Hunter’s Moon

A Cat Clan Novella

 

By

C.L. Bevill

 

SMASHWORDS EDITION

 

Hunter’s Moon

PUBLISHED BY:

C.L. Bevill on Smashwords

 

© 2014 by Caren L. Bevill

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations to books and critical reviews. This story is a work of fiction. Characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

 

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

 

 

 

This novella is a companion piece to the Moon

Trilogy and the fourth in the Cat Clan novellas.

 

The order is:

 

Black Moon

Amber Moon

Silver Moon

 

Harvest Moon

Blood Moon

Crescent Moon

Hunter’s Moon

 

 

Dedicated to the memory of

Cathy Coddington 1943-2014

 

 

Chapter 1

 

Who keeps company with wolves,

will learn to howl. – Proverb

 

Claire Bennett stopped abruptly. Her head came up, and her ears swiveled to better locate the noise that had caused her to pause.

The northern woods of Manitoba weren’t ever truly quiet, but never before had she heard so many planes flying at the same time. Occasionally there was the drone of a single engine plane of a hunter seeking the thrill of elk or moose. Less common were the planes of naturalists exploring the great expanse of the boreal forest. Some of the Inuit near Tadoule Lake also owned planes, but they flew irregularly. Once there had been the roaring growl of an immense military plane thundering through the skies from the east to the west to a destination that she couldn’t discern. Even the clan’s rarely used helicopter sounded so obviously dissimilar to the whining engines in the distance.

This? This was different. A tiny amount of fear coursed through her blood. Different was exciting. Different was thrilling. Different was also dangerous.

Her parents had drilled it into her and to her sister. Strangers were not to be trusted. The humans thought that the otherworlders didn’t exist. Worse, some of them treated shifters like animals to be destroyed at their whim.

Claire was one of the otherworlders. A wolf shifter, an otherworlder born to other otherworlders. Some of the humans called them werewolves, but the wolf shifters found the term to be insulting. They had come to the northernmost regions of Canada for the freedom they could hold, to preserve their secrets, and to be content in isolation.

Their clan held mostly wolf shifters, families with happy children and people who were happy not to be forced to hide their innermost beings. They weren’t all wolf shifters, however. A few bear shifters blended in well, and one man who Claire thought was probably some kind of moose, but not a moose she had ever seen before. She’d had to look it up on the Internet and discovered it was an elk-combined-with-moose-like animal that had gone extinct ten thousand years before.

Within the clan there were also a few humans. They were mostly Native Americans who didn’t freak at the thought of paranormality in their world. There were also a few human friends outside the clan who held their secrets as well as they did.

But multiple planes flying over the forest, flying in a way that suggested purpose and direction, was something to be reckoned with.

Something new. Different. Dangerous?

Claire lifted her wolf head and howled. Mere seconds later, her sister, Ula, answered from the south. They had been out hunting, a long way from their home, over a hundred miles to the south where whitetail deer were more common. A small herd was the object of their pursuit. Claire and Ula planned to take down several and then radio back home to get Russ to fly out and pick up the meat. Claire didn’t mind bringing the animals down, nor did she mind cleaning the carcasses, but she would be damned if she was going to drag the meat the rough hundred miles to home. Even if they hadn’t brought the Willys Jeep, she wouldn’t want to disrupt the hunt when they got going. The clan needed meat, and the deer population was booming.

They hadn’t brought down even one of the deer when Claire heard the sound of distant motors. Not one plane, but several. She found the tallest hill in the area and surveyed the land before her. The sun was up and had been since shortly after four a.m. It was, after all, June, and the days were long on the upside of the world. The sun wouldn’t set until after ten p.m.

Because of her exceptional wolf vision, Claire spotted the distant planes working a systematic pattern. She even recognized some of the planes as belonging to bush pilots who worked out of Churchill, the nearest town in Manitoba. The one human they trusted wouldn’t be with them though. Jake was a pilot who owned his plane and was one of the few humans they knew wouldn’t spill their secrets. He might have already called the clan to warn them.

Claire and Ula wouldn’t have known. Eager to let their inner beasts, out, they’d stripped out of their clothes and changed into wolf form at first light. They hadn’t been near their packs and satphones for hours. The herd of deer had been unusually elusive and antsy, ready to run at the slightest hint of predators in the area. Now Claire had an idea why.

Clearly, the planes had been around for a while. The forest animals were aware of them. Claire and Ula would have been aware, too if they hadn’t been driving the Willys. They hadn’t seen anyone for days, not even the odd hunter, and she wondered if everyone was sparking to the news that strangers were in the woods. Worse, they were strangers who had a lot of money, resources, and the capacity to hunt for days.

Ula howled again, and the mournful sound indicated she was much closer.

Claire bent her head down and began the change. She would need to talk to her sister, and it wouldn’t be possible in her shifter form. Bones and muscles undulated and groaned with near magical transformation. By the time she was done, Ula sat next to her, a black and gray wolf that gazed off into the north with determined curiosity. Her tail thumped restlessly against the earth.

Claire shivered, her shoulder-length black hair fluttering in the wind. The temperature was around four degrees Celsius with a light crosswind. It wasn’t the height of summer, but it wasn’t freezing either. It was fine for a wolf’s fur, but not so much for a human’s bare flesh. “There’s at least five of them,” Claire said.

Ula woofed softly.

“Hunting something. We should go back to the satphone and check in.”

Ula woofed again, eyes skyward as the planes continued their southward sweep.

“I know,” Claire said. “It’s at least twenty miles to the Willys. And most of it across a wide open spot of tundra. Or we stay in the forest and wait until dark.”

Ula grunted and began her change. Nearly a minute later, through her half-formed mouth, she said, “The yellow plane is Barlow’s.”

Claire looked again. Barlow was a bush pilot out of Churchill like Jake. But the difference was that Barlow catered to hardcore hunters and tended to disregard rules. His plane sported all the bells and whistles, including infrared sensors for night. That meant that they were in danger of being spotted no matter what time of day or night it was.

“We have to warn the clan,” Ula said. Her pale blue eyes were identical to Claire’s. “I can run faster than you. I can be there in less than an hour.”

Claire didn’t want to admit that her sister was right. Ula could usually do most things better than she could. Ula was more like their father, Braydon Bennett, the Alpha male of the Manitoba Clan. She was better at her studies. She was better at the martial arts that their father insisted they practice at, and her knife work was exemplary. Claire was lucky if she could throw a knife and hit the target with the handle of the knife, which if it had been prey would only irritate it. All those classes and Claire had rarely found one that she was better at. Ula was the one with the mad skills; Claire was the sister who couldn’t nock a bow.

But all things considered, Claire didn’t hold it against her sister. Ula wasn’t arrogant, and she didn’t lord it over her sister. They were good friends, and that was something not many sisters could say.

And Ula could run much faster than Claire.

Claire looked toward the north. The array of planes swept closer and closer. Their pattern extended and methodical became predictable. “What are they seeking?”

Elk began to stream from the forest below the hill. Other animals also seemed to be trying to evade the hunters, black bears, more whitetail deer, and gray wolves all obviously frightened of what was coming.

“I don’t know,” Ula said through gritted teeth. She began her change. “It’s only a matter of time before they turn toward the north and toward the clan. They must be warned.” The words ended with a high howl as Ula transmuted again. She would pay for such rapid transformations, but it had to be done.

“I’m right behind you,” Claire said as she sank to her knees, willing her body to undergo the change that made their kind so special. It took her longer this time. Her body needed energy, and she was burning through what she had left. Soon she would need to eat and restore that energy, no matter what was coming. As bones and muscles dislocated and realigned themselves, she looked through the hollows of the inuksuk standing on the highest point of the hill.

An inuksuk was a stone monument likely created by some ancient Inuit who had once stood in this place looking out at the great northern forest as Claire did now. The stones had been carefully selected to make a memorial that would withstand the effects of wind and snow. The heaviest, flattest stones made up the bottom pieces and the base of the construction. It became a tower that showed that a person had once been in this space, a person had once come here to show themselves that they were the master of their world. Some argued that inuksuit were simply markers or navigational beacons to guide the way to or from a place. In the decades of recent Canadian history, the inuksuit had become a cultural icon. Once, an elderly Inuit from Tadoule Lake had explained to Claire that the inuksuit were a way of acknowledging all that is greater than the mere mortal.

Claire had built several herself. The Inuit had a way of recognizing the nature of all things earthly and the acknowledgement of all things unearthly. In their mind, the otherworldly were not unearthly. The Inuit believed that all things have a soul, an anirniq. Killing animals was not unlike killing humans because they have a soul just as a human does. Once the body was dead, the spirit was free to take vengeance. Anirnialuk was the Great Spirit and the giver of all souls. Reverence and beliefs were ways of counteracting and appeasing the spirit world. The inuksuk was a voiceless testament to the greater power of Anirnialuk.

Although the Bennetts were Christians, a belief system passed down by human forebears, they weren’t exactly human, nor were their beliefs. It was complicated. The inuksuk in front of Claire affirmed the fact that all things were not explainable, and sometimes it was better to be safe than sorry.

Her wolf shape settled upon her, and Claire huffed with relief. A moment later, and she was running after her sister.

* * *

Claire caught the scent of humans and a single shifter long before they saw her. The wind had changed its direction and brought the acrid smell of perspiration, musk, and spoiled food to her. Someone had been eating something with a lot of chili sauce in it.

Once she knew she was no longer alone, Claire slipped into the shadows of the thick woods and slid through the thickest brush until she had no more forest to conceal her.

The collection of planes was at her back as she crossed over an area of tundra. She didn’t think the pilots could see her. Dozens of animals ran in the same direction, ready to acquiesce to the larger, scarier predators. Deer, bear, elk, and a menagerie of other animals were on the move.

Distant booms reverberated from the direction of the planes. Someone with too much money wanted a bunch of trophies and didn’t have a lot of common sense. Perhaps they were after polar bears or grizzlies. But it slowly dawned on her that the animals were being herded in a single direction.

Claire wasn’t stupid. The clan would herd animals in much the same way. Several wolves acted as the reckoning force while the others waited in ambush.

Ula!

Claire stopped to howl. Ula would recognize the howl, and she would come running, away from the trap, away from the danger. They would find another way to warn the clan.

There was an immediate response from the forest beside the tundra she was crossing. A group of humans emerged, each dressed in forest camouflage. They wore helmets and sophisticated armament. With them came a solitary were dressed in a similar manner. Claire got a good whiff of him then snarled her rage.

Feline were. Cougar. Tiger. Something cat.

Braydon Bennett didn’t really get along with feline weres. He thought they were sly, but he was also the first to admit that all weres came in shades of gray, some good and some bad. One always had to remember that unknown weres should not be trusted until they had proven their worth. But there was that seed of bigotry about the felines. Here was the proof, directing the humans toward her.

“The wolf,” the were yelled in what clearly sounded like a Spanish accent as he pointed at Claire. “That’s one!”

Claire spun to the side and went into flight mode. If Ula hadn’t seen all the humans, then Claire would eat one of her Keen Targhee boots.

Claire escaped into the woods before the men could react to the were’s frantic gestures.

Something slammed against the tree next to her. Not a bullet but some kind of dart with a bright red rubber tailpiece that even now quivered in the tree. When she looked back, she saw one of the humans holding a fancy crossbow. He glanced at her while the were yelled instructions in rapid-fire Spanish.

An elk leapt behind her, and the warbling bugle sound he made indicated that a second dart had hit him squarely. She didn’t look back, but she heard the great animal stumble and crash into the brush.

It was worse than either sister could have imagined. Someone was hunting all right. And not big game in the traditional sense: They were hunting weres.

Claire increased her speed and fell behind a group of whitetail deer fleeing unreservedly through the thick forest. Her presence didn’t encourage them to slow down. The deer couldn’t know that she wasn’t after them now and darted away almost faster than she could follow. She needed to be one target in a large group of other targets. It was possible that she could blend in and find a place to hunker down for the interim. She would have to forget the Willys and head north toward home. It was likely the humans had already located the vehicle and wouldn’t let her use the satphone for a moment.

Ula. Claire’s heart boomed. What’s happened to Ula?

The whitetail deer abruptly scattered into a dozen different directions as they came across another group of humans in a small clearing. Claire only had to look once to see that Ula was unconscious. Naked and in human form, she’d been slung across the shoulders of one of the men. Her black hair spilled down the man’s back. A splotch of blood revealed that the dart had wounded her on her upper back, directly between the shoulder blades. Apparently she’d transformed back into a human before she was shot. But why?

The men startled at the sight of another wolf bearing down on them.

Claire plowed into the human holding Ula and knocked him down. Her twisting shape and snapping jaws made the other humans back away.

“It’s the sister!” one of the men yelled. “Dart her! Dart her before she bites one of us!”

It took a few seconds for the words to percolate through Claire’s rage and confusion. These people weren’t just hunting weres, they were specifically hunting Ula and Claire.

A stabbing pain flashed in her side. When Claire twisted to look, she spied the dart protruding from between her ribs. She yanked it away with her teeth and snarled savagely at the man underneath her. Ula had spilled to one side, her limbs dropping away like she was a lifeless doll.

“Again!” yelled the feline were in his heavy Spanish accent.

Another crossbow centered on Claire’s body. She rotated away, and the dart hit the human under her. She could have leaped away to freedom within the shadows of the thick forest, but she faltered, and it was her undoing. She should have left her sister, but no force on Earth could have made her do that.

