by Eileen Wilks
She pulled on last night’s socks and her shoes, grabbed the roll of TP that Mike had given her last night, and reached for the flute case. She needed to return that.
Her hands were shaky. She looked down at them, surprised. She was scared? She thought hard, trying to identify the fluttery feeling. Happy, scared, uncertain . . . giddy. That was the word.
It turned out her fantasy hadn’t been ruined after all. She was practically living it. Fifty-six lupi, half of them in wolf-form, waited on the other side of the canvas flap. She was giddy with lupi.
It was very bright outside. The air smelled like coffee and bacon and spices. There were a couple men near the stone-edged fire, but most of the lupi were at the other end of the clearing—some on two legs, some on four. They were listening to that man who’d talked to Rule Turner when they first arrived last night. She couldn’t remember his name, but he seemed to be the only Hispanic person here, so he was easy to recognize. He appeared to be directing them in what looked like a complicated dance. It was fascinating. Wolves and men moved in a complex pattern, weaving—
A cold, wet nose poked her arm. She jumped. “Oh. Good morning,” she said politely to the wolf looking at her. She studied him carefully. He was really big, plus his ruff was more black than silver, and there was a roundish spot of paler fur over one shoulder . . . “Mike?”
The wolf wagged his tail once.
“What are they doing down there? Dancing? I—oh. You can’t talk right now.”
He snorted and looked pointedly at her foot, then at her face.
“I don’t understand.”
He tapped her heel with his nose, right where the bandage was.
“Oh, my blister? It’s okay.”
He took a couple steps away, then looked at her.
“You want me to go with you?”
He nodded.
Embarrassed, she lifted the roll of TP without speaking.
He nodded again.
Her fantasy had never involved toilet paper. She sighed.
The latrine was located well inside the trees, so she started walking. She was pretty stiff. Her blister wasn’t bothering her, but her thighs were. She liked Mike, but she didn’t like him escorting her to the latrine. She knew lupi didn’t have human attitudes about bodies. They had no modesty at all that way, but she was human and she did. She told Mike all that. She didn’t think he listened because he went with her anyway. After a while, he loped ahead. A few moments later he came back, grinned at her, and sat.
“You’re going to wait here?”
He nodded.
“You went ahead to . . .” She thought about it. “See if I’d be alone?”
Another nod.
“Thank you.” Maybe he had been listening. “Would you watch this for me?” She set the flute case down beside him.
Once she’d dealt with the difference between fantasy and reality, Demi rejoined Mike and reclaimed the flute and they returned to the clearing. For the first time she noticed the beat-up old pickup parked behind the largest tent. The truck bed held three large coolers. Someone must have driven it bumpety-thumpety across the ground because no roads reached the clearing. It must be hard to feed so many people without electricity or anything. She was thinking about that and about her empty stomach when they reached the campfire.
Two men waited there—an older man with dark skin, white hair, and a smile, and a pale-skinned man with hair that didn’t quite manage to be brown or blond, but hit somewhere in between. Both wore cut-off jeans and shoes. Mike gave a little yip. The older man nodded at him, still smiling. Mike trotted off.
She wished he hadn’t left. Had she met these men when they were furry, or were they the strangers they seemed to be? They introduced themselves—the smiling older man was Theo and the brown-blond-haired one was John—and told her to sit down and have some coffee. A large coffeepot rested on a stone next to the fire; a huge cast iron pot was suspended over it on a tripod. She peered inside the big pot. Chili, the all-meat kind. Oh, well. They were lupi, after all.
She sat and politely refused the coffee Theo held out. “Water’s fine,” she told them. “Um . . . I need to return Saul’s flute. Do you know where he is?”
“He’s four-footed right now,” the younger one—John—said. “You want some chili? It’s almost ready. Or if you’d like more breakfast-type food, I could fix some bacon and eggs pretty quick.”
“Thank you, but I don’t eat meat.”
