A wolf who knew his way around a pool cue.
I stared at the business hours scrawled hastily on a sign hanging on the door.
We might meet if I started showing up. And if he was truly alone … A new recruit who understood the lay of the land—such as it was—could be beneficial.
Could at least give me a view of the area beyond Gabe’s.
But a wolf who couldn’t be recruited…? That would be trouble.
Either way, I needed to meet him.
And deal with him.
Alexi
“A family meeting?” Max grumbled. “How very civilized.” The last to join us, he scraped his chair out, sat heavily, and glared in my direction.
I ignored his attitude and set the stack of bills and their corresponding envelopes on the dining room table before them all. “We have an issue, you see? All of these bills must be paid—in order for us to continue living here.”
Pietr and Cat nodded in agreement—but not yet in understanding the crux of the problem or, as my people would sometimes say, the place where the dog is buried.
Max just watched me, daring me to teach him something.
“But there is a problem. We have nearly no income now the company has been—”
“Blown to bits?” Jessie asked from the doorway.
I smiled at her sudden intrusion despite our predicament. “You and Amy are certainly best friends—that sounds like something she would say.”
“We share a brain from time to time,” Jessie confessed.
Amy grinned, then rolled her eyes and said, “Yesss. You can borrow the communal brain for tomorrow’s quiz.”
“What’s a BFF for?” Jessie asked with a laugh. “So. All this…?”
“Family meeting,” Max pouted.
Amy patted his head and tsk-ed at his grumbling.
“And I wasn’t told?”
I shrugged. “I did not think either of you needed to be involved.”
Jessie pointed at Amy as if to say, But she’s here.
“She all but stalks Max.”
“Hey, I’m just doing what I do best.”
I raised my hands. “Okay, okay. Let us get back to business. We have a serious problem. We do not have the income to continue our current lifestyle—or any lifestyle—after next month concludes. We need a game plan.”
“Aren’t you still…?” Max left the question dangling in the air, giving only a faint hint as to the unsavory moneymaking method I occasionally indulged in.
Americans called it hustling.
I called it building a nest egg.
Jessie and Amy pinned me with their gazes. Neither of them knew how I traveled from pool hall to pool hall and card game to card game—there were a remarkable number of both in the area, considering the relatively small size of the population—but then, too, there were numerous bars, an understandable surge of gambling and alcohol following the recent rise in unemployment. I lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I am a gambling man.”
“Remember how he gambled with our lives?” Max added in a way that was both cold and casual. “This way at least he’s the only one at risk.”
“Unless you tag along,” I retorted. “Then the entire establishment is at risk.”
Amy looked at Max, the pressure pouring on. “Explain yourself.”
“I have not tagged along in several weeks.”
Her left eyebrow arched, and he raised his hands between them to erect a wall, surrendering. “You need to stay out of trouble, mister,” she said, the serious set of her mouth sliding into a slow grin.
“Then what will I do for fun?” Max asked, one of his eyebrows rising to match her own as his voice lowered, softening into a faint rumble.
Instantly Amy stiffened, her flirting cooled, and she abruptly spun back to face me.
Max’s gaze fell from her face, the arm that had rested across the back of Amy’s chair dropped, and he stared at the table, more uncomfortable than I’d seen him act in years.
If Marvin hadn’t already been dead I would have wanted him dead just for that moment—for the awkward space his violence against Amy put between her and my little brother.
I cleared my throat and pushed past the thought. “We must all now pull our own weight—contribute to the family cause and work together, if we intend to stay.”
Max leaned back in his chair, his eyelids heavy. “So what do you suggest, brother?”
Before I could say a single word, Amy had turned on him, her head cocked, eyes flashing. “That you get a job.”
I nodded, holding back the smile edging at my lips.
“A job?” Max mused. “And what are werewolves—ex-werewolves,” he corrected snidely, “good for?”
“Bussing tables,” Amy quipped.
“Waiting tables,” Jessie suggested.
“Taking tickets or working the concession stand at the theater, or sweeping up in the theater.”
“Retail.”
“Fast food.”
I crossed my arms and watched Max, Pietr, and Cat grasp the seriousness of our predicament. They had never held jobs before, but then, we had never been in one place long enough to hold jobs. I picked at the tablecloth. This might require more paperwork—more forgeries—unless they all worked, as they said, “under the table.”
Cat gave a long, slow blink. “Dear god,” she whispered. “Retail? Pravda?”
Jessie and Amy snorted and said in unison, “Pravda.”
“I’d offer to try and get a job, too, but I’m as busy as I can be with the farm…,” Jessie apologized, reaching out a hand to Pietr’s.
He nodded. “I’ll keep doing odds and ends at the farm,” he offered. “That is a small something.…”
“A small something will not pay the bills,” I said firmly.
Amy toyed with a fork left on the table from lunch. “I’m living here now, so I should contribute. I think I can get something—maybe even temp work with one of the local agencies.”
“Temp work.” Jessie nodded. “Probably filling in at Aphrodite, but a temporary gig at a factory’s still better than nothing.”
