Authors: Naomi Clark
What the hell was one doing in the city
limits, bullying a Pack youngster?
He bounded over to me with a sharp bark,
warning me to stay put while he thoroughly investigated me, cold
snout poking at my groin and belly. I closed my eyes and put up
with his nosing, even if the human part of my brain was screaming
in outrage. The wolf part of me knew better than to protest. He was
twice my size and weight; there was no way I’d beat him in a fight.
So I stayed still while he sniffed me over, fighting to ignore the
hot flush of fear he gave me.
After a minute or so he backed off, letting
me up. I rolled to my feet, keeping my head low. We huffed at each
other, breath fogging in the night air. His hackles were down, but
his amber eyes were narrowed, wary, like he didn’t know what to
make of me either. I probably smelled as alien to him as he did to
me: a muddle of city scents and the earthy signature of Pack.
We faced each other for a long, dark moment
and then I took a cautious step forward. He rushed me, snapping at
my neck with an angry yowl. I yelped as his fangs tore into my skin
and dropped back into my crouch. Hot blood dripped from the wound,
sending a spike of panic through me. I cowered, assuming the
meekest pose I could. I didn’t want to fight him.
He chuffed at me, shaking his thick ruff,
then pressed his nose to the ground, snuffling through the snow.
Picking up the other wolf’s scent, I decided when he turned toward
the direction the youngster had run. The feral wolf gave me one
last look, feigned a snap at me, then trotted off after the
youngster. In seconds he was gone, hidden by the curling mist.
I collapsed onto my side, as exhausted and
shaken as if we had actually fought. Adrenaline rode me hard, the
thrill and fear of the encounter twisting my stomach. I tried to
crane my head enough to examine the bite on my shoulder, but it was
impossible. I’d have to get Shannon to look at it.
With a grunt, I forced myself to my feet and
headed home. I had to pace myself. My shoulder pulled as I walked,
a tight line of pain all the way down my right foreleg. I hoped
feral wolves didn’t carry any diseases. The last thing I wanted was
a raging case of rabies.
***
“Ayla, my God!” Shannon cried. “What happened?”
I whined and pawed at her leg. She stood on
the doorstep, blocking my entrance, worry etched on her face. I
butted at her to get her to move, wanting to shift back to human
and get a proper look at my shoulder. The pain had increased as I
walked home and I could feel the blood drying in my fur.
She stepped aside to let me in. I hopped
into the hall, bringing a flurry of snowflakes with me. Ice had
crusted on my paws and I left wet prints on the powder blue carpet
as I limped to the living room. I sat down on the rug with a humph
and began nosing at my frosty paws. Shannon knelt down next to me,
brushing her fingers lightly down my back. I closed my eyes, tongue
lolling in pleasure at her touch. It was a weird thing, when I was
in wolf shape and she touched me. Not sexual, as it would be in
human shape. But still, whatever form I wore, she was my mate and
her touch did something to me.
She gently parted the fur around the bite
mark to examine it. “Scrapping with the local strays, were you?”
she murmured. “It’s not deep, but it needs cleaning. Might be
easier if you change back.”
I sighed and clambered gracelessly to my
feet. Shaking my head, I shifted shape. The bite was a riot of
agony as I did, sending hot flares through me that were somehow
worse than the usual pain of shapeshifting. When I was human again,
I fell straight back to the rug, burying my face in the thick
creamy-white weave.
“
Shit,” I said.
Shannon propped me up against the armchair
in the corner of the room. The worn leather was blessedly cool
after the heat of shifting and I relaxed against it with a moan.
Once again, exhaustion hit me. I pressed my fingers tenderly to the
bite mark. It had stopped bleeding on the walk home, but changing
had opened the wound again, bringing fresh blood to the surface. I
winced.
“
Stay still,” Shannon
ordered. “I’ll get some water and bandages.” She hurried off to the
kitchen and I heard her rummaging through cupboards.
“
It’ll stop in a minute,” I
called. Shapeshifting usually went someway to healing wounds;
broken bones often fixed themselves as the body remade them to suit
the new shape, for example, but bruises and cuts tended to linger
in either form. A bite like this should scab over pretty quickly if
I stuck to one shape for a while.
