Tainted Trail (22 page)

The Dog Warriors had been willing to let a nonbreeding
breeder live. They even allowed Ukiah to continue his relationship with Indigo, with liberal use of birth control.

The Pack would not, however, allow him to take a second lover. They would kill Ukiah first.

How to explain any of that to Sam?

“We warned you.” Max pulled out his cigar case, a sure sign that he was rattled. “Shaw is dangerous.”

“I just pulled a gun in a bar!” Sam was fighting to keep calm. “I can lose my carry permit over this. I can get arrested for this. I want to know why.”

Max focused his attention on lighting his cigar. “Shaw has issues; they're between him and Ukiah. If I'd known he was coming, I wouldn't have asked you to take care of Ukiah. You're better off not getting involved with Shaw.”

“Hello! I just put a gun to the man's head!” Realization flashed over Sam's face, filling her eyes with fear. “Shit! I just pulled a gun on a homicidal lunatic.”

“Rennie won't hold that against you.” Ukiah offered what scant comfort he could. “He'll probably respect you for standing up to him and appreciate you coming to my rescue.”

“Yeah, sure.” Sam shook a finger in Max's direction. “This is the same man that Max just called dangerous?”

Max took a deep drag on the cigar, and then breathed twin columns of smoke out his nose. Another drag and he had chosen his words, and began to speak. “Rennie's part of a paramilitary group known as the Pack. They have objectives you're better off not knowing. All their crimes stem from those activities. They're not crazy. They're not random killers. I wouldn't have left the bar if I thought there was real chance of Rennie killing those idiots. He'll rough them up, scare them good, and leave.”

“You're sure of that?”

Max shrugged. “Reasonably.”

“Rennie won't kill an innocent bystander,” Ukiah said with some truth. The full truth was if Rennie couldn't avoid the killing, he would take anyone down, just making it quick and clean as possible. There just wasn't any reason, though, that Rennie would need to kill anyone at the bar.

“He
is
dangerous,” Max repeated. “But by protecting Ukiah, you've probably earned yourself a great deal of immunity. Just don't sleep with Ukiah, and things will be fine.”

“You're making that last part up,” Sam said.

“No, he's not,” Ukiah said quietly. “Rennie might have killed me if we had sex.”

“Why?”

“There are some things you're better off not knowing,” Max said.

Sam gazed at Max who screened himself with smoke. “Okay,” she said, after trying to search his features for some answer to her questions. “I should have known when you weren't there chewing on Shaw's head for hurting your partner, that I didn't need to get all excited. I chose to pull my gun. You keep your secrets—I'll keep mine—this relationship is for a short haul. But if you lie to me, Bennett, I'll teach you the meaning of regret.”

Max took another drag on his cigar.

Sam narrowed her eyes. “This is where you're supposed to say, ‘Yes, madam, I won't lie to you.' ”

“Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies,” Max said quietly.

“That's a shitty answer.”

“It's the only truthful one I can give you.”

“Men!” Sam turned to Ukiah. “Well, Wolf Boy? Do you have any oblique and obtuse comments you want to add?”

Ukiah shook his head.

“I thought as much,” Sam grumbled, then headed toward her Harley. “I'm tired. I'm going home and sleep by myself!”

Annoyance flashed across Max's face. He raised a hand in farewell to Sam as she pulled away, sweeping them with her motorcycle's headlight.

“Sorry, Max,” Ukiah said when darkness cloaked them again.

Max snorted, flaring his cigar tip to red brilliance. “The old adage applies here, kid—you can't pick your relatives.”

The prickle of Pack sense swept over him, indicating that
Rennie had moved into his range of awareness and was looking for him.
Cub?

“Rennie is looking for me. I should talk to him. Maybe alone—he might be fairly hyped by the fight.”

Max cursed softly, not answering Ukiah directly. He went instead to the Blazer, opened the back and got one of the tracers. “Put this on. I want to be able to find you—especially if you're going to be alone with him. Call me if you need help.”

 

Rennie came out of the shadows, his duster flaring out as he walked. He carried a small pack, which might have held clothes or explosives—one could never be sure with Rennie. Ukiah knew that the Pack leader probably had already secreted guns, ammo, food, and gear close at hand.

“You've been a tricky one to find today.” Rennie dropped the pack and opened his arms, the sudden violence at the bar ignored since it couldn't be forgotten without bloodshed.

And despite everything, Ukiah found himself pleased to see the leader of the Dog Warriors. He hugged Rennie tightly and was pounded on the back with rough affection. Under cigarette smoke, spilled liquor, and coat leather, Ukiah could smell Rennie's wolf-tainted scent. The gruff welcome ended with a light bite on his ear, a slight reminder of his place as child among the Pack.

“You didn't have to come!” Ukiah said.

“Yes, I did. You are too alone here.”

“I have Max.”

“Cub, think. If you land in a hospital mortally wounded, as soon as you die, they will cut you open to see what killed you. Remember what happened to Janet Haze. They gutted her and took out all her organs and weighed them individually.”

Ukiah shuddered, his individual organs reacting to such a fate. “Max will keep me—”

“Cub,” Rennie caught Ukiah and shook him hard. “He's just a mortal man. One blow to the head, knocking him out, and he'll no longer be there for you.”

Ukiah hunched his shoulders up against the idea of Max being hurt. “Why did you come alone, then?”

“I left the Dogs to watch over your little one,” Rennie said. “The Demon Curs are the closest gang, but I trust Degas as far as I can spit him. I've given him plenty of reasons to hate me.”

One of Rennie's memories darted through Ukiah's thoughts, and he caught hold of it.

