Cool Hand (12 page)

His mouth twisted. He didn’t think much of being ordered around by Naryn either. Unfortunately, we were all going to have to put up with it for a while.

“Okay. In a minute.” I looked back at Vera. “Yeah. I understand what you’re saying about the colonel. Being kin is a big step. He needs time. I’ll do what I can to hold off on that.”

Like what?

I had to stop making promises.

“I guess the relationship of Athanate and kin has developed over time, and Athanate aren’t anxious to change what works,” I said. “I suppose that shows how different we are.”

“Oh, my dear, no,” Vera said. “We’re all human. There’s more that we share than makes us different. And what makes us different is so wonderful. You see, Athanate are the great hope of humanity. You are angels who will lift us to the stars.” She smiled and blinked. “That’s except those that are devils, of course.”

Ah.

I tried not to think too much about whether I was a devil or an angel as David drove me to Coykuti. On the road, I called Pia using one of my secure cells, and talked her through everything that had happened.

In return, she gave me some insight into the dilemma Skylur and Naryn faced regarding Diana and the current political situation.

Skylur had to keep control of Panethus in order to counter Basilikos.

If a group of Panethus Houses were to leave the party, it could send a sign to Basilikos to escalate from their current probing assaults to an all-out attack.

When Skylur had claimed all of North America, he’d given an ultimatum to all other Houses in the area—become an Altau sub-House by giving him their personal oaths or leave the continent.

Some of those Houses had welcomed the inclusion in a larger Altau. The trouble was, not all of them had, and the ones that weren’t happy were already diverting more effort than Altau could afford. Everyone knew there was a problem with House Romero in New Mexico. Everyone was watching to see how it was resolved.

Diana
might
be handling it, and my appearance in their mantle, uninvited, would almost certainly damage that. Diana was known for not communicating when she wanted to allow Skylur the option of denying any involvement in what she was doing, or how she was doing it.

If, if, if.

Bian and I didn’t believe Diana was down there negotiating without communicating.

Maybe I could rely on the Athanate loophole Bian had mentioned—access to my Mentor. It wasn’t as if that was a lie. I needed Diana to overcome my crusis. Maybe I could be there on Were business. That depended on Felix.

I didn’t have a good enough grasp of what it would take to persuade Felix, however much I turned it around in my head as we sped toward Coykuti.

David had collected me in Jen’s lovely pink Merc. He’d been looking for an excuse to drive it, and as far as he was concerned, you didn’t notice the color so much when you were sitting inside. It did look completely out of place when he parked in front of the ranch house at Coykuti.

I just sat for a minute. I was looking at the midnight-blue Ram with the overdone air scoop that was here too. The Bonehead’s car. I’d expected to see Ricky’s fire-truck-red Ram maybe, but that wasn’t here.

Crap.

I’d followed Ricky’s advice. I hadn’t made it official. I hadn’t killed them. Only Olivia and I had been involved in the fighting, and Bian hadn’t arrived until after the Boneheads had left. Why were they here? Had I given them a legitimate reason for complaining to Felix? Had I broken another obscure paranormal rule that I knew nothing about?

David gave my arm a squeeze. “Want me to come in?”

“No. This is wolf stuff for me alone, I think, but thanks anyway.”

Ursula’s van was here too. I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad sign.

I got out and closed the Merc’s door gently. Coykuti’s uncanny quiet seemed to reach out and crush the sound. There was no one in the work yard and the farm buildings’ doors were all shut. I swiveled to the left, where the pack’s ancient barn stood tiredly in the meadow. Nothing moved. I might have been visiting one of the mining ghost towns up in the mountains.

The ranch house felt empty, smelled empty. I could hear a noise from behind it, and I walked slowly around to the back. It was the sound of snipping—like garden shears. The air stirred and the scent of Felix’s sister drifted down the slope. I couldn’t see her, but the only place she could be was the little family cemetery.

Felix’s sister, Martha, had driven me back to Denver once. I think we’d exchanged about twenty words on the half-hour drive. I’d started off thinking she was just uncommunicative, but by the end of that time, her watchfulness made me think I was being evaluated. That she’d talk when she decided whether I was worth talking to.

Have I passed, ma’am?