Shannon returned with a bowl of warm water,
a bag of cotton wool and a roll of bandages. “It needs cleaning.
God knows what kind germs you could have picked up.” She sat down
next to me, dipped a wad of cotton wool in the water and swabbed it
across the bite.
I rolled my eyes, even though I’d thought
the same thing myself and submitted to her ministrations. “It was a
feral wolf,” I said, dragging my nails through the carpet. “I ran
into him in the park on the way home from Mum and Dad’s.”
She glanced up at me, surprised. “I didn’t
think ferals came into cities.”
“
I didn’t either. He was
fighting with a Pack cub, then he went for me when he saw
me.”
She frowned. “So do you have to tell the
Pack? Is this a violation of protocol or something?”
“
I’ve no idea.” There
weren’t many hard and fast rules for dealing with ferals. Pack
wolves just had so little to do with them. “If something happens to
the cub... I should have gone after them,” I realized with a pang
of guilt. “I didn’t think, I was just so... I don’t know, freaked
out.”
Shannon finished cleaning the wound and
bandaged it carefully. “It’s not your business,” she said, stroking
my hair. Now it felt sexual and my body tightened in response to
her caress. I was suddenly conscious of being naked, where I hadn’t
cared before.
“
It’s Pack business,” I
said, picturing the youngster’s submissive body language. A feral
wolf had no right asserting dominance over a Pack wolf. Hell, a
feral had no right being in Pack territory—that much I was sure
of.
Shannon snuggled closer to me, pulling me
against her. I nestled my head in the curve of her neck and slid my
hand up her thigh. She was in her pajamas, old flannel that was
soft to the touch and smelled of her floral shampoo. “Pack business
doesn’t have to be your business, Ayla,” she told me, still playing
with my hair. “It was probably nothing. Maybe it wasn’t a feral,
just a Pack wolf you don’t know.”
I supposed that was
possible. Even if my senses told me it wasn’t. Even if the wild,
exotic scent of the other wolf wasn’t burned in my memory, telling
me it wasn’t. I hadn’t known every wolf in the city before I left,
so why would I know now? I sighed and shook it off.
Whatever
. Shannon was
right—it wasn’t my business.
“
I asked Mum and Dad about
Tina Brady,” I told her. “Apparently she had an abortion and that’s
why she was outcast.”
“
Harsh,” she said, sliding
her hand down to my good shoulder. “Interesting, but not really
helpful.” She sighed. “I should have referred this
case.”
“
How about we go and talk
to Tina together?” I offered. “Maybe she’ll feel better talking to
another wolf.”
“
We could,” she said,
sounding unconvinced. “What I really need is a chat with the police
officers she reported Molly’s disappearance to. Think you can swing
that?”
“
Not just yet.” I turned
and kissed her cheek. “But we’ll get there. You’ve only just
started.”
She caught my lips with hers, turning my
chase kiss into a deeper, hotter one. I squeezed her thigh,
pressing myself against her. Shannon gripped my shoulders,
forgetting the bite, and I pulled back with a soft hiss of
pain.
“
Oh God, sorry.”
Immediately contrite, she leaned away from me. “Are you okay? Does
it really hurt?”
I craned my neck to look at the bandages.
“It’s fine,” I assured her, tangling my fingers in her hair to pull
her in again. “I’m not broken.”
“
I’m not so sure.” She
pressed her lips to mine teasingly, little butterfly kisses that
whet my appetite for more. “Maybe I need to play nurse?”
I snapped playfully at her, tingling with
excitement. “Still got that Halloween costume?”
“
It’s tucked away
somewhere.” She rose, pulling me to my feet with her. “I’m sure I
can dig it out if you really think you need some first aid.” She
winked and cocked her hip saucily.
I growled and gave her a light push towards
the stairs. “Take me to bed, Nurse Nightingale. I feel a hot flush
coming on.”
***
My bite wound was pretty much healed by the morning. Whether
Shannon’s bedside manner had anything to do with that or not, I
didn’t know. But when I peeled the bandage back in the shower, the
hot water sluiced over a thick scab and a purplish bruise and
nothing more. I was relieved, although I felt silly for it. A tiny
part of me had been genuinely scared of catching rabies or tetanus
from the feral. Stupid, when there hadn’t been a recorded case of
werewolf rabies in almost a century, but with a feral…who knew?
