Binding: Book Two of the Moon Wolf Saga (21 page)

“All right,” I said agreeably. “I can wait.”

I followed her around the side of the house, lengthening my stride to keep up with her, and limping just a bit on my bad ankle. In back there was another, bigger patio, bordered by pool chairs and palm trees. Orange and lemon trees alternated in big wooden planters along the fence. And of course, there was the big blue pool, smelling of chlorine, where not a leaf or insect marred the perfect, stinky water.

Elaine waved me along, walking so fast I broke into a jog to keep up, and changed from her right side to her left. My adrenaline started pumping as we passed the pool. I wondered if I should just throw her in now and save time. Elaine had washed her hands thoroughly with an astringent soap, since her morning's appointment bringing death to a dog, and more recently with a soap tinged with lavender, but she had missed a trace of the gun oil on her fingers. I couldn’t see where she was concealing a gun on her at present. The pockets on the cardigan weren’t big enough, and should have swung more heavily when she moved with a couple of pounds of pistol in it. She might have just been cleaning the gun before putting it away. Then again, she might have it hidden somewhere out here, ready to hand.

If she shot me again, I might have to bang her head on the concrete a few times before I threw her in the pool. I didn’t think she could shoot me, since I was ready for her. The woman still didn’t know how fast I could move. But if she made me move that fast, I swore she was going to be awfully sorry.

The evil vet led the way across the pool area, which no one had used in a long time.

“So, did you bury my wallet under a tree or something?” I wasn’t expecting an answer. I was just talking to see her reaction. Like poking a snake with a stick. “Look, I don’t care about the cash, I just need my I.D. Or don’t you have it?”

“It's just—you have to see something.”

I stopped walking. “I do? What would that be?”

“It's here.”

The far side of the pool was fenced with high wooden boards that had once been painted dark green. She dragged open a groaning lopsided gate, and held it for me. “Just through here.”

“My wallet is just through there?”

Elaine met my gaze briefly, then looked away into the field beyond the gate. “Go on,” she said. “In there.”

Through the gate I glimpsed green grass and the neatly spaced trees of an old orchard. “Why should I go in there?”

“Just—there's somebody waiting for you.”

“Has she got my wallet?”

She still wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I’ll give you your wallet when you come out.” The tension on her body reached a new height. I took one step toward the gate just to see if it could rise any more, but she seemed to have topped out.

I raised my head and opened my mouth a little. There was almost no breeze, and the air that was stirring came from behind and to the right. Curt had not come this way. Elaine had been through the gate earlier. She pulled it open a little more, invitingly. I smiled at her. I thought I’d better take a stroll around the perimeter of the orchard, outside the fence, before I walked through that gate.

A voice came from behind me. “Thank you, doctor. I’ll take it from here.”

I spun hard. My third oldest stepbrother, Finley, dropped lightly over the orchard fence onto the patio and stalked toward me. His eyes were already turning gold.

I
grow bigger when I’m angry. I grow smaller when I’m scared. Another problem with fear is that you freeze, and you lose track of your surroundings as your attention telescopes on the threat coming at you. Time speeds up as you slow down, and you find yourself clutching at opportunities that have already slipped out of reach. “You little bitch. Where have you been? You are in so much trouble!”

I managed to get an arm up before the first blow struck. I managed to ride the backhand that followed by shuffling a little out of range. I managed to back away before he grabbed me. I stepped to the side before he backed me against the tub with the lemon tree, or trapped me in the space between the tub and the gate, the heavy blows falling faster and harder.

“Bitch! Idiot! Cunt! I am so going to make you pay!”

I heard the evil vet squawking some kind of protest. He turned on her with a snarl, and I ducked back, out of range for a moment, and through the only opening available, into the orchard where I would have a bit more room to move. And there I was.

Right in the trap.

