Things That Go Hump In The Night (34 page)

She paused then, her eyes searching the heavens, lost in the memories of her love. I stared at Ryan, watching his expression as this story unfolded. His grandfather had killed his father, over him? What a horrible thing. What had it done to him growing up to know that?

"Without Alistair, I didn't know what to do," she said. "I was young, and pregnant, and very, very afraid. I knew the Raynard clan would try to kill me before I gave birth to my cub, for they did not want a mutt or a human child to inherit Raynard Hall. My parents had disowned me when they found out I was pregnant out of wedlock. I had no one to turn to, and I did what any young girl pregnant with a shapeshifter's baby would do – I ran away to London and fell in with a bad crowd."

I laughed. "Of course. That's probably what I would've done."

"I did the best I could, working in kitchens in the city and staying with friends until I could afford my own place. I built a network of people who helped me and who nurtured Ryan's creativity – he spent his childhood hanging out with musicians and artists and other radicals. I taught him to control his shifts, and sometimes I took him to Hyde Park and let him run free." She patted Ryan's hair. "Piece by piece, I built a life for us – it wasn't the life he would have had in Raynard Hall, but it was a life full of colour and unique people.

"However, when Ryan hit puberty, his vulpine genes started to work in overdrive. Imagine your typical angry teenage boy, and add a fatherless household and some feral fox genetics, and you have the wild, surly son I did my best to care for. It had become evident to me that Ryan hated the city. He craved the forests, the trees, the rivers. He wanted to roam, and he wanted to hunt. My city life was holding him back."

She left then, returning to the kitchen. We both picked at our meals in silence while I digested everything she'd said. I met Ryan's eyes, wanting to ask him all sorts of questions about his father and his life in London, but my words caught in my throat. Finally, I said. "So what happened next?"

"I ran away," he said. "I'm ashamed of it now, but at the time, I felt I had no choice. I packed up my paints and a change of clothes and hitch-hiked across England. Eventually, I ended up in Belfast. There are great tracts of wilderness near the city, where I would retreat for days at a time. I met other shifters there, some friends, some not. I started to learn about this other side of me, the side I had to hide when I lived in London with Clara."

"And the more I learned about the shifter world, the more I craved a territory of my own. In Ireland, I was always an outsider, always a subordinate to the established clans there. Clara wrote to me from London, telling me my Grandfather had died recently, and if I wanted to, it would be safe for me to return to Crookshollow. Raynard Hall was officially mine."

Clara came out, and set down a slice of torte on a beautiful china plate in front of each of us. I grabbed her arm as she turned to leave.

"Please stay and enjoy dessert with us," I said. "I want to hear all about your life in Crookshollow."

Ryan pulled over an embroidered ottoman, and Clara begrudgingly sat herself down. Ryan pushed his torte toward her, then got up to go to the kitchen to cut himself a slice.

Clara watched me as I finished off the last of my chicken. "Ryan tells me you're a Fauntelroy," she said.

I nodded, my mouth full of buttery mushrooms. "I didn't know about my connection to the vulpine world until yesterday."

"I knew your mother," she said. "She was a woman of singular kindness and wit. From what Ryan tells me, you've inherited many of her traits. I was so sorry to hear she died."

"Yeah, me too." My parents were killed in a car accident five years earlier. It was a hit and run, and they'd never found the culprit.

"I liked you the moment you walked in my door," she said, taking Ryan's champagne glass from the table and draining it in one gulp. "And I'm picky about people. So is he. If Ryan has chosen you, he must think you're truly something special."

"I'm told there's not much choice in the matter, for either of us," I said.

She waved her hand. "Oh, that old "fated to be together" line? Vulpines have been telling themselves that nonsense for thousands of years. Personally, I don't believe it. Sure, they can sniff out potential mates who have the best chance of giving them pure shifting offspring, but the clans are so in-bred now that it's all just a genetic pic'n'mix, when it comes right down to it. No, the real magic isn't in finding the one you're destined to be with, it's in forging the bond that two people make together, that enables them to endure when one of them becomes another creature."

