The steps leading downstairs to Des’s basement apartment normally groaned like an elderly person getting out of bed. They barely made a sound as she descended. When she arrived at her apartment, the door was wide open, and the brunette was gone, though her scent lingered heavily.
Kicking the door shut behind her, Des carried Ruby across the room to the bed and reluctantly laid her down. No time for niceties such as changing the sheets. And anyway, it wasn’t as if they’d be staying for any longer than it took Des to get her stuff.
Des grabbed her emergency duffel out of her cramped closet and tossed it on the futon next to Ruby. Then she pried up the loose floorboard on which the duffle had sat. She got a few splinters for her haste: tiny, but bright flashes of pain gone as quickly as they came, the splinters themselves plinking to the floor as her body rejected the intruders.
Swearing to herself in Spanish, Des extracted the seven thick, neat rubber-banded wads of cash from their hiding place. She knew how much was in each wad down to the exact dollar, not to mention just how far away from Lenape Landing such a pile of accumulated cash could get them.
Pretty goddamn far, Des thought, briefly remembering the months spent wandering the wide world post-rabidity, but pre-Geas and George. The only responsibility she’d had in those stark, hard, empty, drifting days had been keeping her own temper and desires in check. Surprisingly not hard to do since all her formerly endless rage and hunger had seemed to finally be quenched with the passing of her rabidity. Not that said quenching had made living with all she’d done any easier.
Not that Des deserved to have it easy after—
“Time and place, Jennifer. Time and place,” Des muttered to herself, getting to her feet and shutting her closet door with a final click.
A moment later, she stuffed the money inside the duffel under her shirts, except for one wad of twenties, which she put in an inner pocket of her jacket. Des took a quick look around the Spartan, one-room apartment, but she didn’t feel any loss or nostalgia, just the vague sense she’d forgotten something, but that seemed to attend every leave-taking she’d ever had. However, just in case the feeling was right, for once, Des divided the room into quadrants and scanned it carefully.
Closet and bathroom? Nothing there she couldn’t do without for the next day or so. And anyway, the point was for the apartment to look as if it was still lived in, despite the fact that it wasn’t.
Kitchenette? Barely any food in it anyway, and nothing worth carrying except for the small microwave Des had invested in a year ago. But she was definitely not going on the run with a microwave.
The small desk-and-bookshelf that’d been there when she moved in? Nothing on it but an ancient thesaurus, which had also come with the apartment, and Des’s old, bulky but powerful laptop. A gift from Jake, built by Jake. Three years old, and it still consistently outperformed the other laptops Des occasionally looked into buying. Not to mention that whatever alloy the case was made of was tougher than nails, having survived several falls from high places, falls in which it stood up not only to impact, but to Des landing on top of it.
It’d be a shame to leave it behind, but she barely had room for the cash in the duffle, and anyway, she could buy another easily—
“Fuck it.” Des carefully shut down, disentangled, and unplugged the laptop. It’d been all over the world with her, a constant companion. Sometimes, it’d been like having Jake with her, and the Moon Above knew that for some months, months she’d spent living in places she’d only ever read about, it had been her only contact with the world she’d known.
Grim-faced, Des turned to the final quadrant with the bed and the woman lying in it.
Moaning and shivering in it, like someone who’d eaten fruit from the Fever Tree.
“It sucks, now, but it gets better,” Des found herself saying as she pounded the stuff in her duffle into submission, then jammed the laptop down lengthways, between her jeans and leather jacket. “I promise. Maybe at first, for the first few months, it’s gonna be rough. But if you can survive them, well, it ain’t gonna be a cake-walk, but it’ll be okay. It’ll be okay.”
The only response Des got was another moan, followed by a soft, desperate sob.
“Your lack of faith in me is justified. But trust me on this. I know whereof I speak.” She swung the duffle on her back then stood looking down at Ruby, arms akimbo. In the forgiving light of the Hunter-Moon, Ruby looked as if she was merely sleeping, not nearly comatose with a fever that would in all likelihood kill her.
She looked as if a kiss could wake her from her slumber and save her, all in one press of lips against lips. A police siren wailing in the distance snapped Des out of her reverie and, red about the face, she got her arms under Ruby’s legs and around her waist, and hefted her up.