When my stepfather moved in, he made a point of teaching me and my brother Luke what the new pack order was. When he was certain we’d learned our place, his four sons took up the lesson. My oldest stepbrother, Tillman, chased me down every day, pinned me, held me down and laid into me until he was satisfied that I’d submitted sufficiently. He kept at it until he got me to submit without fighting him, through four memorable months. He left after that, since he had a job and a place elsewhere. His brothers stayed, though, and they picked up where he left off. Finley's smell, his sweat, his sneer, brought up the remembered rage and shame I’d retained from those lessons. That bile filled my throat and stomach again now as I backed away, step by step, holding off his heavy, open-handed blows, catching them on my forearms, riding them when I could not stop them, keeping them from landing where they would damage me the most, while I tried to blot out the practiced venom of his words. Ducking, blocking, keeping myself whole. Not on the jaw. Not on the joints. Not on the lower ribs. I heard myself make the little grunting noises that meant I was losing, and I burned with fury, hatred and shame at the sounds.

Deep in my belly my panic and fear told me again what I’d learned from all those old lessons: that I was already beaten, that it was only a matter of time before Finley did anything he wanted to me. I clenched my jaw against any further little noises. The rage rose in me, hopeless though I was. I was not going to give up.

I dodged a tree at just the right second, and the blow fell on the trunk instead of on me. I enjoyed the welling satisfaction, and the sound of his curses, and respite from the blows that didn’t fall because the pain had disturbed his rhythm. One for me, and I hadn’t even touched him.

I couldn’t change, because the evil vet was over there somewhere, and she had her gun. If there's a gun around, you want to be in human form. Anyone can get away with shooting a wolf, especially one in their yard. In any case, changing to wolf form in a fight just meant that Finley, in his wolf form, could do things to me that humans couldn’t get away with. Right down to my bones, I did not want to go through that again.

His hands came down like hammers, blows meant to disorient, weaken, diminish. Blows that I knew from experience would not stop until I couldn’t stand up anymore. Stepping backward, I tripped over a pile of tree stakes, six feet high and almost as thick as my wrist. Someone had a plan to prop up this old orchard, but crashing down on the pile nearly ended the fight. Finley, grinning, launched himself to land on top of me. I twisted out of his way, pushed some poles between us and came up again. Finley was on his feet as well, with one of the poles in his hand. Oh, shit.

He tried to strike me with it, but it was too heavy to move very fast, and I avoided it easily. He stabbed at me with it, and I sidestepped, and then grabbed it and used the pole as a lever to shove Finley into a tree, but he dropped it before he struck, stagger-stepping to remain upright. Then he came at me in a rush, hammering at me now with his fists. He was angry.

The evil vet came into the orchard. I heard her crying out at him. He left me and headed for her at a run, and she backed out and slammed the gate shut. I moved to better my position, further out among the trees, away from the fence where he intended to pin me. Then he came for me again. Don’t let him damage me, don’t let him grab me. Once he had hold of me, since he was stronger and weighed more, he could throw me around however he liked, and I wouldn’t be able to protect myself.

I was gasping now, as he laid in to me methodically, not hurrying, not breathing fast, the satisfied smirk on his face just like his dad's. Each blow falling on my bruised arms felt as though my bones might crack, they ached so much. But still I reached to block the blows that fell. My head rang from the ones that had connected. My lip was bleeding. I had to stay out of his grasp, hold him off as best I could, as long as I could.

He would beat me until I was exhausted. He would put me on the ground and beat me until I couldn’t move. He would make sure I knew I was beaten. Then he would haul me off and take me back to my mom's place, where I’d have to go through this again and again. There were tears in my eyes, and I hated that too. A low growl started in my chest, almost too low for human hearing. Finley heard it, heard in it my defiance, and cursed me again. He came at me harder, and faster. If he grabbed me, I was done. I knew that.

I realized why he was holding back on me, why he hadn’t ended this already. He wanted me to change. He wanted to pin me, screw me, roll me, make me piss myself. He wanted that complete subjugation. So his blows were a form of taunting, trying to get me to bite.

It's amazing how quickly you tire, when you’re being beaten. I can run all day. I can hold my own in a fight for quite some time, but being beaten shakes you at your core, weakens you, drags out all your strength, makes you see only one way out of this situation, and that was to give up, to submit, or to die.