During her second of hesitation, another human with a compressed air dart rifle shot her. Claire yipped as it hit her rear flank. She twisted and yanked the dart out with her jaws, but it was too late. The drugs had hit her system, and the world turned blurry. Her limbs became as heavy as concrete, and the world turned over sideways as she fell to the ground.

The traitorous were with the Spanish accent stood over her. His hair was black, and his eyes were vividly green. He was tall and clearly alpha enough to be in control, even of humans. “The children of the Bloodletter,” he said. “Good. Keep tightening the net. We might be able to bring in some other weres.”

Claire distantly felt her muscles and bones begin to writhe and rearrange themselves. It was a distorted feeling of change that made her question her consciousness. It seemed like an eternity later that she was lying on cold grass, and her fingers scraped into the dirt. The Bloodletter. The Bloodletter was a story of the boogeyman that weres told to their children, although their mother had never told it to them. Claire had heard it from other parents and other children. If they weren’t good little weres, the Bloodletter would come bite off their heads in the middle of the night.

The children of the Bloodletter.

“You’ve got the wrong weres,” she mumbled, hardly able to make the words come out of her mouth. Her internal beast screamed silently, desperate for freedom, unable to combat the power of the tranquilizer.

The were knelt at her side. He gently turned her head and brushed some of the hair out of her eyes. She saw him, but it seemed like he was kneeling a league distant from her. “No, señorita, we do not. I have people watching your clan. It was only a matter of time before we got one of the two of you. It was fortunate we got both of you.” He smiled down at her.

Claire tried to get to her feet. She planted her knees in the ground, but her arms wouldn’t work, and she fell. The were chuckled darkly. “Go to sleep, pequeña. We’ve got miles to go, and I’ve got a date with a young woman in Colorado.”

 

 

Chapter 2

 

There are nights when the wolves are silent,

and only the moon howls. – George Carlin

 

They called him Shade, although it wasn’t his name. It was the name he used while he worked under the auspices of the Council. It was the name he’d used for nearly ten years. It wasn’t uncommon for weres to change their names. They had human names for the purposes of blending in, but Shade hadn’t blended in for almost two decades. The Council didn’t care about names. They cared about power and allegiances.

Once the Council had been what it had needed to be. Now it was crap.

Shade heard whispers at first. One day a were named Braydon Bennett had been part of the Council. Then he was gone. His mate and two young children had vanished with him. That had happened before Shade’s time in Paris, but the rumors had run rampant and continued for years. It was said that Bennett would return. Blood would rain down upon the Catacombs of Paris when he did. Justice would be served.

Then the Council had added another were to their triumvirate in order to present a façade to the outside world of weres.

There was Scarlotte the wererat, the one who looked as if she was merely twelve years old. Weres whispered in the darkest shadows about her combined witch/were heritage. Another was Quincy. He was a weresnow leopard, although his human hair was the color of decayed maple leaves, and his eyes were black. Little was said about him except that he wasn’t the type one wanted to meet on a bright afternoon, much less in a dark alley during the dead of night. The third was Renard the Elderly. His forbidding gray hair and a harsh visage correctly revealed his nature.

Together they presented a universal front of unspoken cruelty and general disregard for weres’ wellbeing.

The Council had begun its deterioration.

Abuse of power was an ugly thing. Shade believed that the shifter world needed to be policed. Humans weren’t ready for the new, improved species to be introduced into their realm. So the Council kept its secrets, but it also created more than its fair share.

Shade’s eyes hadn’t been opened until he had progressed to his current rank. Prosecution wasn’t the same thing as persecution. He attempted to rein in the Council’s members, but instead, others had whispered into his ears.

The Council was no longer just. But it was worse than that. Weres who entered the catacombs did not come out. The Bloodletter was said to be mounting a revolt. The three members of the Council were becoming paranoid. The rat witch was apt to let her bone monster deal with their problems instead of making decisions that needed to be made.

Not six months before, an old friend had enticed Shade to a bar in Algiers. It had been six hours on a borrowed jet to make sure Shade was out of the Council’s immediate influence, but it had been worth it.

The old friend was another bear, a Kodiak by the name of Aningan, and he sat with another were in the rear of the bar, both of them with their backs against the wall. Bars in Algiers were few and far between, secretive affairs that were kept from general knowledge through frequent movement and camouflage. Alcohol sales in the conservative Muslim country were limited and generally only catered to tourism in the larger hotels.

The locals didn’t care to have their hidey-hole invaded. They stared at the newcomer with nervous attention. Then they looked with even more nervousness at the pair at the back of the dive.

The latest customer had to duck to get through the door. His black hair and black eyes could have been the result of numerous regions. Shade had been told he could be Mongolian or American Indian. It didn’t matter to him. He’d been born in Alaska and abandoned to a clan of shifters there. The Kodiak shifter named Aningan had been the one to take Shade into his home and make it the bear’s world, as well. As Shade grew into a man, his world was the one he had created, the one formed by the lessons taught to him by Aningan. However, Shade’s world had begun to crumble because the vision of a place with integrity was putrefying into a black-tinged hot mess.

Nevertheless, Aningan remained ever the same: solid, dependable, loyal, and fiercely patriotic. When Aningan called Shade, Shade had come, because Aningan was the father Shade should have been born to.

Shade looked at the solitary bartender, who immediately looked away.

Shade slowly stalked through the tiny bar, stopped a full five feet away from the rearmost table, and looked at his old friend. “It’s been nearly a year, Aningan,” he said. “You don’t post on Facebook, and Jesus, you don’t even tweet. You should definitely have a blog.”

The older were grinned broadly. “I really didn’t think the Council would let you come, even for a short jaunt.”

“I can’t work all the time.” Shade glanced at the other were. He discreetly used his nose, trying to decide what was sitting there and the best way to deal with it. Wolf. Big. Dangerous. He felt as though he should know the person. The were was huge, even sitting down, and his thick gray hair didn’t denigrate his threat potential. And his pale blue eyes, shards of ice that would cut open an artery if so disposed, marked him as a creature with whom he should not trifle.

“Sit down,” Aningan said. His hair was black and his eyes just as black as Shade’s. They might have been brothers. The Inuit bloodline in the man had lent him the coloring, but the size was all shifter DNA.

Shade sat and studied the other were. “You didn’t tell me you were dabbling in politics, Aningan,” he said without looking away from the wolf.

“I told you he would understand quickly,” Aningan said to the wolf. “My brother,” he said to Shade, “this is Braydon Bennett.”

Shade wasn’t particularly surprised. Braydon Bennett was the Bloodletter, and Aningan was prone to support the underdog. It might have been over a decade, but the Bloodletter had returned to the shifter world, and his game was in play. Blood would rain down…

“They have some beer here, an Algerian product,” Aningan said to fill up the silence. “The proprietor says that he serves the best chorba and dolma within the city. I’ve had the börek, and I think the man doesn’t exaggerate.” He turned slightly toward the Bloodletter. “Chorba is a spicy soup,” he told him. “Dolma is a mixture of tomatoes and peppers.” Aningan smacked his lips as if he wasn’t sitting in the company of two of the most dangerous weres in the shifter world. “Very tasty. And the börek is kind of an egg mincemeat. It’s rolled and fried with batter.” He motioned at the bartender and spouted off a number of instructions in Arabic.

Shade remained silent for a long moment. “My old friend,” he said to Aningan, “I am never unhappy to see you. But this is a wretched time for revolution.”

“On the contrary,” the Bloodletter said, “there has never been a better time.”

That was all that it took because deep inside, Shade knew he was correct.

* * *

In the present, Shade stood on the edge of the Council’s chambers and listened to the three members discuss finances. Perhaps they thought he was oblivious. He studied the bones on the tall columns that supported the roof of the immense room and pretended that security was the only issue he cared about.

“—special project,” Scarlotte said in French.

Shade attempted to keep his face neutral. It was getting harder and harder not to frown in the presence of the Council. Scarlotte was a vicious back biter who relied on her dark magicks to pull through. Allegedly, she had been tempered by the Bloodletter and Renard. Perhaps she had tired of hiding her nature. Perhaps she had discovered that other things made her happier.

Renard the Elderly was crueler than the rest. His decrees usually mandated death in some awful fashion in order to deter other weres who would follow down a dark path. Maybe he had been mitigated before, but Shade didn’t see it. Renard had been another one interested in power and was patient enough not to show his hand.

Quincy had replaced the Bloodletter. He’d been handpicked by Scarlotte and backed her every move. He was as chillingly vicious as the others. In some ways he was worse. But if Shade had to kill one of the three, he would first go for the rat witch every time.

“The reports are what we expected,” Quincy said. He tapped his laptop. “Although I would have thought some of these expenses would be less.”

“As would I,” Renard added.

“The human in charge,” Scarlotte said thoughtfully, “is to be trusted?”

“As much as any human,” Renard said. “His references are impeccable, the top of his class, and the product of Ivy League universities. However, intelligence means that he is far from stupid. Perhaps he thinks that since the outcome is less than legal, then it wouldn’t be noticed if money trickled away into his pocket.”

“Perhaps,” Scarlotte agreed.

Shade’s attention perked up. What was it that the Council was doing that had a less than legal outcome?

“Martinez followed through with our plans in Canada,” Quincy said.

Martinez was a name Shade had heard before. He was a traitorous feline-were who did wet work for the Council. There were jobs that even the Council balked about. If Martinez had been in Canada, then he was up to something nasty. Furthermore, Canada was where the Bloodletter and his family had settled. Canada was a huge place, but what were the odds? It was obvious that the Council was hunting the Bloodletter because he presented a threat to them.

But other recent happenings, all at the Council’s behest no doubt, sent chills down Shade’s spine. Weres had been vanishing in the United States and from India and the Balkans. Also, a dragon were from Japan had supposedly gone missing.

Aningan and the Bloodletter wanted Shade to obtain as much information as possible, being careful not to arouse suspicion, until the death knell was about to be rung. Playing James Bond the werebear wasn’t his basket of salmon, but it was what it was.

What Shade really had was a strong inclination to rip Scarlotte’s head from her shoulders before she could summon her out-of-a-nightmare bone creation to save herself. Then, he would follow up with a knife to Quincy’s throat before finishing Renard off with another weapon of his choice, probably the war harpoon he kept mounted on his back.

It disagreed with Shade to remain as a spy. Digging around in paperwork and dredging through computer files was nearly mind-bogglingly boring, but Aningan and the Bloodletter weren’t ready for the bloody insurgency that was coming. He had to stuff the lump in his throat down deep into his stomach and like it, too.

“Fuck,” he muttered because nothing else came to mind.

“— more weres from the states,” Scarlotte said and Shade jerked. “We’ll send an envoy to see how this human—what is his name?—, is faring.”

Quincy looked at the laptop. “Whitfield Dyson. Perhaps we’ve trusted him too much. Perhaps we should close down the facility while we’re ahead.”

A tinkling bell indicating email sounded from Quincy’s computer. His fingers worked at the keyboard. “The two daughters are at the facility,” he said.

“Both of them?” Scarlotte smirked.

“We only need one,” Renard said. “Best to separate them in any case. He’ll come for them.”

Scarlotte smiled coldly. Shade’s hand itched to touch the handle of the war harpoon on his back. “That’s what we want him to do, is it not?”

Daughters. Two daughters. Shade frowned. It was said that the Bloodletter had two daughters. He needed to break away from these lunatics and make some phone calls, but it was going to take him time to get to a spot where he could do it safely.

“Put one on a jet and bring her here,” Scarlotte commanded.

“Which one?”

Scarlotte shrugged delicately. “Shade,” she called and looked at him.

Shade turned toward the Council. It was likely that they had forgotten his presence. That was good for him, but he doubted that Scarlotte ever truly forgot about him. The rat witch was the scariest were he’d ever encountered, and he’d encountered a great number of scary weres. She was, however, arrogant, and the arrogance would likely be her undoing.

“A jet will arrive in Paris in approximately six to seven hours,” Scarlotte said. “Bring the were on board to us. She is not to be trusted and will attempt to persuade your assistance.”

Many of the weres who came down into the catacombs attempted to persuade Shade’s assistance. He forced his face into compliant neutrality. That was what he was good at playing. He was the muscle, and he didn’t have a brain. All he had was unwavering loyalty, but that was the Council’s assumption, and assuming was always a mistake.

* * *

“She’s unconscious,” one of the weres said to Shade. He had brought four of his soldiers with him to the small private airport hours later. He trusted three of them with his life; the fourth was likely a mole for Quincy. The game had to continue its play.

“Drugged?” Shade asked.

A were named Yves nodded. “They said it was a special type of ketamine with a minimal amount of silver nitrate in it. She’s a wolf like me, I can smell it.”

Two of Shade’s weres carried a stretcher with the girl off the small private jet. They were careful not to overly jostle the stretcher. Shade had previously met the human doctor who walked at their side. The man checked the unconscious girl’s pulse when they paused near Shade, then nodded at Shade. “She should be out another few hours,” the doctor said. “Her metabolism will blow right through the drugs. We had to give her an extra two shots so she wouldn’t tear up the plane mid-Atlantic.”

Shade’s teeth ground together. It was getting harder and harder to deal with the Council’s injustices. What had this were done? Nothing but be the daughter of someone they wished to control. There’s no crime here.

