by Carol Wolf
I found Gray Fox on the slope above Elaine’s house, about fifty feet off the track I’d laid. I located him more easily than I might have, by the static from his radio. I pushed my way through the bushes and found him lying twisted, one leg under him upslope from his head. He’d changed to his human form. He lay on his back with his arms oddly outstretched. He watched me come up to him.
“You!” His voice was a whisper.
I changed and hunkered down by him. “Who did you think?”
He didn’t answer. The radio in his pocket blurted again, and a muted voice spoke. I saw him try to move his fingers toward his coat. I saw that he couldn’t.
“You betrayed my mother,” I stated.
His lips rose in a smile. “No, little wolf girl.”
“I heard you.” My head still felt wobbly, and the headache hammered me with every pulsebeat. But I was still strong enough so that my eyes turned yellow as I looked down on him.
“No,” he whispered. “It was your great-grandmother who betrayed the grandsire of my master. My line have lived in exile for more than a hundred years now, to keep you in his eye.”
I stared down at him. I had no idea what he was talking about. Only one thing was clear. “You’re a spy.”
“I did my duty.”
My head was spinning, and it wasn’t just the blows that Tillman had given me. What the hell was going on? “You got rid of my dad. You brought Ray and his sons into our house. You…”
I could hardly hear him. “I serve my master’s plan.”
“Who? Who were you spying for?”
Again that little smile. “Soon, you will meet him.” He whispered a name, and his eyes grew fixed. I didn’t look behind me. I knew no one was there.
I took the radio out of his pocket. At the bottom of the hill, I tossed it over the fence into Elaine’s swimming pool. I found the keys to Finley’s truck in the predictable spot, on top of the visor. I started it up and did what I should have done in the first place. I drove down the road that led to the beach, and then along the highway until I found a well-used parking lot, and left it there with the keys on the dashboard. I expect some smart guy soon made it as hard to find as it could possibly be.
I made my way back over the mountains on four feet. At any other time it would have been a joy to lope across the open country, smelling the dawn and crossing through the traces of the night creatures’ journeys. My splitting head and the new bruises Tillman had given me were an unwelcome distraction.
What was I doing here? What was the plan? To lie in wait for each of my stepbrothers in turn, and anyone else Ray sent after me, and take them out one by one? But no, the plan had been to hide. I’d run away to hide like a kid pulling the bedcovers over her head to escape from a nightmare. All right, fair enough, it was good to get out, and it had been a nightmare. But what was the plan? To stay down this hole until someone from home cried ollie ollie oxen free? To come back when it was all over, and Dad had somehow come home again at last, defeated the bad guys, taken up his rightful place, and everything was once again as it used to be? That was stupid. It was childish. And it was young.
Wasn’t I supposed to be growing up? Getting stronger? Finding my powers? The powers I would need to deal with the situation at home? Well then, I needed to know what the hell it was. What was going on? Why was my mom so weak? Why had my dad been defeated? Had he been killed, or just run off? And if he wasn’t dead, then where was he? Where was my older brother Carl? Ignoring these problems because I wasn’t ready to deal with them was no longer an option. I had to find out. I had to figure out what to do next. I had to grow up.
When you’re a child, the sounds of the larger issues echo through the house, and you ignore them. Gray Fox’s frequent journeys. Dad asking Mom about them, and getting an off-hand answer. Oh, that’s just his way, we have to accept him the way he is. Aunt Dora talking to Mom, trying to get Mom to do something, to act. Mom slipping away. Dora fighting with Dad, Dad telling Aunt Dora it was just Mom’s way.
Grown-up’s problems. Adult issues. Not mine, when I was a pup. Well, they were mine now. I had to grow up, and I had to do it right now. Gray Fox’s whisper, his last words to me, almost inaudible, sang in my mind. “Sun Wolf is coming. He is going to kill you.”
Who the hell was Sun Wolf? I’d never even heard the name.
I made it back to my car before the sun rose. I went the long way out of the valley, because I remembered where Gray Fox’s sentries might still be watching the passes. I stopped at a gas station and filled up, and while I was there I left a message at work, telling Ariadne that I might be late this morning. It was dawn, but morning rush hour traffic could start this early, and I had the whole Los Angeles basin to cross.
