Moon Called (Mercy Thompson #1)

Moon Called (Mercy Thompson #1) Page 5

A Vanagon resembles nothing so much as a Twinkie on wheels; a fifteen-foot-long, six-foot-wide Twinkie with as much aerodynamic styling as a barn door. In the twelve years that VW imported them into the US, they never put anything bigger in them than the four-cylinder wasser-boxer engine. My 1989 four-wheel-drive, four-thousand-pound Syncro's engine put out a whopping ninety horses.

In layman's terms, that means I was cruising up the interstate with a dead body and a wounded werewolf at sixty miles an hour. Downhill, with a good tailwind, the van could go seventy-five. Uphill I was lucky to make fifty. I could have pushed it a little faster, but only if I wanted to chance blowing my engine altogether. For some reason, the thought of being stranded by the roadside with my current cargo was enough to keep my foot off the gas pedal.

The highway stretched out before me in gentle curves that were mostly empty of traffic or scenic beauty unless you liked scrub desert better than I did. I didn't want to think of Mac, or of Jesse, scared and alone-or of Adam who might be dying because I chose to move him rather than call his pack. So I took out my cell phone.

I called my neighbors first. Dennis Cather was a retired pipefitter, and his wife Anna a retired nurse. They'd moved in two years ago and adopted me after I fixed their tractor.

"Yes." Anna's voice was so normal after the morning I'd had, it took me a moment to answer.

"Sorry to call you so early," I told her. "But I've been called out of town on a family emergency. I shouldn't be gone long-just a day or two-but I didn't check to make sure Medea had food and water."

"Don't fret, dear," she said. "We'll look after her. I hope that it's nothing serious."

I couldn't help but glance back at Adam in the rearview mirror. He was still breathing. "It's serious. One of my foster family is hurt."

"You go take care of what you need to," she said briskly. "We'll see to things here."

It wasn't until after I cut the connection that I wondered if I had involved them in something dangerous. Mac had been left on my doorstep for a reason-a warning to keep my nose out of someone's business. And I was most certainly sticking my whole head in it now.

I was doing as much as I could for Adam, and I thought of something I could do for Jesse. I called Zee.

Siebold Adelbertsmiter, Zee for short, had taught me everything I knew about cars. Most fae are very sensitive to iron, but Zee was a Metallzauber-which is a rather broad category name given to the few fae who could handle metal of all kinds. Zee preferred the modern American term "gremlin," which he felt better fit his talents. I wasn't calling him for his talents, but for his connections.

"Ja," said a gruff male voice.

"Hey, Zee, it's Mercy. I have a favor to ask."

"Ja sure, Liebling," he said. "What's up?"

I hesitated. Even after all this time, the rule of keeping pack trouble in the pack was hard to break-but Zee knew everyone in the fae community.

I outlined the past day to him, as best I could.

"So you think this baby werewolf of yours brought this trouble here? Why then did they take our kleine Jesse?"

"I don't know," I said. "I'm hoping that when Adam recovers he'll know something more."

"So you are asking me to see if anyone I know has seen these strange wolves in hopes of finding Jesse?"

"There were at least four werewolves moving into the Tri-Cities. You'd think that someone among the fae would have noticed." Because the Tri-Cities was so close to the Walla Walla Fae Reservation, there were more fae living here than was usual.

"Ja," Zee agreed heavily. "You'd think. I will ask around. Jesse is a good girl; she should not be in these evil men's hands longer than we can help."

"If you go by the garage, would you mind putting a note in the window?" I asked. "There's a 'Closed for the Holidays' sign under the counter in the office."

"You think they might come after me if I opened it for you?" he asked. Zee often ran the garage if I had to be out of town. "You may be right. Ja, gut. I'll open the garage today and tomorrow."

It had been a long time since Siebold Adelbertsmiter of the Black Forest had been sung about, so long that those songs had faded from memory, but there was something of the spirit of the Heldenlieder, the old German hero songs, about him still.

"A werewolf doesn't need a sword or gun to tear you to bits," I said, unable to leave it alone, though I knew better than to argue with the old gremlin once he'd made up his mind. "Your metalworking magic won't be much help against one."

