Bite Back Box Set 2

by Mark Henwick

  We all felt Kaothos stir, but she said nothing.

  Diana turned. At that end of her circuit, Anubis was in a line behind her from my point of view. I couldn’t stop my gaze from slipping past her to the Lyssae. His eyes gleamed in the shadows and his jaws moved as if he were speaking.

  I blinked again.

  I needed to get a grip on this hallucinating.

  “The obvious way to find Tullah is this more involved spirit walk that the Hecate is suggesting,” Diana said. “So... do we trust her?”

  “I worry that it seems too obvious.” Bian looked dour. She turned to Tolly. “You’ve been listening in. What do you think about the Hecate?”

  “What she’s said seems to be truthful,” Tolly said. “I’m wondering about what she hasn’t said.”

  He gestured at our Adepts: Alice, Flint and Kane.

  “Never met another Adept whose spirit guide I couldn’t even guess at,” Kane said, clearly uncomfortable, but not willing to come out and say it. “Doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but I’m having trouble trusting her.”

  “She has that rep, up in the north,” Flint said. “That her guide doesn’t show. I was sure I’d be able to see, when I met her up close. Can’t. Makes me itchy.”

  “Not that we ever intended meeting her up close.” Kane shuffled some more in his seat.

  “She didn’t reveal her spirit guide, but neither did Kaothos manifest visibly,” I pointed out. “I got the impression we were both waiting for the other to make a show of trust, and that was why she told us about Matlal.”

  I felt Kaothos stir around us again, but she still said nothing and remained hidden.

  Bian huffed. “But exactly what did she tell us? Matlal’s alive. Vega Martine is alive. Peterson and Tucek are alive and they’re all in Mexico. We know all that.”

  “And we’re still not doing anything about it. She’s saying there’s an urgency—that they’re getting stronger.”

  My opinion wasn’t winning them over. Everyone else was still suspicious of the Northern Adept League.

  When they’d saved my life, I’d lost that suspicion.

  Is that a good thing? Can I trust myself?

  Given I’m hallucinating eyes on fingers and Anubis talking to me?

  “If they’re hiding things from us, are they truly important things?” Flint asked.

  “They’re being coy about the dangers of substantiations in the spirit world,” Alice said. “The longer you search, the deeper you go in the spirit world, the more dangerous it gets.”

  “But they know you know that, and that you’ll tell us,” I argued. “I think it might be ingrained reluctance to discuss that level of Adept knowledge.”

  No one answered. We’d hit a stalemate, and Bian moved us smoothly in another direction.

  “Do you believe what she said about Kaothos?”

  “Or what?” I said. “Do you think she’s helping us to create some kind of advantage in the Assembly?”

  Diana answered. “She specifically said to me she has no personal interest in the Assembly, and that the Hecate in New York, Faith Hinton, would be talking to Skylur and probably taking any official position within the Assembly.”

  “And the Hecate’s only interest is in protecting and guiding. Even if the dragon’s power is as frightening as she said it is.”

  “I didn’t feel any lies when she spoke.”

  Finally, Kaothos manifested and spoke. “The Hecate seems truthful to me,” she said. “I need Tullah back. A delay of a day is too long, but I cannot see any other way around waiting for them. I also wonder what the League wants beyond guiding me.”

  She faded out of sight again.

  Bian and Diana went back and started arguing the presumed politics of the Northern Adept League and how it might affect the Assembly.

  I was sitting between Flint and Alice. Flint was muttering to Kane, completely uninterested in the politics. Alice was half listening.

  It was too good an opportunity to miss. I needed some answers and yet I didn’t want to discuss the details of what had happened at the end of the spirit walk. It felt like it was mine, and that if I talked about it they’d use it to say I needed to rest. Or that it was too dangerous, and they’d find some way of preventing me from using the power.

  My oath wouldn’t let me rest. Tullah, Tara, Hana. Whatever the cost.

  I closed down my eukori and held my pulse steady.

