“It’s still my territory at this point, but I wouldn’t go south of Eugene if I were you. Sacramento likes to push the border around there, and he’d probably make your life pretty uncomfortable if he got hold of you.” Her delivery of the understatement was desert-dry. “But he’s alive and kicking. I talked to him the other week.”
She grimaced, and Andrew suspected it was something to do with the ongoing battle over that territory. “Denver’s far enough away that I don’t really have too much to do with him. Sacramento was whining about him, though, so I presume he’s also still all right. Seattle—”
She hesitated long enough that Andrew drew in a deep breath, trying to read what was worrying her from her scent. It was low-level concern, not sharp fear. “Seattle, though. He’s been … weird. I mean, I’ve talked to him, but he was constantly trying to get into my pants from the time I made alpha, only to stop maybe six months ago.”
“Maybe he fell in love,” Andrew said, mimicking Tom’s earlier cadence with a small smile.
Michelle gave a sardonic laugh. “It’s not just him, though. The whole pack pulled in and stopped calling to chat or coming to visit as much. I mean, packs like Alaska are like that, but Seattle used to be different.” Michelle crossed her arms and shrugged. “So. For what it’s worth. I’ve been thinking about it since you first contacted me, and it’s the only thing I can think of that’s the least bit out of the ordinary. And it wasn’t weird enough that I’ve particularly been worrying about it these last months. It’s been a relief, actually. But I thought you should know.”
Andrew nodded. She was right, it wasn’t definitive. Seattle could just have decided he was tired of chasing the prize he couldn’t catch, and clammed up from wounded pride. But put it together with Silver’s situation, and it raised questions. “I’ll head there next. Stop on the border and see if I can find anything nosing around while I wait for permission to cross.” He hesitated, trying to find the most tactful way to ask for the next favor.
“I’ll warn him you’re coming,” Michelle said with dry humor, getting there before him. “Since he does at least still answer my calls. I’ll show you where the current borders are before you go, too.”
“Thank you.” Andrew offered his hand, and they shook on both that and the territory permission he now had. “I think it might be best if I go now, grab a cab to the rental car place. Silver seems like she’s objecting to staying anywhere at all, not so much that I’m leaving her behind. You can talk her out of it just as well without me, I’m sure.” It felt a little strange to leave without her at this point, but Andrew reminded himself that she wasn’t his responsibility anymore. Now it was time to concentrate on hunting and forget about her.
Michelle nodded. “Good luck.”
9
She needed to leave as soon as possible, Silver knew. Though it had been sweet relief to sleep without worrying the monster would find her in the night, or Death would steal her voice while she wasn’t awake to resist him, she couldn’t stay here. This pack had cubs. Besides that, they were too soft, too kind. The monster would tear them into tiny shreds.
Too patronizing, also. One fancied herself a priestess of the Lady, but she had no more of the Lady’s light about her than the others. It took Silver a little while to realize it, but the more words the woman spilled into the air, the clearer it became that they were made of mist. Silver had stayed with the warrior because he’d asked her to like she was someone who could think for herself. She would not stay for this pack who assumed she would follow directions like a child.
Rain filled the air, like at home, and the Lady’s light grew steadily brighter. It angered the snakes, making them writhe more and more often. Each time Silver got to her feet to escape the den while the pack’s attention was elsewhere, the pain brought her right back to her knees again. Death sat by and panted. At least he wasn’t urging the fire on this time, calling it down with a borrowed voice. Perhaps that meant she would survive this, like all the other times when the Lady’s light had seemed to burn her away, leaving an empty shell.
It hurt. It hurt until nothing remained but pain. Silver wished the warrior was here, to goad her into hanging on through pride. He never gave in to pain, she was sure. It was easier to stay with the world when he was watching and would be impressed by her control.
But he wasn’t here. Just Death laughing at her. He wouldn’t want her voice now, too raw with screaming.
* * *
Seattle didn’t answer his phone. Andrew chewed over that fact as he drove north, trying to keep from speculating too wildly. What was Seattle up to? Refusing to talk to Andrew could be simple rudeness, but he had Portland’s misgivings to consider. Michelle had talked to him the night before, so he was still alive. But if Seattle was up to something he shouldn’t be, it would be much less suspicious to deny Andrew permission to cross flat out, rather than screening his calls. Andrew couldn’t figure it out.