Neither woman nor duffle was heavy for Des.
Stalking out of her apartment for the second time that night, Des gave no thought to the groaning of the stairs this time. Within seconds, she was stepping out into the windy, moonlit night, eyes always searching-searching-searching for the ever-present danger. In her arms, Ruby started to shake almost immediately, unconsciously huddling in Des’s arms, as helpless as she’d ever be.
*
On such a patchily overcast, gloomy night, it was easy enough to keep to the many shadows Lenape Landing offered. What wasn’t so easy was getting out of the city without using public transportation or a cab.
From her vantage point of a stinking, dark alley, Des watched yet another L.L.P.D. cruiser go by. The police presence seemed heavier to Des tonight. Not an hour into her flight with Ruby, and she’d already evaded twelve cruisers. No telling how many more were out on the streets of the rest of the city. It was enough to make Des wonder why the extra bacon. Why tonight? What or who could possibly have the Commissioner so spooked that he put so many units out on patrol. And why tonight? Looking down at the moaning woman in her arms, Des felt a cold, prickling sensation that ice-danced its way down her suddenly rigid spine.
They’re looking for us, she thought with a start. They may not know who we are, or at least who Ruby is, but they definitely know who I am, because I am—was—George’s Geas-Protector. If they find us, it won’t be hard for them to figure out who Ruby is. Or, if they have a Loup in their midst, she or he will smell it on her.
And on the heels of this surely unbelievable premise: Holy shit, how deep does this rabbit hole go?
Des had a feeling she didn’t want to know.
Not that what she wanted had anything to do with what she was obligated to do, and she was quickly realizing the Geas placed on her to protect George, and now Ruby, was more than just a night job as a bouncer at a club. It was a life-and-death duty that included her gathering information as needed to keep her Dyre safe. She was not just a hired gun. She was a soldier, a spy, and a nursemaid, all rolled into one. Maybe more, as time went on. Looking down into Ruby’s soft, innocent, troubled face, Des for the first time wondered if she was up to the challenge. Another cruiser went by, and Des moved deeper into the alley.
Just then, it started to rain. Hard. The clouds that had been sporadically hiding the waning Gibbous-Moon released a torrent that immediately soaked Des and her charge.
Sighing, Des hefted Ruby. When she was sure the cruiser had turned a corner, she scurried out of the alley and headed east. It wasn’t the fastest or safest way out of the city, but it was mostly abandoned, and only occasionally patrolled by the cops. Maybe less occasionally tonight, but still, their presence wouldn’t be as heavy as it was here in the Northside, or in the more commercial Downtown.
And from the Eastside, they could make their way out of the city proper through the brief, iffy eastern suburbs, then they could circle around north to safety. It was a plan. And it had the added benefit of leading any pursuers of the Loup persuasion on a merry chase, what with all the backtracking Des’d have to do just to find their way.
And that was assuming Des wouldn’t have to fight for their lives.
That may be a lot to assume, Des thought and stopped, standing stock-still and letting her shoulders slump for a few moments.
Then she was shaking off her despair and sniffing the humid, slightly reeking air. After a moment of hesitation, she turned east toward their only chance at safety.
*
An hour later, she was skulking among old warehouses and factories, grimly weathering the rain and hoping Ruby was doing the same. She was still moaning weakly, still shivering. But she was barely radiating any heat Des could feel. That worried her, but another hour, two, at most, should find them at their destination.
All Ruby has to do is not die for that long. No, not die for long enough for us to get a Loup doctor to look her over, Des corrected herself with stern pragmatism. She’s in a bad way. I don’t know anything short of a miracle that could save her if I can’t get her to Nathan’s place in time.
Her ears and nose pricked up, assaulted by a sound and scents she did not like: gun oil, silver nitrate, evil intent, and Loup, approaching fast, no attempt at stealth.
Shit-shit-shit, Des thought, picking up her pace to a light jog that jostled Ruby enough to make her moan. It was as worrying as it was heartening that she was still alive enough to feel discomfort.
Des dodged right, around the corner of two old condemned warehouses that looked like they were ready to fall down. On going deeper into the alley, she found a section of the warehouse on the left had fallen down, blocking the egress on the other end of the alley. The clouds diffused the overcast light of the Waning Gibbous, but Des still couldn’t see a safe way up that pile of boards, nails, and concrete. Which left Des in the unenviable position of having to backtrack, only that scent of gun oil, silver nitrate, and Loup had been slowly filling the alley even as Des had jogged to the blocked exit.