His blows slammed into me and I couldn’t stop them. The anger in me rose and touched my heart. As I backed away through the thick grass, dodging the trees when he tried to drive me into one, turning away again so he couldn’t back me into the fence, it occurred to me that this was taking longer than it should. He should have beaten me by this time. He always had before. I blocked another blow, and they were definitely coming slower now. It seemed to me that despite his weight and despite his strength, he wasn’t as big as he used to be. I met his eyes. I didn’t have to look that far up to do it.

My rage began to sing inside me, as I felt myself grow with my anger. Now a growl came from him, a purely human sound of fury and frustration. I grinned, showing him my teeth. He roared at me and lunged, and grabbed my wrists. He tried to pin both of them in one big hand, so he could beat me with the other one, but as he grabbed me, I changed, just my arms to my wolf forelegs, just for a moment, so when he grabbed, the shape he was expecting wasn’t there, and I slipped out of his grasp, and in his moment of confusion, I gained a few steps on him, backing off and moving away from the high wooden fence. The growl deep in my throat was louder now. He stared at me for a moment in surprise. I was dizzy with pain, my arms, shoulders and ribs ached, and my stomach where he’d gotten in a good one. But I wasn’t beaten yet. I was stronger now, and faster, and I knew more. There was a chance, just a chance, that I would get lucky.

He lunged and grabbed at me again, held me tight and tried to turn me and get an arm lock on me, and there I was with my head close to his shoulder, a bit bigger than I was before, and I changed, just my head, just for a moment, and in that moment I got his shoulder just below the neck in my wolf teeth and bit down as hard as I could. The taste of his blood was like the nectar of the gods.

He threw me off with a roar that was partly a scream, but I landed easy, out of the range of his arms, and grinning like a fool, his blood on my lips. He clutched his torn shoulder with his other hand, the blood welling through his fingers like the goo spilling out of a donut.

“You rabid bitch! I will get you for this. Dad told us to give it to you, but I was going to go easy. But you’re going to pay for this now!”

His eyes slitted, he stomped toward me, his hands out, ready to grab. I backed away, still enjoying the sight of the blood that smeared his hand, and trickled through his shirt. He charged me, raining down blows with his fists. He didn’t seem so fast anymore, or nearly so big. And it didn’t seem so certain that he was going to be able to beat me. I tried to use new angles of my arms to block his blows, to spare the pulsing bruises I already had, but I was sure now that they wouldn’t fail, that they would be strong enough to keep the rest of me intact. I smiled.

As his fist rose again, I stepped in, instead of back, and unleashed my rage and grew, and again changed just my head, just for a moment, and snapped at his nose. He jerked back, but I hooked the edge of one nostril on a lower canine, and it tore. You gotta know that really, really hurts.

He screamed and changed and leaped at me all at once and I went down beneath a flurry of teeth and blood and fur, holding his jaws away from my neck with my hands, and laughing hysterically, because his wolf nose was askew, and it was bleeding like mad, and he snarled, trying to push his jaws between my hands and rend my throat. And then suddenly he jerked and yelped, and twisted off me. He staggered a few steps in a half-circle, and then he fell, partly across my legs.

Finley's big, as a wolf. I pushed him off me and got up, panting and covered with blood and saliva—his—and sweat—mine. The vet, a pistol held away from her side in one hand, grasping a big leather dog muzzle and a come-along in the other, ran toward me, her face as shocked and tearful as though she was the one who’d been attacked and beaten for the last ten minutes.

“Are you all right?” She dropped down next to Finley and looped the come-along around his neck.

“Me?” What a stupid question. I caught myself as I reeled, my body one big ache, with flares of more intense pain where I’d taken bad strikes. I was going to be red, white and blue for at least a week. I looked down at Finley at my feet, blood streaking his fur, and his nose all askew, still bleeding. I grinned. In fact, I really was all right. “Yeah. I’m fine. Hey, thank you.”

“I didn’t know he was going to do that. I swear, I didn’t know.”

“No?” I wondered why I was having trouble talking, until I realized I was still gasping for breath. “What—did you think—he was going to do?”

“He said he would take care of you.”

“Yup,” I managed. “That's how he does it.”