Wolf Pact: A Wolf Pact Novel (2 page)

T
he
world
was ending. The world was on fire. He had never seen anything so bright. So this was the sun. His eyes hurt from its brilliance. He was cold and hot all at once, shivering and sweating, and he realized he was naked. They all were. They were four boys on the side of the road, shuddering from the cold and broken from the heat.

How had they gotten here? He remembered running into the portal, landing in the woods, realizing they’d somehow shifted to human form. They’d been shocked and exhausted, and he wondered if they’d somehow wandered back and been transported somewhere else. It didn’t matter now; they just had to figure out how to function in this new world, how to figure out if they’d been followed, if the hounds were on their tail. With their collars off, the hounds would be able to trail them only by their scent. They had some time, he hoped. Time to get used to this new world, time to run and hide, time to plan to free the others.

“Here.” He looked up to see Tala standing over him. Unlike them, she was clothed, wearing some sort of black-and-red checked suit, in a material that looked warm. The clothes were huge on her; her small frame was drowning in them. She handed him a similar pair. “Pajamas,” she said. “That’s what they’re called, for sleeping.” She was speaking the human language, and he could understand her.

Tala
placed a blanket on Mac’s shoulders. Mac was the youngest of the brothers, unsure of himself and often scared. Tala seemed to have appointed herself his caretaker, and Lawson was grateful for it.

“There are more back there.” She pointed to a small building on wheels not too far away.

He gathered Edon and Rafe with him, Tala, and Mac; the five of them were all that was left of the pack—such a small number—and they walked slowly toward the trailer. Tala had already broken the lock on the door. They rummaged through the drawers in the small beat-up compartment, which was even shabbier than the den they’d left behind. So this was what it was like above-ground, he thought. And here they were, stealing from folks who were no better off than they were.

The
clothes were ill-fitting, but covered them. He looked in the mirror, shocked to see his human reflection. It was said among the wolves that Lucifer’s curse was what had turned them into animals. Lawson saw that he had dark brown hair, brown eyes, a scrawny build. This was what he’d fought for, a new life, a new beginning, and he realized he wanted a new name to go with it. The old one wouldn’t do anymore. Not in this new world. But what? He found a blue jacket on a nearby chair and put it on, grateful that it was warm.

“Lawson,” Mac said, pointing to the white tag on his lapel. “Your name,” Mac joked. “And mine is Malcolm.”

Lawson. That would fit. He could live with that. It sounded brand-new to his ears, and he liked that.

“That’s me,” Lawson said. “From now on.”

Mac nodded.

Lawson looked around at his brothers. Rafe was large and hulking; Mac, or Malcolm, as he wanted to be called now, was too skinny; Edon, out of all of them, looked almost normal, handsome with his bright golden hair, his features almost like those of the masters, except without their frightening scars.

“You look good,” Lawson told him. “But the rest of us …” He grinned.

Edon didn’t look at him, didn’t smile, didn’t answer.

They
had left Ahramin behind, and Lawson wondered if Edon would ever forgive him for that. But he had no time to worry about that now; they had to figure out what they were going to do now that they were up here, now that they were free. His stomach rumbled, a low, almost gurgling sound, and he realized none of them had eaten in at least a day. “We have to find food,” he said.

“There’s a refrigerator in the kitchen,” Tala said. She was slim and small, quiet-looking, almost plain, but her blue eyes were the same as before, kind and gentle.

“How do you know so much?” he asked her. She knew the words for everything. She knew how this place worked.

“Master Quintus would read to me sometimes, books from this world. I was his favorite pet.” She shrugged.

They took only as much as they needed: a loaf of bread, a jar of something green, “pickled,” Tala called it. He didn’t want to take any more, to steal from those who had so little, but he didn’t yet know how else they would manage. And they had to survive. So that someday they could go back and save the rest of the wolves. So that someday everyone would be free. Lawson thought of the portal he had left open for the others. Marrok would not come until he had Romulus’s chronolog—he had been adamant that they could not leave the underworld without the device—and Lawson hoped his friend knew what he was doing.