“Hello,” I called out before I got too close. It was usually her son, Duane, that carried the shotgun and I couldn’t see him, but I didn’t want any unpleasant surprises.

Her head appeared over the dark arms of the yew hedge that held the little cemetery in its embrace. Her hair was bound up in a pale cotton scarf and she wore oversize dungarees. She waved me forward.

“Hello, Amber. Come on. I need an excuse to stop.”

“Bit late to be pruning,” I said.

“Yeah. Shoulda listened to Duane,” she replied. “Needs doing in the fall. Winter’s come early this year.”

“It’s beautifully kept.”

“One of my jobs.” She snipped a last branch and laid the shears down alongside the bags of clippings at her feet. “I do it for Candy.”

Felix’s first wife.
Candace Lis Larimer:
the name was etched in crumbling letters on the headstone behind her, along with the date of her death—
Jan 5 1918.

Something stirred in my mind as I looked at the headstone. Another frigging important thing that I should be doing or asking. I felt too tired. Either it’d come to me or it wouldn’t.

“Felix said he didn’t know why it’s called the tree of life,” I said, stroking my fingers through the yew leaves.

“That’s because he’s dumb,” she said. She took a brush and began to work gently on the headstones. I went around the semicircle of the hedge, picking up clippings that had gotten away and waiting for her to continue.

“Candy didn’t want headstones,” she said quietly after a while. “She planted the hedge, made it like it is: a mother’s arms reaching out to comfort. She wanted all the pack’s dead to be buried here, one on top of the other. No markers, because we’re all just pack in the end. And she wanted this tree.”

She sat back on her heels.

“You know, parts of the yew die and rot and feed the rest of it. It lives off itself. It makes itself new from all it has ever been. The pack’s like that. It’s all the things it’s ever done, all its loves and hates, all its desires and fears, all its triumphs and failures.”

The sum of all the things it’s ever done…

I got goosebumps. I’d finished the circuit of the hedge and put all the bits I’d collected into the bags. Then I went over to Candy’s headstone. Martha had moved on to the next one, and I traced the fading dates with my fingers, like I’d done the first time I saw them. And I kicked myself.

“Martha? You’re the same age as Felix, right? So, you were around in 1910, weren’t you?”

“Course I was. Why?”

“My great-grandmother—”

“Speaks to Wolves,” she said. “Sarah, I called her.”

“You knew her, then?”

“Oh yes. I got along fine with the Adepts.”

Oh, my God. She’d been here all along, and with a bit of thought I could have realized it. Bian and Julie were right; I was way off my game.

“But Felix said he didn’t know her,” I said hurriedly. “He said he doubted she had anything to do with helping Were change.”

“Yup.”

Well, that wasn’t reassuring. I wasn’t sure how I stood with Martha. If I asked something that the alpha had already dismissed, was that some kind of Were insult? Could I try just one more question?

“Did Sarah help the pack?”

“The honest answer is, I don’t know.” She finished brushing the last headstone and frowned. “First change was more private then. If a newbie was having trouble changing, they’d go into the hills with Candy. Did they meet someone up there? Candy didn’t say, but she never claimed to be the one who helped them.”

She got to her feet and looked around the little cemetery, hands on her hips. I waited, disappointment heavy on my shoulders. So close and yet no further forward.

“After Candy died, Felix changed things. He said that encouragement from the whole pack would help and they were there to support each other if it didn’t.” She looked at me. “I mean the mercy killing if it gets too much.”

I’d spoken with Alex about when his girlfriend, Hope, had failed to change. I could understand how he’d have wanted others there. To be able to tell yourself that you couldn’t be sure whether it was your bite that killed your friend or lover.

I tried again. “Are there any more left from that time? I mean ones who had trouble. Anyone who would’ve changed back then?”

She shook her head. “We’d have told you if there was. Even if Felix is a hardass about it. We almost never had a failure when Candy was alive.” She sighed. “I don’t know. All the packs are having trouble, far as I can tell. Maybe it’s become harder for other reasons. More new wolves, less space, more stresses.”

Something Mary had said to me about how hard it might be for a werewolf to change stirred in the depths of my mind. What had she said?