Climbing that rubble was not an option while carrying Ruby.
So Des scrambled carefully up the rubble as far as she dared, not wanting to leave Ruby vulnerable on the ground, and placed her on a relatively flat spot that didn’t seem to have any nails or splinters waiting to impale the unwary. She settled Ruby’s head on the solid duffle and covered her with the army jacket.
She wouldn’t need knives for this fight.
Ruby opened her eyes briefly, wide and staring, blind in the milky, faint light of the Waning Gibbous. But they nonetheless seemed to lock on Des’s.
“I got this,” Des promised, leaning down to kiss Ruby’s cool, damp cheek. “Don’t go anywhere, gorgeous. I’ll only be a minute.”
Ruby moaned again and closed her eyes once more.
Des turned and leapt off the heap of rubble and began removing her clothes. Now? the Loup growled from just under the surface of her psyche, and Des smiled. But it was more of a snarl.
Now, she told it as she kicked off her soaked jeans, boots, and socks. They lay where they fell, next to her sodden shirt.
Lightning struck through the heavens and through Des, like the brightest flash of pain, like a full-body cramp that split her in two. She dropped to her hands and knees, keening. As her bones began to crack and break and reshape themselves, her pale, drenched skin rippled with the suggestion, then the reality of a coarse black pelt. As every bone in her face re-formed, her human keening slowly became an animalistic growl.
Then a howl.
A howl that was answered from the mouth of the alley.
*
Anka Patsono was old-fashioned, even though she was a relatively young sixty years old.
When supplied with the silver nitrate bullets and the gun, she’d initially sneered at their clunky, new-fangled impersonality. At the lack of honor they represented. What about the Old Ways? What about the honorable fight? The Right of Challenge?
And when her erstwhile employer had assured Anka that in a fair fight between herself and this half-blood mongrel, Anka would lose, well Anka had nearly turned down the job right then and there, almost too insulted to even continue the meeting, let alone accept it.
But she’d been intrigued by the supposed challenge presented by this mongrel pup, this youngest bastard of a Pack full of the same. So she’d taken the job and the gun, even though its very touch seemed to soil her hands, and she waited to follow her orders.
Then everything had gone straight to Hell when the Human assassin had partially failed in his duty, getting himself killed before Anka could kill him. Which wasn’t necessarily a disaster as far as Anka’s job went, but the mongrel pup had gotten away with the heir-apparent to the North American Dyrehood, and Anka had nearly lost their trail in the downpour that’d started earlier in the evening and hadn’t let up.
But Anka had eventually found their trail. Had tracked them for two hours, always staying just out of scenting range until the mongrel pup had gotten to the abandoned edges of Lenape Landing.
Tactically, she’d dug hers and the Dyre-Apparent’s graves. Anka couldn’t have been more pleased. Now, as she stood at the mouth of the alley, scenting the pup’s Change, all ideas of following the orders to use the gun and silver bullets on any Loup who got in her way flew out the figurative window.
Rolling her shoulders, Anka tossed the gun back the way she’d come and began shrugging off her clothes, letting the sweet agony of the Change flow through the muscle and bone and marrow of her body.
In the dim moonlight, she could only barely see the pup shifting and Changing with little yips of pain and the usual cracking of bones and tearing of muscles. Coarse black hair sprouted up all over her small frame, and she focused her dark, dark eyes on Anka with keen, cold intelligence.
Anka laughed, and it came out as a mocking growl. Perhaps her employer had been right, after all. In any event, after years of easy kills, Anka welcomed a challenge. Even one it was likely she would win.
Change completed, the pup threw back her head and howled in response: both defiance and challenge. There was no fear in it. Not a single note.
Snarling her anticipation, Anka stepped forward.
*
The smaller Loup trotted warily forward, a lean black shadow in a sea of the same, obsidian-dark eyes shining like marbles, hooded and cold. Her teeth were bared, white and long.
The larger Loup, mouth also open in the Loup-ine equivalent of a smile, loped forward confidently, reddish-brown fur a-bristle, nonetheless.