  Chapter 47

  “Alice, do trees have some kind of special meaning for Adepts?”

  “Hmm?” She turned to me. “Trees? Yes, of course, especially in the older Celtic traditions, for instance.”

  She tilted her head to the side, looking strangely just like Flint when he was channeling his Raven. “You’re wondering why you spirit-jump to trees?”

  I shrugged. “It works. I’m not concerned so much as interested.”

  “Ah, well. There’s the whole thing about trees connecting worlds, which would have an attraction for you, I suppose. You know: roots deep in the secrets of the earth, trunk on the ground and leaves in the sky. Even more fundamental to the Norse, naturally. All of those myths and metaphors inevitably seep into Adept thinking.”

  “Why fundamental to the Norse? And what parts have Adepts adopted into their thinking?”

  “Well, fundamental because in Norse magical traditions, the sacred tree Yggdrasil is the structure of the whole cosmos. Literally fundamental. All creatures are bound to live within Yggdrasil, from the great wyrms of power that coil around the tangle of the roots, up to the angels, the sky gods and goddesses, who hold their courts in its loftiest branches. Bound until the end of the world, when the great wolf Fenrir is unchained. Fenrir will kill the gods and goddesses, while his pack eat the light. Then the roots of Yggdrasil will let loose the earth into the endless dark where the wyrms will consume it, and all that moves upon it.”

  While I shuddered at the startling imagery her voice made in my head, she snorted. “A wonderful image of human destiny and entropy,” she said. “What is tangled becomes untangled and simple and pure, but in doing so, it loses its substance, its grip on life.”

  I’d felt that, and the images flooded back like shattered pieces of remembered dreams. The tangled roots. The deep secrets. The power. The conflict. The emptiness of simplicity.

  “Is that an Adept belief?” I asked, forcing myself to speak normally.

  “Entropy, yes.” She smiled. “Fenrir and his pack, only as a fanciful allegory. Yggdrasil, on the other hand...”

  “Yes?”

  “There is something about the image,” she said, her eyes taking a faraway look. “About the connection of the deep, dark powers to the lofty objectives. About controlling the balance. Anyway, to answer your question, many Adept communities and covens, especially in the Old World, visualize their communities exactly in this way, as a sort of tree. The old ones call it the soultree. Other think of it as a great wheel and so on.”

  It was chilling. I’d taken a detour on the way back from the spirit walk to Erie. I’d spirit jumped into a tree, in a graveyard. Not any old tree or any old graveyard. My gut was telling me that this tree was somehow the spiritual soul of an Adept community, a soultree.

  And my gut was also telling me that this was connected with the dark power I had started to use. The same power that fed the family’s curse.

  It was also telling me that it wasn’t anywhere around here. The age of the church, the gravestones. This churchyard was on the other side of the Atlantic. Ireland, if I had to guess.

  Which meant I could spirit jump a long way, regardless of what the Adepts said, and I’d visited the Adept community that was the origin of the curse on my family.

  “All the paranormal communities do a similar thing, if you think about it,” Alice continued. She was really thinking aloud. “It’s more than the need for a totem, or an image of what they are or want to be, or a group memory of everything they’ve been. It’s like a reservoir of power that they can
call on. It’s what pulls them back to the core. The werewolves have the song of their pack that binds them together. The Athanate have the marque of their House. The Adepts have the soultree, or their equivalent.”

  “It pulls them back to the core? That sounds like soultrees can think and act independently.”

  “Eh?” She finally stopped listening to Diana and Bian and turned back to me. “I suppose it does sound like that, but I’m not sure that’s really it. Are you especially interested?”

  I was. I needed to understand the nature of the soultree, and how it was linked with the curse on my family and the Adepts who created that curse. But I’d alerted her, and I didn’t want others to know this. Yet.

  Alice was expecting some kind of response and looking a little puzzled that I was so slow today, so I distracted her with a change of topic.