“Okay,” Amy said with the groan that meant she’d made up her mind, “I’ll put in as many applications as I can—hit everything. And you”—she punched Max in the arm, the most physical affection I’d seen her easily display in front of us for quite a while—“will fill out every application I give you. Happily.”
“Gladly,” he muttered.
“Gleefully,” she added.
“Gleefully?” His eyes slid to catch hers and he groaned. “Must it be gleefully?”
“Yes,” she said, all serious. “I’m afraid gleefully is the least I’ll accept.”
“There is something above gleefully?” he asked her, a hint of fear coloring his tone. This was how they played now: carefully. Awkwardly.
But it was something.
“Of course there’s something above gleefully,” she said, her voice somber and low. She spun to face Jessie, startling her just enough so she jumped in her chair. “Jessie,” she hissed melodramatically. “What’s above gleefully?”
Jessie’s head hit the table in response. “I used up all my words with the lit assignment,” she apologized. “I could add Sarah to your speed dial, though…,” she offered slyly, her hand creeping across the table toward Amy’s ever-present phone.
Amy smacked it definitively, grinning at Jessie’s overacted yelp, and whipped back around to Max. “I’m sorry to report that although I am absolutely certain there is something above gleefully, I have no current means—and want no new ones,” she added over her shoulder to her best friend, “to tell you what it is precisely.”
“So I have to take your word on it?” Max asked, reaching up to stroke his stubbly chin in thought.
“Yes. I’m afraid so.”
“Then that’s what I’ll do,” he conceded, but the subtext between them was much deeper than a discussion about linguistics and job applications. I had the definite feeling he
was promising her something more. That he was promising to take her word on everything—every question he asked.
Relieved by his reply, a certain tightness in her shoulders released and she leaned back in her own chair, peering at Max a moment.
“Excellent strategy, Amy,” I congratulated her.
“And I’ll help Cat get some applications in at places that’ll suit her tastes,” Amy offered. “Think clothing stores, Cat,” she said with a wink.
“Oh! The shoe department,” Cat replied.
“Da, there is hope for everyone,” I muttered.
Marlaena
We’d been bedded down in the same place for two days when the sharp scent of woodsmoke filling the old house and leaking past its tattered curtains and out broken windows woke me. A welcome smell until my nose pricked and my eyes watered. Uncurling, I stretched and swallowed up my wolfkin side, feeling the fur pull back into my flesh like a million tiny pinpricks that woke my human senses more fully.
They stared at me, eyes stroking along my naked form, some curious, some hungry as I stepped to the fire’s side. They’d stacked firewood hastily in the center of the tile kitchen floor and lit it as safely as they could.
“Is there no fireplace?” I asked the group resting with snouts on their paws, my voice still gruff from both waking and the change.
Most of them were younger—timid things I’d picked up along the road, lost, wounded, or abandoned and still shy in their human skins and barely playful in their furs. Shyness was a luxury. The hard fact was the quiet ones had less chance of survival in our world than those of us who learned to be bold.
Gabriel’s mouth stretched in a long canine yawn and he changed from the boy in the nearly fox-colored wolf pelt to the man he kept trying to prove he was. He stood before me, as naked as I was, his shoulders back and head held high, green eyes glinting. Bold and as unmarred as he was now, I’d seen him at his lowest—whimpering in a ditch, bullets from his adopted father’s handgun riddling his flesh.
We were the lucky ones.
Survivors.
“Flue’s blocked—can’t unjam it,” he explained coolly.
“So building the fire in the kitchen—”
He sat slowly down, his eyes never leaving mine and full of the spark of challenge and hunger. “Allows a better way to circle and enjoy its heat. The smoke can’t be helped.” He stretched out, lounging—basking—in the warmth and glow of the fire.
It was weird how easy it became to ignore nudity once you’d seen so much of it.
Crouching, I thrust a nearby stick into the fire, holding its tip in the flame until it kindled, fire licking greedily along its end. Standing, I held the burning brand before them. “What does this fire have in common with us?”
There was quiet from my pack as they shifted to forms more capable of speech, some reaching for their scant clothes or the moth-eaten blankets Gabe had rummaged for us.
“Stop,” I commanded. “Be not ashamed of your forms, either human or animal. We are made in the image of God—doubly so because we admire both Fenrir, the dark and dangerous wolf destined to devour the sun, and Loki, the light-bringer and trickster, his father.”
They paused, hands sliding away from cloth for the moment. At my bidding. My command. Perhaps listening to Phil preach hadn’t been a total loss after all. They were hungry for the Word—even if the Word was mainly of my own construction. Wasn’t the Bible made by ordinary men supposedly inspired by God? Why couldn’t I be likewise inspired if it helped empower others?
Where was the harm?
I shook the stick at them. “Tell me: What do we have in common with this flame?”
“Some of us are hot?” Gabriel’s eyes swept across my form, pausing on key locations that piqued his interest.
I growled at him and shook the stick again.
“The flame is as hot as the fire that burns within us,” a soft but steady voice responded, and my eyes caught Darby’s—a cute strawberry-blond girl who’d had little of the trauma most of us had endured. I’d found her in San Antonio near the River Walk, tired and hungry, the police chasing her away for begging from tourists. She’d worn out her welcome at the local homeless shelters and was as lost as anyone could be.