After
their first week aboveground, they learned. To sleep in the parks, which was easier than sleeping in the woods. To scavenge from garbage cans. To filch a wallet from a back pocket, or a purse from behind a chair in a coffee shop. To steal from those who seemed like they could afford it, shiny people in handsome clothes, three-piece suits and well-cut dresses.

They learned the name of the place they had landed: Hunting Valley, Ohio. And how to adjust to the sun, the noise, the nighttime cold, the daytime heat. And that aboveground was an awful lot like hell; the underworld was just a darker version of the world above it. He was disappointed by this; he’d hoped for more. Tala teased him, told him he was thinking of Paradise, and the wonders of Elysium were not meant for the likes of them. They were lucky enough to have crossed into this world; he didn’t have to go and get ambitious all of a sudden.

Like Tala, Mac seemed to have a better sense of what they’d gotten themselves into. In Hell, he’d discovered the secret library the masters kept, and had taught himself to read the books describing things they didn’t have down there: art, music, poetry. “There’s beauty up here,” he told them. “We just have to find it.”

But
Lawson didn’t know if they would ever find it. They were barely making it day by day. That there was no sign of hellhounds gave him little comfort. If he and his wolves had been able to cross Hell’s Gate, then it was reasonable to expect that the hounds would be able to do so as well. There was also the matter of Edon’s stubborn refusal to talk. Edon was mute, broken, and Lawson was starting to get impatient. “We’ll go back for her,” he told his brother again and again. “We won’t leave her behind.”

But Edon’s silence said it all: they already had.

Thank god he had Rafe to help him there—Rafe had been especially strong as a wolf, and as a human he was large, dense with muscle. He flexed his biceps often, preening. “Can’t keep up a body like this without food,” he’d say, and poke Edon in his stomach, or pinch his arm. Edon never said a word, but finally, he snatched a sandwich out of Rafe’s hands one day, and ever since he had been scavenging with them.

“I knew I’d get him eventually,” Rafe confided in Lawson. “He never could stand it when I teased him.”

“Well,
keep going,” Lawson said. “He’ll have to talk at some point.”

“Give him time,” Tala said. “He’s been through so much.”

“We all have,” Lawson reminded her. “And there is still so much to do.”

“Be gentle with him,” Tala said, and her eyes showed her own sadness. Lawson had almost forgotten that she and Ahramin were sisters—not just in spirit, not just because they were from the same den, but because they were from the same mother—and that Tala was mourning as well. “She was tough, and she didn’t have much time for someone weak like me, but I loved her. I miss her. I wish she was here with us.”

“We all do,” he said.

“He’ll come around eventually,” Tala said, putting a hand on his arm.

Lawson hoped so. He felt guilty enough leaving Ahramin behind as it was, and with every day Edon passed in silence, he felt worse. But he had to worry about the pack; he didn’t have time to focus on individual concerns.

That afternoon he gathered them together to strategize. “We have to start thinking about the future. We can’t keep living like this, stealing and scrounging and never sure where we’re going to sleep.”

There was silence,
then a surprising response, from a scratchy, low voice that resembled a familiar growl. “We can’t stay in any one place too long,” Edon said. “We have to keep moving, before the hounds catch our scent. We don’t know how long the Gates will hold them back.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Lawson nodded, relieved to have his brother speaking at last.

“We need to learn more about this world,” Malcolm said, ever the sensible one. “I’m the only one who knows how to read. And none of us can write. We need to find a place that’s safe for us. This isn’t it.” He waved his hand around the park they’d camped in, a bleak stretch of asphalt covered in dingy wooden benches where they’d eventually sleep.

“Where should we go?” Rafe asked, looking to Lawson for answers.

