that’s the focus.”
“Now you’re not only lying to yourself, but lying to me,” Shogun said with a hollow laugh. He threw a chair at the back wall, shattering it, and bent with a painful howl as a wave of agony overtook him. “You were about to kill me, alliance be damned, because you thought I’d been with her!” Shogun released a bone-chilling howl and then dropped down on all fours, panting. He gave Hunter a dangerous sidelong glance. “If this hadn’t happened, I would have competed with you until the end of time for her—brother. Know that.”
Hunter watched Shogun stalk away, hearing him loud and clear. Yet as he watched the man before him, he shuddered to think that that was what Sasha had witnessed. If he’d been like what Shogun was now—and he had at points—then he couldn’t blame her if she’d sought a mate who was free and clear of the dread contagion . . . who could live with the disgusting transformation? But she’d stayed and loved him and fought for him and with him . . . and had even offered her body in exchange for a blood sample to give to Doc to possibly save his life. And now he’d killed a man due to misplaced jealousy and being a disease carrier, all over a shadow dance.
Guilt lacerated him as he listened to the footfalls of anxious guards returning. He could smell the fresh blood in the dank dungeon air. He watched Shogun spin and begin to pace, eyes wilder from the scent. Time was running out for an innocent man.
“You have to eat. You have to hold on to your human,” Hunter said quickly. “We have to stand as one. We have to both lead the Federations and find out who did this.”
“You lead,” Shogun said, panting through elongating canines, his eyes beginning to glow. “I’m finished. You won.”
“No! Together,” Hunter said emphatically, pounding the bars with his fist. “I didn’t want to win like this—and I never wanted Sasha by default, either.”