  “You’ve been open with information,” I said. “Why do I get the feeling the Northern Adept League don’t approve?”

  Alice laughed quietly.

  “Oh, I am an abomination to the Hecate and the rest of the League. My mission was to be their eyes and ears within the Athanate world. It was understood I was flirting with damnation, and as far as they’re concerned, I fell.”

  Bian rapped on the table.

  “We’re running out of time,” she said. “I have a teleconference with Skylur in ten minutes, and we’ll have even more to discuss after that. What do we think about the League’s offer to help?”

  Everyone seemed reluctant, so I leaped in.

  “If we trust the Northern Adept League enough to have them visit here, then I’m guessing we trust them enough to go ahead with their search,” I said.

  “Okay.” Bian was looking at the Adepts. “Which leaves us a day to come up with a better idea...”

  Alice lifted her hands, palm up. “I have no better ideas.”

  Kane and Flint exchanged glances.

  “He won’t have it,” Kane muttered.

  Of course everyone at the table heard, as Kane knew they would.

  “Who won’t have what?” Bian asked.

  Flint squinted and scratched his ear. “Mr. Tolly here says his library has everything about the paranormal—”

  “Everything that involves the Athanate,” Kane interrupted. “He won’t have stuff about medicine wheels and ghost dances and spirit walks.”

  Tolly sighed, entirely aware they were trying to play him. “The Dark Library contains books about those topics. What specifically are you thinking of?”

  Flint stared intently at him while Kane answered: “Anything by a guy named Oronhiateka?”

  Tolly went still.

  For a moment, I thought it was a reaction to the name, but the stillness was his way of thinking. I’d heard of people who did memory tricks by putting themselves into a light trance and visualizing themselves physically passing through their memories. Tolly seemed to be demonstrating it.

  We waited a minute in silence before he spoke. “Yes. It’s not that old, naturally. About a hundred years, but it’s still waiting for processing because it’s not fundamentally about the Athanate. It appears to be in a code. All I can say is the name of the volume itself.”

  “Songs of the Long Walker,” suggested Kane.

  “Indeed.”

  “We’d like a look,” Flint said. “It’s possible that it’s not really code—”

  “It’s his own writing style—” Kane interrupted.

  “Which we know about.”

  “And this may have some relevance?” Diana’s brow arched elegantly.

  “An old guy we met once said Oronhiateka could spirit walk from one side of the country to the other,” Kane said.

  “Not that we’re experts in the League’s substantiation, but even they admitted spirit walking is safer than using a substantiation.”

  “And one of the major reasons for spirit walking is to go looking for something. Or someone. Which is exactly what we want to do,” Kane finished.

  I could see Bian liked the idea of not relying on the League.

  “On the other hand, other people told us that Oronhiateka was crazy.” Flint shrugged. “So maybe we’ll fall back on the League’s way of finding Tullah anyway. Just an idea.”

  “An idea. Good.” Diana rose. “Tolly, take them and retrieve the book. Bian, your call with Skylur, but first, I think you said that Amber has a problem with her cubs.”

  My cubs. I had a to do double take on that before my brain clicked. The young werewolves from the El Paso pack that Alex had left behind here at Haven.

  Yup. My cubs.

  Bian nodded and got up. “They were fine when Alex was here, but you need to talk to them now. I’ll show you where they are.”

  I followed.

  I’d already had meeting with them on my list of priorities while I was here at Haven. I’d even sent Yelena a text message for when she landed, to pick up Rita and Tove from their shopping trip and bring them here. Rita was an experienced pack member, and I probably needed her insight with my new pack.

  I guessed it made no big difference if I started off with the cubs now, rather than later.

  It was still intensely irritating that they’d caused a problem big enough to have come to Diana’s attention and distracted me from the important business of the day, which was finding Tullah.

  I was not happy with them.

  Chapter 48

  “They’re in the billiard room,” Bian said as the elevator brought us to the ground floor. “West corridor, room at the very end in front of you. I have to tell you, I’m not much impressed. The Ops 4-10 guys and gals were keen to meet with some werewolves, but I don’t think they are now.”