Shade turned and indicated that the two weres carrying the stretcher should go toward the Mercedes Benz G-Class SUV waiting on the tarmac. “Load her up,” he said in French. “Make certain she’s comfortable.”

“I’m supposed to—” the doctor began to say and stopped when he saw Shade’s face.

“I don’t care what you do,” Shade said in English. “Go back to the facility. Do some more experiments. Do what the Council wants you to do. Just get the hell out of here!”

The man blinked and stepped back. He looked around him, and it obviously dawned on him that he was surrounded by weres. “I’m only doing what I’m supposed to do.”

Yves grunted in a derogatory manner.

“I’m a veterinarian. I don’t—” the man said, and his mouth immediately closed, likely realizing what he had said and to whom he had said it.

“Go back to the states,” Shade said. He knew he wasn’t supposed to act like an ass. He was supposed to be one of the committed lackeys, but something was grating on his last nerve. There was a scent in the air. It had come to him as soon as the jet doors opened. It reached around him and tugged at the very inmost part of his being. It bothered him on an instinctual level so that his temper was very close to flaring.

“Make certain she drinks plenty of fluids,” the doctor persisted. “The drugs have different effects on your kind, so that—”

“GET BACK ON THE FUCKING PLANE!” Shade roared.

The human turned and fled.

Yves blinked and stepped away from Shade.

Shade watched as the other weres loaded the female into the back of the Mercedes Benz. With the seats folded down in back, there was enough room for the stretcher, the driver, and two weres. The other two soldiers would go back to the building the Council owned near the main entrance of the catacombs in another SUV. One of the two other soldiers would be the were Shade thought was the mole.

“You drive,” he told Yves. Then instead of getting into the front passenger side, Shade surprised himself by getting into the rear seat that hadn’t been folded down.

The woman’s head was turned away from him as he bent himself into the seat. Her hair was black and a tangled mess. Angry bruises colored the part of her shoulder that he could see. Shade’s growl was low, long, and mournful.

Shade took a moment to cover the woman’s shoulder up with the thin blanket that had come with her.

“Humans,” Yves said. His voice was high and agitated. “I can’t believe I used to be one.”

Shade stared down at the woman.

“It was the thing he said about being a vet,” Yves added nervously, “as if shifters are merely animals to—” He closed his mouth and twisted the key in the ignition. The Mercedes Benz revved to life. “I’ll shut up now and drive,” he added.

Shade tossed the back of Yves’ head a volcanic glare. Shade thought that was probably best. He had an overwhelming urge to rip heads from bodies lately. There was no telling what he might do if Yves spun him up even a notch more.

He looked down and saw that his hand was stroking the curve of the female’s shoulder. She was wearing pale green scrubs and one shoulder was ripped, revealing the very top of her arm. Only the uppermost purple green smudge of the bruises he’d noticed showed.

Once all the doors were shut in the Benz, Shade realized that the unsettling scent emanated from the woman herself.

She moved restlessly, and her head came back to face him with her eyes still shut. It was a pert face with well-formed bones. It was a face that had seen pain and effort. It was also a face that made his breath catch in his throat. Her lips were full and perfectly formed, the shade of a pomegranate seed.

Abruptly her eyes opened. Pale blue, they unnerved him. She couldn’t really focus on him, and after a single moment, they closed again.

Shade nearly sighed. He caught himself. This female was going into one of the deepest, murkiest cells the Council reserved for its prisoners. Political prisoners were down there along with others Shade couldn’t fathom the reason for their imprisonment. There was even another female were named Tatsu imprisoned who never talked to anyone. Based on whispered rumors about the Asian were, he suspected that Tatsu was something very dangerous herself. In his ten years of working for the Council and directing special operations, he had never seen a prisoner leave the catacombs. Rather, he had never seen a prisoner walk away from the catacombs.

Shade refocused his concentration on the woman beside him. She looked so fragile. So small, bruised, and ever so delicate.

With revolution impending and he himself embroiled in the darkest of conspiracies, Shade knew he couldn’t help her, and she, whoever she was, was his mate.

 

 

Chapter 3

 

A society of sheep must in time beget

a government of wolves. – Bertrand de Jouvenel

 

Claire woke up with a howl of rage. Both wolf and girl were ready to do battle. She instinctively swung her fists, aiming for that which threatened her. No one was there. Reluctantly stilling, finding herself in a crouched position with her fists out in front of her, she scanned the gloom. A meager light from the exterior of the room shown through the set of iron bars set in heavy mortar. She was in a stone-walled room not much bigger than herself. There was a plastic mat on the hard stone ground. A plastic bucket sat in a corner. A liter-sized bottle of water was propped on the wall by the door as if someone had stuck it in through the bars as a kind of afterthought.

It wasn’t much of an improvement over the last prison she’d been in. Claire and Ula had been drugged and transported somewhere. She could vaguely remember the smell of jet fuel and the roar of airplane engines. They’d woken in cages designed for animals and reinforced with silver because they were weres. Other female weres, mostly cats and one bird were, had also been imprisoned.

Humans had been there, too, but not as prisoners. There’d been a guard, Scott, who leered at her and warned her that escape would be punished severely. A man in a suit had asked about her animal form, and medical personnel had darted her again before they’d examined her. It wasn’t long before Claire had been drugged again. She had floated weightlessly through hallways as she had been carried away to somewhere unknown. She’d heard Ula shrieking her rage.

Claire fought, and she had fought every time she’d woken up. The Spanish speaking were had been there to hold her down, but he hadn’t gotten on the last plane with them, only advising the doctor to “Keep her under or the lobito loca will rip out your throat.”

Ripping throats out sounded like a dandy idea.

Claire found herself slowly regaining consciousness. No longer on a plane, she seemed to be in a moving vehicle. Lights from businesses shown inside, and the weres around her were speaking in French. No more humans, French speaking weres— was this good or bad?

Claire’s French was about as good as her sister’s, which was poor at best. They’d always been more interested in things more fascinating than learning another language. She’d even liked the classes about armaments better than the language classes. Her grogginess held her translation abilities in check. It took her a long time to realize that the driver said something about vets and then something about humans.

But for a slice of time that stretched away into infinity, Claire had felt protected. Even the inner beast was calm for the moment, only a whimpering yip echoed in her brain. Someone sat next to her. Someone had his fingers on the flesh of her shoulder. The tips of the fingers were gentle and understanding. They would never hurt her. Then the slice was gone when she’d slipped away again into unconsciousness.

Now, here in this dark, foul-smelling place, this dungeon cell with its iron bars, her terror had reasserted itself, all sense of safety slipped away.

If Ula was here, she would have ripped the bars from the mortar and shoved them down someone’s throat. Claire’s stare slowly rotated over the cell. Ula wasn’t here, and she wasn’t going to help her.

Overwhelmed by an all-consuming thirst, probably drug induced, Claire grasped the bottle of water. As she twisted the cap the safety seal popped open. If they wanted to drug her further, they would simply dart her from the safety of the hallway. Regardless, she sniffed the contents trying to detect the stink of unknown chemicals. It smelled like water and nothing more.

She drank half the bottle before she made herself stop. Allowing herself to become dehydrated would be dangerous, but she couldn’t know when she might get more water either.

Claire approached the bars and touched them tentatively. The wolf inside cried out for freedom. It roared its frustration, and she couldn’t do anything about its distress but to attempt to alleviate it with calm reasoning. There wasn’t a point in screaming or crying or calling out. She was in this place for an ambiguous reason. No one was going to hear her. More specifically, no one who could or would help her would hear her.

She could see the stone-constructed wall across from her, and if she turned her head, she could see a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling about five feet down. The walls were oddly shaped, and she pushed her face to the very edge of the bars to see closer. If she could have reached out to touch one of the stones, she would have felt the smooth rounded top of a…cranium.

The walls of the hallway that she could see were covered with bones. They might have been human bones or weres, she didn’t know.

“You’re in the Catacombes de Paris,” a deep voice said in English from somewhere beyond the light. As she strained to discern the speaker, Claire saw the edge of another set of bars. The speaker was also caged.

“Well,” he amended, “it’s actually below the Catacombes de Paris, if you want to be specific.”

Dripping moisture echoed in the little hollow spaces, moving ever downward. The ground creaked its protest of the weight it withstood. The walls groaned in response. A distant moan echoed from another hallway, from another cell. It was the tormented call of a were who was dying or going crazy, or both. She felt underground. It was like being in a cave with heavy humidity and a thickness of atmosphere that couldn’t be replicated.

The Catacombs of Paris. The Council. Only the Council was in Paris. The Council ruled Paris, above as well as underground. The catacombs were a tourist’s affair. But, in a place where the tourists did not go, miles and miles of tunnels for the Council’s evil and malevolent pleasure existed.

Claire had always wanted to see Paris, but not from below.

Humans headed by a single were had taken Ula and Claire. They had been at some other facility with at least two dozen captive weres. Humans had been experimenting on them. Testing them. Doing things to them. But it was the Council who controlled the reins.

Claire growled and knelt. The bones under her flesh begin to tremble and move. She didn’t want to change, but her temper was provoking her. Whatever was happening was for a reason out of her control, but her inner beast was always at her disposal. The wolf might fit through the bars of the cell. It screamed at her to let loose and let it take command.

“Don’t,” the similarly caged were said. “Don’t change. They’ll know. They watch. Look up.”

Claire’s eyes, already feral and animalistic, looked up. There was a single security camera focused on her cell. She snarled and retreated into the darkest part of her cell.

Claire focused on her breathing. It was a technique taught to her by her mother, who believed in self-control at all times. They might be weres, but they were still powerful. In. Out. In. Out. The beast retreated into its inner cage, unhappy, but barely willing to do her bidding.

Soon. Soon she’d do exactly what was needed to do to escape this hellhole and she’d make the weres responsible for this aware of the fact that the Bennetts are not ones with which to fuck.

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice was thick and throaty. Her inner wolf still itching to emerge.

“Just another wretch caught in the middle,” he said.

He spoke in American-accented English.

“And you?” he asked.

“Claire,” she said. There wasn’t any point in lying. They knew exactly who she was. “Do the cameras listen, too?”

“There’s no sound. They only watch. But they always watch.”

“Did they bring in another wolf besides me?” Claire asked.

“No, you were alone.”

Ula was back in that other place. Alone. Afraid. Without her sister. Claire almost snorted at herself. Ula wasn’t afraid. She’d probably escape before Claire could. She’d come after her. If their father doesn’t beat her to it. Or their mother.

“What’s my crime to be brought into the Council’s dungeons?” she asked before she could help herself.

“Crime?” the voice sounded skeptical and bitter. “No crimes need be committed for the Council to act.”

“And you? What’s your crime?”

“Having my eyes opened to what is wrong with the were’s world,” he said with acrid intensity.

Living in the northernmost part of Manitoba meant that the clan was cut off from much of the Council’s machinations. They heard things. They had Internet and friends all over the world, but everything seemed far removed from their business in the Canadian wilderness.

“Do you know why I’m here?” Claire asked carefully.

“Because of who you are,” the man said.

“And who am I?” They might know who she was, but she wasn’t going to make it easy for them if they didn’t.

“Don’t you know?”

Claire wasn’t unfamiliar with the games men could play. Plenty of male weres in Manitoba wanted to be more than friends with the daughter of the Alpha, but Claire wasn’t the type to play with those who seemed manipulative. It was silly, and she wanted more. The stories that they had heard about mates had struck her in a personal way. Ula thought it was ridiculous. What if they found their mate in the ugliest, nastiest were imaginable?

Then it was meant to be. Many weres never found a true mate. Her parents were well and truly mated. They loved each other in a way that Claire often found embarrassing. On another level she would never admit out loud, she also envied them.

The boys of the clan circled the girls, trying to urge them into relationships. Claire had never fallen for any of them. She had always waited. She wasn’t about to fall for anything now.

“Let’s assume I don’t know who I am,” she said.

He laughed. It was a nice laugh, profound and husky, all male. She could imagine his face, the same face of the were who had protected her in the final transport vehicle to this place. A dark face but one that could be generous and loving at the same time.

“You’re his daughter,” he said after he stopped laughing. It wasn’t cynical or biting, but merely a statement of fact. “The guards have big mouths.”

I’m no one’s daughter but Braydon Bennett’s. Braydon Bennett is the Alpha male of the Manitoba Clan, and we’ve nothing the Council could want.

Without warning, a feeling of vague understanding overcame her, perhaps a memory of a different time, long in the past.

Claire had been young and the world was frantic and full of strange smells. Odd weres came and went from their apartment. Her mother had been full of fear. Her normally serene aura had been tinged with the black stain of dread.

One day their overly large father had come home and simply said, “It’s time.” Sonja Bennett hadn’t asked questions. She took out pre-packed bags from a great wooden armoire and hustled the two girls out of the front door, closely following Braydon Bennett. “We’re having an adventure, children,” she’d told Ula and Claire. And they had had an adventure.

They drove and drove into a night without city lights and eventually found a remote airport with a small plane that moved and squealed each time the wind changed direction. Because her mother told her it was all right, Claire had fallen asleep wrapped up in Ula’s arms. When they woke up, they were in another country, in fact, on another continent, and the world was a different place.

The fear that had surrounded her mother had eventually faded away.

The Bennetts had run from something, and Claire never would have never thought that Braydon and Sonja Bennett would run from anything. But the Council was its own horror story. No one crossed the Council. No one.