Ryan returned then with a slice of torte for himself, and another bottle of champagne, which he poured into our waiting glasses. I dug in to my torte, the delicious chocolate ganache running over my tongue, as I gestured for him to continue his story.

"When I returned to Crookshollow, I tried to convince Clara to move in to Raynard Hall with me, but she wasn't having it. She knew me too well – even in that huge house, her presence would be too cloying, too close for me. But she did move back to the village, to be near to me. I spent the first couple of years here repairing the damage the decades of neglect had done to my ancestral home. I also refurnished my own suite of rooms to get rid of the moose heads and mahogany and create something more conducive to making art. Finally, I could establish my own territory, and work in complete solitude, and I could be close to Clara, to protect her. At night, I roamed the forest, and little by little I fought off the other vulpine clans that had ensconced on the Raynard territory and reclaimed Crookshollow as my own. As the years went by, my life in the forest, and my art, became my driving force, and so I took myself out of the world, becoming more and more like my father, letting my fox side control me. Until you came along."

Ryan paused. He reached across the table and clasped Clara's hand, meeting her eyes. The love that flowed between them was fierce, primal, bound by bonds of blood. He would do anything to protect her. This was a side of Ryan I'd never seen before, the side of him that was utterly human.

"So what has changed now? Why the exhibition?"

"Over the last few months, there has been an influx of new shifters into Crookshollow forest," Ryan said. "Not just foxes, but wolves and birds and badgers and deer and all types of shifters. They're responsible for all those animal maulings and attacks. Most are mutts, like Marcus, but I don't think they're doing this on their own. You mentioned a name last night – Isengrim. That is the name of a powerful lycanthrope, a wolf-shifter."

"A werewolf?"

Ryan shook his head. "Werewolves are creatures of mythology, but they are based on the lycanthrope, one of the most ancient and powerful shifter species. Wolves and lycanthropes were once common in Britain, but they became too bold, decimating livestock and desecrating burial sites, digging up the bodies. The species' were completely eradicated by the 19th century.

"Isengrim is a rogue lycanthrope. He left his clan in the Black Forest and came to England as a stowaway on a fishing boat a few years ago. He has some dangerous ideas about the place of shifters in the world, and he's been moving up and down the country, gathering followers. He's stirred up the mutt population with dangerous thoughts, bringing chaos and disorder to the delicate shifter dynamic. He wants shifters to rise up, to not only make themselves known to humans, but to take over control of the country. A few weeks ago, I saw him in the forest, and ever since more and more mutts and rogue shifters have entered the forest, dancing dangerously close to the edge of my territory. As an old magical area, and an important part of shifter lore, Crookshollow is an ideal place to launch his attack. The clan who holds this area could theoretically command all the shifters in Britain. And that's what I believe Isengrim plans to do. He has a lot of supporters, even in some of the old, powerful clans – dangerous shifters who want free license to hurt humans, who they believe to be inferior.

"All that's standing in their way is me, and my old territorial claims on the village and the surrounding forest. They can't just kill me – they have to get me to hand over my rights, but because I have nothing and no one in my life they care about – they have no idea Clara is here – they have no leverage. Edgar and the other ravens have been watching my home for weeks, waiting for a chink in my armour to reveal itself. Effectively, they have me trapped here – if I leave Crookshollow to search for help, they would step in and claim my land in my absence. So I did the only thing I know how to do…I painted. In my paintings are messages – to shifter clans I know in Ireland, in Germany, in the Americas. These messages call them here to help me, to help me put this unrest down before it turns to bloodshed."

"You had to get your paintings in front of the world, so the shifters could see what was happening in Crookshollow." I breathed.

"Exactly. But now the situation is even more dire. Because now they know you are here, they suddenly have leverage against me. That's why I have to protect you, and why this exhibition has to go ahead, no matter the cost."