He snorted. "Don't you worry about me, Liebling. I was killing werewolves when this country was still a Viking colony." Many of the lesser fae talked about how old they were, but Zee had told me that most of them shared a life span similar to humankind. Zee was a lot older than that.

I sighed and gave in. "All right. But be careful. If you're going to be there, I have a parts order that should be in. Could you check it for me? I haven't ordered from this place before, but my usual source was out."

" Ja wohl. Leave it to me."

The next call I made was to Stefan's answering machine.

"Hey, Stefan," I told it. "This is Mercy. I'm headed to Montana today. I don't know when I'll be back. Probably late this week. I'll give you a call." I hesitated, but there really wasn't a good way to say the next part. "I had to haul a dead body in your van. It's fine; Elizeveta Arkadyevna cleaned it. I'll explain when I get back."

Mentioning Elizaveta reminded me of something else I needed to do. Adam's house was on the end of the road, but it was clearly visible from the river. Someone would notice that the couch was sitting in the flowerbeds and call the police if the mess wasn't cleaned up soon.

I had her number on my phone, though I'd never had occasion to use it before. I got her answering machine and left a message telling her there was a mess at Adam's house, there had been a dead man on my porch, Jesse was missing, and I was taking Adam, who was wounded, somewhere he'd be safe. Then I closed the phone and put it away. I didn't know what happened at Adam's house, but that didn't stop me from feeling guilty and responsible. If I hadn't interfered last night when the two bullies came to find Mac, would everyone still be alive? If I'd sent Mac to Montana, to the Marrok, rather than letting Adam take him, what would that have changed?

Taking Mac to the Marrok had never even occurred to me. I hadn't contacted Bran since he'd sent me away from the pack, and he'd returned the favor. I took a quick glance behind my seat at the blue tarp concealing Mac's body. Well, I was bringing Mac to him now.

I found myself remembering the shy grin Mac had worn when I told him my name. I wiped my cheeks and fiercely blinked back further tears, but it was no use. I cried for him, for his parents and his brother who didn't even know he was dead. Doubtless they were all sitting beside their phones, waiting for him to call again.

I was coming down the grade into Spokane before more pressing worries distracted me from grief and guilt: Adam began stirring. My fear that Adam would die was instantly overwhelmed by the worry that he'd heal too fast.

I still had well over two hundred miles to go, most of it two-lane mountain highway meandering through dozens of small towns at twenty-five miles an hour. The last sixty miles was on a road marked "other" on the state highway map-as opposed to highway or road. As I recalled, it was gravel most of the way. I figured it would take me at least four more hours.

Dominant wolves heal faster than the submissive wolves. By my rough estimate, it would be no more than two days before Adam was recovered enough to control his wolf-which would be capable of mayhem long before that. I needed Bran before Adam was mobile, and, if he was stirring already, I was going to be lucky if I made it.

When I hit Coeur d'Alene, where I'd have to leave the interstate for highway, I gassed up then drove to the first fast-food burger place I found and bought thirty cheeseburgers. The bemused teenager who started handing me bags through the service window peered curiously at me. I didn't explain, and she couldn't see my passengers because of the van's curtains.

I parked in the restaurant's parking lot, snatched a couple of the bags, stepped over Mac, and began stripping the buns off the meat. Adam was too weak to do more than growl at me and snatch the cheese-and-catsup-covered meat as fast as I could toss it to him. He ate almost twenty patties before he subsided into his previous comalike state.

The first few flakes of snow began falling on us as I took the highway north.

I drove into Troy, Montana, cursing the heavy wet snow that had distracted me so I missed my turnoff, which should have been several miles earlier. I topped off my gas tank, got directions, chained up, and headed back the way I'd come.

The snow was falling fast enough that the snow crews hadn't been able to keep up with it. The tracks of the cars preceding me were rapidly filling.

The gas station clerk's directions fresh in my mind, I slowed as I crossed back over the Yaak River. It was a baby river compared to the Kootenai, which I'd been driving next to for the past few hours.

I watched the side of the road carefully, and it was a good thing I did. The small green sign that marked the turnoff was half-covered in wet snow.

