I was torn. While I really wanted to just give him the bow, I also really wanted a handgun of my own.
He must have thought I was holding out for a better deal. "I have the sister to this Glock, just a slightly older model, that I would be willing to trade. The weight and balance are about the same between the two guns."
I sighed. "Then we have a deal, Dunwood." I could always throw in a dozen hand-crafted arrows and an arm guard. It was something small, but those would be a gift, not a trade.
"You know," he said, fingering the bow one last time before handing it back to me. "You could easily sell these on eBay. If you can turn them out fast enough, you could even make it into a full-time business. Then you wouldn't have to find a job."
"Sounds good to me. But how far away is this eBay? I don't have a car."
He laughed, but it was a good laugh. "It's a computer thing. One of your pack can show you how it works. You can sell them right from your dining room table." He saw me open my mouth and hurried on, "The table isn't required either. I just mean you don't have to leave home to sell them. It's all done on the magic of the internet."
Ah, magic. Now magic I understood.
Chapter 7
Running really does help to calm one's mind. Especially if one happens to be a wolf while doing it. Something about having all four feet pounding the ground, the low center of gravity, the agility needed to dodge the quickly oncoming trees... well, it's soothing to say the least. In Faerie, it had seemed that I was always running somewhere at full tilt. Here, not so much. Yesterday's time with Dunwood had been nice and all, but it had meant that I lost two full work out times.
That had cost me. I had a lot of time to make up for now, and my body wasn't very happy with me. Oh, for the good old days of a few weeks ago when I could run hard for over an hour and still keep my breath controlled. Not today. We'd only been running for a few minutes before that ship sailed.
The pups had wanted to come, but Rebel put his paw down. I think he knew I really needed a full-out run, and that simply wouldn't be possible with all those extra little feet getting in the way. Besides, he and Maggie (his Husky mate) could take the pups out for a good run later. They needed some family fur time too.
We ran past the property line and out into Bradford Woods for about a mile before turning back for home. When we reached that mile mark, Reb saw my distress and starting slowing his pace. I gave him a wolfy grin in thanks. Yes, it was much easier on me, but truthfully, we would have needed to slow down anyway. At least that's what I was telling myself.
We needed to make a quick patrol of our borders for safety purposes, and the slower speed made it easier to catch any latent scents. With the Seelie court up to mischief, it just made sense to make regular checks for the scent of cedar and lavender. Luckily, today the air was free of them.
By the time we got back to my treehouse, I was feeling pretty darn good. Totally exhausted, but good. However, a shower was definitely in order. Reb veered off when we reached the house to join his family out in the yard, and I went through the doggie door, up the stairs and into the bathroom that Taz and Jed had been nice enough to give me full reign of.
They even supplied me with a small shelving unit over the commode that was perfect for stashing a clean set of clothes. Within minutes I was back down in the kitchen. Taz and Rose were deep in a conversation, so I just walked past them to grab a glass and fill it with water.
Staying hydrated is a good thing.
"You know Rose,” Taz was saying, “I was thinking that with the Fae up to no good, maybe you and Lily should move in here for a while. I mean, we have an extra bedroom already equipped with twin beds and everything. And if you each wanted your own room, we could always kick Jed out of his office for a few weeks."
Technically they had two spare bedrooms as I wasn’t using mine. But Taz was adamant about that room being my personal space and there whenever I chose to use it. It might be wasteful, but I appreciated the gesture. There may come a time when I would need more security than my treehouse provided.
Rose simply smiled at her. "Thank you, dear, but I really think you are more interested in having a live-in wedding planner. From what Steele was saying, it sounds like the Royals used up their power reserve to create the rift. So we should be good for a time yet. Other than finding a way to close the blasted thing, of course. Which I can help do just as well from the comfort of my own home."
Taz’s shoulders slumped as she blew out a breath. “Well, you can't blame a wolf for trying. This wedding stuff is hard. Who knew getting married would be so bloody difficult?
“It isn’t really, you know,” I said. I mean someone had to say it, right? “A bride, a groom, someone to perform the ceremony, and a few friends and family members. It’s really quite simple.”
For my statement, I received a heated glare.
“You sound just like Jed,” Taz said. “There is so much more to it than that. There is choosing a wedding venue, which I had taken care of months ago and now have to start from scratch on. There is arranging food for the guests, and places for them to stay. Not to mention....” Her breath caught and her words trailed off.
It was evident that reasoning with her would do no good at all. I held my hands up in surrender. “I’m sorry. Obviously, I was mistaken,” I said. Little white lies never hurt anyone that I knew of. “I don’t know how much help I’d be, but if there is anything I can do, all you have to do is ask.”
Taz gave me a shaky smile as she crossed the room to throw her arms around me. It took me a second to return the embrace. I was still learning all this emotional stuff.
“If you really mean it, there’s lots you can do,” she said. “Rose pointed out that since we already had the tents and chairs rented for the reception to be held here, it just makes sense to have the ceremony here too.” Her shaky smile grew a little more confident. “So that’s one thing taken care of at least. But I could really use your help in sending out wedding invitation corrections to everyone.”
