by Carol Wolf
Well, that pissed me off, and since I’d already set myself to grow, the next moment my head was brushing the roof, so that was all right. I worked on toning the size-thing down a bit, while I focused on the top of Darius’s head, and then planted my pointy upper-left canine just—there. I steadied myself for a moment, leaned in to Darius to hold him steady, and then dropped my tooth hard onto the top of Darius’s head and heard the bone crunch.
I tasted blood, and Darius let out a choked scream, shoved me away hard and grabbed his head. Richard was there with a towel and pressed it down hard to stop the bleeding.
I backed off, and when I was far enough out of reach I changed. I crouched on the floor where I was to try and keep from panicking him any further. “Darius? Darius! Listen, I’m sorry I hurt you. But I think it’s going to help, it’s going to make you better. Darius? It will be all right.” At least, I hoped it would be.
Darius grabbed hold of the towel and pressed it to his wound as though doing so would stop it from hurting so much. He was still crying, which disconcerted me. Honestly, I hadn’t wanted to hurt him.
Richard brought another towel, took the first one away from Darius, and bent to examine the wound. Then he covered it with the second towel, and guided Darius’s hand back up to hold it in place. The first towel was fairly soaked, but the wound didn’t seem to be bleeding so much anymore.
“How is it?” I asked. “Did I do it right?”
“It looks right,” Richard said uncertainly.
“You weren’t sure!” I heard it in his tone. “You don’t know!”
He shrugged. “How much can anyone know, caught in a form like this one? It should work.”
“How long before we know?”
“I have no idea. But this is a good place to try what you did. He has done many workings here over the years. A lot of energy has been raised, and he put a lot of himself into his work. If this works, he should be able to call that energy to himself.”
“If it works.”
Darius’s panic decreased as he seemed to realize that no one was going to attack him anymore. I sat there talking to him, saying anything I could think of, so he would calm down. I was well aware that the night was leaching away, my last night with Richard, my last hours with my love. And I couldn’t tell if all this had even done any good.
Richard brought a third towel, and Darius focused on him as he took the other one away and guided Darius’s hand to hold the new towel in place. When Darius turned back to me, his eyes had changed. They weren’t empty anymore. There was, in their depths, a gleam of awareness.
“Darius?” I said.
A moment later I thought I’d imagined it. He went to his futon and lay down, still holding the towel to his wounded head.
The freeways were as clear of traffic as they ever are as we sped home. The streets of Whittier were empty and dark. I let us into my apartment, and we went straight to bed. And perhaps he was a master of time and space, because despite the lateness of the hour, we seemed to have all the time in the world to say good-bye once more. I did everything I could to impress his form, his scent, and his laughter into my memory. This extra visitation was a gift, and I made the most of it.
When I woke, Richard was gone, as he told me he would be. Not wholly gone. He’d left his jacket, neatly folded on the chair. It smelled like him, and when I put it on, it just about fit me.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
So, the demon was gone, everyone finally got it about the World Snake not coming, my lover had come back of his own accord to be with me and ravish my senses to unparalleled bliss, I’d defeated Finley and sent him into a miserable exile. I had a job, I had a friend or two, and I’d grown almost an inch, and might grow some more, so now I could settle down and live happily ever after, sad about Richard going away, but joyful that he’d come back at all.
Not unexpectedly, it did not turn out that way.
I flitted around the music store all day in a state of hyperactive bliss. I dusted every shelf and every object, reorganized the sheet music, cataloged and shelved the new CDs for sale, and even greeted and helped customers using a friendly voice and a nice smile. Ariadne looked at me askance. I think she was considering a drug test. When Yvette came in at lunch time, she told Ariadne not to worry, it would wear off and I’d be back to normal again.
I’d been ignoring Minto, Adriade’s cat, and she didn’t care for that. After lunch I went into the back room where Minto was sleeping, and a moment later the cat ran out into the shop hissing and yowling. When I came out, she hissed at me and struck out with her tiny paw, and then ran and hid under the counter where she made yowling sounds. Ariadne looked over from where she was showing a customer how to assemble their new music stand. I could see her wondering just what I’d done to that cat.