There was only one set of tracks up the road. They turned off at a narrow drive and, after that, I found my way up the road by driving where there were no trees. Happily, the trees were dense and marked the way pretty clearly.

The road twisted up and down the narrow river valley, and I was grateful for the four-wheel drive. Once, a couple of black-tailed deer darted in front of me. They gave me an irritated glance and trotted off.

It had been a long time since I'd been that way-I hadn't even had my driver's license then. The road was unfamiliar, and I began to worry I'd miss my turn. The road divided, one-half clearly marked, but the other half, the one I had to take, was barely wide enough for my van.

"Well," I told Adam, who was whining restlessly, "if we end up in Canada and you haven't eaten me yet, I suppose we can turn around, come back, and try again."

I'd about decided I was going to have to do just that, when I topped a long grade and saw a hand-carved wooden sign. I stopped the van.

Aspen Creek, the sign read in graceful script, carved and painted white on a dark brown background, 23 miles. As I turned the van to follow the arrow, I wondered when Bran had decided to allow someone to post a sign. Maybe he'd gotten tired of having to send out guides-but he'd been adamant about keeping a low profile when I left.

I don't know why I expected everything to be the same. After all, I'd changed a good deal in the years since I'd last been there. I should have expected that Aspen Creek would have changed, too. I didn't have to like it.

The uninitiated would be forgiven for thinking there were only four buildings in Aspen Creek: the gas station/post office, the school, the church, and the motel. They wouldn't see the homes tucked unobtrusively up the draws and under the trees. There were a couple of cars in front of the gas station, but otherwise the whole town looked deserted. I knew better. There were always people watching, but they wouldn't bother me unless I did something unusual-like dragging a wounded werewolf out of my van.

I stopped in front of the motel office, just under the Aspen Creek Motel sign, which bore more than a passing resemblance to the sign I'd followed to town. The old motel was built the way the motor hotels had been in the middle of the last century-a long, narrow, and no-frills building designed so guests could park their vehicles in front of their rooms.

There was no one in the office, but the door was unlocked. It had been updated since I'd been there last and the end result was rustic charm-which was better than the run-down 1950s tacky it had been.

I hopped over the front desk and took a key marked #1. Number one was the Marrok's safe room, specially designed to contain uncooperative werewolves.

I found a piece of paper and a pen and wrote: Wounded in #1. Please Do Not Disturb. I left the note on the desk where it couldn't be missed, then I returned to the van and backed it up to the room.

Getting Adam out of the van was going to be rough no matter what. At least when I dragged him into it, he'd been unconscious. I opened the reinforced metal door of the motel room and took a look around. The furnishing was new, but sparse, just a bed and a nightstand that was permanently fixed against the wall-nothing to help me get a werewolf who weighed twice what I did out of the van and into the room without hurting one or the other of us. There was no porch as there had been at Adam's house, which left almost a four-foot drop from the back of the van to the ground.

In the end I decided calling for help was better than hurting Adam worse. I went back to the office and picked up the phone. I hadn't called Sam's number since I'd left, but some things are just ingrained. Even though he was the reason I'd left here, he was the first one I thought to call for help.

"Hello," answered a woman's voice that sounded completely unfamiliar.

I couldn't speak. I hadn't realized how much I'd been counting on hearing Samuel until I heard someone else's voice instead.

"Marlie? Is there something wrong at the motel? Do you need me to send Carl?" She must have caller ID, I thought stupidly.

She sounded frantic, but I recognized her voice at last, and felt a wave of relief. I don't know why Lisa Stoval was answering this number, but the mention of Carl and the sudden tension in her voice cued me in. I guess she had just never sounded cheerful when she talked to me.

Some things might have changed, but some things I had just forgotten. Aspen Creek had a population of about five hundred people, and only about seventy were werewolves, but I seldom thought about the human majority. Lisa and her husband Carl were both human. So was Marlie, at least she had been when I left. She'd also been about six years old.

"I don't know where Marlie is," I told her. "This is Mercedes, Mercedes Thompson. There's no one in the motel office. I'd really appreciate it if you'd send Carl down here, or tell me who else to call. I have the Alpha from the Columbia Basin Pack in my van. He's badly wounded, and I need help getting him into the motel room. Even better would be if you could tell me how to get ahold of Bran."