Except perhaps Braydon Bennett. Her father. If someone wanted something from Braydon, wouldn’t they be inclined to take a hostage? Words from the humans and Martinez trickled back to her. “It’s the sister!” “The children of the Bloodletter.” “No, señorita, we do not. I have people watching your clan. It was only a matter of time before we got one of the two of you. It was fortunate we got both of you.”

Okay, Daddy wasn’t just Braydon Bennett. He was the Bloodletter, the boogeyman of all boogeymen. And the Council, the other boogeyman of all boogeymen, was now keeping the boogeyman’s daughter in their dungeon.

“What do they want with him?” she asked quietly.

“What does the Council want with anyone?” he said. “Power. Control. Absoluteness. The world in its pocket.”

Claire touched the bars. Though no silver lined these bars, the mortar was thick and reinforced. It wasn’t old and cracking. These bars had been recently reinforced. She wrapped her fist around the bar and pulled. It didn’t budge in the slightest.

“I’ve tested these bars a dozen times, no a hundred,” the were said. He wasn’t reading her mind, but was clearly familiar with the thought processes of the new prisoners. “There’s no way to escape except with a key and an invitation.”

The Council wanted something from her father. They wanted something from the Bloodletter, and she was the key to that something.

“Do you know where they brought me from?”

“The States,” the were said. “They didn’t show me the GPS.”

Claire nearly smiled. The were sounded like her sister. All spit and vinegar and ready to do battle with whatever badass the world happened to hand her.

“What’s your name?”

“Taqukaq,” he said. The q’s and k’s clicked as he said the name.

“It sounds like how the Inuit pronounce bear.”

“Grizzly bear,” he corrected. “Taq for short. I was born in Alaska.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Ten years.”

Claire gasped. “Are there others here?”

“Yes. There are several other cell blocks.”

A distant scream filled the hallway. It echoed away as if it had been running down an isolated canyon filled with nothing but stone and air.

“Not alone,” she murmured. She thought of the inuksuk she had seen on a hill in distant Manitoba. Someone had been there and built a marker. It might have been a marker to designate a direction, a guide for the lost. It might have been a reminder of someone who once was. It might have been an homage to the father of all gods. But it was the last remnant of a person who existed. As long as the inuksuk stood, the person who built it would be remembered.

How long would Claire be remembered?

* * *

Food came a few hours later delivered by a lone were who glided along the rock wall on a determined mission. He didn’t say anything, but Claire could hear his occasional pauses and the sound of paper rustling, as if he stopped to toss something into each cell. She wasn’t surprised when the black shape hesitated in front of her bars and thrust a paper bag inside.

Claire was prepared and lunged for the shape, thrusting her arms through the bars and wrapping her hands around his neck.

The were chuckled, then contorted, and slipped away from her.

Claire shuddered and fell back on her butt. She’d just touched scales and suddenly her hands felt dirty.

“Ah-ah-ah.” The were hissed from a safe distance from the bars. “No food for you tomorrow.” Its voice was comprised of sibilant tones.

She sniffed almost by reflex, taking in its dry earthy scent. The rattle when it sounded, was not completely unexpected as it moved away from her cell.

Her mother had told her that the world was a mysterious place. Humans couldn’t change, but some of them could be infected with the shifter DNA. Most didn’t survive. Born shifters were commonplace, but occasionally weres mated with humans. Sometimes the genes bred true. A wide variety of weres existed, such as the extinct stag-moose were in her clan. She had seen the bird were at the other facility where she and Ula had been held. She’d never even heard of a snake were. But obviously, now she knew they existed. The one who’d just served her meal rattled just like the rattlesnake she’d once seen in the Toronto Zoo.

“Ignore him,” came Taq’s voice. “Eat. Eat because you’ll need your strength.”

It occurred to Claire that she could trust no one in this place. Not Taq, not any other were, because she didn’t know them, she couldn’t know them. It would be dangerously stupid to assume anything about any were. Her father would be proud to know that some of his lessons had stuck.

Claire pulled a ham and cheese sandwich in a plastic baggie from the paper bag. No condiments were included. Her captors had also provided two boiled eggs. Lots of protein to maintain the were.

“I don’t suppose we get to order next time,” she said.

Taq chuckled. “I think the snake was expecting you to have a go at him. Most new prisoners do. He can change his skin in an instant, makes it hard to grab him. And he does bite. The venom won’t kill our kind, but it’ll make us sick.”

“I’ll remember.” Claire sniffed the sandwich. It smelled like it had been sitting on a plate for a few hours. The bread was thick and not processed. The ham was fresh. The cheese wasn’t American. It didn’t matter because she was hungry. She ate steadily, trying to control her chewing. The snake had said there would be no food for her the next day. This was going to have to last. She ate the eggs and half the sandwich, saving the rest for the next day.

When she was done, she tried to get Taq to speak to her again, but he wouldn’t. Possibly he couldn’t.

Claire couldn’t do anything about that except to methodically check every inch of her cell for a possible method of escape or weapon. She needed to keep occupied because there was no way of knowing how long she’d be in this place.

The one thought that brightened the moment was that if her father was the Bloodletter, then he would be coming for her. Even if her father wasn’t the Bloodletter, he would be coming for her.

The clock was ticking down.

 

 

Chapter 4

 

The gaze of the wolf reaches into

our souls. – Barry Lopez

 

Claire woke up to more screaming. It wasn’t her own, though she’d much rather it had been. Then the awful questions that immediately followed the screaming wouldn’t have been gushing through her brain. Who is screaming, what did they do, what does the Council want from them, what are they doing to the person? Am I next?

She tried to ignore the screaming but couldn’t. The snake had been by again, virtue of another paper bag on the stone floor propped on the bars. Perhaps he’d forgotten about his mandate, but somehow Claire didn’t think this was the case.

Wrapping her arms around her shoulders, she crouched on the plastic mat and tried to find her center. The screaming came from a faraway distance, but regardless of the distance, it was the agonized shriek of someone who was in the worst kind of pain. The kind of pain might involve a hand reaching into someone’s gut and pulling out the intestines inch by incrementally excruciating inch. The hair on the back of Claire’s neck began to rise.

“Claire,” Taq’s voice said.

Claire lifted her head and sniffed. For a brief moment, she could smell him. It was musk and an intrinsic attribute that touched her. The absoluteness of it made her forget everything for a transitory twinkling of time. The scent curled around her shape and poured over her entire being. She gasped, and the gasp turned into a sighing breath of much needed oxygen. Then it was gone.

“Claire?” he repeated more urgently. Noise followed. It sounded like he took a step toward her. Then there was abrupt silence. He had stopped, doubtless stopped by the bars.

“I’m awake,” she said. Her head was spinning, and the awful screaming had finally stopped. It was almost like the time she and her sister had consumed three bottles of Auntie Sheree’s blackberry brandy. They should have stopped at the second bottle, and Auntie had been furious with them for weeks. But her head had spun like a top drifting on a cloud far above them. Her head was spinning in the exact same manner.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Claire pushed to the back of the cell, wanting to separate herself from encountering that scent again. She didn’t know what it meant. It seemed like more trouble, and more trouble was something she didn’t need at the moment.

“I’m all right,” she whispered.

“I thought—” he said, and the last word simply cut off.

“What are you?” she asked.

“A were, just like you.”

“That I could tell by smell. But just now, I smelled … something else.”

Silence.

“It was an odd scent,” Claire said as she touched the stone at the back of the cell. It was cold and had a hint of moisture. It seemed almost to vibrate. “I don’t think I’ve smelled its like before.”

“Just a were,” he repeated.

Was that a hint of desperation she’d just heard in his voice?

“You know who I am, you know whose daughter I am,” she said.

“I’m a bear,” Taq said, ignoring her statement and her question that wasn’t quite a question. “Lots of bears from Alaska. There’s a clan of polars and grizzlies there. Fierce weres. They don’t care for weakness. The cold climate doesn’t cater to weakness.”

Claire thought about it. “My father doesn’t care for weakness in the clan,” she said. “He’s always pushed us to be more than ourselves. He wanted us to shove ourselves outside the envelope.”

More silence.

“I suppose he was trying to prepare us,” Claire surmised. “Do you know what he did that was terrible enough for the Council to take his children hostage?”

“He was…is…independent,” Taq said, his tone tinged with apparent admiration. “He thought that the Council was close-minded, that too many weres were suffering needlessly. There was even the suggestion of coming out to the human world.”

Claire considered the idea. There already were humans who knew about weres. Necessity made it a fact. Some of them were friends. Some of them were mates. It was understood that some of the human governments did regular business with the shifter world. The rest of the humans would probably freak. Nevertheless, outing the existence of weres was an eventual inevitability. A hundred years before, the world population hadn’t been large enough to make a difference. People vanished. Stories were told. But now, thanks to the Internet and cell phones with cameras, information, photos and videos could be broadcast worldwide in an instant. People explored every inch of wilderness simply because they could. They didn’t leave inuksuit like the Inuit, but they created their own markers in the way of YouTube and Facebook.

One day someone would capture a video on their cell phone of a were changing from human to animal form or vice versa. The video might be disregarded as special effects from a Hollywood studio. At first. Then one crazed were would do it in the middle of Times Square in New York City. Or in front of Buckingham Palace. Or on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Then the proverbial cat would be out of the bag and people would wonder if John Landis had known all along when he had directed An American Werewolf in London.

“He’s not that way any longer,” Claire said defensively. The father she knew kept to the northern parts of Manitoba. He minimized contact with outside groups. He made their life comfortable, livable, and yet continued to train the weres in methods of self-defense. Once Claire had thought it ridiculous, but that was before Martinez had marched into Manitoba with a group of humans and dozens of tranquilizer darts. Dad knew it might come one day. He didn’t know when, but…

“Yes, he is,” Taq disagreed calmly. “And you’re the bait.”

“The Council wants my father,” she stated. It wasn’t something she hadn’t thought of before. The Council didn’t want her. Unless they had a longing for her collection of T.S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath poetry.

Braydon Bennett. The Bloodletter. Somehow she wasn’t particularly surprised, although she thought that her mother might be more suited for the role of the most legendary were in the shifter world. She could totally picture her mother holding a battle axe dripping with crimson gore. Her mother could be completely cutthroat. The last time they’d played Uno, she’d hit Claire with five draw four cards in a row. Five! Her own mother! God help everyone if she had a knife in her hand.

Claire suddenly chuckled.

Silence. Obviously, Taq didn’t know what to think of a prisoner who laughed without provocation. Then he laughed too, and it was a sonorous noise that reverberated down the hollows of the passages. “I should have known,” he said after the laughter died away, “that the Bloodletter’s daughter wouldn’t be whimpering in a corner.”

Oh, she wanted to whimper in the corner, and she would, if she thought it would do her any good. “That’s me. No whimper. All fight. You’ll remember when they do whatever it is that they’ll do to me.”

“They won’t—” He growled and it was as if he’d suddenly gone bearish.

“Please,” she said. “Let’s not lie. This is a terrible enough place without lies.”

This time the silence was punctuated by the sound of growling a long way away.

Claire wanted to cover her ears with her hands and hum a nonsensical song.

“You know some of the Inuit,” Taq said. “Where you’re from, there’s The People. You do know that Inuit means The People.”

Claire didn’t think he was asking questions. Not really.

“They’ve a sad and tested life,” Taq went on. His deep voice was addictive. It made the muscles inside her want to relax and collapse into a state of bonelessness. He waited for her to understand that he was about to tell a story. It was reminiscent of the way the Inuit told stories to their children. When Claire couldn’t listen as a human, she often listened from the shadows of the woods as the Inuit told their stories around their fires. The wolf was clever at hiding while the tales were narrated.

“It’s said that Sedna is the creator goddess of all things marine,” Taq began, and she closed her eyes so that she could see the pictures in her head. “She was the beautiful daughter of the creator god, Anguta, and once, she was misled by a great seabird, a fulmar, into becoming his bride.

“The fulmar flew the beautiful daughter away, using his fantastic wings to fly them far to the north, where few dwell and fewer survive. When Sedna came to his gigantic nest, she realized she had been tricked by a cunning bird god and called out to her father to rescue her.

“Anguta battled bravely as he fought his way north. The fulmar came to the command of the great seabird god and attempted to repel Anguta. But eventually Anguta waited for a long dark night when the fiercely blowing snows would cover his tracks.

“Where he could not force his way into the fulmar’s nest, he snuck his way in and rescued his daughter. They were gone by the time the sun finally tipped its nose over the distant horizon.

“When the fulmar found that Sedna was gone, he created a huge storm to upset their kayak and kill them.

“But Anguta was somewhat selfish. When he knew that the storm would kill them both, he threw his daughter into the seas to appease the fulmar. She reached for the side of the kayak, but Anguta cut her fingers off. She and the fingers sank to the bottom of the sea. She became the goddess of the seas and her fingers turned into the seals, walruses, and whales.” His voice trailed away.

“That’s a god-awful story,” Claire said.

Taq chuckled. “Most of the Inuit stories are,” he agreed. “You have a good idea of how hard their lives can be.”

“I heard another version of that story,” Claire said. She cleared her throat and began it like she had heard one of the Inuit from Tadoule Lake tell it. It was a cautionary tale, as many of the Inuit stories were, and one was meant to listen to all the details so that one could absorb the wisdom from it.