They didn’t live like us.
I left Shannon in bed with a plate of
scrambled eggs and a cup of tea and set off for Inked. Despite her
misgivings she’d decided that both of us speaking to Tina might
help—or at least wouldn’t hurt—so I planned to ask Calvin for a
half day.
As usual he was already at work when I
arrived, down in the basement area polishing the tattooing chair. I
quirked an eyebrow at him and he shrugged.
“
Cleanliness is next to
Godliness. And you can’t be too hygienic in a tattoo
parlor.”
I shrugged. I’d spent the morning worrying
about rabies, so who was I to question him. “Can I take a half
day?” I asked. “I’ve got something on this afternoon.”
He whistled through his teeth. “It’s pretty
short notice.”
“
It’s
important.”
Calvin sat in the chair, twirling his
polishing cloth in the air. “Wolf stuff?”
“
Not exactly. Private eye
stuff.”
“
You have the most exciting
life, Ayla.” He threw the cloth at me. “Alright, but you can’t have
it as holiday.”
I caught the cloth. “No problem. I’ll make
up the time somewhere.” I couldn’t afford to lose half a day’s
wages. A few extra hours stocktaking or cleaning wouldn’t kill
me.
“
Finish polishing down here
and we’ll call it even,” he said, tossing me a can of furniture
polish. “Then you can sterilize Kaye’s needles.”
I grabbed the can with a sigh. Exciting
didn’t really seem the word.
FIVE
Hollow Hill was a suburb
of the city
that would probably make Joel fall to his knees and thank God for
Foxglove. Street after street of identical, depressing boxy houses,
saplings fenced off with chain link and gardens filled with broken
cycles and abandoned children’s toys. It was the most depressing
part of the city and—coincidence or not—it was where Hesketh had
lived. He was the bent copper who’d skinned my cousin Adam after
his death, using the skin to transform himself into a wolf-monster.
Driving into Hollow Hill with Shannon that afternoon, I was crushed
with memories of my fight with him.
It had been Alpha Humans who’d murdered
Adam, but Hesketh and his werewolf partner Kinsey had desecrated
him. Rage threaded through me as we drove to Tina’s, feeding my
wolf, who still thirsted for revenge. Never mind that Kinsey and
Hesketh were gone. I still didn’t feel like anyone had truly
paid.
Shannon tapped my arm, pulling me out of my
black thoughts. “This is it,” she said.
I glanced at the house.
Like the all the others down this street, it was grim and
uninspiring. Maybe even more so, as it didn’t even have a proper
garden. The lawn had been paved over with thick concrete slabs and
lichen filled the cracks between slabs.
God
. If this was what Molly had to
live in, no wonder she’d ran away. She must have been starved for
greenery, for open space.
“
So what’s the plan?” I
asked Shannon, who drummed her fingers on the steering
wheel.
Nerves
.
“
I don’t really have one,”
she confessed. “It’s not like I think she’s involved in Molly’s
disappearance or anything, I just think she can be more helpful
than she has been. Tell us more about Molly, her friends, her
hobbies. Anything would be useful at this point.”
I nodded. I’d helped Shannon out on cases
before, mostly with research. I’d never questioned anyone before,
but how hard could it be? As Shannon said, Tina wasn’t a suspect.
We weren’t going to be shoving bamboo slivers under her
fingernails, as Lawrence had suggested.
We went to the door and Shannon rang the
bell. A few seconds later, a woman I guessed was Tina answered. She
was younger than I expected. Prettier too. I’d built this image in
my head of a world-weary wolf, ground down by the bad hand life had
dealt her. But Tina’s eyes were bright, curious and, when she
recognized Shannon, hopeful.
“
You’ve found her?” she
said eagerly, letting us in. “Oh God, tell me you’ve found
her.”
“
Not yet, Tina,” Shannon
said. “But we’re making progress. This is my partner, Ayla
Hammond,” she added, stepping aside so I could shake Tina’s
hand.
The other woman’s grip was firm; she knew I
was a wolf and she was testing my strength. No way would she have
subjected Shannon to this bone-crushing grip. I squeezed her
fingers in return, holding her gaze. “Nice to meet you.”