Jenna’s gaze snapped to her. “Do you know what it is?”
“I was hoping you did.”
“I’m afraid I might.” Jenna didn’t elaborate.
Skylar tried again to rally and stand. Stumbling sideways, she reached for the rocks surrounding the fireplace to steady herself. There was no reason to be sick. Werewolves required moonlight to transform, and moonlight couldn’t reach her here. As long as she stayed inside, she was safe.
Right?
That had to be correct, since Jenna didn’t want her to go outside, and the blinds were closed. Jenna seemed adamant about remaining indoors.
“What does it want?” Skylar asked.
“I’m not sure.” Jenna looked pensive.
“Could it be revenge on whoever resides in this cabin?”
Jenna turned to her. “Why do you think so?”
“I’ve seen the cage and the room that contains it. I’m wondering if my father’s interest in werewolves might have veered off course, and the one he trapped in that cage got away.”
Jenna seemed to stop breathing. Skylar read a lot in that sudden silence, mainly that Jenna didn’t know anything about a cage in a room tucked away behind Tom Jeevers’s house.
“You told me he wanted to protect wolves, not harm them,” Skylar said. “So maybe you can explain how a cage hidden here in Colorado might accomplish that. Tell me you realize that locking up a werewolf didn’t work so well when it was my mother.”
When Jenna’s thoughtful gaze met hers, Skylar saw pain in her expression. “There are things you don’t know about that,” Jenna said.
“But you do?”
“David confided in me about your mother once he discovered what I am. He wanted information about us and was worried. He had to confide in someone in case—”
“In case he tried the same scenario again and the task killed him?” Skylar used both hands to keep herself upright, sick over having her instincts proved correct. Her father must have captured a Were, and that creature somehow eventually tore the cage apart to make its escape. Maybe her dad went after it, and the creature found him first.
Her mind raced over this conversation with Jenna, sweeping back, moving sideways, leaping ahead to recall what information the doctor had provided either knowingly or unknowingly. One thing stood out. It was Jenna’s answer to Skylar’s question about how her mother differed from both Jenna and Gavin, and what that revealed.
A creature that’s so much more dangerous, Jenna had told her. One that has to be carefully monitored for everyone’s good.
Before realizing she’d moved, Skylar found herself across the room and next to Jenna, able to stand without support. While this sudden burst of strength surprised her and raised all the little hairs on the back of her neck, Jenna showed no concern at all, only the discomfort of being the one to break all this bad news.
“Why was my mother considered to be so dangerous?” Skylar asked. “What made her unlike you and Gavin?”
Under the weight of the question, Jenna began to display the first hint of what made her seem a kind of werewolf royalty, if pure bloodlines covered that sort of thing among man-wolf combinations.
Her face became even more angular and set, giving the impression of its having been carved from a slab of marble. Her auburn hair deepened in color and richness, as though the full extent of its color and shine had been purposefully repressed to resemble a normal human’s red-gold mane. Jenna stared back at Skylar with eyes flashing gold fire.
Or maybe Skylar just hadn’t noticed those things until now.
The effect was stunning and a little scary, and made Skylar take an unconscious step back.
“I’ve been searching for the answer to that question,” Jenna replied. “I spent the past few years trying to understand why your father did what he did to your mother, keeping her at Fairview. When I discovered the truth, or what my pack believes must be the truth, his actions became clearer and made me catch the next plane here.”
Pack. Dr. James was the member of a pack of wolves that were so much more than four-legged animals, and light-years from being human. Not one thing completely, or the other. Altogether different.
Skylar tripped past those thoughts, locking on to what Jenna just said.
“You discovered the truth? And that truth is?”
“Your mother might not have been a true werewolf at all, Skylar.”
“What? You just…”
Jenna raised a hand to silence the protest. “I believe…We believe your mother might have been a Fenris.”
Skylar wanted to shout for the absurdity to stop. Put an end to the ridiculous accusations and all the strange terms that had come her way since arriving in Colorado, threatening to make the world a brand-new place.
But in the really creepy way people were drawn to anomalies and tragedies, unable to help themselves, she repeated the term Jenna used, wondering if Jenna might be making stuff up.
“Fenris?”
“Will you sit down?” Jenna said.
“No. Talk, please.”
Jenna said “All right,” as if not totally sure about that or where this information might lead. She ran a hand over her forehead as she went on, pressing back her wisp of bangs. “You were thinking your mother was locked up because people thought she was some kind of demented demon.”
“I didn’t say that out loud,” Skylar protested.
“You thought it.”
“Are you telling me you can read my thoughts?”
“When the moon is full, all Weres, when lacking voices, can speak through our thoughts.”
This news spread like whips of fire through Skylar’s mind, enlightening, frightening, changing things. New ideas formed rapidly and she had to follow where they led, because if Jenna was right and Gavin could hear her thoughts, he’d hear her calling to him now.
It meant that the night before, at the motel when she wished for his return, he’d have been aware of those thoughts, too. Nor would he have had to guess what kind of reception he’d receive when he got there.