“Sedna had her loyal dogs with her. She rose from the ocean depths and found her father asleep in the kayak. She had her dogs chew off his hands and feet. Of course, Anguta woke up at that point, and cursed everything, the Earth, the seas, the world, the universe, and everyone else, too. The Earth decided to destroy Anguta and swallowed him up. It swallowed Sedna and her dogs, too. Sedna, her father, and her dogs all live in Adlivun, a place deep under the world where the dead go to live with Sedna, Anguta, and the dogs.” She paused to let the words sink in. “It’s hell, or a version thereof.”

There was silence for a long minute. “That trumps my sea goddess story,” Taq finally said. He sounded amused.

“It seems apropos.” Claire looked around her, focusing on the craniums decorating the walls that were dimly lit from a single muted light. They were under the world, and there were all manner of dead with them. She didn’t have her dogs, but she did still have her fingers. And she still had one canine. Herself.

* * *

Shade stumbled away as he rounded the last set of circling stairs. He almost threw himself through the door that led to that part of the dungeons. It wasn’t the deepest, darkest part of the pits, but it was close enough.

Someone waited for him. Shade nearly snarled before he saw that it was Yves. Yves had been his friend for ten years, almost from the moment he’d wrapped the shield of the Council around his shoulders. Yves was a Frenchman and a wolf shifter, and sometimes Shade wondered if the French part came first. Regardless of his ethnicity, Yves was ever his friend, having saved Shade’s life multiple instances. He’d even saved him from himself upon occasion.

Shade shut the door and locked it. “Tell that bastard snake not to skimp on her food,” he growled.

“Be a little more obvious, mon ami,” Yves said. He leaned against the opposite wall and toyed idly with a row of femurs. “She won’t die if she misses a meal.”

Shade looked away from Yves and took a step back from the heavy door, staring at it. He didn’t really want to look at his friend. He didn’t want to look at anything but Claire. He wanted to sink into those pale blue eyes and drown there. It was all part of the rope he was using to hang himself with. He was damned if he did, and damned if he didn’t.

“You should tell la petite fille were,” Yves advised. “Tell her who you are and why she needs to be patient. Her father is coming. The winds of change are roaring through the towering peaks above us. The Earth will shudder.”

Shade glanced around. He sniffed for a moment. “I can’t even get a message out now. They’re watching everything. The keeper keeps his gate well guarded.” He thought about it and added, “Except when thrice-damned Pitch slips out occasionally to go to that dive he likes so much. I’ll have to wait for an opportunity. She’s safe enough down in the hole. No one but the three of us knows where she is, and the Council isn’t really interested in speaking with her. They’ve no reason to torture her for information.”

“It’s said that the Bloodletter is in the city,” Yves said. “Looking for his children. Seeking an audience with the Council perhaps?”

“He’s not that stupid,” Shade snarled. “He’ll have to trust that I’m keeping her safe for the moment.”

“Oui.” Yves nodded. “She’s safe, but what happens if our side loses?”

“The snake will free her,” Shade said, “and get her out one of the exits.”

“You should tell her,” Yves repeated. “You’re playing a stupid game with your mate.”

Shade’s head shot around and he glared at Yves.

“Yes, yes, I know.” Yves smirked. “I’d have to be blind, deaf, and stupid not to know. You act a certain way with every were you meet for a full ten years, and then you suddenly become un imbécile.” Yves waved his hands. His long brown hair spilled around his shoulders, and his blue eyes twinkled with amusement. “They say the biggest weres fall the hardest. And you, mon ami, are one of the biggest weres I know.”

“Shut up,” Shade said without rancor. “Tell me what the Council is doing.”

Yves looked pointedly at the locked door. “Crowing like little chickens. Scarlotte threatens with her bone monster. Quincy sharpens his knives. Renard flicks his gray hair over his shoulder like a horse flicks its tail at flies. Do you know I’ve never seen Renard change? What kind of horse is he? Perhaps one of those pretty Appaloosas that all the little girls like so much. With many spots on its rump.”

Shade sighed. “It’s probably the kind with a hundred sharp teeth like a Carcharodon megalodon. You don’t want to piss him off, or you’ll be one big horsey snack.”

“I don’t want to piss off any of the Council,” Yves admitted.

“Who was screaming?”

“One of the new humans who wouldn’t kowtow to the Council,” Yves said shortly. “They put him in with one of the dark ones.”

Shade snarled. “The dark ones. Weres who cannot control themselves. I’ve heard stories about these weres. They are the ones that inspired Bram Stoker’s tales about creatures who drank blood.”

“Not much left to clean up,” Yves said with distaste. “I don’t know how the human writer even got enough gossip from the villagers to plant the idea of a long-dead human who rose from the dead and enjoyed a good pint of warm blood. I prefer a good bottle of wine. French, of course.” Yves chuckled.

“We’ve got work to do,” Shade said. “Tell the snake to watch her. Watch like he has eyes on nothing else.”

Yves nodded.

* * *

Claire thought another day might have passed. The snake had brought another paper bag and two bottles of water. He’d included some packaged wet wipes, something she found very curious. He never said much to her, but his eyes studied her relentlessly. She found them somewhat chilling. The solid green color that seemed to glow in the dark, was intersected by an elliptical pupil that was nothing but a solid black line. Like a cat. No, like a snake. A human-sized snake.

“I don’t see it,” he said and the s in the word see came out as a hiss.

“See what, Parselmouth?” Claire snapped.

The snake smiled briefly. “Now I see it.” He clicked his tongue. “Harry Potter fan. That’s ironic. Snakes are always the bad guys. I’d like to see a writer do a good snake for a change.”

“Master Viper in Kung Fu Panda,” Claire said. The Furious 5 were the bomb in the eight to ten-year-old range of the clan. Three families in the clan had satellite dishes, and those were the popular houses to go visit on a given afternoon. But most homes had DVD players, and there was a hugely popular lending library of DVDs.

“That’s a cartoon,” the snake said. “Hardly counts.”

“Kaa in The Jungle Book,” Claire said promptly. “The book, not the Disney movie.”

“Beginning to really appreciate the appeal more.” The snake took two steps back from the cage. “You have a preference for something? I might be able to make it happen. Chinese food?”

“The key to the door?”

“Maybe later.”

“You’re awfully accommodating for someone who works for the Council,” she remarked.

“Ah, did I mention that one of my ancestors nearly ate Rudyard Kipling? My grandmother swears we’re the inspiration for Kaa. Had half of his leg down his gullet. Then the family interbred with snake weres from America, and I’m not sure what we are anymore. Python-rattlers or something equally mutated.”

His head suddenly came up, and he glanced to one side. “Time for me to move along. Listen up though. Things are happening quickly. I know you don’t trust me, but if I open this door, it will be because I have no other intention but to help you. I hope you remember that.”

The snake slithered down the hallway. Claire had never seen someone who looked like a human move so much like a reptile. A chill raced down her back.

“Did he bother you, Claire?” Taq’s voice came floating down the hallway.

“No,” Claire said. “In fact, I think he might be trying to be—” Trying to what? Warn her?

 

 

Chapter 5

 

They (bears) are not companions of men,

but children of gods… – John Muir

 

As time passed in an incremental manner, the conversations with Taq became more commonplace. However, there were times it was as if he was no longer in his cell. Sometimes she would call, and he would not answer. She had an inkling that the Council was doing something to him or perhaps an inkling that she was trusting his words too much. He was another prisoner. Another prisoner might do anything, betray anyone, in order to get away from this dank pit. But the brevity of the snake’s visits and the utter despair that overcame Claire when she thought of her sister alone in a distant silver-lined animal cage, made her a little reckless.

It was enough that she longed to hear Taq’s voice, she wanted the reassurance of his words.

Stupid, Claire told herself. She couldn’t tell when the days started and when the nights began. All she had were the times when the snake came by and dropped off food and water. She marked the visits on one wall with a broken bit of stone. Four marks. Then she crossed through the four with a fifth mark. The world had become desolation, and she had nothing to hang onto.

“What about you?” she asked Taq one day.

“What about me?”

“You’re down here for a reason. What is it?”

“You could say I had to come,” he said mysteriously.

“Forced to be locked in a cell,” she teased. “That seems rather convoluted.”

“Once there was a great hunter who trekked deep into the forest,” Taq said and Claire sighed. It wasn’t an impatient sigh. She liked the sound of his voice; she enjoyed the stories he told. She thought that by telling the stories, Taq was sharing something of himself. The stories were the clues. He didn’t sound like an Inuit, but he told stories like one.

“A hunter,” she breathed.

“A great hunter with a wonderful bow and quiver of arrows,” Taq corrected. “He went deep into the barren lands where the polar bear wanders, where the white fox plays, and the arctic rabbits bounce endlessly. He found a bear, a grizzly bear of giant stature, but the hunter was not afraid. He shot arrow after arrow into the bear, yet the bear did not fall. The bear simply ran away, finding a bit of forest to hide within.

“The persistent hunter continued his trek. He found the bear again and again and the bear was impressed by the hunter’s dedication. Finally the bear said, ‘You cannot kill me. I am a magic bear. Your arrows will not harm me.’ This bear, you see, was a bear god, the child of gods, and invulnerable to man’s weapons.”

Claire smiled to herself. Here was a story she had never heard before. The bear was telling a story about a magic bear. It was irony and amusement wrapped up in a neat package.

“So impressed with the hunter was the bear, that the bear said, ‘Come with me. I will not harm you. You may live with me in the mountains and always have a full belly.’ The hunter had never met a magic bear before and was thus persuaded.”

“He was too easy,” Claire commented.

“Hush,” Taq said, “if you met a magic bear, you would be thusly persuaded, too.” He paused a moment, and Claire kept her mouth shut. She wanted to hear what happened to the bear and the hunter. She really did. “So the bear led the hunter into the tall mountains. Mountains of ice and snow towered above them. He led them to a hole in a rock wall and said, ‘This is not my home, but there will be a council of all the magic bears, and it is important to know what is happening.’

“The hunter followed the bear inside the cave a long way. As the tunnel went into and under the mountain, it widened and became large enough for a stone village populated with dozens of bears. Brown bears, black bears, and giant white bears. The hugest bear of all was the great chief bear. They talked about scarcity of food and about which valleys had the best acorns and which rivers had the ripest salmon. They even discussed which inlets had the plumpest seals.

“After a while, one bear complained about the bad smell in the cave, and the bears looked at the hunter in the corner with the first magic bear. The chief bear told them, ‘It is only a stranger, and you should not be rude.’ Then the ceremonies began and they danced and sang and celebrated the lives of magic bears.”

Claire surreptitiously sniffed at herself. She smelled bad. She hadn’t had a bath for days. The wet wipes that the snake gave her were a godsend, but she’d give one of her arms for a hot shower and a bar of soap. Well, maybe not an arm. Perhaps a finger?

“So the first magic bear and the hunter left the cave the next day and went to the bear’s home, another cave some distance away. There the bear rubbed his belly and made enough blackberries and huckleberries and dried fish for them to survive through the winter. As the two made their home in the cave over the long winter, they played games with stones and told stories. Their friendship grew, but as spring approached, the magic bear became sad. ‘Soon, my friend,’ he told the hunter, ‘other humans will come and kill me. They will not kill you. But if you look back after I have died, you will see something.’”

“Oh, does the bear have to die?” Claire couldn’t help interrupting.

“Don’t spoil the story,” Taq admonished her gently. “The humans did come. They brought their dogs and hunted the magic bear into his cave. They killed the bear. Then they skinned him and took his meat. When they noticed the hunter in the back of the cave, they thought he was another bear at first, but it was only his long hair and beard that momentarily fooled them. They recognized him as the hunter who had gone missing a year before and invited him back to their camp. When the hunter left the cave, he looked back at where the bear had been killed. There in the blood and dirt was a movement. The magic bear rose from the gore and dust and became bear again, for he was invulnerable to man’s weapons. As I said before. The hunter did not want the humans to know the bear was magic, so he went with the humans back to the village and never saw the magic bear again.”

Claire shrugged to herself. “But the hunter lost his magic bear friend.”

“And became an animal shaman, who recognized that sacrifices must always be made for the good of the tribe.”

Claire thought about it. “But the magic bear lived.” She hadn’t missed the point of the story, but she felt somewhat petulant. It wasn’t exactly a happy story. Nor had the story about Sedna and her father been happy, but at least they hadn’t been skinned and their meat taken. She glanced at her fingers. Just her fingers cut off. And her father’s hands and feet chewed off by Sedna’s dogs.

Sacrifice. Claire didn’t like the sound of it. It meant that someone had to die. Someone always had to die.

* * *

Claire was tired. She didn’t sleep well in this place. Who could possibly sleep well in this place? She filled her time with jogging in place and doing pushups. She tried to remember the moves of tai chi her mother had taught her, but she hadn’t been a very good student of things that didn’t interest her. Taq would speak to her several times a day, and then other times he was mysteriously quiet. No one else but the snake came to see her. She nearly became desperate to escape the cell she found herself trapped within. The inner beast came to the surface more and more, speaking to her in tones of demand and needing.

“I want to feel the sun on my face,” she muttered to herself. “The push of a tundra breeze as it feathers my hair away from my head.”

“Patience,” Taq said from his usual distance away.

You be patient, Claire told him in her head. She wanted to try some of that Parisian coffee and right now wouldn’t be too soon. She wanted to rip someone’s guts out and now wouldn’t be too soon for that. In fact, if she could have a cup of that Parisian coffee at the same time that she ripped someone’s guts out, she would be a happy, happy were.