"But this doesn't make any sense. Why did Marcus break in to my house to look for the ring?”

"He wanted to scare you into leaving Crookshollow, into staying away from me. Otherwise, he has to kill me to claim you, and that would incur the wrath of Isengrim. But if you leave my territory, you are free for him to claim as his own. He gets what he wants, and Isengrim get my territory. If the shifters take you and try to use you against me, then he doesn't have a hope, for they will most likely kill you. And more than he is loyal to Isengrim and his fellow mutts, Marcus wants a mate to redeem his bloodline."

Panic was beginning to rise up within me once again. "If it's so dangerous, if these shifters are just lying in wait to grab me, why are we sitting out here, where anyone can see us? Why are we eating dinner and touring the art gallery like nothing is wrong?"

"Clara has powerful protective spells around this place. They wouldn't dare come here, and they won't be able to sense either of us through her barriers. They don't know where we are. The gallery is part of my territory, and they won't attack there in daylight, not until they are ready. It's relatively safe, while you're with me. Do you see now, Alex, that the exhibition
must
go ahead."

I glanced up. The moon has risen high in the sky, tinging the sky with an ethereal blue glow. I stared into Ryan's eyes and saw the moon reflected there – flecks of blueish light against those deep brown orbs.

"I don't want to stay at my flat tonight," I said, shivering as the cold night air touched my bare arms.

Clara reached across and squeezed my hand. "You've learned so much tonight that you must digest," she said. "Ryan, take Alex back to Raynard Hall. She needs a nice bubble bath, and maybe another glass of wine."

Ryan dragged me to my feet, his other hand flying across the keyboard on his phone, texting the driver to come back. I began to walk with him toward the house, casting a last, lingering glace at the beautiful, fairy-lit grotto Clara had created for us.

"Wait!" Clara bent down, and from the folds of her shawl she pulled a small velvet pouch. She pressed this into my hands. "For protection," she said. "Keep it with you at all times."

I tucked the pouch into the pocket of my jacket, and embraced her. "Thank you," I whispered.

The cab driver took us back to the building where my car was parked. Panic seized me as I stepped out of the car. I scanned the parking lot, hunting for animals hidden in the shadows. My hands shook uncontrollably as I pulled my keys out and went to climb into the driver's seat. Ryan slipped in between me and the door, his eyes ablaze. "I'll drive," he growled.

I was barely holding it together as it was, without having to endure more of his driving. "No, you won't. Don't ruin this beautiful night by being an ass. This is my car, and you drive like a maniac, so it's either I drive us back to my place, or you take a long, pleasant walk through the mean Crookshollow streets. And you're meant to be protecting me, remember?"

Ryan shot me a filthy look, but slid into the passenger seat beside me. I pulled out of the building and eased into the street. Traffic had eased off for the evening, and people gathered in the outdoor restaurant tables lining either side of Main Street. I wound the window down, listening to the sounds of laughter and light conversation floating through the crisp air, straining my voice to hear the flutter of wings or bark of a fox behind me.

As I drove back through the streets toward Holly Avenue, near the edge of the forest, I stole a glance at Ryan. He stared out at the window, his expression unreadable. I wondered what he saw when he looked at me - what did it feel like to find the girl who supposedly was meant to be your destiny? What was it like to discover she didn't feel the same connection?

Or did she? I wasn't sure. I definitely felt
something
in his presence…a kind of magnetic pull I couldn't explain away. In the two days I'd known Ryan, I'd seen so many sides of him. The arrogant, rich
artiste,
the protective fox, the sensitive, lonely painter, and tonight...he'd been so charming, so sweet, so honest. I wanted so badly to peel away all the layers of him, to see if anything else lay deeper.

I glanced up at the mirror and noticed something odd. A car was following close behind me down a residential street. A bad feeling twisted in my gut. I turned down a side street. The black station wagon behind me turned, too.