No one said anything for a moment. Theo had stopped smiling. He asked, “Are you one of those vegans?”
“No, I’m vegetarian. You’re carnivores,” she told them, nodding firmly. Nodding was one of those gestures that meant different things, depending on the context. Demi wasn’t good at context, but an article she’d read said that people nodded to affirm the other person. This seemed like a good time to add an affirmation. “You’re supposed to eat meat. Technically I’m an omnivore, so you’d expect me to eat meat, too, but I like animals too much to eat them. Plus there’s substantial evidence that the consumption of meat—some say all animal products, but that’s contested—leads to inflammation, which is a cause or contributing factor in all sorts of diseases. I do eat eggs,” she added hopefully.
John scrambled her some eggs. Theo emptied the coffee from her mug and filled it with water. While she was eating, Mike rejoined them. He was a man again. She smiled at him so he wouldn’t know she was disappointed.
“They’re drilling,” Mike said, sitting beside her. “It looks like a dance, but it’s a drill.”
She blinked.
“When I was four-footed, you asked what they were doing at the other end of the field. They’re drilling.”
Reminded, she looked that way. “Oh! Look at them!” The man-shaped lupi had separated from the wolves and were performing what looked like coordinated acrobatics—leaps and throws and tucks and rolls and things she didn’t have a word for.
“The chili smells great,” Mike commented.
“It’s about ready,” John said, adding, “She doesn’t eat meat.”
Now the wolves joined in, weaving in and out of the moving acrobats . . .
“Danny.”
They moved faster and faster, so swift and beautiful she could hardly breathe for the wonder of it.
“Danny!” Mike said loudly.
“What?” She didn’t look away from the performance at the other end of the clearing.
“We’re not sure what to feed you.”
“I eat pretty much everything except meat. Beans, vegetables, eggs, pasta, dairy, all sorts of grains.” Nonvegetarians always thought it was hard to cook without meat. She didn’t know why. Reluctantly she tore her eyes away from the beautiful wolves. “If you have a smaller pot I could use, I’ve got a package of dried beans in my pack I could fix. I’ve never cooked over a campfire, but it can’t be too different from cooking on a stove.”
“I can cook beans,” John said, “but they won’t be done for hours.”
“I just ate, so I won’t be hungry for hours. Where should I wash my plate?” she asked. “I don’t see . . . you’re leaving again?” she said in dismay to Mike. She didn’t know why she felt better when he was nearby, but she did.
“José signaled for me. I’ll be back.”
John didn’t want her to wash her plate right now, but after a bit of discussion, he agreed that she could help with the after-lunch cleanup, so he wanted her to come with him to see where things were kept. Theo assured her he’d watch the flute for her.
The largest tent held supplies, including several five-gallon water bottles. John would clean the pot himself—it was seasoned cast iron, and he was particular about how it was cared for. For everything else they used four dishpans and six people, set up assembly-line style. It sounded very efficient. She scraped her plate into the trash sack, then put it in one of the dishpans along with her fork and mug. John added a splash of water so everything wouldn’t dry on hard.
Last night sh
e’d decided what she should tell Rule Turner about Amanda. Once she’d been alone and calmed by the music, it hadn’t been that hard to figure out what had to stay secret because it pointed at Nicky. As they headed back to the cooking fire, she asked reluctantly, “Where’s Mr. Turner? Rule, I mean.” He’d told her to call him that. “I should talk to him.”
“Rule’s checking something out.”
“What?”
“He didn’t give me permission to tell you.”
She didn’t mind putting off her conversation with Mr. Turner. With Rule, that is. She was kind of dreading it. “Is it okay if I ask you questions? I have a lot of questions about lupi, but I can’t tell when I’m asking too many or the wrong sort. You’ll have to tell me if I do that.”
Theo—they’d reached him by then—smiled. “You may ask whatever you wish of me, José, or Mike. We won’t take offense, though we may not answer. Don’t ask the others. They won’t know what is permitted.”