When he finally wrenched his mind from the same ruts about Seattle, the scenery seeped in. Every patch of woods called to him to run. He hadn’t realized that the freeway from Portland to Seattle could present such an untamed illusion, given the cities’ sizes. Huge evergreens flanked the road’s shoulders, even if development lurked immediately behind them.
He stopped south of Olympia, right off the freeway. It was inside Seattle territory as Michelle had shown him on the map, but not insultingly so, yet. Every territory had official borders that lay beyond what could be patrolled regularly, so this was more a “hey, morons, pay attention to me” sort of trespassing. He’d wait here until someone showed up. There was a mall—of course there was a mall—but he couldn’t make himself pay attention to anything inside. He wanted to run on four legs. Full moon was soon.
After he’d circled the entire mall twice without feeling the smallest desire to go into a store, he gave up. Suspicions or not, knowing Seattle was alive, he didn’t want to trespass any farther without waiting another few hours at least. Hunting and killing anything on Seattle’s territory would be a slap in the face he wanted to avoid, but he could run at least. It felt better to have a purpose, even when it seemed he’d been driving forever without finding an end to development.
The place he stopped wasn’t a park, but it looked densely forested enough he’d have the privacy he needed, and he’d hear or smell anyone coming in plenty of time. He stepped over a rusting barbed-wire fence to get in, and started piling up his clothes. Since it would be such a short run, he left his wallet and keys in the pile with them rather than hiding them somewhere. The phone went on top so he could shift back and grab it quickly if Seattle finally called.
Finding the wolf was like falling, so easy. He’d just dropped to four feet, shaking to settle fur into place, when the phone’s chime assaulted his ears. It sounded even more tinny and strident in this form. What timing Seattle had. At least it wasn’t near the new, when the shifting process was too exhausting to begin again immediately the other way.
He shifted back and flipped the phone open with one hand without looking at the screen. He tried to pull on his boxers simultaneously, with little success. “Dare.”
“Thank the Lady. How far away are you? She won’t stop screaming.” Michelle’s voice was breathy with stress. “Did she do this with you? Did you hold her still or let her flail? What should we do? We don’t want her to hurt herself, but she was bruising from where I was trying to hold her—”
Andrew swore, set the phone down, and used the pause to pull on his pants and then shirt, leaving it untucked for the moment. He managed shoes and jacket well enough one-handed. “What happened? She seemed to be in pain before, sure, but nothing that bad. I wouldn’t have left her with you without saying—”
Michelle brushed past the apology. “We have no idea. She was sleeping, and most of us were getting ready to go out on a run.”
“All right.” Andrew winced as all the needles his shirt had picked up from the ground skittered down his back. “Leave her free. I might be as long as two hours.”
Michelle fell silent for a moment as she digested the snap of command in his voice. Andrew grimaced. He didn’t have time for the careful dance to avoid a dominance fight. He wasn’t going to challenge Michelle, and if she couldn’t figure that out herself, that was her problem. She was the one who’d called him for help. Apparently she was intelligent enough to realize it, however, as all she said after the silence was “Hurry.”
It took what felt like days to get back, even speeding anywhere everyone else was, taking refuge from the police as one of the crowd. The irony of being a herd member hiding from the predator would have amused him more in other circumstances. Any time he stopped concentrating on driving, he could feel wolf form hovering near the surface. His impatience, like any strong emotion, was an unceasing pressure on the balance between wolf and human form, trying to push it over. His jaw ached from clenching it by the time he reached the Oregon border.
He heard Silver the moment he opened the car door in front of the house. The noise was low enough that he suspected that the neighbors would mistake it for the television, but it cut straight to something instinctive in him, twisting. It had the whine of someone who’d been in pain too long to spare the strength for real cries.
He didn’t bother knocking, just raised a hand to the knob, but the door opened out from under him. Tom stood aside to let him through, anxiety on his face smoothing to a naïve faith in Andrew’s abilities. Michelle appeared at the top of the stairs. “She’s not thrashing so badly,” she said tightly and jerked a gesture to a bedroom.