I got down on my hands and knees and stuck my head under the counter. Minto backed away and growled, but I saw her smirking at me. I propped my chin on my hands and smiled. She flinched back. “I’ve only ever once eaten cat,” I told her. “It was pretty stringy. But if I lose this job, I’m going to be hungry, and I’ll bet you’re not stringy at all.” I smiled wider. Minto slowly crouched down. Her tail stilled, and she stopped making those noises. I got up. Ariadne was watching me. “She’s fine,” I told her.
After that, Minto made a point of greeting me when I entered the shop, and otherwise left me alone. I could feel her watching me sometimes from her various hiding places, but that was fine. Now that she knew her place on the food chain, she was just as respectful as she needed to be.
I walked home after work, enjoying my melancholy at Richard’s departure, which was overshadowed by my glee that he’d come back, he’d come back to see me, he didn’t have to, he just wanted to, and the joy we’d made together, and the fun we’d had. His smell was still on me, in places. And I was thinking about that chicken thing with mushroom sauce, that we’d made so much of the previous night that I was going to eat it for dinner again. Up the street a guy got out of his truck and came toward me, flipping the keys and pocketing them. I noticed him first because he looked a bit like my defeated stepbrother Finley. It wasn’t Finley, of course, but that’s the moment I realized I’d forgotten all about Finley’s truck.
Finley’s truck was better than a scent marker. It was a beacon that would summon someone from the family. And for anyone from my family, Finley’s trail would lead directly to Elaine, Elaine’s house, and the fight I’d had with Finley in the orchard. Anyone who came looking for that truck would be able to tell that I’d been there, that his blood and mine had been shed on that ground. Since Finley was gone, they’d know where to start looking for me: they’d start with Elaine, and she knew where to find me. Was the truck still there? Had it been towed away? Or had he been in a rental car, which was now overdue and being tracked down? Had Finley told anyone where he was going that last day?
I called Tamara’s shop as soon as I got home, to ask her to contact Elaine. Tamara wasn’t there. The shop worker didn’t know Elaine. She’d heard of Curt, but didn’t have his number. She said she’d have Tamara call back, except Tamara wasn’t expected back in the shop that night. Since there wasn’t any point in trying to cross the greater Los Angeles valley right smack in the middle of rush hour, I had my dinner, and enjoyed the last of the chicken with mushroom sauce, breathing in the scent that Richard had left in the room, on the things that he’d touched, remembering his smile, the look in his eyes, before I caught the freeway and headed back out to Calabasas.
And I hit traffic. It was dark by the time I got to the exit from the 101 that would lead me to the little hamlet where Elaine lived in her parents’ house. It was true that my family could use that truck to hunt me down. On the long drive out, I realized that it didn’t necessarily have to work that way. I could instead use the truck as bait, to gather information on who was hunting me, how much they wanted me, and what they knew. I thought of Gray Fox, and how this would put me one up on him. So now this was not their trap to c
atch me, but mine to catch them. And that was a lot more fun.
I parked in the parking lot of a trendy restaurant some miles from Elaine’s place. The dirt lot backed up against a scrubby hill, with a bigger and steeper hill beyond it. I changed in the twilight and leaped the fence, and loped up and along the hillside. I made a loop around the steeper hill, then came down the rocky, scrub-covered slope to the dirt road that ran behind Elaine’s orchard. No one of the wolf kind or the fox kind had been on this hillside. I moved closer down the slope. Finley’s truck was there, parked a hundred yards down the road and around a slight bend from the back fence of the orchard. Finley had made sure that if I circled Elaine’s house before going in, I wouldn’t see his truck, and I wouldn’t catch his scent. As it turned out, I hadn’t bothered to check, since I hadn’t expected Elaine’s call to be Finley’s trap. I told myself to be more careful next time. And of course, this was next time.