Until I found her—recognized her for what she was and brought her to the pack.
“Damn right—what else?” I wiggled the stick again, watching as embers tumbled from its tip to be licked up by the flames nestled a few feet below.
Red eyes glowed from one dark corner, and a voice deep as the noise of the nearby train rumbled out of the darkness. “It burns brightly when tended, but never long enough.”
Gareth. The eternal optimist. The man meeting our group’s quota for tortured hero.
My mouth twisted into a grin. “So we tend our inner fire—our wolf—and remember that just because life ends too soon it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make the most of it. We seize each day. Make it ours. And why is that?” I asked them, looking from face to face in the wavering light the fire cast.
“Because the Wolf is the Way!” Kyanne led the cry.
Grinning, I threw my head back, let out a howl, and joined them in the chorus of “The Wolf is the Way!”
I reached into the blaze and pulled out two sturdy branches, thick with flame. Tauntingly, I jabbed the torches toward my wolves, watching them grin and dodge. I stood as straight and tall as I could, watching the flames flicker and creep closer to my hands.
When the tongues of fire were so close the fine hairs on my hands curled in the heat, I raised the torches over my head …
… and set the ceiling on fire.
Grabbing odds and ends we ran out into the snow, mostly naked but fully alive—and laughing.
Except for Gareth, who merely raised a heavy eyebrow in my direction and shook his head at the growing blaze. Wanton destruction, he’d once accused me of. I strode over to him and, with a smile, I bent over to slowly pull on my jeans.
When I rose I knew his eyes only bothered to meet my eyes—that they never strayed to any other bits of me.
Because between Gareth and me, there was only one of us who was ever wanton. So I laughed again.
In his so very serious and disappointed face.
CHAPTER NINE
Jessie
“Seriously? You’re going to play Dungeons & Dragons?” Amy raised an eyebrow skeptically at me. “Why do I feel a need to stage an intervention?”
I laughed. “Well, I’m tempted to agree with the intervention idea, but it’d be aimed at Pietr since he’s initiating a family game night and it seems we’re going on a quest.…”
“I’m so sorry for you.”
I snagged her wrist. “Oh, don’t be sorry for me—you’ll be joining in the fun.”
“What?”
“You’re the one suddenly tossing around terms like grand mêlée in the midst of a snowball battle.”
“So I’m being penalized for improving my vocabulary?”
I began to drag her toward the dining room as she sputtered out her protests. “I’m really not a gamer.… I don’t know the first thing about this stuff.… This really isn’t my thing.… I…” But her mouth shut when she saw Max sitting next to an open chair.
She shook free of my grip and straightened.
“Hey,” she greeted him. “Jessie was just telling me about this quest.…”
“Great,” he muttered, pulling the chair out for her. “Then you can explain it to me.”
“Jessie!” I heard someone call from the other side of Max. Smith leaned around him, waving to catch my attention. “There’s a seat open here…,” he said, pointing to a spot located conveniently at his side.
Luckily it was also at Pietr’s side.
“Thanks,” I said, slipping into the chair between the two of them and right across the table from where Hascal and Jaikin sat, fully mesmerized by the existence of Cat—who was looking as nervous as her namesake in a room full of rocking chairs.
Alexi l
ounged nearby, his chair tipping back haphazardly as he texted on his cell.
“Nadezhda back in the States?” I asked him, noting how intent he was on reading and replying.
He spared me a glance and a grin—all I needed to answer my question. Then he returned to what he was doing.
“So,” Smith announced, clearing his throat and rising from his seat, “the first matter of business—”
Amy groaned, “Business? Isn’t this supposed to be fun?”
“Just the turn of a phrase,” Smith assured her, looking her over skeptically. He had a gift for occasionally backhanding someone with a wry cynicism, but I knew he’d keep his mouth shut about Amy.
He knew she was my best friend.
And I knew—god help him—he was still crushing on me. Hard.
It was flattering, really, having a guy with a full scholarship to nearly anywhere—based on his brain alone—crush on you, especially when it appeared Pietr had nearly become his geeky doppelgänger.
I did a double take.
Well-combed hair, button-down shirts, downcast eyes …
I was sitting between two studious, bright (and decidedly pale, I added to the checklist—Pietr was going to need some light other than what bounced back to him off his computer monitor’s screen) guys. One who’d crushed on me since we started our frequent flirters club in the school van taking us to and from our Service Learning project, and … Pietr.
And as clever as they both were … I would’ve accepted a less studious Pietr if he’d just returned to studying my lips. Or my neck. Or …
I straightened, suddenly warmer than the room should make me. I looked at Pietr. He was looking at a paper. The same type of paper Smith thrust in my direction.
“… character design,” Smith concluded.
I gulped, hoping I hadn’t missed anything vital.
The next twenty minutes were a blur while I tried to catch up and fill in the blanks that had gaped open while I’d fantasized about Pietr kissing me. And holding me … Maybe Pietr was exactly all he could be as a simple human. Maybe if you wiped all the alpha out of any of us you were naturally left with someone gentle and kind and too willing to please and study and …