Knowing of her hunger, he brought food. He came prepared to engage in the kind of wild, abandoned sex she craved while in his arms. And he obliged her desire to have him stay with her until daylight. All when there was no way he could have heard those wishes.
But wait just a damn minute, she wanted to shout.
“How could Gavin have heard me before the discovery tonight that I might be Were?”
“If you were human, he couldn’t have,” Jenna said.
“Is it possible he felt the wolf inside me without realizing it? Could he have read me without understanding why?”
“That’s entirely possible.”
Too fast. Too much information is coming in at once.
“Go on.” Skylar whispered the prompt, waving a hand, feeling sick again but standing firm. “What the hell is a Fenris?”
Jenna’s eyes were soft and empathetic when Skylar looked there. “A Fenris is an animal demon.”
What? Her body’s shaking tipped Skylar into an open-legged stance.
“Do you want to hear this, Skylar? It gets worse.”
“Yes. Damn it, go on.”
“If I’m right about this, your mother was an entity not seen before on earth, or not for generations, anyway. A Fenris comes out of Were legend and is an entity that can appear to be human and also appear in the form of a giant hybrid wolf.”
Skylar considered sitting down before she fell, feeling as if she’d been struck by a particularly potent bolt of lightning. Her skin iced over with shock. Her voice pitched an octave higher.
“What do you mean by it can appear to be human? A human-wolf combination is what you all are, isn’t it?” She failed to include herself in the remark.
“Yes. But we’re just that, wolf and human. The Fenris of legend is not human at all, but the offspring of a wolf god.”
The shock accompanying this revelation was an almost tangible thing and so dark it covered Skylar
with another layer of chills.
Secrets, unknown identities, and the pain and transformations of the body and soul were concepts pushing her beyond her ability to cope. There were too many revelations. The world had gone haywire, taking her down with it, forcing her to either sink or swim.
She laughed with a slightly hysterical tone and then quickly sobered with her attention riveted to Jenna. “You’re saying my father married a demon and that union produced four daughters. That my father knowingly carried on with such a creature—not just a werewolf, but something altogether worse—in a way that might now affect his own children. You do realize how ridiculous it sounds? How sick?”
Jenna’s reply came swiftly, and as if she’d thought about this before tonight. “He couldn’t have known until it was too late. A Fenris must be able to mask what it is for long periods convincingly, until it gets what it wants.”
“Which is what? What could a demon want?”
“Offspring.”
Skylar’s knees threatened to give way, and held her up with only the utmost willpower as she uttered the protest rising from within her. “That’s insane!”
Jenna realized this, Skylar knew. She couldn’t miss the effect her information was having. Skylar felt Jenna’s strong will reaching out to her like an invisible hand helping to shore her up, as if Weres could not only share thoughts, but energy.
“Why not just a werewolf?” Skylar said. “How did you get to Fenris?”
“Gavin’s description of the beast fit with the bits of information I found in your father’s archives at Fairview. A werewolf would have been easier to deal with when the full moon wasn’t overhead. Even a mad one.”
“But a demon wouldn’t?”
Jenna didn’t answer that.
“They had four daughters,” Skylar said.
“Two,” Jenna corrected.
“Seriously. You think I can’t count?”
“Lark and Robyn were adopted,” Jenna stated clearly, in a way that defied further argument. “Probably either to further the whole family image or to keep normal kids close to those who might not be quite so normal.”
Skylar stared open-mouthed at her father’s partner. “How would you possibly know any of that?”
“I checked birth records, just like you could if you dug deep enough.”
“Why would you check?”
“Because the children of a Fenris could possess powers unlike those the Were community is used to and would need to be watched.”
“In cages and padded cells?” Skylar shouted.
Skylar heard little after that because the ringing in her ears was getting louder by the second. When the alarm bells grew shrill, she clamped both hands to her head and muttered in a voice that sounded nothing like hers, “I’m part demon. That’s the charge? My mother was a demon who seduced my father into a liaison that lasted a few years before her incarceration in a mental ward?”
She sucked in enough air to go on. “Well, hell. Screw the body’s rewiring process. As the daughter of a demon and the granddaughter of a god, I might not need help with my transformation, after all.”
She’d said that in full panic mode, sure there was no way anyone sane could actually believe this nonsense. Wolf gods? Demons able to take any shape they wanted to and birth children? Her two younger sisters had been adopted by her father?
Standing there, listening to this babble, made her feel less like a demon’s child and more like an idiot.
Jenna’s hand connected with hers, the Were’s long, thin fingers warm and senselessly calming.
“Skylar, it’s okay,” Jenna soothed in a voice as mesmerizing as Gavin’s, but in a different way. The earnest compassion in Jenna’s eyes gave Skylar the strength to speak.
“Why didn’t he let her go? If Dad knew what she was, and that being locked up drove her insane, why couldn’t that demon be freed?”
“I’m sure your father discovered his mistake late in the game. Maybe he didn’t realize things fully, even then. But he took action to prevent it from happening again, to anyone else.”