So for a while she wallowed in questions, asking all sorts of things—stuff she’d wondered about forever and questions that had just occurred to her. What did the Change feel like? How many clans were there? Could they truly heal any wound? How long did they live? (Theo didn’t answer that one.) Why weren’t there any female lupi? Did they have jobs? What happened to those jobs when they left to come here? Where were all their cars?—because obviously, they hadn’t walked all the way here from California, and the only vehicle she’d seen was that old pickup truck.
That’s when she found out that José was the only one from Nokolai Clan. Everyone else was part of a clan called Leidolf, which claimed the area around here as its territory. She stared. “But Rule Turner is Nokolai, and he’s your Rho.”
“He’s Leidolf as well.”
“But how did he become your Rho?”
“That’s not a question I can answer,” Theo said.
“But I—”
“You may ask Rule, if you wish.” Something about the way his smile folded into his face made her think of her grandmother. Granmè had died many years ago, but Demi had photos of her . . . at least she used to. She remembered those photos, so she knew Theo didn’t really look much like Granmè. Why did he make Demi think of her? “I doubt he’ll tell you, but you may ask.”
“I need to finish up,” John said. “They’re about to head back for lunch. Maybe you’d help me carry some bowls, Danny.”
She did. She’d read that lupi ate more than humans, and that seemed to be true, judging by the size of the bowls. She made three trips between the supply tent and the cook fire, carrying oversize plastic bowls. John’s timing was good. By the time she fetched the last stack of bowls, the men had begun forming a line. One of them brought over one of the big coolers, which she saw was filled with iced soft drinks. John dipped a big ladle into the chili, filled a bowl, and handed it to Theo.
Mike didn’t get in line. He came straight to Demi. “I need to talk to you. Come with me while I get some chili,” he said. He went straight to the head of the line, ahead of everyone except José, who was filling his bowl.
She put her hands on her hips. “Cutting in line is rude.”
“We don’t do first-come-first-served.” José had finished, so Mike started ladling chili into his. “Since Rule isn’t in camp, Theo is served first. You can see that he already started eating—that’s so no one has to wait once we get our food. After Theo comes José, then me. Jason would be after me, but he’s wolf right now, so . . . never mind the list. Everyone lines up according to his status.”
“What’s my status?”
“As ospi, you may eat whenever you wish.”
“Can I get a Coke when I wish? Because now would be good.”
“Yes. Get me one, too, please.”
She did. Mike selected a spot that looked no different from any other section of ground and sat. She didn’t. He looked up. “Sit down, Danny.”
“I don’t know how close to sit. That’s not always easy for me to figure out with humans, and you aren’t human. What’s a friendly distance, but not pushy?”
He looked at her in a way that made her uncomfortable, though she wasn’t sure why. “Between a foot and two feet, I guess.”
She sat one and a half feet from his left elbow. “What about the ones who are wolves? When do they get to eat?”
Mike started eating, but his eyes weren’t on his food. He was watching everyone around them as if someone might decide to attack him or steal his food. “About half of them are due to Change soon. They’ll eat once they’re two-footed. The ones who stay wolf will have some kind of raw meat.” He glanced at her. “Does the sight of raw meat bother you?”
“No more than cooked meat does. Why can’t the wolves have chili, too?”
He shrugged. “They could, but when we’re four-legged, we usually prefer raw meat.”
“Is everyone taking turns being wolves?”
“Except for those whose position calls for them to stay two-footed. Take John. As cook, he needs hands and has to be able to tell his helpers what to do. José and the squad leaders have to be able to talk, too. I’m assigned to you, so—”
“Assigned to me?”
“You heard Rule last night. He placed you in my charge.”
“I thought that meant introductions.”
He gave her another quick glance. This time he smiled. He didn’t do that often. Mike had a hard face—not mean, exactly, but hard. She had trouble understanding expressions on normal people beyond knowing if they were smiling or frowning. Mike didn’t seem to have expressions. If she’d first met him when he was a man instead of a wolf, she probably would have thought he was scary.