“There’s a story about shape-shifters that the Inuit tell. They call them the ijiraq or sometimes the ijiraat, depending on who you’re speaking to.” Taq sounded patient. He sounded a lot more patient that she was.

“I’ve heard about the ijiraq,” Claire said musingly, tamping her useless impatience down into the very pit of her soul. “They sound like the weres.”

“Ah, but the ijiraq play in the north, and their land is cursed,” Taq said. “It’s said that the ijiraq were once hunters who went too far north and were trapped between the land of the dead and the land of the living.”

“Those who hunt near the land of the ijiraq are likely to lose their way, to become confused,” Claire said. “The ijiraq do not like to share their hunting grounds.”

“They can change their shapes at their whim. They become the bear, the fox, the rabbit, and the fulmar. They play games with the humans because they can.”

“It’s also said that they steal children and set them free on the tundra. Some of the people build the inuksuk to help guide the children back.”

Taq sighed. “And you’ve built inuksuit, haven’t you? In order to guide the lost children back to The People.”

“They’re only babies,” Claire said, “and it’s only rocks, isn’t it? It’s only a small gesture.” How could he know that? She hadn’t told anyone, and no one had seen her make them.

She could almost hear the smile in his voice as he said, “But you didn’t think it small, did you?”

“I don’t know what I thought. I’ve never seen an ijiraq nor any of the shadow people who linger at the corners of one’s vision.”

“The tariaksuq, or shadow people, are only visible if they’re killed,” Taq said gravely, “which makes it difficult to kill them.”

“And the ijiraq and the tariaksuq have kicking raves at the top of the world,” Claire said. “Now what happened to my invite?”

“The clan I was raised with said I had been taken by the ijiraq,” Taq said, “although they are bears like me, and wolves too, they saw me as an outsider.”

Claire took a breath. Even in the world of shifters, there was bigotry and discrimination existed. The humans didn’t really own all of those misguided prejudices. “Did they mistreat you?”

“I had a protector who took me in. Another bear, but he’s a Kodiak bear. A big mother who never said a word that wasn’t all blunt honesty and designed to educate me in the way that would benefit me most.”

“My father is—” like that, she was going to say, then didn’t. She didn’t want to give away too much information, even to Taq, who seemed to be genuinely concerned with her. Only a fool would trust anyone in this place.

“Aningan is exactly like your father,” Taq said. “Remember the name. If you should need a friend, Aningan will help you. Aningan of the Alaska Clan. All you have to do is give him my name. You remember my full name?”

“Taqukaq, Inuit for grizzly bear,” she murmured. “What makes you think I will get out of here and you won’t?”

“Circumstances are rarely what we wish them to be,” he said.

“Very enigmatic,” she admonished him. “That sounds like something I would find in a fortune cookie.”

“Nevertheless, remember it.”

“I’ll remember,” she vowed.

“You know that sometimes weres have to do things for reasons they don’t always want to admit,” he murmured.

“I know that my father has had to make hard decisions.”

“I’m sure the Bloodletter has had to make many hard decisions.”

“I don’t know him as the Bloodletter,” she said with a wry smile. “Although I can imagine him with a great axe.”

“An axe with a double blade,” Taq corrected. “One side is larger than the other and sharp enough to split the finest hair. There’s a wolf head at the top the battle axe. It’s said it’s made out of silver because the Bloodletter doesn’t feel the sting of silver like other weres.”

That was true. The Bennetts had a certain immunity to silver. Her father and mother told their daughters to keep that knowledge to themselves, to use it as an asset. It was likely the reason the drug they’d used on the sisters hadn’t worked as long as it had on the other weres. The silver-lined animal cage that Ula was contained in wouldn’t hold her for long. Perhaps she’d already escaped. Claire could see her sister doing exactly that, and taking names as she kicked ass. But Claire…she was stuck in a dungeon, with an irritable snake were, and a bear were she couldn’t see. But his voice made her stomach tingle like it was full of butterflies.

Shut…the…front door, Claire told herself. “Tell me another story,” she said. “Make me forget where I am for a moment.”

So Taq did.

* * *

She was waiting for Shade as he closed the door that led to the pit holding Claire. He smelled her as soon as he exited, and he resisted the shudder of fear. Of all the Council members, Scarlotte the rat witch was the vilest. She might appear as if she was twelve years old, but she was full of vicious purpose. She didn’t need to be a fearsome warrior because she had cunning and powers that most didn’t appreciate until it was far too late. Weres whispered about the Bloodletter when they should have been whispering about Scarlotte and hiding under the nearest rock.

Scarlotte had been a member of the Council long enough that most forgot she had killed off some, or all, of her husbands. No one knew for certain because they had vanished into the ether. No one dared to question their absence.

It hadn’t always been that way. Once the Council stood for its motto. In gremio legis meant “in the bosom of the law.” The Latin could be confused for something more sinister, but the origin had been honest in intent. When Shade had become an agent of the Council, he’d had the motto tattooed on his right bicep. A special tattoo artist used silver nitrate in the mix to make the tattoo stick. One couldn’t see it when he became the bear, but it was there when he returned to his human form.

When had the Council begun its slide into blackened corruption? Shade didn’t know, but he would see it returned to the original, or he would die trying. Of course, he would prefer not to die, especially now. He would also prefer not to deal with Scarlotte.

“Interesting,” Scarlotte said in French. Her French was lovely and lilting, a throwback to a hundred years before. It was said that she had seen two centuries roll over, but no one would dare ask a lady her true age. No one would ask Scarlotte either.

“Madame Rat,” he said in recognition as if he had nothing to hide.

“Does the Bloodletter’s daughter know who you are?” she asked.

Shade shook his head. “She thinks I’m another prisoner.” Scarlotte was far too clever to play games with. The truth could be used in his situation, if he could skip around the deceptions he was forced to produce. He was still the Council’s were. He was still a game in play until the time came for the Bloodletter to take the Council back to where it belonged. It was safest to assume that the rat witch had been listening to the two speaking. She’d probably followed him in rat form. There were enough rats in the catacombs not to be suspicious. More fool I.

Scarlotte tittered. Her large eyes kept watch on the were who towered above her. “How funny,” she said. “How absurd. She’s your mate, is it not so? And you cannot have each other.”

“I can’t see that the Bloodletter’s daughter would look upon me affectionately as a mate,” Shade said, forcing the words to sound neutral and uncaring.

“She is our prisoner,” Scarlotte trilled. “There will be no mating.” She made a genuinely Gallic gesture with her hands. “You should be relieved, bear. Mates are a burden. They weigh upon your souls. Best to be rid of them.”

Shade stared back at Scarlotte. He wasn’t sure how to react. Mating was typically perceived as a gift to the shifter world. The were was given a mate to love and protect. Some would never meet their mates, but the ones who did usually didn’t complain about it. But Scarlotte was a psychopath in rat’s clothing. She’d probably eaten her mate.

“I don’t have any choice, Madame Rat,” Shade said after a long pause.

Scarlotte’s impish grin belied what he knew to be inside the rat witch. “So you play with the girl, make her think you’re something you’re not. How very clever and cruel of you. Whatever will happen when she finds out?”

Shade shrugged. Best case scenario. Claire would understand about choices and his desire to make the shifter world a better place. He hoped.

“Not that it truly matters,” Scarlotte added. “The Bloodletter will come for the girl sooner or later. He’ll do what we say because of his child. Then when we don’t need him, he’ll die. The seeds of their little rebellion will be over. The girl won’t be of any use to us anymore.” She passed one hand under her nose, a French gesture indicating something had slipped away or would slip away.

“She won’t be worth anything,” Shade said, well aware of how cold he sounded.

Scarlotte made a fist and extended her thumb. She clicked the edge of her thumbnail against her teeth as the fist went away from her. Just after the click of the nail against her teeth, she said, “Que dalle!”

It meant “Absolutely nothing.”

* * *

“That human’s created a mess in Wyoming,” Quincy said to Scarlotte and Renard. Shade stood in the shadows of the Council’s main chamber and listened. “The New York Clan and the Colorado Clan are up in arms. Female weres have been kidnapped and worse. That imbécile, Dyson and that mercenary, Martinez, took the Alpha’s mate from Colorado.”

Scarlotte looked at her watch. “Take the jet, Shade. Take one of the teams. Clean their mess up. You might be able to beat the Colorado Clan to the location. The team with the special helicopters will meet you in Wyoming so you can go in quietly.”

Shade nodded. Though this main chamber was dimly lit, he was positive that Scarlotte saw it.

He suppressed the urge to grin as he swept out of the Council chamber. Thank goodness Scarlotte hadn’t been more specific. It gave him more leeway than he could have imagined. He would be able to make calls to clans that he wouldn’t have been able to make otherwise. Yves waited outside the chamber, and Shade growled, “Pack them up. Bring the special weapons, mon ami. We have to blow some things up.”

“Shade,” Scarlotte said from behind him and he froze. “Bring the human here. What was his name, Dyson, Whitfield Dyson? He has something that belongs to us, I think. Make sure you search his office for anything of interest to the Council.” She clicked her tongue. “Don’t leave any loose ends.”

When Scarlotte sauntered back into the Council’s chambers and the doors slammed behind her, Yves shuddered. “She gives me the willies,” he said in English.

“She speaks English, too,” Shade advised with a grim smile. Then he whispered, “Tell the snake to move the girl. As soon as possible.”

Yves’ eyes darted left at the bone-laden doors leading to the Council’s inner sanctum. Shade nodded incrementally. “The rat witch knows where Claire is. Hurry,” he whispered. He knew that his tone was neutral, but the words conveyed the urgency that stabbed deep inside his soul.

Yves nodded and sprinted down one of the halls.

 

 

Chapter 6

 

Wolves are very resourceful. All they need to survive

is for people not to shoot them. – Bob Ferris

 

Somehow Claire knew that Taq was no longer near her. There was an emptiness inside her now that was almost as filling as had been the bear’s presence before. Because she had no choice, she waited, and the waiting was nearly intolerable. Braced against the back wall, she let her inner beast play on a distant tundra. In her mind’s eye, the wolf gamboled and jumped, playfully snapping at the flies.

What does it mean? the wolf asked Claire in reference to knowing that Taq was gone. It had been a full week since the wolf had been allowed out, and it was taking full advantage. Deep inside, Claire knew the wolf was only another manifestation of herself, but at the moment, she didn’t care that she had two voices in her head. The beast was welcome company.

I don’t know.

The wolf huffed. Oh, you know. You’re but a silly fool.

I’m not a fool. Don’t trust anyone. Not him. Not the were thing that suddenly appears right now, right in front of you!

Arrooooo, the wolf cried because for the first time, it was the second to notice something very significant.

Claire opened her eyes. A little girl stood in front of the bars, staring inside the cell. The child’s head rested against one bar while she held the closest one to it with one slight hand. Her thin face pointed in Claire’s direction as if she was taking in the caged were’s measure. She was dressed in a rag that looked somewhat like a peasant dress, and her dirty blonde hair was untidy, falling messily around her shoulders.

Claire hadn’t heard the girl approach and stop. Her nose told her something else about the girl. The wolf inside Claire howled again. The wolf didn’t like the girl. Were! Magicks! Blackness! Arrooooo! Arrooooo!

The girl’s face was the mask. The youth was the bait. Others were meant to be fooled by the façade of innocence and childhood. Claire wasn’t the fastest with a sword or a knife. She couldn’t tumble the heaviest were in the clan with a simple shoulder flex as could Ula. Claire couldn’t run as fast as most of the other wolves. But Claire had a very good nose. It wasn’t something that was always useful, but it helped now.

The girl at the bars was like the trapdoor spider. It constructs its nest and its door out of silk and vegetation, using clever camouflage. It sets out trip lines constructed from its webs. When the prey comes close enough, fooled by the camouflage into thinking nothing predatory is about, the spider pounces, and makes a hasty end of the prey.

But the girl at the bars was also a were. Claire had heard of such a being. The rumors even made their way to the northernmost parts of Manitoba. Now she understood why her mother didn’t like others to repeat the stories. They weren’t stories at all. Here was the rat witch in front of her, not really larger than life. Scarlotte was her name, and she was seemingly innocuous.

Let me go! Arrooooo! Let me fight her!

“Do you know who I am?” Scarlotte asked in French-accented English. She might have been a young school girl asking for directions to the nearest bibliothèque.

Claire nodded.

“Good. It’s so much better when I don’t have to explain everything.”

Claire kept her mouth shut. No one was going to help her but herself. That Parisian coffee was sounding better by the moment.

Wait for opportunity, the wolf advised her. There is always a moment when an adversary’s throat is exposed. There was a pause, and a subdued inner howl followed as if trying not to tip its hand to the enemy.

The rat witch studied Claire as if she was a bug under a microscope. “I thought the Bloodletter’s children would be larger.”

Children? Had she seen Ula? Claire’s pulse quickened.

“But you take after your mother, do you not?” Scarlotte smiled and showed tiny pegged teeth. “Except the eyes. Those are your father’s eyes. Pale blue. Like the dog with the pale blue eyes. What do they call that breed?”

The wolf didn’t like being compared to a mere dog. Of course, Claire didn’t like it either. However, who wanted to argue with a rat witch? Not her, for sure!

I do, the wolf said. Wait for the time and rip her throat out! Drink her blood! Make her pay for what she’s done to us! Arrooooo!

“You should step away from the bars,” Claire warned.