“He married her. He had fallen for her disguise. That’s one hell of a mistake. So, after he put her away, why did he allow me to see her at Fairview? What would that prove? You must see that the discrepancies read more like science fiction.”
“I don’t think he could have known anything about what he was dealing with for quite a while, Skylar. Madness covers a wide range of symptoms and behavior, as you well know from your studies.”
Skylar waited for Jenna to go on.
“Your visit must have calmed her. She’d gotten what she wanted in you and Trish. However, she wasn’t allowed to see you. Until you went there, she had probably given up. David’s paperwork on your mother stopped after you left the hospital. There’s no mention of your mother after that, which suggests to me that the discovery about your mother’s true identity either came with your visit or soon after.”
Skylar fine-tuned her focus on Jenna’s face, looking for a hint of the wolf Jenna carried inside her, finding only the gold flash in her eyes.
“You’re sticking to this fanciful explanation?” she asked. “Because in all honesty, your theories make me worry about you.”
Calmly, Jenna said, “I’m here to help in any way I can, Skylar. David was my partner, but some mistakes are so terribly personal, not even professional friendships can bridge them.”
Skylar’s spine snapped straight with loathing for the whole idea of demons and wolves. She said insolently, “So, do you have something in mind, now that you’re here? Have you brought along a dart or two in case you’re right about all this and about me, in case my behavior gets out of hand?”
When Jenna winced at the accusation, Skylar was sorry for the remark. Whether or not these were lies and fantasies, Jenna had done her best to answer some of Skylar’s questions.
“I came here to be with you,” Jenna explained. “In case you were alone and unsure of what might happen to you here. I thought you might need the company of someone who understands the process and could remain a rock in the bizarre, changing world you as yet know nothing about. I wasn’t lying about wanting to help. I didn’t know about your lover. And I swear to you now that I would have searched for a way to help your mother if I had been there at the time, no matter what she was.”
Skylar’s reply sounded very small and faint. “You would have helped a demon as dangerous as you think she could have been?”
If there was a way to do so that wouldn’t harm others.
“I believe you,” Skylar said. “I believe you’re sincere about wanting to help.”
How did she know that, though? Was she now reading Jenna’s emotions as well as her thoughts? Because doing so meant, proved…
You see? Jenna asked without moving her lips.
And Skylar did see. She was forced to comprehend that Jenna hadn’t been lying or making things up. The Were beside her truly believed Skylar’s mother might have been a wolf demon in disguise and that somehow this place in Colorado might spark Skylar’s first transformation.
“So she died,” Skylar said slowly. “My mother died soon after I left Fairview.”
“And another one may have shown up here, against all odds,” Jenna said.
Pounded by the significance of that and unable to stomach any more bad news, Skylar turned for the door and the moonlight beyond it, hoping to either escape this madness or jump right in with both feet. Being just a werewolf was bad enough. Now there was a chance she’d become something worse.
Not much of a choice. Not much of a future.
But either way, good or bad, she had to be sure.
Chapter 28
Gavin ran.
His senses were icy with fear and anger at his inability to stop the beast. The thing moved too damn fast.
There were no sounds of footsteps in front of him on the path, though the scent of malice trailed in the great beast’s wake along with the foul odor of wet fur.
; Branches tugged at him as he moved. Tree limbs hit him in the face. But he would not slow down. His heart lay in the clearing below, and his lover was in no shape to tackle this kind of nightmare.
He wanted desperately to fight. He would have given anything to avoid what might happen if that fanged thing reached the cabin. He refused to picture it. Fear continued to flow through him, chilling his internal heat, mocking his own tremendous strength.
Darting through the forest, he roared his frustration and swallowed blood from the line the beast had drawn on his face with its claw. He’d gotten away lightly this time. The fact that he could stand, run, breathe, was mystifying.
Why? he asked over and over. Why did you let me go?
The area remained quiet, but in that silence his heart thundered. Gavin tossed his shaggy head as if he’d deny everything that had happened to him up to this point. Everything except Skylar. He’d never wish to take that back.
God. Somebody.
He needed to get to her in time.
Brace yourself for what’s coming, little wolf.
Reaching deep inside, finding one more spark of energy formerly trapped by fright, Gavin kicked up his speed. He ran like the wind, his boots eating up the trail.
When the clearing came into view, his heart soared. But he also felt the complications about to happen down there as if being psychic came with the territory.
Skylar. I’m coming. Damn it, hang on!
*
Skylar didn’t stop to wonder how she sensed her second visitor of the night. An acute awareness of this took her over the minute her feet left the porch.
Before she drew her next breath, moonlight found her and she stumbled to her knees, nerves immediately firing like crazy. The feeling was like being lassoed with barbed wire, the iron thorns piercing skin and muscle all the way to the bone.
Crying out, head lowered, she groped unsuccessfully for a steadying breath. Instead, white-hot flames shot across her skin, entered her open mouth, slid down her throat. Those flames got bigger each time she made a sound.
A new vibration of power filled the night, as if moonbeams were lethal. Each bone in her body began to ache, pound and pulse. She needed to get back inside the cabin. This was a mistake. This was madness.
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