I nodded. It was the least I could do. And thanks to Titania, I could read and write with the best of people. Not true of a lot of humans raised in Faerie, but she had always had big plans for me.
Getting the revised wedding invitations out was pretty easy. I highly approved of my sister’s choice in stationery. Each invite was a plain white design with a slightly embossed wolf and trees. Most of those invited to the event knew we were Benandanti, and those who didn't knew of my sister’s fondness for wolves, so it worked. Best of all, it fit her so well.
After getting them filled out and ready for the mail, my sister turned her attention to the food for the reception. Luckily, as they had invited so few guests, she had decided that we could handle the catering ourselves. Rose is a pretty mean cook... and her food is good too.
Of course, the menu would be on the vegetarian side, but with Jed’s Benandanti mother coming, I was certain that Taz would insist on having a few meat dishes available too. You don't want an audience of meat-starved wolves, and I wasn't at all sure that Jed's mom would be okay with a strictly veggie menu. Jed either, for that matter. I still count him as a wolf, even if his fur form is trapped inside his skin one.
My sister had chosen her mate well. Jed Crowe was a good man. Every morning, bright and early, he would go and pull the small hidden camera from the forestry and replace it with another. Then he would drive to his office in Franklin, download the video onto his personal computer, and put in a good day’s work at his official job. In his downtime at the office, unless he was out on an assignment, he would review the footage for anything odd.
Then he would take the long way home again and repeat the process of camera replacement. The cameras were battery powered and would only hold about eight to ten hours of video. Just in case we missed something in those few hours not covered by Jed's schedule, we had also set up a motion activated camera aimed at the rift. And, of course, all of the devices were well hidden from view.
All
in all, I truly believed we were covered. With Jed covering the rift surveillance, and me and Reb doing our daily patrols, we were as safe as we possibly could be considering who our enemies were.
Of course, it never pays to underestimate the Fae.
IT WAS STILL HARD DARK when Coyote popped into my small space. The only thing I regretted about my treehouse versus the bigger house was the lack of electricity. There was no sure way to tell what time it was without turning on my phone.
I glared at him. “I thought you were supposed to knock first?”
“No time for niceties,” he said, giving me a quick glance over. Then he threw me a shirt. “You’ll want this. Or at least Taz will want you to have it.” He paused for just a second. “I’m really sorry about this.”
The next thing I knew we were standing beside MacDougal on Taz’s front porch, and Coyote was whamming on their door. Oh sure, for them there would always be time for niceties. On the ranking ladder, I was around the bottom rung.
Shortly after, Jed threw open the door. Middle of the gosh darn night, and he looked fresh as a daisy. And can I just say... damn. Standing there in nothing more than a pair of short pajama bottoms, he was showing a lot of skin and muscle that I’d never gotten to see before. Taz had indeed chosen well.
Before my thoughts could head in the direction of Dunwood, which they surely would have done, Coyote spoke.
"It's grown," Roy blurted. Mac was nodding furiously beside him.
My sleep riddled brain took a minute to understand. My body could go to alert status instantly, but my mind not so much. Sometimes it needed time to catch up.
Jed didn't seem to have that problem. Even as Tazlyn appeared beside him, wiping the sleep from her eyes, he was on board.
"The rift has grown? Has something come thru?" And then, after a second, "And you left it unguarded?"
Coyote seemed offended. "Of course, I didn't leave it unguarded. I called some brethren to watch it. If anything comes through, I will know and be there to follow it. If I disappear..."
Jed nodded. "We'd understand. Nothing has come through yet?"
Roy hesitated. "Not that I can immediately tell, anyways." He shrugged. "There is so much evil there right now, slowly leaking from that tear that it's hard to tell. It still isn't big enough for anything large, but it is bigger than it was."
"How did you find it?" Taz asked.
Good question. I was pretty sure she didn’t have him patrolling the rift on the pack’s behalf. She wasn’t ready to start delegating things to the Trickster just yet. In her mind, and by her own words, he and Mac were on a probationary pack status. They still had to prove themselves.
"A coyote was in that area and it felt... different. So we went to check it out."
Mac stepped up. "Could we please come in? This cool night breeze is a bit too chilly for a man of me stature."
When you've been around Mac for any length of time, you'll find that anything he wants, he'll use his small size to get. Right now, it was warmth.
Jed stepped aside and grabbed his coat from the hook by the door. Then reached for his keys on the table.
"Stop right there," Taz said, putting every ounce of Alpha into her voice that she could. Yes, he's an Alpha too, but still. "You are not going out there alone. Give me two minutes to get dressed and we'll head out and switch the cameras." Then her eyes fell on me. “You’d better come with me, Steele. I’ll loan you an outfit.”
She looked Coyote right in the eyes. For some reason he seemed a bit intimidated by her. Being an Alpha must be pretty awesome if you could cow a godling. Not that I’d ever know. I might have been born first, but that gene passed to Tazlyn.
"Don't let him leave without me," she said. A quick glance at Coyote told me Jed wasn’t going to go anywhere until we were back downstairs.
It might have taken us three minutes rather than two, but only because of two trips on the stairs. By the time we had reached the bottom again, Jed had already dropped the keys back on the table.