Turn around now, or I’ll kill you, the pup said emotionlessly. That surprised Anka, as most pups tended to be hotheads. This one was as cold as ice, with deadly unconcern in her scent and death in her eyes.
For a moment, Anka felt actual fear, then she shook her head, muzzle twitching as she side-stepped her way closer, heartened when the pup took a step back. It’s you who’ll die tonight, little mongrel. It’s you who should be—
But Anka didn’t get to finish, because the mongrel pup was leaping for her, all red rage and sudden fury.
Anka faked to the left then dodged to the right, but the pup seemed to have anticipated her, landing on Anka like a hundred-pound weight. Solid despite her lack of size, she bowled Anka onto her back. She immediately sought Anka’s throat with her muzzle. Anka tried to shake the pup off, but couldn’t. She was like Velcro, her claws embedded in Anka’s flesh.
Wondering when this fight had gone so wrong, had gotten so far out of her control, Anka did some throat-seeking of her own, expecting the pup to waste time trying to evade her. But the pup didn’t. She was as fearless as she was diminutive, her eyes burning, red, and rabid.
Anka’s employer hadn’t mentioned that part.
Suddenly the discarded gun seemed like not such a bad idea.
That bolt of fear came back with a vengeance, and Anka struggled even harder not to be bitten in any way by the rabid mongrel on top of her, growling and dripping poisonous slather all over Anka’s face. Anka dared not let that slather drip into her mouth. At even the suggestion of rabidity, the Patsono Pack would kill her, assuming some other Pack didn’t take care of her first.
This is the Loup they let guard their leader? This half-cocked gun? This mad little thing with poison in its veins and murder in its heart? What were they thinking, these upstart American Garoul? What were they—
Then bitter, murder-salty, madness-coppery saliva dripped into Anka’s nose, and she yelped in horror, more of it dripping into her mouth. Horror mounted upon horror, made her toss her head away and to the side. It was in her, now. And no Pack or Clan would be able to hide her or overlook the growing scent of madness that would overlay her once the rabidity really got its claws into her blood. No one would help her. She would find no forgiveness here in the New World or back in the Old Country. Unlike the Loup of the rumors, rumors that had made their way back to Romania, of the mad wolf who was supposedly allowed to run rabid because its father was an Alpha, there’d be no reprieve for—
And oh, it all made sense too late: who this mongrel pup was and why the American Council of Alphas had spared her. They’d taken a vicious, remorseless, lunatic of a Hell-hound, and turned her into a guard dog. The Council’s pragmatism and refusal to see any opportunity pass without exploiting it had let them consider and do the unthinkable.
It was practical and so perfectly American an idea.
And the renewal of that initial horror proved to be Anka’s undoing, for the jaws from which that evil, poisonous saliva fell descended upon her. Upon her throat, and through it, till those purposeful teeth were gripping her spinal column and yanking upward. Outward.
The pain isn’t as bad as I thought. Why, it barely hurts at—
Then a flash of silver-white light, so bright it obliterated even as it exalted, burned even as it soothed, took Anka with it. This light ran and without even a sense of transition or disorientation, Anka was running with it.
*
Des’s Loup paced around the fallen body of its enemy, snarling and growling.
Hungry.
No, Des told her Loup calmly, a small, easily ignored voice from within. Her Loup laughed its snickering, mad, growling laugh and stopped pacing, lowering its muzzle to the pool of blood spreading around their enemy’s cooling body. It was thirsty, too. Hungry, thirsty, and—
From behind Des and her Loup came a soft cry that seemed to bring with it the gentle scent of woman-vellum-lilies-innocence. Of power and potential.
Power and potential the Loup wanted to take into itself.
Enemy forgotten, the Loup trotted toward the source of that scent.
As it trotted, that scent became stronger, purer, irresistible. It began to mean everything Des’s Loup wanted and no longer had. It slunk up the rubble, jaws wide and dripping, till it was crouched over the sleeping form from which all things emanated.
Wide eyes opened again, still blank and unseeing, once again, however, seeming to land on Des’s Loup. To command it, and that command found an anchor in the Loup’s rabid, buzzing-mad blood and brain. In its empty, barren heart.
