Running with the Pack

Running with the Pack Page 20

She ought to have been wary. Ought to have known he would carry another weapon; that a second knife could be secreted more easily than a gun. He moved faster than a dying man should, but the surge of muscle warned her. The blade glittered and she turned into it, ducking low, body transformed without a thought. The horse’s neck had been massive in her jaws; his wrist was fragile, and bone shattered all too clearly beneath his scream.

She tore the sound out with a single bite, spitting away flesh she had no desire to feast on. A wolf would have taken his throat before, and never learned that he’d known what he hunted. That was worse, worse by far, than she might have imagined. She would have to leave Britain, find her brethren elsewhere and warn them.

A branch cracked, folly of human intrusion. Markéta snarled and fell back from Thomas’s body, lost between knowing whether to run or to take human form and bluff. Run; she would run, away from England’s shores, but first there were other men to be dealt with.

Radcliffe stood at the edge of the clearing, a gun held loosely in his hands as he stared at Thomas’s body. “His father stole horses from my grandfather,” he said eventually, softly, though there were no other humans nearby to hear him. “I had hoped for some satisfaction in that. Some mark of watching him embarrassed by a woman out-hunting him. I had not imagined . . . this. It is you, Markéta, is it not?” His gaze lifted to her, almost apologetic. “I saw, when you . . . when you spoke to him. When you took human form. You are a . . . ”

“Wiaralde-wulf.” Those words, so ancient they were made for a wolfen tongue, still hurt her throat. Markéta changed, cautiously, to her human form, to speak more easily. “A world wolf, by our own name. Werewolf, by yours. As old as man, and closer to the world than you now are.”

“Mother of God.” Radcliffe fell back a step, gun clutched to his chest like a woman might clutch a kerchief. “Markéta?”

“Please, sir.” A whisper of humor bent her smile, though she could feel blood drying around it. “’Miss Alvarez.’”

He drew himself up, gun still held like a bludgeoning weapon. “You are naked in my sight, dear woman. I believe I might call you by your given name.”

“Only if you intend to make me your wife.” Her gaze flickered to the gun. “Will you shoot me, if I run?”

“Would you have me?” he asked at the same time. They stared at one another, Markéta still primed to run, and Radcliffe’s eyes dropped to the gun he held. He cast it away with a shudder, then looked to her again. “You said to Thomas that you were the ones who chose to heed the wild. Can a man make that choice even still? Can he become . . . wiaralde-wulf even now?”

“Not in memory.” Markéta hesitated, creeping forward a few steps. He was unarmed; she could kill him, if she must. “But in legend . . . .”

“In legend, as we tell it? Through a bite?”

“And through the tending of the wound. Why would you want it? We are hunted.” Markéta spat at Thomas’s body.

Radcliffe smiled faintly. “What man would want a wife capable of such astonishing feats that he could not himself achieve? Would you have me, Markéta Alvarez?”

She glanced at herself: naked, bloody, fingers caked with gore and her face and throat no doubt worse. Beneath the horror, well-enough endowed in human standards, her frame neither overwhelmed nor embarrassed by the curves she possessed. Then she lifted her gaze to Radcliffe’s, watching his face and stance as she shifted to her wolf form. Scenting for his apprehension, preparing herself to face fear.

She found curiosity in his cant, and wonder, easily read as a puppy’s. Eagerness, like a pup’s enthusiasm for exploration, though he was a man fully grown. Caution threaded through it: he saw her as the predator she was, but extended wary trusts. Beneath it all, though, a line of confidence was struck, familiar tone seen in any pack leader. He was certain of the choice he was asking both himself and her to make.

Humans were clearly mad. Markéta changed again—she hadn’t made the change so many times in a day in years, if ever—and sat staring at Radcliffe with a wolfish gaze, waiting for him to falter. Minutes dragged on, and he remained steady, until she herself looked away and gave a short sharp laugh. “Then I suppose we should find water that I might wash myself in, and my clothes, and then go to young Lord Thomas with the sad news about his father. And then I think we shall visit France, Master Radcliffe, there to further discuss our future.”