I drove home, thinking all the way. I showered and changed into work clothes. I clocked in just half an hour late, and I worked all day. I listened to my boss going on about the history of music, and I smiled at Yvette’s clowning on the drums, even though it felt like my head was going to explode. I went home after work and ate some dinner before I went to sleep. Because that was the grown-up thing to do.
Two days later, on my day off, I drove out to Malibu to find the ranch where I’d been held prisoner all those weeks ago. I wanted to talk to Sarah. I should have done it long ago, but between being attacked, and recovering from attacks… the fact was, Sarah was one more enemy at my back that I had hoped would just stay away. But my plan was to be wiser now. So I was going to have a talk with Sarah.
I drove with my windows open because of the heat, though Yvette told me the previous day that this was nothing to what was coming in July and August. It took a couple of casts to find the dirt road Elaine had bumped her way out of when I was hiding in the backseat of her truck, but by mid-afternoon I drove up to the bungalow where the beat-up truck and the dented hatch-back were parked at the side of the barn. I parked next to them and got out. No dogs barked. Out in the pasture some of the sheep were carrying on, trying to convince somebody that they hadn’t been fed in weeks. I knocked on the door but no one answered, and I didn’t hear anyone inside. I sat down on the steps to wait. Sarah had gone up and down these steps half a dozen times today already, with Baz at her heels. Holly had been here recently, perhaps even this morning. Elaine had been here not long ago as well.
It was cooler in this little bowl of a valley, and this much closer to the ocean, than it had been further inland. A breeze came through the gap in the two hills to the south, and brought the smell of salt and water. I heard Sarah out in the pasture yelling at her dogs, and then Baz’s black and white form came around the corner of the barn on four legs, barking his head off at me. He skidded to a stop when he caught my scent, backed up and disappeared into the barn. Sarah was still calling him when she saw me.
“Can I help you?” She had on the same work boots and stained corduroy pants. The sleeves on her shirt were rolled up, and she wore a leather hat pushed back on her head. Her voice was hard.
“You don’t remember me.”
“Can’t say I do.”
I opened my heart to my anger at this woman, and released my wolf aspect so that I wore it above my human form, and I let the growl sound in my voice. She stepped back even as I said, “Does this remind you of anything?”
She collected herself and stopped. “Oh. The wolf girl. I wondered when I’d be seeing you again.”
“Yeah?” I let my wolf aspect fade. “You thought Elaine or Curt or Holly would be bringing me back to you shot, drugged, and in chains again?”
“No.” She glanced over to her sheep pastures behind the barn. “I thought you’d come and take it out on my flock. I stayed up nights with a shotgun for days after you took off.”
I smiled. “I was busy,” I told her.
“So I heard.”
“Oh?”
“Curt, Holly, Elaine, they’ve all been telling stories about you.”
“I met Cecil.”
“I hope you bit him,” she said darkly.
“Never had much use for a preacher who needs so much money.”
I stood up. “Then why did you do that to me? Treat me like I’m some kind of animal?”
She folded her arms, but she didn’t back up anymore. She shrugged. “Holly asked me to. She told me you were possessed by a demon, and that Cecil was going to cure you. I should have known it was a lie. Cecil couldn’t cure rabies with a shotgun.”
“So, Holly is the liar.” I looked across at the pasture where a couple of late lambs were bouncing around. That is the moment, that must have been the moment, when I missed Sarah’s glance up at the house.
“I suppose you’ll want to talk to her next.”
“I suppose.” I looked back at her. “Is it true you can make people shape change? Curt said you used to make him, and Holly, and Elaine shape change when they were kids.”
She shrugged. “Can’t you?”
“No.”
“Oh. I thought you were like me.”
She held on to both her wrists with her hands, and made some kind of tug. And then there was a border collie looking up at me with tired eyes. She shook herself, and then Sarah stood there again.
“Huh! I didn’t know people could do that.”
“Then you don’t know much. There’s always been people who could do that.”
“And you can do it to other people?”
“For a little while. Made babysitting a breeze, with those kids. Always did.” She looked smug.
“I’ll bet.”