Bran didn't have a telephone at his home-or hadn't when I left. For all I knew he had a cell phone now.

Lisa, like most of the women of Aspen Creek, had never liked me. But she wasn't one of those people who let a little thing like that get in the way of doing what was right and proper.

"Bran and some of the others have taken the new wolves out for their first hunt. Marlie's probably holed up somewhere crying. Lee, her brother, was one of the ones who tried to Change. He didn't make it."

I'd forgotten. How could I have forgotten? The last full moon of October, all of those who chose to try to become werewolves were allowed to come forward. In a formal ceremony they were savaged by Bran, or by some other wolf who loved them, in the hopes that they would rise Changed. Most of them didn't make it. I remembered the tension that gripped the town through October and the sadness of November. Thanksgiving had a different meaning to the residents of Aspen Creek than it did for the rest of America.

"I'm sorry," I said inadequately, feeling rawly incapable of dealing with more dead youngsters-I remembered Lee, too. "Lee was a good kid."

"I'll send Carl." Lisa's voice was crisp, denying me the right to grieve or sympathize. She hung up without saying good-bye.

I avoided thinking-or looking at the tarp that covered Mac-while I sat in the van waiting for help. Instead, I fed Adam the remaining hamburgers while we waited. They were cold and congealed, but it didn't seem to bother the wolf. When they were gone, he closed his eyes and ignored me.

At long last, Carl pulled up next to me in a beat-up Jeep and climbed out. He was a big man, and had always been more of a man of action than words. He hugged me and thumped me on my back.

"Don't be such a stranger, Mercy," he said, then laughed at my look of shock and ruffled my hair. I'd forgotten he liked to do that, forgotten the easy affection he showed to everyone-even Bran. "Lisa said you have Adam here and he's in bad shape?"

Of course he'd know who the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack was. Adam's pack was closest to Aspen Creek.

I nodded and opened the back of my van so he could see what we were dealing with. Adam looked better than he had when I first put him in the van, but that wasn't saying much. I couldn't see the bones of his ribs anymore, but his coat was matted with blood and covered with wounds.

Carl whistled through his teeth, but all he said was, "We'll need to tie his jaws shut until we get him in. I've got something we can use in the Jeep."

He brought an Ace bandage and we wound it round and round Adam's muzzle. The wolf opened his eyes once, but didn't struggle.

It took a lot of grunting, a few swear words, and a little sweat, but the two of us managed to get Adam out of the van and into the room. Once we had him on the bed, I made Carl get back before I unwound the bandage and freed the wolf. I was fast, but even so, Adam caught my forearm with an eyetooth and drew blood. I jumped back as he rolled off his side and struggled to stand-driven to defend himself against the pain we'd caused him.

"Out," Carl said, holding the door for me.

I complied and we shut the door behind us. Carl held it shut while I turned the key in the dead bolt. Unlike most motel rooms, this dead bolt operated by key from both sides-for just such situations. The windows were barred, the vents sealed. Number one served as prison and hospital on occasion: sometimes both.

Adam was safe-for now. Once he'd regained a little more strength things could still get problematical unless I tracked down Bran.

"Do you know where Bran took the new wolves?" I asked, shutting the back hatch of the van. Carl hadn't asked me about Mac-he didn't have a wolf's nose to tell him what was in the tarp-and I decided that Mac could ride with me for a while longer. Bran could decide what to do with his body.

"You don't want to go after him, Mercy," Carl was saying. "Too dangerous. Why don't you come home with me. We'll feed you while you wait."

"How many wolves are left in town?" I asked. "Is there anyone who could resist Adam's wolf?"

That was the downside of being dominant. If you did go moonstruck, you took everyone who was less dominant with you.

Carl hesitated. "Adam's pretty weak yet. Bran will be back by dark."

Something hit the door, and we both jumped.

"He took them up to the Lover's Canyon," Carl told me, giving in to the obvious. "Be careful."

"Bran will have control of the new ones," I told him. "I'll be all right."