So I moved parallel to the road for a couple of hundred yards, to catch any scent of anyone looking for me. I came down to the main road and walked along it on two feet for a half mile, passing the start of the dirt road, some ways from where the truck was parked. I completed the circle without scenting anyone recent, anyone hanging around, anyone who wasn’t a human who passed here often, or a critter who lived in the neighborhood. No one had found the truck yet. So this would be my trap.
I walked on two feet down the road in front of Elaine’s house, and then changed and trotted along her fence line, and turned up the far end of the dirt road behind the orchard. Somewhere back there I remembered seeing a sagging section of the fence. What I wanted to do was change the story that our scent traces told about what had happened in the orchard. Right now, you could scent that Finley had walked from his truck to Elaine’s house, gone over the fence into the yard, and gone into the orchard, where he’d met me. We’d had a big fight on two feet, then he’d changed, and there was blood from the wounds I’d given him on his shoulder, and of course his nose, and a tiny bit from the dart wound. All of this would tell the hunters to go knock on Elaine’s door on two feet, and ask questions. I didn’t want Elaine brought into this, since she knew how to find me. So I had to prevent anyone from finding her, by making the scents tell a different story.
The fence to the old orchard had been repaired a number of times, but for the last few years no one had bothered. I found the sagging boards, got up on two feet and manipulated them until I’d made a gap. I changed and went through on four feet.
It was easy to find the place where Finley had fallen. He’d lain there bleeding for quite a while, spreading his scent with his blood, sweat, saliva, and fur. In my wolf form, I rolled in this, until I carried his scent on my back and sides.
Then I went back and forth through the gap in the fence, until you’d swear that both of us had come in this way. If someone found the place along the way where Finley had touched the top of the wall jumping over into Elaine’s yard, they wouldn’t know what to make of it, because it didn’t fit the story. I went out onto the dirt road and wrote a new story. I trotted over to Finley’s truck, and then on the way back I rolled every few yards, rubbing my back on the dirt road. In a day or two, when the wind and weather, fog and traffic had erased the marks, a scent tracker would be led to believe that I’d met Finley at his car, that we’d both come back this way on two feet, and then we’d gone into the orchard through this fence, and fought all over the place, on two feet and on four.
On four feet, I rolled over the ground where I’d dragged Finley to the garage. I left a few more odd traces of Finley in the yard, and then came back into the orchard and messed up the story some more. There’d been a big fight, obviously. And then I’d run away straight up the hill across the dirt road from the orchard. I laid that trail, and then I laboriously laid the scents that would tell them that Finley had followed me in his wolf form, up to the summit of the hill. I took both his scent and mine up and back down the trail I was laying. When I got back to the dirt road I walked back the way I’d come on two feet, until I crossed a stream. I changed onto four feet and followed the stream for miles, in and out of the water, and then made a huge circuit around the whole base of that mountain, and then ran up to the top of it and caught up my trail and Finley’s again, and took it in another direction.
My kind are air as well as ground scent trackers, so water by itself won’t cause us to lose a trail. What confuses a tracker the most is circles. One trail crossing another, concentric circles with tracks crossing through them, makes the path hopelessly confused. I made four concentric circles, the first two a hundred yards or so apart, and each succeeding one farther apart until the last two were miles from each other. Then I crossed through all of them again and again, laying spokes across these great wheels, with both my scent and Finley’s, in different directions. It would take a month for someone tracking this to figure out who was going where, and in that month the traces would degrade and make it even harder to understand. Some trails I went over again and again, some only once, touching the ground, or the foliage, as little as possible.
You can fool a tracker into thinking a trail is fresher because it is stronger. I confused the story for ten square miles moving out from Elaine’s orchard. Ha. Let them try to figure that out. This is what I’d done when I’d run away from home. I’d laid tracks of concentric circles for weeks beforehand, and then joined them up just before I left, so they’d be tracking me in circles for a month, while I got away by car. I couldn’t say I wasn’t having fun. I giggled to myself every time I crossed the track again, with yet another misleading trail.