Everyone has a connection to the energy, even humans. A million people in the broad daylight who believe you can’t change into a wolf would make it difficult for a Were in the middle of Denver. But at night, out in the woods…

So, a newbie having difficulties would try out in the woods at night. But too often, it still wasn’t working. What was going wrong? Something was teasing me, just beyond reach, like that word on the tip of your tongue.

But Martha hadn’t finished. “My opinion? The pack needs a female alpha.
He
needs an alpha mate. Pack’s not rightly balanced without one. I had hopes for you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Either it was going to be or it wasn’t. Can’t force things like that. Tried with Donna and that didn’t work. He never stopped loving Candy. Oh, he would have loved Donna too; she was sweet. Too sweet to become an alpha maybe, but she didn’t make it anyway. It was a mistake to go for someone who hadn’t made the change.”

It was quiet for a while; a companionable quiet.

But I was curious about something she’d said earlier—too curious to let it go. “You said Candy wanted this as a cemetery for the pack, but it’s only the three graves, isn’t it?”

“Hmm.” Martha came to stand by me. “Pack don’t much hold with the cemetery. Living is with the pack, but dying is private, I guess. The pack kinda swallows us whole. It gives and it takes away. If it needs you, it feeds you. It needs Felix. He’s strong like an ox. But me? I’m just around, and I been around for a long time. That means I’m getting old for a werewolf. Time to think about it.”

She plucked a couple of the last dead flowers at the base of the hedge. “Some just stop changing and die. Some take up dangerous sports until their reflexes let them down. Mostly, and that’ll be me too, we start to listen to the wind and we hear the last call.”

She went quiet, listening. I found myself listening too, holding my breath, not sure if I wanted to hear what she meant, or what would happen if I did.

Martha could see I didn’t understand. “Come here,” she said, and pointed up the hill. “Look over there, beneath the trees. Tell me what you sense.”

“It’s dark.”

“Go on. Feel. Smell. Just say the words as they come to you.”

“The wind from there, it’s colder.” I drank the scents in, rich and sharp. The more I concentrated, the more I could untangle them. “There’s cool pine, dry timber, wet earth.”

“More! Smell it. Taste it.” Her fingers clamped on my arm.

“Earth. It’s slow. It’s cold. It’s full of life. Just…paused.”

“Yes. Cold earth. All still, underneath. It seems to us that life bleeds away into the earth, but that’s nature’s trick. You never die, but you’re gathered up. Like the yew feeds on itself, the pack remembers and you never die.”

“Now, close your eyes, and listen. Listen with your whole heart.”

Silence that had form and movement, nebulous as cloud, came rolling down the hill.

My eukori reached and blended with the Call and stretched and stretched, thinner and thinner.

“Listen!”

Trembling. Something just beyond my reach. Sighing—no,
singing
—there were words on the wind. Too soft, too faint to understand.

She shook me and my eyes snapped open.

I was leaning into the hill. I’d forgotten to breathe.

“That’s where I’ll go,” she said. “I’ll follow the song. Next winter or the next or in ten years’ time. Who knows? I’ll go to my wolf and I’ll run and run until I’m so tired I can’t run any more. Then I’ll lay down beneath the open sky and rest. And by and by, I’ll be part of that song.”

With my senses stretched out like a fishing net, I felt something then, something echoing through the Call. Not my pack’s Call; Felix’s Call. It was nails scraping on a blackboard, shocking cold water down my back, a knife slicing flesh.

“What the hell?”

Martha didn’t answer. She was looking up into the mountain, a terrible sadness in her eyes.

“They’ll come back soon,” she whispered, but she wouldn’t say any more.

We started taking the bags of clippings to the recycling heap. On the second round, I felt Felix returning. I stopped to look up the slope at the forest.

The shadow beneath the pines was a hard blackness that pulled your eyes to it and drank in light. Parts of the darkness separated out into shapes that seemed to float down the hill. At the front, a huge wolf, silver and black. Felix. Behind him, the bulk of Silas and Ursula, with two smaller wolves scurrying after them. The pair held themselves low, heads and tails down, their whole body language cowed. Another large wolf was herding them. Although I’d never seen him or Felix furry, I could tell the last one was Duane.