And something began to bloom in that arid space. Something that hadn’t touched Des or her Loup in so long, they’d forgotten that feeling even existed. It was both lead and helium, this feeling, heavy as earth and light as air. As frightening as Des’s rabid Loup, itself—more so. And it was also quite beautiful . . . so much so, neither Des nor the Loup could look directly at it for long, for fear that they might be obliterated entirely. Made hollow and refilled with this feeling, and once that happened, where would they be?
Taken aback, Des’s Loup found itself sitting on its haunches and leaning down to touch its nose to the soft, cool cheek of the Hume-seeming Loup that lay both fevered and freezing on rubble and duffle. Nothing could have startled Des’s Loup more than when a gentle hand settled on its head like a benediction, scratching and ruffling the fur at the scruff of the Loup’s neck before falling away.
Des’s Loup sat up, only to find those wide, unseeing eyes falling shut again.
It howled plaintively, wanting them to open once more. To feel that benediction, that sense of belonging and welcome again.
But it didn’t.
The Loup finally hung its head . . . and after a minute’s stillness was able to find that blooming sensation welling up within, watering dried, cavernous hollows, bringing life to the lifeless and joy to the joyless.
Elated and humbled, it tentatively touched this feeling. . . .
It was pure Moon’s Light. It burned and soothed. It was still as a pond, deep as a river, and it ran.
It washed clean, and Des’s Loup—Des, belonged to it. Was of it and made for it.
Des and her Loup, as close to being one as they’d ever been, bathed in it, and let themselves be immersed, until their whole world was Moon’s Light.
*
Nearly half an hour later, Jennifer Desiderio stood up shivering, arms crossed over her breasts, knees knocking as they tried to support her in a way of standing that barely seemed to make sense after what seemed like an eternity spent in Loup-form.
At her feet lay Ruby Knudsen, still shaking, still moaning, but now once more radiating that alarming heat, which showed up as a deep flush under her café-au-lait complexion. For minutes Des could only stare dumbly at her and feel something so big and alien, it defied explanation and forbade observation.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, shattering this reverie and startling Des into taking a step backward onto nothing. She pin-wheeled her arms, but nonetheless fell back down the pile of rubble, scraping and bruising every scrapeable and bruiseable part of her. She landed spine first on her own boots and grunted, the wind knocked out of her. It was several moments before she sat up and reached for her drenched clothes.
It was time to play Human again.
*
By cloudy, drizzling midnight, Des was exhausted from carrying Ruby around and keeping to the shadows and alleyways of Lenape Landing. From the fight with that murderous bitch. From Changing to full Loup form and back in less than an hour.
She and Ruby were both drenched. At least that would muddy their scents in case someone else came sniffing after them, but Ruby had acquired a racking cough Des didn’t like one bit.
Keeping that thought firmly in mind, Des stepped up to the huge wrought-iron gate and glanced at the CCD camera mounted atop it like a watchful raven. She knew she must have looked like a drowned rat, carrying a corpse for company.
Des was, yet again, not remotely in a position of power. But there was nothing to be done about it. She’d barely reached out for the intercom buzzer before the gate swung silently open like something out of a gothic novel.
Any second thoughts she had about entering were quashed by the suddenly increasing downpour, and Ruby’s soft, pitiful moans and weak shivers. Des trotted down the gravel driveway, past the gatehouse and whichever goon was playing guard that night, to the brooding front door of the estate house. She wouldn’t bother reaching for the knocker. He obviously already knew she was there. Indeed, the front door was already open by the time she climbed the shallow front steps.
A somber man of middling height waited in a rectangle of soft yellow light that did nothing to soften his features. Unreadable dark eyes flicked from Des, to Ruby, then back to Des. He flared his nostrils disdainfully and sighed as one greatly put upon.
“Good evening, Jennifer,” Nathan Coulter murmured in his smooth, eternally unruffled tenor. He was the only person who called her Jennifer. The only person left who has a right to, she supposed tiredly. But it still pissed her off.
“Good evening, sir,” Des mumbled, then gritted her teeth and firmly reminded herself that beggars couldn’t be choosers. “Father.”
Nathan smiled his thin, amused smile and that also pissed Des off, as did his regal, languid gesture to enter. But for the moment, Ruby Knudsen was safe. That was all that mattered.
So, Des checked her ego at the door and stepped inside.