"I'm not worried about them. You left enemies behind you, girl."

I smiled tightly. "I can't help what I am. If they are my enemies, it was not by my choice."

"I know. But they'll still kill you if they can."

The lovers were a pair of trees that had grown up twined around each other near the entrance to a small canyon about ten miles north of town. I parked next to a pair of old-style Land Rovers, a nearly new Chevy Tahoe, and a HumVee-the expensive version. Charles, Bran's son, was a financial genius, and the Marrok's pack would never be begging on street corners. When I left here, I'd had ten thousand dollars in a bank account, the result of part of my minimum wage earnings invested by Charles.

I stripped off my clothes in the van, jumped out into knee-deep snow, and shut the door. It was colder up in the mountains than it had been in Troy, and the snow had a crust of hard ice crystals that cut into the bare skin of my feet.

I shifted as fast as I could. It might have been safer to go as a human, but I didn't have the right kind of clothing on for a winter hike in Montana. I am not absolutely sure there is a right kind of clothing for a winter hike in Montana. Running as a coyote, I don't mind the cold all that much.

I'd grown used to city scents and sounds. The forest scents were no less strong, just different: fir, aspen, and pine instead of exhaust, fried grease, and humans. I heard the distinctive rat-a-tat of a woodpecker, and, faintly, the howl of a wolf-too deep to be that of a timber wolf.

The fresh snow, which was still falling, had done a fair job of hiding their tracks, but I could still smell them. Bran and his mate, Leah, both had brushed against the bough of a white pine. Charles had left tracks where the ground was half-sheltered by a boulder. Once my nose drew me to the right places, I could see where the old snow had been broken by paws before the snow had begun, and the tracks weren't difficult to follow.

I hesitated when the wolves' tracks began to separate. Bran had taken the new wolves-there seemed to be three of them-while his sons, Charles and Samuel, and Leah, Bran's mate, broke off, probably to hunt up game in the hopes of chasing it back to the rest.

I needed to find Bran to tell him what had happened, to get his help for Adam-but I followed Sam's trail instead. I couldn't help it. I'd been in love with him since I was fourteen.

Not that I am in love with him now, I assured myself, following his tracks down an abrupt drop and back up to a ridgetop where the snow wasn't as deep because the wind periodically swept it clean.

I was only a teenager when I last saw him, I thought. I hadn't spoken to him since then, and he hadn't tried to contact me either. Still, it had been his number I had called for help. I hadn't even thought about calling anyone else.

On the tail of that thought, I realized the forest had fallen silent behind me.

The winter woods were quiet. The birds, except for a scattering of nut hatches, cedar waxwings, and a few others like the woodpecker I'd heard, had gone south. But there was an ominous quality to the silence behind me that was too heavy to be only winter's stillness. I was being stalked.

I didn't look around, nor did I speed up. Werewolves chase things that run from them.

I wasn't really frightened. Bran was out there somewhere, and Samuel was even nearer. I could smell the earth-and-spice musk that belonged to him alone; the wind carried it to me. The tracks I was following had been laid several hours ago. He must have been returning the way he'd come; otherwise, he'd have been too far away for me to scent.

The new wolves were all with Bran, and the one following me was alone: if there had been more than one, I would have heard something. So I didn't have to be worried about the new wolves killing me by mistake because they thought I was a coyote.

I didn't think it was Charles stalking me either. It would be beneath his dignity to frighten me on purpose. Samuel liked playing practical jokes, but the wind doesn't lie, and it told me he was somewhere just ahead.

I was pretty sure it was Leah. She wouldn't kill me no matter what Carl had implied-not with Bran sure to find out-but she would hurt me if she could because she didn't like me. None of the women in Bran's pack liked me.

The wind carrying Samuel's scent was coming mostly from the west. The trees on that side were young firs, probably regrowing after a fire that must have happened a decade or so in the past. The firs were tucked together in a close-packed blanket that wouldn't slow me at all, but a werewolf was a lot bigger than I.

I scratched my ear with a hind foot and used the movement to get a good look behind me. There was nothing to see, so my stalker was far enough away for me to reach the denser trees. I put my foot down and darted for the trees.