“What did you say?” Scarlotte asked.

Without hesitation, Claire leapt across the tiny space, and in that instant of time, her hands became wolf paws with the claws extended. They weren’t cat claws, but they could dig and tear. Her mouth opened wide, and the incisors erupted as she was midair. She hadn’t known she could do that. She felt her paws push through the openings between the bars and wrap around the tiny were. She tried to push and pull at the rat’s flesh at the same time. The growl exploding from her mouth was only halted when she shoved her head between the bars and it closed around the were’s throat. She was a millisecond from ending the rat witch’s existence when a gut-wrenching pain seared through her middle.

The rat witch had reached through the bars and touched Claire’s midsection, delivering a burst of dark magick to her stomach that felt like she’d been punched with a ten pound mallet.

Claire jerked back, trying to find her breath again.

Something else reached through the bars and wrapped its bony grip around Claire’s head and tossed her to the rear of the cell. She hit the back wall with a loud grunt and slid to the ground. In the next moment, she was standing up, snarling, and ready to pursue the next opportunity.

The rat witch stood on the opposite side of the hallway, looking in at Claire with a hint of newfound respect. But it was the other thing that stood beside the bars, gazing in at Claire that made her snarl harder.

Fully seven feet tall, it looked like a figure encased in bones. No, not encased in bones. This creature, whatever it was, seemed constructed entirely of bones.

A thin skin covered the bones, but the paltry light in the hallway shone through it, revealing stringy cartilage and gray, ropy muscles. It also showed the barbed wire that held the creation together.

Worst of all were the red-rimmed black eyes like tiny stones that stared at her from a skull with massive teeth jutting downward, like the skull of a long extinct saber tooth tiger.

Scarlotte wiped away Claire’s spittle from her neck and motioned to the creature. “Put her in chains,” she said in French.

The door popped open as if it hadn’t been locked at all.

The thing clanked inside, twisting in ways that normal things don’t twist. Its bony hands reached for Claire.

Claire roared her response before she launched herself at it.

* * *

Yves stopped when he heard the roar. There was a response to the roar as the bone-wrought monster made a noise that gave fingernails raking a chalkboard a run for its money.

He’d been delayed for only five minutes as he gave directions to members of one the Council’s special teams. By the time he reached the door that led to the pit holding the Bloodletter’s daughter, the monster was dragging the girl out. One of its great bony hands held onto her shoulder and the other pulled at the chains of the manacles encasing each of her slender wrists. Yves faded into the shadows as the thing rattled by him, and a bruised and battered Claire apparently didn’t notice the other shifter at all. Yves was about to follow when a cat-sized rat scampered past him. He froze, and the red, beady eyes only glanced at him curiously.

Yves swallowed compulsively. Large rats lived in the catacombs, but not many that size.

“Don’t you have a plane to catch?” the rat asked in lilting French. “The Council’s business to attend to?”

And none of the cat-sized rats in residence spoke French in their animal forms. Not normal ones anyway.

Yves nodded and strode away as the odd trio disappeared down the skull-lined hallway in the direction of the Council’s main chamber.

He had to find the snake. Only the snake was going to be able to help Claire Bennett now.

* * *

The bone monster dropped Claire on the floor of the Council’s main chamber. At least that’s where Claire assumed she was. Witch lights dotted the walls; their blue lights eerily illuminated the large room. Their lights waxed and waned as if they were alive. Columns supported the great arched ceiling. Each was decorated with elaborate patterns of bones that got smaller and smaller as they went up the column. Thousands of bones held testament to the living beings who once used them and took them all too well for granted. It was a grim locale suitable for dark deeds.

On the far side of the chamber, a raised platform held three elegant chairs. Two were occupied, by the weres who couldn’t be bothered to look up from whatever activities occupied them to see who’d come in.

Claire lay on the floor, catching her breath, urging the inner beast to calm itself. Scarlotte stepped past her, again in human form. Her dirty blonde hair dropped to her shoulders, bouncing as she walked, and her plain cloth dress was still nothing more than a rag. Her stained slippers clip-clapped on the stone floors.

How did a shifter return to her human shape dressed in clothing again? Must be the dark magicks she wielded. Claire wouldn’t mind changing into human form dressed again. But if she could, she’d surely never wear such an ugly cloth dress.

Claire studied the other Council members. She knew the names and the reputations. What were didn’t? Even a were living in isolation, under a rock in a cave on the tip of an arctic isle, knew of Quincy and Renard. No one wanted to come before the Council.

She climbed to her feet, awkwardly handling the ancient iron manacles. They should have been coated with silver for maximum effect, but Claire suspected the rat witch didn’t think she needed silver-coated manacles to control the weres she was terrorizing.

They waited for a good long time before saying anything. It seemed like a lifetime, thought it was no more than ten long minutes, during which Claire had to force herself to remain calm. Quincy tapped at his laptop while Renard stared at his smartphone. Scarlotte was the only one who didn’t do anything particular. Instead, she sat in her chair, swinging one foot back and forth idly. Her legs weren’t quite long enough to touch the floor.

After a while, Quincy closed his laptop, and Renard glanced up from his phone. Scarlotte cleared her throat, sounding like a little child playing at being a grownup.

“What do you know about the Bloodletter’s plans?” she asked in her peculiar French-accented English, and Claire was ironically certain that the rat witch was, in fact, speaking to her.

“I know about my father,” Claire said curtly.

“And your father is the Bloodletter,” Renard the Elderly said.

“I’ve never known him to let blood,” Claire said.

Scarlotte tittered. It sounded like the laughter of the exceptionally mad. It suggested that a tea party followed by a ritualized decapitation would ensue. It certainly didn’t make Claire want to laugh along.

“Let’s break some of her bones and see if she changes her tune,” Quincy suggested.

“Do we really want to provoke the Bloodletter?” Renard asked.

“Eventually, we’re going to kill him,” Quincy snapped, “what difference does it make if he’s pissed off over his assaulted daughter or not?”

“Is your father planning a rebellion?” Scarlotte asked Claire rather politely.

“I don’t know,” Claire said. She stared at the trio in front of her and then glanced at the bone monster. It stood about five feet away from her, and it swayed back and forth just a little as if it was impatient, as if it was truly alive. She looked at her hands. The manacles were attached to a chain about two feet apart. It would have been enough to hold most people down.

“This is the daughter who’s a little slower,” Quincy said. “They say the other one is as swift as her father.”

“Oh, hey,” Claire protested, “I’m not that much slower than Ula. Sometimes I can beat her high score on Halo. That’s Halo 4, by the way, for you nongaming pussies.”

“Is the girl being sarcastic?” Quincy asked the other Council members. “The youngest child of the Bloodletter has a mouthy aspect because she’s got nothing else?”

Scarlotte tittered again.

“Okay, I’m slower, and I’m the youngest daughter, and I don’t know what my father’s doing,” Claire said. She suspected that it mattered not a whit what she said or did here. No doubt, her ass was about to be waxed.

The doors crashed open. Claire glanced over her shoulder and saw the weresnake. He looked a little wild-eyed. His gaze settled on Claire before he took in the Council and the bone monster.

“Serpent,” Scarlotte said to the snake. Claire didn’t know if Scarlotte was calling him by name or by his were species.

“There’s an escape,” he said urgently. “The female prisoner has gone. Several of the guards are dead.”

“Tatsu?” Scarlotte asked.

The snake nodded without looking at Claire. “She ripped them to pieces.”

“Get as many weres as possible,” Scarlotte instructed. “Has Shade left already?”

The snake nodded again. Scarlotte glanced at Quincy. “You should hunt the drakken down. She’ll run to fire. If you’re not quick about it, she’ll burn half of Paris down.”

Quincy shrugged. “Should have killed her.” However casual he felt about it, he immediately got up and swept away.

Scarlotte wrinkled her nose. “I suppose we should help. Best to stay together until she’s caught again.”

Renard looked pointedly at Claire. “Best to kill all the prisoners before they become problems.”

“We can’t kill them all,” Scarlotte said. “Where would we put the bodies?” She waved at the bone-decorated columns and walls. “Space is at a premium here.”

“That’s why we have Shadow Realms, my dear,” Renard said insouciantly.

Claire studied both of them. She couldn’t take all of them, but if she took out the bone monster, she might have a fighting chance. She suddenly closed her eyes and let her inner beast take control.

It’s about friggin’ time, the wolf thought. Arrooooo!

No one moved when Claire did. She bent to the left and wrapped the chain of the manacle around the leg bones of the bone monster. She slung the doubled end of the chain around the thick lower bones and caught it with her other hand. She caught the bones in a firm grip and yanked. The thick femur, not shin bones as it should have been, was covered with a thin layer of grayish flesh stretching across it. The flesh ripped like newsprint and fell away as she gave a tremendous pull. The bone popped away and the barbed wire snapped like popcorn.

Claire heard Scarlotte curse in French, but the bone monster was already falling away from Claire, unbalanced by the sudden loss of one of its legs. It fell hard, several smaller bones cracked as it hit the stone floor, and spread out as if someone was throwing a set of dice.

Twisting around, Claire flipped the thick femur in her hand and swung it at the snake. The snake let out an annoyed bellow and rapid jangles sounded sharply like an angry child waving a toy rattle. The balled joint of the femur caught him in the stomach, and he lurched over forward, keening with the sudden loss of oxygen.

Claire growled as she spun toward the members of the Council. The inner wolf chortled with triumph. She paused to kick the grasping bony fingers of the monster away. It was pulling itself toward her. Claws reached for her flesh. Claire stomped on the bones and felt them crunch even while she felt them cut into the roughened flesh of her heel.

She didn’t waste time running for the door. Although it might have been smarter if the human part of her had been in charge, then she might have stopped to think about it. But the wolf was holding the reins, and the wolf was ticked off. Furthermore, the weres at whom the wolf was ticked, were only ten feet away.

Claire raised the femur and charged the raised platform. Scarlotte merely smiled sardonically and Renard dumped the chair backwards, trying to get away from the shifter with the rabid snarl on her face.

Claire hit the platform with one foot as she went for Renard. He had won the lottery on that score because he was marginally closer to her than Scarlotte. To Claire’s wolf, Renard presented the larger person, or the biggest threat, and was necessary to deal with first. Again, if she, herself, had been thinking she would have gone for Scarlotte first.

The femur pulled back for the strike, she would bash the horse were’s head in, so he’d never be able to look down his long nose at another were again. They’d thought the bone monster was enough protection for them, and it was easy to disregard a girl barely out of school, one who was known to be slower than her sister. However, neither she nor her wolf minded teaching them a lesson about reality versus assumption. She might be slower than Ula, but she wasn’t useless.

Claire’s body in the air, femur clutched tightly in her manacled hands, she swung the bone toward Renard’s face, which had gone rigid with fear.

The air in Claire’s lungs whooshed away as something caught her around the middle and snatched her backwards. The ball joint of the femur had been an inch away from Renard’s skull, and the bone went flying out of her hands as she was pulled away.

Claire found a breath of air and shrieked her rage, twisting and clawing with her hands. Through her mounting fury, she smelled the dry reptilian scent of the snake. He’d wrenched her away from the platform and tossed her across the room. She slid on her side, zooming past the bone monster still struggling to reach for her. Its skeletal claws scraped against the stone floor as it pulled itself around. Those red-rimmed black marbles burned with frenzy.

Claire had come to a stop against the far wall, underneath a row of witchy blue lights. She snarled and launched herself to her feet just as the snake reached her. For a weighted instant as he stared at her, his mouth moved in a single, silent word. “Sorry,” he’d said before slamming his fist against her face.

 

 

Chapter 7

 

The wolf is not always a wolf. – Italian Proverb

 

In a state of rising consciousness, Claire touched her jaw before she could decide whether she should do that very thing. It was dislocated, and it hurt a lot. As she bit down on her tongue and pushed the bone back into place, it made an odd popping noise.

“Good,” the snake said. “You’re awake.”

“Fuck you and your cold-blooded relatives,” Claire muttered. The words sounded funny because the jaw wasn’t working correctly yet. She opened her mouth wide and nearly winced when her mandible ground against another bone. She pushed again with her finger, trying to re-adjust the bone alignment. She heard it make another grating popping noise, and then it was where it needed to be.

“We’re not really cold-blooded,” the snake said. He clicked his tongue. “I wonder if we are when we’re in snake form. I’ve never thought to check.”

“You should have let me kill them,” she murmured.

“You might have damaged Renard,” the snake said. Should she think of him as Serpent instead? No, she couldn’t let go of the snake part. He was snake to her, no matter what. “But you wouldn’t have gotten Scarlotte. I’ve never seen anyone get the best of her.”

“My sister could,” Claire said. “She’s that fast and she’s sneaky.”

“You’re not exactly slow.”

“Slower than my sister.”

“A little sibling rivalry, hmm? One day, I look forward to meeting Ula, daughter of the Bloodletter.”

“You’re awfully friendly now,” Claire said and opened her eyes. Slowly she took in the scene. One part of her expected to be in a traditional torture chamber with the iron maiden, a ducking stool, and a rack. Instead, she found herself lying in her cell. She recognized the marks on the walls as her own. The snake sat in the middle of the open doorway, blocking the exit.

“Scarlotte wasn’t happy about having to put her ‘thing’ back together,” he remarked, “but it’s keeping her busy now. Most weres try to levitate away from it instead of attempting to tear a limb from it. I’ll have to remember that if I have to go up against it.”