Andrew sensed other worried Were behind the nearest doors, but the only person besides Silver inside the bedroom was Maria. She radiated tension from keeping herself still just inside the doorway, watching Silver pant on the end of the bed. A few angry red patches showed on Maria’s arms. After a moment to puzzle out the angles, Andrew realized that Silver’s thrashing must have brought her welts into contact with the older Were’s skin. In exchange, Silver had fingerprint bruises on both her wrists.
He stepped forward, and Maria grabbed his arm in a tight grip. “Don’t. You’ll make her worse again.”
Andrew spread his palms flat. “I’m not going to touch her. I’m just going to talk to her. Silver?” He raised his voice, and called her name several more times, but she gave no sign she’d heard him. Maria’s hold slackened when she got a pointed nod from her alpha, and Andrew shook off her hand.
He sat to put his eyes level with Silver’s and tried to hold hers. He couldn’t put the true command of dominance behind it because she didn’t return the gaze, but it was better than nothing. “Death. Tell her she has to talk to me. She has to tell me what’s wrong. What made it worse.” Might as well make her delusions work for him.
Silver’s whine drew out until she ran out of breath. Her lips started to shape words but it was a moment before she put air behind them. “Her light brings it back. The children’s voices. He uses the children’s voices to hurt me.” She sobbed, and her gaze finally focused, but on Michelle. “And your baby. It just cries.” Then she curled into a ball, losing the thread of her words. Her low whining began again a moment later.
Michelle made a choking noise. “How could she know—?”
Andrew gritted his teeth. What hadn’t these people told him? “A child was killed…?”
Michelle made a violent gesture, cutting off the topic. “Miscarriage. Early-term shifting. Nothing to do with this.”
Andrew winced and bowed his head, offering the gesture of submission as an apology. Miscarriages were less common now that women could discover their pregnancy quickly and stop shifting, but they still happened. Some werewolves could shift throughout the entire first trimester, some would lose the baby with even one shift after conception. One couldn’t tell.
“But if she’s really speaking to Death—” Maria’s voice had a note Andrew recognized. True belief.
“Her light—too bright—” Silver distracted them all by reaching out with her good hand to clamp onto Andrew’s. She went into something that looked like a seizure, back arching helplessly, while the marks on her arm seemed to blaze red.
Andrew knew that arch. Oh, he knew that arch. He should have realized it before. He had once seen a Were tied down with silver chains on a full-moon night. His back had arched like that when he’d tried to shift. Under the full, the balance tipped into the other form with the slightest push of strong emotion. Then, when the silver halted the shift before it could begin, panic forced him to try another shift, and another.
The only way to stop it was to remove the silver.
But that was what the doctor had said he shouldn’t do. It seemed so deceptively simple, just slit the welts and let the poison bleed out. He couldn’t sit here and do nothing. Her seizure went on and on. He could cut shallowly, couldn’t he? Minimize the bleeding?
Maria made a whimpering noise, unable to bear it any longer, either. “Can’t we do something?”
Andrew grasped Silver’s elbow, dragging her arm out straight. He felt for his pocket knife and flipped it open awkwardly. Michelle made a noise in her throat and jerked a step toward them, but Andrew looked down at Silver’s arching body and then up at her. He didn’t need Portland’s permission, but it would help if she wasn’t trying to stop him. “Trust me.” Michelle’s jaw clenched and she dropped her head in assent.
Cutting the first line was relatively easy, and the seizure eased as blood seeped out. Silver’s face grew confused at the new pain, however, and she struggled weakly. Andrew’s courage wavered, seeing her fear. What if he was killing her? After all she’d survived, what if she died of his simple stupidity?
Silver’s struggles eased after a second, but the blood flow did not. It seeped steadily. Andrew’s lungs started to burn before he realized that he was holding his breath waiting for it to stop. It should stop, for a werewolf. Long before he used up one breath.
He sucked in a deep breath. He couldn’t stop halfway. If Silver was going to bleed out, it should take all the silver with it. He cut along the next welt, and again. He cut and then squeezed out the blood until it no longer burned over his fingers.