I got home a couple of hours before dawn, even before the morning rush hour began. I took a hot shower and fell into bed for a few hours’ sleep before I had to go to work. I drifted into dreams, my feet twitching as I ran my trails over again while I slept.
At work the next day I was as slow and dragging as I’d been hyper the day before. Ariadne was amused. Yvette gave her an “I told you so” look. I planned a quick dinner after work, and then three or four hours sleep before I headed back to Calabasas to see if anyone had walked into my trap.
Instead, Jason arrived about fifteen minutes before I was due to clock out, looming through the shop doorway and staring askance at the cat on the counter. Ariadne didn’t have any students on Fridays, so she was showing Yvette how to draw the bow across a violin, and we were all, even Minto, being polite about the sounds she made. Jason greeted Ariadne respectfully. Yvette turned at the sound of his voice and lit up at the sight of him, though being on duty she did not throw herself into his arms, as she usually did.
“Hey! I didn’t know you were going to be up this way tonight.”
“Madam Tamara sent me.” He turned to me. “Madam Tamara would like to see you.”
“Oh? When?” A drive down to Costa Mesa that evening was really not in my plans. I’d had a long night, and I was in for another one later.
“Now, of course,” the bear replied.
“Now?” I said, and I put every bit of resistance I could into the syllable.
“Yes,” he said, meeting my gaze. “Now.”
A wolf can take a bear. Bears know that, too. The trouble is, what’s left of the wolf afterwards is usually not worth much.
As it turned out, Tamara was in Whittier, at the home of Lady Fireheart. I drove there with Jason hunched in the passenger seat giving directions and making unspoken but unmistakable complaints about the head and leg room. I felt the wards guarding Lady Fireheart’s house from two streets away. I went past the house and parked in front of the next one. Wards incline you that way, and hers were strong. The name on the mailbox was Ortiz. Jason opened the front door without knocking and led the way through another powerful set of wards that parted for us, through the living room redolent with ancient incense, with floor to ceiling bookshelves on every inch of wall space, all stuffed with books. On a few empty surfaces heavy glazed pots were displayed. We passed a couple of young kids in front of the TV who
didn’t look up from the computer game they were playing together.
In the kitchen, Madam Tamara sat at the table cutting vegetables with a long knife, while Lady Fireheart fried meat on the stove. Jason made a slow circuit of the room, sampling whatever food he could reach. I stood in the doorway with my arms folded, making my own unspoken statement.
Madam Tamara looked up at me. Her hair was twisted up in a simple blue cotton kerchief, and she wore a long white cotton shirt over a pair of light blue trousers. She took in my expression and asked, “What did the bear tell you?” She shot a look at Jason, who looked unconcerned.
“That you wanted to see me. Now. Tonight.”
Lady Fireheart gave the bear a look. “Trust Jason to put it like that.”
“We do have a few questions to put to you,” Madam Tamara said. Her voice was remote, not friendly.
“Yes,” Lady Fireheart turned to me, the hand without the wooden spoon in it open. “But I sent Jason to ask if you would join us for dinner. If you please. People of power are so prickly!” She slapped Jason’s hand away from one of the pots she was stirring. I thought she was brave, to come between a bear and food, even in her own kitchen. Also, whatever she was cooking smelled really good. And anyway, it wouldn’t do me any good to leave this early for Calabasas and my stake-out of Finley’s truck. If I left in an hour and a half, I’d get there at the same time as if I left right now, since rush hour was just gearing up.
“Thanks,” I said. I stepped into the kitchen. Lady Fireheart turned back to the stove. She was barefoot, and wore jeans cut off below her knees, and an old t-shirt. She told me to call her Susan.
“Perhaps you would like to tell us,” Madam Tamara began, but the sorceress interrupted, admonishing her with the spoon.