“Nice femur,” she said. “Makes a damn fine club. Must have come off a giant. And I didn’t ‘attempt’ anything. That thing was crawling for the interim.”

“How’s that jaw?”

“Hurts,” she mumbled. “It’s healing. Won’t hurt in a few hours.”

The snake breathed a heavy sigh. “Whew,” he said with obvious relief, “I wouldn’t want to have to tell—”

Claire rolled onto her side. She had been lying on her back on the plastic mat and had her head turned to one side. She had an amazing view of a half-empty water bottle and the plastic bucket that served as her toilet. She turned her head back toward the snake. “Tell who what?”

“Never mind that,” he said quickly. “We’ve got to get you to another location. Since Scarlotte knows about this one, she’ll be down to torture you about her bone monster. She doesn’t mind a little collateral damage to her creature, but outright vandalism pisses her off. Once they’re done trying to find the drakken, she’ll come to see if she can break you.”

“What the hell are you trying to say?”

“Pay attention. We need to move you to protect you,” the snake elucidated.

“Then why did you bring me back here at all?”

“Weres were watching me,” the snake said. “Her weres. I had time to free the drakken as a distraction, but I don’t have time to get you out of the catacombs. I can’t openly revolt, or they would know that…”

Claire’s eyes narrowed. “Why would you…”

The snake came to his feet in an elegant movement. One instant he was sedentary, the next he crouched in the doorway apparently waiting for Claire to attack him.

“Taq?” she called. There wasn’t an answer.

The snake grimaced. The expression revealed everything even to the typically clueless Claire.

“Son of a…” Claire climbed to her feet and said a few more choice swear words. “He’s one of you. He’s one of the Council’s weres, isn’t he?”

The snake didn’t say anything.

Don’t trust anyone. Don’t trust anyone! DON’T TRUST ANYONE!!! The wolf inside Claire howled with dismay. That jerk and his stupid Inuit stories! That absolute asshat!

Finally the snake said, “I’ve got just the place for you. It’s safe until Sh— I mean, Taq, comes back, and he’ll make sure you’re protected then.”

“Why would you do this?” Claire said through gritted teeth, which only exacerbated the pain in her jaw.

“The Council’s weres aren’t all bad,” the snake said quickly. “I can’t explain it all to you. There are a hundred other weres who would sell us out for the Council’s favor, and I don’t know all of them. So come with me and we’ll…”

Closing her eyes for a moment, Claire leaned on the wall, desperately trying to think of options. She didn’t have any options, and the snake didn’t have to tell her anything. She would have to cautiously trust him. When he didn’t say anything else, she opened her eyes and saw another were carefully holding her forearm around the snake’s throat, and choking him. He tried to change, but the abrupt lack of oxygen had obviously turned his brain into mush. His hands turned blackish-green and scales rolled across his flesh. A highly agitated rattle sounded and echoed down the hallway. One of his hands pried at the forearm.

After ten seconds, the snake’s eyes rolled up in his head, and his body relaxed. The were released her forearm and let him fall onto the floor. The snake grunted and lay as still as a rock.

Claire stared. The other were wasn’t particularly large, not an inch over five feet and was, in fact, some inches shorter than she was. Her hair was as black as Claire’s, but her eyes were a gleaming green, a fiery green that seemed to undulate in place. The epicanthic fold revealed her Asian descent. The butter brown of her flesh was smudged with dirt, and her clothing was a ragged t-shirt that hung to her knees.

“But he helped you,” Claire said, assuming that this were was none other than the escaped drakken. She certainly didn’t smell like other weres, and she didn’t even smell like the snake. It was part reptile, part mammal, part bird. The wolf inside Claire didn’t know whether to fight or flee. Is there any kind of were they don’t have around here? the wolf asked.

“And when they find him, they’ll think he didn’t help me,” the other were said. She spoke Japanese accented English.

“What about the cameras?”

“The snake took them out when he freed me. He short-circuited the feeds.”

“You’re the one they call Tatsu?”

“Hai.”

Don’t trust anyone, her inner beast advised.

“Where are we going?”

“Out. Away. The snake freed me, but there are so many of the Council’s weres here,” she said quickly, looking anxious. “I’ve stomped around enough of the tunnels for them to be confused by the crossed scent paths, but I need someone to help fight.”

“I can fight,” Claire said. She could have eyes in the back of her head, too, for a while, if need be. She’d do just about anything to escape this netherworld. A burning rage ate a hole in her gut. She had trusted Taq, and he was nothing but another were who wanted her for another undisclosed reason. She couldn’t afford to trust the wrong person again.

Tatsu studied Claire. “They whisper about you,” Tatsu said. “The weres here. They say you are the Bloodletter’s daughter. They say the Bloodletter is coming for you. Having the Bloodletter’s daughter at my side would be advantageous.”

Claire studied the other were in turn. The torn t-shirt didn’t detract from her exquisiteness. She was a petite beauty, the kind that Claire would always be jealous about. She didn’t look like she would be able to fight her way out of a paper bag, but she had just choked the snake into unconsciousness with an arm movement that had seemed effortless.

“I haven’t a clue what my father is doing,” Claire said honestly. “I know he’s coming. I don’t know when, and I don’t care to wait and see if he’s in time.”

“Good,” Tatsu said. “Let’s get out of this place. I like a dark place but this…this is too dark.”

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, the wolf told Claire, until the enemy of my enemy is not my friend.

* * *

Claire followed Tatsu. They climbed from the pit she’d been kept in. There was only one exit from that. It was there that Claire scented Taq again. He’d been all through the corridors and the passages above her dungeon. It was such a unique scent, and it coiled inside her, twisting through every vein, working its way through her bloodstream, making her want to scream with frustration.

A cat shifter came out of the darkness to Claire’s left, aiming a billy club for the back of Tatsu’s head. He disregarded Claire completely. The wolf inside her reacted and swung with her left arm. She followed with her body, and the shifter hit the wall with all of the force of Claire’s weight. He fell to the stone floor without regaining consciousness. It turned out some of her father’s many teachings had held true.

Tatsu aimed a kick at the shifter’s head. “Thank you,” she said. “They’ve been told I’m very dangerous.”

She doesn’t look dangerous, the wolf said. She looks much smaller than you are.

“Why don’t you change?” Claire asked and aimed another kick at the unconscious shifter’s head, wishing it was Taq’s head. Just to be certain.

Tatsu smiled, and it was a cold, grim smile. “The drakken is much larger than these little tunnels.”

They could hear yelling in the distance.

“They’re desperate to keep you,” Claire said. “They think you’ll head to fire, that you might burn down half of Paris.”

“Fire does not come from above,” Tatsu said. She crouched in the tunnel and touched the floor, her hand flat against the rocks. “I feel the fire below us. We must go down. They’ll be expecting us to head upward. We might slip past them.” She rose to her feet and spun around. One leg snapped out, and Claire ducked as it passed over her head. It missed Claire’s head but it didn’t miss the shifter behind her. His body slumped against the wall, then fell next to the first one.

Claire spared a quick glance. “We need to run, Tatsu.” She pulled her clothing from her body. She began her change. The words were thick in her metamorphosing jaw. “I can sniff us a way downward.”

Tatsu nodded and waited, looking around them. “Come, daughter of the Bloodletter. The rat witch will be on us soon, and she’ll bring that cursed bone-constructed thing with her. I can’t fight her black magicks in this place.”

Claire’s wolf shape shook its head and took an accounting of the situation. Claire could speak to the wolf just as the wolf could speak to her, although they were both, and sometimes they were separate. The wolf wanted only to think about the way to fresh air and a forest in which to run, while Claire wanted not to think about the fact that some bear had deceived her. Not up, Claire told herself. Down. Down into the deep tunnels of the Earth. Let the drakken find her source of energy. Let her help us.

The wolf didn’t like that much, but the distant sounds of approaching weres prodded them into acceding.

The wolf led the way and the drakken followed.

* * *

Tatsu bent over and caught her breath. “I can sense the heat, Bloodletter’s daughter.” Her green eyes waxed with knowledge. “They won’t be able to stop us before we slip away.”

Claire yipped. Tatsu was more intense than any were Claire had ever met, with the exception of her father. However, Tatsu had been held by the Council in the same manner as they’d held Claire, and Claire didn’t want to change back into her human form to ask Tatsu why this was so. Tatsu could have killed the snake or the other weres they had run into, but she had withheld her strength and left them unconscious or unable to follow. The last rat were they’d encountered had four broken limbs, and he was going to need traction to set them straight. But he wasn’t dead and for that he was lucky.

Tatsu suddenly straightened and looked ahead of them. Claire glanced forward and saw nothing but a bone-decorated wall blocking them. They would have go back and find another route. That was a problem because Claire could hear a group of weres moving in that direction. It shouldn’t have been a problem because the trail of scents she had been following was strong. It shouldn’t have led to a dead end. Weres had come to this very place for some reason. A very specific reason.

Tatsu said something in Japanese and then added in English, “The Earth’s heat beckons to me.”

Claire looked at the drakken and then at the wall. Multiple scents in a path meant someone had come this way. Some of the scents came and went. Other scents only came once. She stepped closer to the wall and stopped. It stank of magicks. It smelled like the rat witch and what she emitted when she conjured blackness. Claire whined, but the drakken paid her no mind.

Tatsu took another step closer to the wall. She held up her hands and said, “I am drakken,” she said, “and you will allow me to pass.” Claire didn’t like the abrupt surge of magicks that followed the statement and bumped Tatsu’s leg with her shoulder.

Consequently, when the wall opened and swallowed Tatsu, Claire was sucked in, as well.

* * *

Shade rubbed his forehead. He had a headache. Actually he had multiple headaches. The trip to the states had been uneventful. They’d changed to the helos at Riverton. The airport there was small, and the humans gave them and their militarized armament and transportation a wide berth. Fortunately, the airport was well outside of the town, and the witnesses were limited to a few Airport Ground Operations crew. If the Council’s team was lucky, the humans would chalk up the sighting to the mythical men in black or something equally innocuous, like unknown NSA action.

The helos made the trip to the facility near Yellowstone Park in record time. Regardless, the clans from Colorado and New York had beaten them to the locale. The facility had been rescued. The humans were rounded up in the cafeteria, and the weres were systematically searching for the kidnapped weres they couldn’t find.

Shade caught sight of Ula Bennett once, and his heart was wrenched in his chest. He wanted to tell her about Claire. He wanted to tell her about her father, but it was something he couldn’t do. Scarlotte had neglected to instruct Shade on what to do with the kidnapped weres, and specifically Ula, so he was purposely going to turn his head. Let her run back to Manitoba and the safety of her clan.

But the humans of the facility were Shade’s responsibility. That and the cleanup. He set Yves on the task of planting the explosives. He arranged for transport of the prisoners he needed to keep, which meant a few of the scientists that Whitfield Dyson had working for him and Whitfield Dyson himself. The Colorado Clan wanted to argue about who got to kill Dyson, but the Council trumped their claim, and their Alpha was out in the woods chasing after his mate, so he couldn’t weigh in. To give Shade more of a headache, the weredove, Xandra, had claimed that a few of the humans helped them.

Shade wasn’t a cruel were, but if the dove knew what he knew about what would happen to the humans when they reached Paris, she wouldn’t have insisted on Shade’s intervention. The doctor, Anton, and a few others, would be tried before the Council. It wasn’t going to be as just and fair as trials were portrayed on American television shows.

For the rest of the humans, Shade used a witch. She was on the Council’s payroll, and she systematically wiped their memories. They were going to remember the think-tank and the explosion and the deaths of the billionaire, the state senator, and his brother. It was a disastrous accident. The former military base had filled with noxious gases emitting from the geologically unsound region. Something had ignited them and kaboom. Wow. Nothing left. Couldn’t even find ashes. A fifteen second line on CNN Headline News. Very tragic.

It was all a large headache. Shade tried to avoid killing as much as he could. The clans that had reached the Wyoming facility had taken care of most of it. He heard the shots in the nearby forest and the roaring of an enraged lion and knew that the Alpha of the Colorado Clan had taken care of the remainder.

He did want to kill the Irish were, Killian, with his smartass mouth and tendency to shoot it off. Unfortunately, Shade was going to need all the good weres later, and he couldn’t justify it in his head. Not that he really wanted to kill Killian, but it would have been nice to break some of the mouthy were’s bones.

By the time Shade had returned to the helo and was headed back to Riverton, he was in the foulest mood imaginable. He’d tried to forget about Claire. But the rat witch knew where Claire was located. The snake was supposed to move Claire to somewhere safe, but Scarlotte was tenacious, and no one could predict what she would do and what she wouldn’t do. The Council needed Claire for the moment or until Scarlotte decided the Council didn’t need her.

Shade sat back against the bench seat and stared into nothingness. He finally glanced at Yves and saw that the wolf shifter didn’t want to look at him. Yves had been busy on the ride over from France. He’d been busy with planting the explosives throughout the facility to ensure there wasn’t a trace left of what the humans had been doing. Shade hadn’t had a chance to talk to him until this moment.

“Did you do what I told you?” Shade asked.

“Scarlotte already had her,” Yves said. There wasn’t any humor left in the were’s normally genial tone. “I told the snake to get to her and get her away from the Council. I don’t know what happened.”

Shade growled and clenched his fists helplessly. That wasn’t the news he wanted to hear. Claire was in the Council’s hands, and he was half a world away.