The wolf behind me howled her hunting song. Instinct takes over when a wolf is on the hunt. Had she been thinking, Leah would never have uttered a sound-because she was immediately answered by a chorus of howls. Most of the wolves sounded like they were a mile or so farther into the mountains, but Samuel answered her call from no more than a hundred yards in front of me. I altered my course accordingly and found my way through the thicket of trees and out the other side where Samuel had been traveling.

He stopped dead at my appearance-I suppose he was expecting a deer or elk, not a coyote. Not me.

Samuel was big, even for a werewolf. His fur was winter white, and his eyes appeared almost the same shade, an icy white-blue, colder than the snow I ran through, all the more startling for the black ring that edged his iris. There was plenty of room for me to dive under his belly and out the other side, leaving him between me and my pursuer.

Before he had a chance to do more than give me that first startled look, Leah appeared, a gold-and-silver huntress, as beautiful as Samuel in her own way: light and fire where he was ice. She saw Samuel and skidded ungracefully to a halt. I suppose she'd been so hot on the chase she hadn't been paying attention to Samuel's call.

I could see the instant he realized who I was. He cocked his head, and his body grew still. He recognized me all right, but I couldn't tell how he felt about it. After the space of a deep breath, he turned back to look at Leah.

Leah cringed and rolled onto her back-though as Bran's wife she should have outranked Samuel. Unimpressed by the show, he curled his lips away from his fangs and growled, a deep rumbling sound that echoed in my chest. It felt just like old times: Samuel protecting me from the rest of the pack.

A wolf howled, nearer than before, and Samuel stopped growling long enough to answer. He looked expectantly toward the north, and in a few minutes two wolves came into sight. The first one was the color of cinnamon with four black feet. He was a shade bigger even than Samuel.

The second werewolf was considerably smaller. From a distance he could have passed as one of the wolves that had only this decade begun to return to Montana. His coat was all the shades between white and black, combining to make him appear medium gray. His eyes were pale gold, and the end of his tail was white.

Charles, the cinnamon wolf, stopped at the edge of the trees and began to change. He was an oddity among werewolves: a natural-born werewolf rather than made. The only one of his kind that I have ever heard of.

Charles's mother had been a Salish woman, the daughter of a medicine man. She had been dying when Bran came across her, shortly after he arrived in Montana. According to my foster mother, who told me the story, Bran had been so struck with her beauty that he couldn't just let her die, so he Changed her and made her his mate. I never could wrap my imagination around the thought of Bran being overcome by love at first sight, but maybe he had been different two hundred years ago.

At any rate, when she became pregnant, she used the knowledge of magic her father had given her to keep from changing at the full moon. Female werewolves cannot have children: the change is too violent to allow the fetus to survive. But Charles's mother, as her father's daughter, had some magic of her own. She managed to carry Charles to term, but was so weakened by her efforts that she died soon after his birth. She left her son with two gifts. The first was that he changed easier and faster. The second was a gift for magic that was unusual in werewolves. Bran's pack did not have to hire a witch to clean up after them; they had Charles.

Bran, the smaller of the two wolves, continued on to where I stood awaiting him. Samuel stepped aside reluctantly, though he was still careful to keep between Leah and me.

There was no sense of power about Bran, not like the one his sons and Adam carried-I'm not certain how he contained it. I've been told that sometimes even other werewolves, whose senses are sharper than mine, mistake him for a real wolf or some wolf-dog hybrid to account for his size.

I don't know how old he is. All I know is that he was old when he came to this continent to work as a fur trapper in the late eighteenth century. He'd traveled to this area of Montana with the Welsh cartographer David Thompson and settled to live with his Salish mate.

He padded up to me and touched his muzzle behind my ear. I didn't have to sink submissively to be lower than he, but I hunched down anyway. He took my nose between his fangs and released it, a welcome and a gentle chiding all in one-though I wasn't certain what he was chiding me for.

Once he released me, he stalked past Samuel and stared down at his wife, still lying in the snow. She whined anxiously and he bared his teeth, unappeased. It seemed that even though he'd once asked me to leave, I wasn't to be viewed as fair game.