"Time is of the essence here. We need to see if something from this side caused that tear to widen, agreed?" Jed was speaking to Taz in his 'make her see the logic of doing something she doesn't want to do' voice. That had me worried. My sister generally had a very good reason for not wanting to do certain things. I trusted her judgement.
"Agreed," Taz said slowly.
"Good." Then he nodded to Coyote, and before she could open her mouth to protest, we were at the clearing miles away from my nice warm treehouse. I was very glad of the borrowed clothes.
Taz glared at Jed. "That was dirty."
"We saved a good hour's drive time, and we'll save another hour on the return trip, unless you are stubborn enough to insist on walking," he answered. He was talking over his shoulder as he was already making his way up the tree to the hidden camera.
She spared a second to growl at Coyote, just to relieve her feelings, I’m guessing, then we started to make our way over to the hidden mount for the motion activated camera. That's when the scent hit me. Scents really. I stopped mid step and turned in a full circle, eyes closed.
A group of people had been here. There was the lingering scent from at least six different people. There was also the smell of a campfire, but there was another more deeply disturbing scent too. Blood. There.
I walked toward it, not really wanting to see what the blood was coming from, the coppery smell filling my nose. For a wolf, the scent of blood is not necessarily a bad thing. It's a necessity. Wolves don't cook their food. But this... this smell smacked of evil.
It didn't take me long to find it. A large rabbit and about a full dose of rabbit's blood. The remains of the rabbit covered a large, flat stone. The blood had dripped down the sides of the rock, making for a very macabre and scary scene.
Turning to call out to Taz, I found her standing right behind me. She could be sneaky that way. She'd probably caught the scent at the same time I had.
Of course, her first instinct was to check in with Rose and Lily, but Jed’s logic prevailed. For one thing, it was just after two o'clock in the morning, and for another, if it were one of them (as they were both bunnies in fur form), it would be a human body lying there. In sleep or in death, we always change back to our skin form.
So, it definitely wasn't as bad as it could have been, and I had reason to keep telling myself that. Because the rabbit had been sacrificed. And that sacrifice had widened the rift.
Titania had found a way to grow the rift from the human side.
Chapter 8
My heart sank when I saw that the rift had widened. I had been banking on the Royal's lack of power reserve. If things on this side could cause the thing to grow, then we would not have the months of planning that we had previously thought.
Granted, all I knew at the moment was that the rift had grown. Taz and Jed were getting ready to watch the video now to see what had caused it. Well, obviously it was the animal sacrifice that caused it, but the who and why still remained a mystery. Hopefully that video would solve it.
I am not a stupid person. I know that Taz had expected me to cancel my early morning date with Dunwood, but I wasn’t willing to do that. One more set of eyes watching that video wouldn’t make a difference, and I’d been looking forward to today for days now.
Dunwood and I had seen a lot of each other the past week. He had gotten me what he called legal to own a gun, and we had made the trade. According to him, I wasn't quite allowed to actually carry the gun yet (how silly is that?), but with the situation at hand, it might be a good idea to bend those rules a bit. His advice was just to try really hard to not get caught carrying the gun. I was okay with that.
One of the many wonders of this world that Dunwood had introduced me to was called the gym. He belonged to one and he took me to it as a guest. The instant I walked through the doors, I felt I had come home. The smell of sweat and just a little blood filled the air, and I breathed it in just as deeply as I could.
This gym was ac
tually filled with wonders. It held what Dunwood called a boxing ring. I still don't understand why they call it that, as it isn't circular at all. But what drew my attention was that people fought in it. I just couldn't stop grinning. I wanted in that rectangular box really bad. Unfortunately, there was always a waiting list for it.
There were two ways to sign up. One list was for people who already had sparring partners, the other was for singles. Of course, as a single, you never knew who you would draw as an opponent, but I was hoping if they signed up, they would be at least partly worthy.
Dunwood refused to fight me, even though I had asked him repeatedly to do just that. I could tell he was judging my strength by my size, and I could have told him (well, did tell him actually, again repeatedly) that is was never a good idea to underestimate an opponent.
Today for the first time, my name was on the list of singles. And as Dunwood had done it at the end of our last visit, I was only second on the list. I was up next. Unless there was a certifiable life or death pack emergency, I wasn't budging from this gym until I'd had my turn. If the Fae’s timetable had sped up, I needed to be ready. And it had been far too long since I had truly been tested in battle.
As the last two partners climbed down out of the ring, I was literally jumping in place. Partly nervous anxiety and partly as a warm up. They called my name and just like that I was in the ring. Finally. The next name they called was one I didn't know. Troy Sanders. Troy stomped up to the outside of the ring and spat to the side when he saw me already inside.
"I waited all this time, and you expect me to go up against a girl? I want a real partner," he said.
Troy was the epitome of the manly man, and a carbon copy of about half the men that frequented the gym. While Dunwood came here in sweats and a tee shirt, Troy's type came in tank tops and shorts that barely existed. All the better to show off their heavily muscled bodies. He would rely on strength, I would almost guarantee it. I wanted to fight him in the worst way. If I could prove my prowess over him, Dunwood would see what I could really do.
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