“Perhaps I can be of assistance,” boomed a voice from behind them. How could Lawson have missed someone sitting on one of the park benches? He could have sworn no one was there. But sure enough, when he turned around, a man was sitting there, an older gentleman with about three-quarters of a smile on his face. He was small and round, dressed in fine clothes that had seen finer days—a brown corduroy jacket and neat slacks, but Lawson could tell they were old and worn, the collar was frayed, and the hems of his coat were threadbare.

“You must
be the wolves. Allow me to introduce myself,” the man said. “I’m Arthur Beauchamp.”

“I
’m a warlock,” he explained, in response to their alarmed looks. “Actually, I’m a Norse god, doomed to mid-world, but why complicate things? That’s another story.”
¹

“Is that
how you know us? Is that how you recognized who—what—we are?” Lawson asked.

Arthur cocked his head to one side. He exuded a shabby geniality that was difficult to dislike. “Yes, and no, I suppose. Warlocks aren’t allowed to use their powers. Those of us who choose to live in the open must pretend to be mortal. I’ve been in hiding for some time now, so I suppose I’m not …
strict
… about keeping a rein on my magical activities. But I’ve been looking for you for a very long time. A friend asked me to do her the favor of finding you. She said that one day I would come upon a pack of young wolves, and they would need my help.”

“We
need some kind of help all right,” Edon muttered.

Lawson supposed it was a good thing that Edon was speaking, but why did he have to choose now, and with that tone?

“Well, that’s what I’m here for,” Arthur said, not at all perturbed. “Come, we have much to discuss, and you can’t stay here.”

Lawson looked around at the other wolves. It was easier to read their faces in their human forms. Malcolm was scared, Rafe was skeptical, and Edon was indifferent. It was Tala’s face that made the decision for him: there was an openness to the possibility that Arthur really was there to help, that he could be trusted, and Lawson trusted that.

“Okay,” he said.

Arthur packed all of them into his beat-up van, introduced them to fast-food takeout, then drove for several hours until they reached his apartment in the city. “This is an older part of Cleveland, a bit forgotten—like me,” he said. It was a cramped one-bedroom with one bathroom, and he apologized for the size, but Lawson assured him they’d be fine—they were used to the tight quarters of the den, after all.

“I’d use
magic to make it bigger, but that would be conspicuous,” Arthur told them. “What small amount of magic I’ve used to increase the space is all for storage.” He opened what appeared to be a closet door and turned on the light.

Lawson could barely see in, but apparently Malcolm had gotten an eyeful right away. “Whoa,” he said, and then ran into the room with a whoop.

Arthur wasn’t kidding about using magic, Lawson realized when he saw that the closet expanded on the inside to the size of a small library, with long mahogany tables and enormous bookshelves. “I thought this was more important than extra bedrooms,” Arthur said. “We have much work to do, all of us.”

“What kind of work?” Rafe asked suspiciously.

“As young Malcolm said, you need to learn to live in this world,” Arthur replied. “And you need to learn about the world you came from. The wolves have a long history, and I’m not sure how much of it you know.”

“We know some,” Lawson admitted. The masters were reluctant to teach the wolves much about their past, but stories were handed down. They knew that wolves had lived in mid-world once and had served a special purpose. Lawson told Arthur what they knew about the Guard and the passages. “Does that sound right?” he asked.

The old
man nodded. “You’ve got the basics down. But there’s a lot more to the story than just what’s happened to the wolves, and there’s a lot more at stake now that the dark fallen—those ‘masters’ of yours—are making trouble. We Norsemen don’t interfere with the lost children of the Almighty, it’s part of our restriction. But you are not similarly bound by our covenant, which is possibly why I was asked to help you. Now let’s all go into the library and get started. First things first, nothing happens without literacy.”

It felt to Lawson as if they spent every moment of the next month in the library. They must have slept at some point, bodies piled on top of each other as when they’d been puppies in the den, but whenever they were awake, they were in the library, studying.