He spooned up the last of his chili. “Introductions are part of it. Danny—”
“What’s the rest of it?”
“I take care of you. Keep you safe.”
For some reason that made her stomach feel funny. Not an unpleasant sort of funny, but one she couldn’t identify.
“In order to keep you safe, I need to talk to you about how we’re going to hide you when the time comes. There was a copter hovering over the camp last night, checking us out. The cops are bound to come in person at some point. Maybe soon.”
The not-unpleasant funny feeling vanished, replaced by a familiar tightness she had no trouble identifying. She reminded herself that her fantasy—which had several story lines—had usually included some kind of danger to make things interesting. Real danger wasn’t as much fun as the fantasy kind, though. “I’m good at climbing.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
RULE crossed the open meadow at a lope, ignoring the two men who ran with him—Reno on his right and several yards away, Eric thirty feet behind. He was in a foul mood.
Right before she’d been kidnapped, Lily had been planning to speak with the homeless men who lived in the wilderness area. Rule had decided he needed to follow through with that plan. Lily’s phone had gone missing when she did, but it had automatically synced with her laptop the night before. The FBI had that laptop, but before giving it to them, José had e-mailed himself the crime scene pictures she’d taken. This morning, Rule had loaded them onto the prepaid phone he was using.
There’d been five men in camp when he arrived; two more had shown up while he was visiting. Their number varied, according to Wheeler, who was their unofficial leader. Four of the seven Rule had met were the camp’s founders and had been coming here for years. None of them stayed in camp through the winter; most went to Cincinnati—a fair trek for men with no transportation other than their feet, but they had hope of finding a warm bed in a shelter there. They lived in part by setting traps, Rule knew. His men had spotted a couple of them, and he’d smelled the pelts someone had fleshed and salted. That along with gifts of canned goods from charitable organizations saw them through the warm months. Wheeler made sure they didn’t annoy the rangers; they kept the camp clean, packing out their trash.
Not that Wheeler or the others had been eager to chat. They wer
e suspicious and didn’t appreciate outsiders intruding into their territory—an attitude he understood—but patience and a few packs of cigarettes had eventually broken the ice.
Six of them had recognized the dead man. The seventh man might have, but he wouldn’t talk to Rule. According to HSI, the dead man was named Jason Humboldt, and their agent. According to the homeless men, the dead man’s first name was Larry. They were unsure of his last name, but Wheeler thought it had been Hoffman or Stockman. Something ending in “man” anyway.
HSI claimed that their agent had been undercover and on the trail of that dreadful terrorist Rule knew as Danny. They said he’d been in North Carolina until recently and must have followed her here.
The homeless men said Larry had lived with them since April of this year. Before that he’d been in Huntington—“no real shelters, but the Baptists open up their basement when it get cold ’nuff.” One of the men had spent last winter in Huntington and had known Larry pretty well. He’d been a good guy, they said—not too bright, but “always ready to help out, you know what I mean?”
They hadn’t known about his death. A couple of them were pretty torn up about it.
It was theoretically possible that all of them were lying or mistaken. It was also theoretically possible that Rule would spontaneously combust in the next thirty seconds. He didn’t feel he had to take either possibility into account.
The dead man had not been an HSI agent. The two agents who’d spoken to Lily had either been deceived themselves or were part of a more general conspiracy within the organization. Given how helpful Homeland had been to Danny’s Mr. Smith, Rule was fairly sure there was at least one highly placed conspirator in the sprawling department, someone able to mobilize HSI in pursuit of fake terrorists.
Rule was badly out of his depth. How could he take on both Homeland Security and the NSA? Even if he hadn’t been on the run, he didn’t see what he could do against two governmental behemoths. Ruben might have some chance, with the resources of the FBI behind him—but Ruben didn’t have that now. He might be facing arrest himself.