“You waiting for me to say I’m sorry? Or are you going to chew my liver out?”
“Do I need to?”
She shook her head. Her eyes were still tired. “Not if you’re willing to let bygones go.”
“All right,” I was going to add that if she made me sorry, I was going to come back and burn down her barn, but that’s when Holly slipped out of the house and down the steps along the banister. I turned as she came, and only thought this made one less trip back up to goddam Malibu. She had her hand cupped in front of her, and lifted it as she reached the steps. She was lit with tension, but didn’t seem to have a weapon, and I knew I could change and rip out her throat before she did anything serious to me, so when Sarah yelled, “No! Holly, don’t!” I just stood there, my mouth open to finish what I’d been saying to Sarah, or say something to Holly, or ask Sarah what she was going on about.
Holly blew the fine sparkling dust right in my face, and then backed up fast, her face leering into a grin. “I got you! I got you!”
I was brushing the grit out of my face, and off my tongue as Sarah marched up the steps, grabbed Holly’s hand and her neck, scraped her hand over Holly’s and then made that odd tug, and changed her into a sheep. The ewe bleated and leaped, but Sarah didn’t let go. She’d wiped some of the last of the dust out of Holly’s hand as she changed her, and she stuck her fingers in the sheep’s mouth as deep as it would go. And then she let her go, and kicked her the hell down the stairs. If I had known at that moment what Holly had done to me, I would have given her an awfully good kick as well.
Sarah stared down at me.
“What?” I asked. “What just happened?”
“Silver,” she said. “Silver dust.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I tried to change, right there at Sarah’s place, and I couldn’t. I threw myself into the change, rode the pain in my head, my throat, my lungs, until it topped out and I fell, still on hands and knees. I called up my wolf aspect and I was able to raise it, but not make that turn to where I wore my wolf’s form. I tried again and again. I blacked out twice. The second time I came to lying in front of the steps, with my head on Sarah’s lap. I pulled myself up. I still didn’t like her smell.
“It’ll wear off, right? It’s just temporary.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Curt’s brother, Pete, he did something like that. He did it to himself, and he never did come back.”
I tried every day. I spent whole nights at it. I walked up the hill of Hellman Park and tried my heart out until I lay screaming. I am a daughter of the wolf kind. I have my father to seek, my history to discover, my would-be assassin to defeat. I am one of the two-natured kind, but if my wolf nature is never to be seen again, then what? If I cannot change, then what am I?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, thank you to Laurie McLean, Agent Extraordinaire, without whom . . . as well she knows.
Grateful thanks to Skyhorse and Start who resurrected the beleaguered Night Shade Books, and with it Binding, Summoning, and the Moon Wolf Saga.
Thank you, Ross Lockhart, my most excellent editor, for asking pointy questions in all the right places. Thank you to Cory Allyn, and to Jeannine Hanscom and Shannon Page, for saving me from error.
Thank you to Sarah, for friendship, and for Writing in the Library, and to all the WITL gang. And loving thanks to Riva and Rebecca; and to Bill Jouris, for his long-sustained and continuing support and encouragement, which means more to me than he can ever imagine.
I would like to thank my beta readers, Doug, Laurie, Bill, and Eric, for raising useful doubts in good time.
And as ever, and always, to Eric.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carol Wolf earned a B.A. in History at Mills College, an MFA in Drama-Playwriting at Rutgers University, and pursued a life in the theater, which resulted in about thirty productions of her plays on five continents, including her feminist musical farce, The Terrible Experiment of Jonathan Fish, and the award-winning The Thousandth Night. She wrote the scripts for the blockbuster video games Blood Omen II: Legacy of Kain, and Legacy of Kain: Defiance. She co-founded the micro-budget film company, Paw Print Studios, and produced and directed the feature films The Valley of Fear and Far From the Sea, available on Amazon. She studied broadsword fighting in the SCA, Uechi-rhu karate, and earned a black belt in Toyama-ryu Iaido. She has lived on both coasts, and in Europe, and presently lives in the Foothills of the Sierra Nevadas with her husband, two border collies, and a varying number of sheep.
Table of Contents
Cover
Praise for Carol Wolf's
Dedication
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Acknowledgments
About the Author