  “What’s happened?”

  She grimaced. “Nothing in particular. Not yet. It was good when Alex was here, but the ones he left behind are like a bunch of immature teenagers. Big, bad attitude with nothing to back it up. Sitting around expecting to be waited on. I need it fixed before there’s a problem.”

  “It will be fixed,” I promised her, through gritted teeth. “Have Rita sent to join me when she arrives, please.”

  My pack. My cubs.

  Yeah. About to meet my temper.

  We came out of the room where the secret elevator was hidden and I put my head into the main living room. Scott had his nose in a book.

  “Scott, you’re with me.”

  Amenable as ever in two-footed form, he stood and followed me out into Haven’s central hallway and down the west corridor.

  “This is an incredible place,” he said, his voice rich with his enthusiasm. “There are books of poetry in the living room written by poets I’ve never even heard of. Athanate folk, I guess. Excellent poetry. It’s wonderful.”

  “Unfortunately, not what we’re about today,” I said shortly. “This is pack business. Don’t get involved until I tell you to.”

  I could hear the cubs from the other end of the corridor; there was music playing and loud arguments. No one even turned when I opened the door to the billiard room and my temper began to edge into the danger zone.

  There were three girls and nine guys.

  Two of the guys were at the billiard table, arguing over the rules, and not far short of a fight.

  The rest of them were sitting or lying around on sofas like so much discarded laundry. They were all drinking beer.

  The music was coming from a stereo. I stalked across and turned it off.

  That got their attention.

  “Hey, I like that song.” The idiot who said that hadn’t even turned around.

  One of the others noticed who I was all right. “Shit. It’s—”

  “No more music while you’re here at Haven,” I said. “No more beer. And when I come into a room, you will shut up and stand immediately.”

  I said it quietly. There was no need to shout for werewolves, even a bunch of idiots like this.

  I was already zeroed in on the main problem. The guy who complained about my turning the music off. He still had
n’t even looked around.

  “We’re not in the army,” he said.

  Oh, man, if there was a prize for surly...

  In two steps, I reached the sofa and grabbed the back of his sweatshirt, ripping it as I lifted him like the dumb cub he was. I dropped him onto the floor.

  “I said stand.”

  Everyone got up, Mr. Surly quickest of all. Anger was burning right through that beer and lighting his face up like a tomato.

  “You’re right,” I said. “You’re not in the army. It’s far worse than that. You haven’t figured it out yet, but you’re in my pack.”

  “Alex is the alpha,” one of the billiard players said. He was still holding his cue.

  “That’s Mr. Deauville to you when you’re talking to me, and sir to his face.”

  “He said to call him—”

  “I don’t care what he said. He’s in El Paso. I’m here. You have to deal with me, and I say he made a mistake with you. You’re in the pack, but you are not pack members yet. You’re an ill-disciplined rabble with too little to do and no brains.” I glared at them. “I don’t know if I want you in my pack.”

  There were glances from the others to Mr. Surly. He was more dominant than them, and he’d been practicing on this impressionable group. The others were looking to him for an indication of how to react. He was the stereotypical alpha—big, handsome, full of muscles and sex. Bloated with his own opinion of himself.

  I’d put him in a spot and he decided he couldn’t back down. He took a swing at me.

  Good. I’d gotten tired of talking.

  I swayed back, grabbed his wrist and let the weight of his punch pull me around. I jerked his arm straight, slammed my fist into the back of his elbow and swept his legs out. He fell face down. I twisted his arm and shoved my boot into his armpit.

  “Hurts, doesn’t it?” I said. “And you can’t move or I’ll dislocate your shoulder. That’ll hurt even—”

  One of his girlfriends came at me.

  No time for this shit.

  I dislocated Mr. Surly’s shoulder and punched his girlfriend in the face, knocking her onto her back.