Bran turned his back on her to look at Charles, who had completed his transformation and stood tall and human. Charles's features were pure Salish, as if the only thing that he'd gotten from his father was the ability to change.

I've been told that the Native Americans were shy about their bodies. It was certainly true of Charles. He'd used his magic to clothe himself and stood garbed in fur-lined buckskins that looked as if they had come out of another century.

I, like most shapeshifters, was nearly as comfortable naked as clothed-except in the middle of November, high up in the Rockies of Montana with a chill Canadian wind blowing from the northwest and the temperature beginning to drop as the snow quit falling at last. And as soon as Charles started to speak, I was going to have to become human so I could talk to him.

"My father bids you welcome to the territory of the Marrok," Charles said, his voice carrying the flat tones of his mother's people with just a hint of the Welsh lilt Bran no longer spoke with unless he was really angry. "He wonders, however, why you have chosen now to come."

I took human form, quickly kicked snow away from me, then knelt to keep myself lower than Bran. I sucked in my breath at the chill of the wind and the snow under my shins. Samuel moved between me and the worst of the wind. It helped, but not enough.

"I came on pack business," I told them.

Charles raised his eyebrows. "You come smelling of blood and death." Charles had always had a good nose.

I nodded. "I brought the Columbia Basin Alpha here. He's been badly wounded. I also brought the body of another wolf, hoping someone here could tell me how he died and who killed him."

Bran made a soft sound, and Charles nodded. "Tell us what is necessary now. You can give us the details later."

So I told them what I knew, as succinctly as possible, beginning with Mac's story, as he had told it to me, and ending with Mac's death, Adam's wounds, and Jesse's kidnapping. By the time I was finished, my teeth were chattering, and I could barely understand myself. Even when I shifted back into coyote form, I couldn't quite warm up.

Bran glanced at Samuel, who gave a woof and took off at a dead run.

"Bran will finish the hunt with the new ones," Charles told me. "It is their first hunt, and should not be interrupted. Samuel is going back to take care of Adam-He'll take a shorter route than the automobiles can manage, so he'll be there before us. I'll ride back with you and take care of your dead."

On the tail end of Charles's words, Bran trotted off into the forest without looking at me again. Leah rose from her submissive pose, growled at me-like it was my fault she'd gotten herself in trouble-and followed Bran.

Charles, still in human form, strode off in the direction of the cars. He wasn't talkative at the best of times and, with me still four-footed and mute, he didn't bother to say anything at all. He waited politely on the passenger side of the van while I transformed again and dove into my clothes.

He didn't object to my driving as Samuel would have. I'd never seen Charles drive a car; he preferred to ride horseback or run as a wolf. He climbed into the passenger seat and glanced once behind him at the tarped body. Without commenting, he belted himself in.

When we got back to the motel, I pulled in at the office door. Carl was in the office with a red-eyed young woman who must be the missing Marlie, though I couldn't see the six-year-old I'd known.

"Mercedes needs a room," Charles told them.

Carl didn't question him, just handed me a key. "This is on the side away from the road, as far from #1 as we get."

I looked down at the #18 stamped on the key. "Don't you know that you're not supposed to put the room number on the key anymore?" I asked.

"We don't have much trouble with burglary," Carl said, smiling. "Besides, I know you spent a couple of years working here. Except for number one, there are only three different locks for all the rooms."

I smiled at him and tossed the key up once and caught it. "True enough."

Charles opened the door for me as we left. "If you'll get your luggage and give me your car keys, I'll take care of the body."

I must have looked surprised.

"Don't worry," he told me dryly. "I'll have Carl drive."

"No luggage," I told him. I pulled out my keys and gave them to him, but caught his hand before he pulled away. "Mac was a good man," I told him. I don't know why I said it.

Charles didn't touch anyone casually. I had always thought he rather despised me, though he treated me with the same remote courtesy he used with everyone else. But he put his free hand on the back of my head and pulled my forehead briefly against his shoulder.

"I'll take care of him," he promised as he stepped back.

"His full name was Alan MacKenzie Frazier."

He nodded. "I'll see that he is treated well."

"Thank you," I told him, then turned and walked toward my room before I could start to cry again.