“Randolf,” he said absently, and offered her a hand to help her stand. “My given name is Randolf. Will you call me by it?”

Markéta froze, then laughed and put her hand in his. “Randolf. Wolf’s shield. Did you know the meaning of your name, sir?”

He drew her upward, only smiling when she was on her feet. “I did. It bodes well, does it not?”

“If one is bound by superstition and coincidence, perhaps.”

Radcliffe’s eyebrows rose. “And are you?”

“I’m wiaralde-wulf, Master Radcliffe, a creature of superstition myself. I suppose I must then be bound by it.” Her teasing faltered. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had anyone to walk beside, Randolf. Are you certain of this?”

“I am certain,” he murmured, “that there is a world awaiting us that we cannot yet imagine. Let us not disappoint it, Markéta. Let us see what discoveries lie in store.”

And what future her people might find, she did not say, if there were men even now willing to embrace the wiaralde. There would be time enough for those thoughts in the years ahead, and she had spent so long thinking as a human did. It would be good, for a little while, to embrace the wolf.

With a smile and a loll of her tongue, she leapt forward, not to abandon, not ever to abandon, but to scout ahead of her shield until he might learn to be a wolf himself.

LOCKED DOORS

STEPHANIE BURGIS

“My dad can’t come to parent-teacher conferences on Monday,” Tyler says. He keeps his voice calm and steady as he meets his English teacher’s eyes. “He has to work.”

Tyler is a pro at this. He can tell exactly when doubt flickers in Mrs. Jankovic’s eyes and when his open, friendly expression settles it for her. There are too many eighth-graders in her class for her to chase up worries about every one of them. Too many kids in this middle school, period.

That’s why Tyler’s dad chose it for him.

When Tyler gets home, he hears his dad moving around in the basement—probably getting it ready for next week. Tyler scoops out some ice cream for himself and settles down at the kitchen table to do his homework early. His friend Paul is coming over later, and Tyler’s dad has promised to rent them a DVD. They’re hoping for Tomb Raider, but he’s told them not to hold their breath.

Footsteps sound on the basement stairs, behind the closed door. They pause for so long that Tyler turns around to check that the industrial-strength bolt hasn’t accidentally locked itself into place. He’s craning around to look, vanilla ice cream still sliding down his throat, when the door bangs open.

The first thing he notices is the smell, acrid and unmistakable.

“Sorry,” his dad mumbles. He averts his eyes from Tyler’s shocked face, stumbles into the kitchen. He’s already losing coordination, his movements shambling.

Tyler finds his voice, but it comes out as a squeak. “It’s not supposed to come for a week!”

“I guess it’s starting early this month.” His dad shrugs, paws at the freezer, sighs heavily. “Can you get the ice cream out for me?”

Tyler shoves his chair back, hurries to the fridge. All his senses prickle as he passes close to his father. There’s no visible sign yet—not unless you know how to read his dad’s expression—but all his other senses can tell that the Change has begun.

Enemy, they whisper. Goosebumps crisscross his skin. Run away.

Dad, he tells himself, and slips between his dad’s big body and the fridge. He feels his dad’s uneven breathing ruffle his hair as he opens the freezer. He doesn’t let himself look back or edge away. He pulls out the carton of ice cream and scoops out three dollops into a blue bowl. Only then does he allow himself to turn around.

Yellow streaks have already appeared in his father’s eyes. The smell of heavy musk is growing.

How long does he have left?

The phone rings. Tyler shoves the bowl at his dad and darts for it.

“Hey, Ty.” It’s Paul, his voice bright and cheerful. “What movie are we gonna watch? Did we score Tomb Raider?”

“Sorry,” Tyler says. His voice wants to quaver, but he won’t let it. You can never let anyone suspect, his mother told him. That was the first rule she taught him, and the last, before she left him here alone with It. “Tonight isn’t so good after all. Maybe we can do it some other time?”

Tyler has a game he plays with himself, sometimes. Times like tonight, when the heavy bolt is locked into place, but he can still hear It lurching through the basement, searching for a way out. He looks through the DVD collection on the bookcase, hums to himself to drown out the noise, and plays the Game.