. . . Cold rain pounded on Rennie's shoulders as he gazed down at Degas's body, blood pouring out into the mud. The watching Dogs and Curs growled at each other. He'd better check that, or they'd be at each other's throats in a moment . . .

“You killed him,” Ukiah said as surprise jolted through him. The memory was from the 1930s, the last time Rennie and Degas fought against the Ontongard together.

This past June, Rennie had called a gathering of the five Pack clans for a desperate battle against Hex. For over a century, the Pack believed that Prime had destroyed the Ontongard mother ship. The truth was that the damaged ship had landed on Mars with the entire crew locked in cryogenic sleep by Prime. Hex had a remote key that would have allowed him to wake the crew—if the ship's protective shields were lowered. The Ontongard had manipulated the development of human technology for decades to bring about the Mars Rover, and then adapted it for their needs.

Only four of the clans fought Hex, and they nearly lost. The modified Rover lowered the mother ship's shields, and Hex used his remote key. Ukiah had replaced Hex's program, however, with one that self-destructed the ship—snatching victory out of the jaws of defeat.

The Demon Curs were the only clan missing during that battle. Considering Rennie's and Degas's history, Ukiah wondered now if the Curs' absence had been by chance or design.

“Chance,” Rennie answered him. “Too much was riding on that. If Hex managed to wake the sleeping crew, Earth would have never withstood the following invasion. Much
as Degas hates me, I know he would have set it aside to stop Hex.”

Ukiah looked at Rennie skeptically.

“Remember, cub,” Rennie turned to stare at him with eyes cold as gunmetal, “under it all Degas and I are nearly the same creature.”

“If you're one and the same, why did you kill Degas?”

“To teach him a lesson. Your father's blood gave us the ability to be individuals if we're given the room. What we grow into depends much on the human that we were. Degas was a cutthroat pirate, devious and ruthless, with willpower made of steel. As a Get, he's extremely effective at fighting Ontongard—which is why I didn't destroy him completely.”

“It just seems a little extreme to kill him. Did it help any?”

“Made me feel better.” Rennie gave a wolfish grin. “And it did drive a point through Degas's thick head—stop trying to make massive numbers of Gets.”

“So it worked?”

“Not completely.” Rennie sobered. “There is necessary killing, and then there is wanton slaughter. Sometimes it's a fine line between the two. Those of us who were trained military men or law officers can walk the line—we do what needs to be done and no more. Degas often walks the wrong side.”

Rennie jerked his chin in the direction of the Watering Hole. “Degas probably would have laid waste to that bar tonight and killed your gutsy woman friend on suspicion alone. You're lucky I'm the one that found you in June, not him.”

Ukiah had Rennie's memories from the day that the Pack hunted Ukiah down and closed for the kill. He knew how much he owed to Rennie's compassion. “Degas would have killed me.”

“Degas would have killed everyone that ever met you.”

Ukiah staggered back, stunned. “Why?”

“Have you never questioned why the wolf dogs attacked Hex's Get disguised as you? How they knew it wasn't you and that Hex's Get meant harm to your family?”

“No,” Ukiah whispered, suddenly afraid to hear the reason.

“Your blood has gotten into those dogs and changed them, cub. They nipped and bit and drew your blood, didn't they?”

“They're my Gets?”

“No.” Rennie shifted uneasily. “I'm not sure what they are. Your blood should have made them Gets; at least it would have, if you were a normal breeder. Your father might be the reason.”

“You think because Prime was a mutation, that I—I—I'm what?”

“You
are
a breeder. But your father's mutation has put a few spins on things. Certainly there's no memory in all of Ontongard history of blood crawling back out of a host before Hex tried to make Max into your Get.”

Ukiah shuddered with the perfect memory of finding the syringe that had contained his own blood—and its needle tainted with Max's. He'd never known grief so great as that moment, when he was sure that his true Max was gone, replaced by an alien mockery.

Max's salvation was that very love that Ukiah had for him. All of Ukiah, every single half-alien cell of him, refused to harm Max. Instead of propagating through Max's body, Ukiah's injected blood gathered into a long, thin worm and crawled back out of Max.

“Thank God it did!” Ukiah said. “Maybe I can't make a Get! Maybe my blood will always—”

Rennie gripped his shoulder hard, to the point bones threatened to crack. “Don't even think it, because then you'll start believing it. The fact you heal up even from the dead and form blood mice says that you
can
create a Get.”

“Okay, okay.”

Rennie released the pressure and rubbed away the hurt. “The dogs can die, and they don't form mice.”

“What did you do to my moms' dogs?”

“We only killed one.”

“One! Mom Jo is going to freak!”

“If their blood were as dangerous as mine, wouldn't you want your family to know?”

“Yes! But did you have to kill one?”

Rennie shrugged. “It was important to be thorough.”

“Oh, shit! I'm going to have to call her and tell her. Which one did you kill?”

Rennie gave him the dog's name, thankfully not one of Mom Jo's favorites of those that survived the June slaughter. This was still going to crush her; she thought of the half-breed dogs as unfortunate children, and had rescued them from shelters across the country. Ukiah imagined her pain and scrubbed the tears out of his eyes before Rennie saw them. Rennie, of course, noticed.

“That's why we let you live.” Rennie rumpled his hair. “Because you have compassion. Yours is a human heart, and it's filled with a great deal of goodness.”

“So, what did my alien blood do to the dogs?” He couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice.

“It seems to have mutated them to something similar to what your children will be like—if you ever have any.”

Ukiah winced. He had Kittanning, but his son was identical to him in every way except memories. He had witnessed his sister growing inside his Mom Lara and the joyful mysteries that surrounded her. What sex would the child be? What color hair? Even after she was born, the questions continued. How tall would Cally grow to be? Would she be good at school? What would she want to be when she grew up?