The silence struck her like a fall of bricks. The three women at her table stared at her stone faced, when they should have been shrieking and cursing at her win. She felt the grin solidify on her face and clacked the dice nervously in her hand as she stared back.
The other eight, four at one table and four in the pit, were staring at her as well. Sandy"s smile faded as she looked around: there was a strange, sharp tang in the air that, more than the somber gaze of eleven other women, made her hackles rise. The scattered pencils on each table, a spill of honey-glazed peanuts from a bowl across the stained cloth of the pit, the bright green bear crumpled on the floor, a cl.u.s.ter of half-filled water bottles and a lone, lipstick-stained martini gla.s.s gave the impression of a room abandoned in haste, and the group of women that once belonged so intrinsically to this milieu, with their good-natured vulgarity and dull jobs and side businesses and recipes and husbands and boyfriends was gone, this predatory, alien coven in their place.
Sandy grasped the dice hard until the pointed edges bit painfully into her palm, then laid them carefully on the table. She tried a final placating smile, directed at Miranda"s grim expression opposite her, then let it fade.
"I think we won. Did I make a mistake on the scoring?"
Miranda regarded her under lowering brows for a few seconds, then smiled, hugely, showing all her teeth. With a dull shock Sandy saw they were very white, and very pointed. More like a dog"s teeth than a person"s, she thought.
"No," said Miranda. "No, I don"t think you made a mistake."
The sharp smell-a kerosene kind of smell, Sandy thought in her back brain-got stronger suddenly and she shifted backwards in her chair. The path to the front door was blocked by the two tables to her left, but the arch to the kitchen was directly behind her and on the other side, the front hallway.
But that was silly. No one was going to hurt her. Not over bunco. It wasn"t that important. Not like they had skin in the game. Not like her.
Then Miranda and Ca.s.s rose; Ca.s.s"s chair fell with a clatter-she ignored it, poised in a semi-crouch, just like Miranda. The way they stood, knees bent not quite right, the planes of their faces not quite right-they had changed, shifted in some indefinable way, and as she watched Sandy saw it: the base of Ca.s.s"s nose broadened between the eyes, lips lifting from teeth that were not made the way they were before.
"I told you," growled a voice from the pit. Shel. Her partner four rounds back. They had lost, Sandy making sure it was her last loss. "I told you she cheated. Second time she subbed."
Dumb b.i.t.c.h, thought Sandy with useless clarity through her pooling fear. I fooled you the first game too, and you though it was sub"s luck.
Miranda growled, her lips lifting, her snout-it was a snout, her face shifting, malleable as Play-Doh-extending out of her formerly placid face. Sandy scrambled backwards, tipping her chair over in front of Ca.s.s to give her a few more seconds, retreating into the kitchen and, abandoning purse and coat, making for the hallway. The blinds over the sink were up and a small part of her, seeing the moon rise over the neighbor"s rooftop, understood.
It wasn"t even a full moon, a blobby something somewhere between full and half, not even photogenic. Seemed like cheating to her.
Of course, that was only fair, considering.
The arch to the hallway was blocked by three looming forms-small plump Gwynne, her back humped up under a pink silk blouse, her fangs protruding over her lower lip, her pet.i.te fingers now claws. Lydia and Shel loomed behind her, their faces molded flat and feral like Miranda"s.
Sandy whirled around, her heels slipping on the linoleum. Ca.s.s"s shoulders, enormous and hairy, were bursting out of her dusky purple jacket, part of the suit she wore every Monday, or when clients were in the office. Sweet, kind-of-frumpy Ca.s.s, eating yogurt every morning and heating up her Lean Cuisine at lunch. Harriet-called-Harry, who had a meeting with her fifth-grader"s teacher that afternoon and was bemoaning the fact that she only came up with fantastic retorts three hours later at dinner, drooled down her T-shirt, her eyes huge and yellow.
Sandy backed into a table loaded with the dirty dishes from dinner; one tipped to the floor and spun around with a clatter of silverware. More crowded into the kitchen: Tessa, Maggie, Mia-whose ears had grown up pointed, still pierced with Cookie Lee earrings. Lexie, impossibly broad and squat. Dionne, her body still human, her face a beast"s.
"Keep her in here," snarled Ca.s.s. "I just got the carpets cleaned."
Sandy backed into the cold expanse of a sliding gla.s.s door and fumbled at the latch; it was closed and locked tight. She slammed the gla.s.s, trying to break it, but gla.s.s is tougher than it looks and that only works in movies, and this wasn"t a movie.
If this were a movie, you would have seen a reverse angle of the sliding gla.s.s door and a scarlet spray across it.
The kitchen was very clean by the time they were done. Everyone was always careful to help clean up.
"Did you win?" Ca.s.s"s husband shifted over to make room for her. He"d taken their daughter to the movies, knowing neither of them belonged here on bunco night-not a scary movie, with blood across a window, but something with princesses, and spells, and little bit of death, suitable for a seven-year old.
"The hostess never wins," she said, pausing to listen for her child stirring again before she laid her head on his chest, looking out the bedroom window at the blobby moon, small and insignificant, risen high above the trees.
He stroked her hair. "Your friend from work-Sammy?"
"Sandy."
"Did she work out?"
Ca.s.s didn"t answer at first, and his fingers, twinned in her hair, stopped.
"No," she said, finally. "She didn"t fit in."
"Oh."
"Some of the others think she cheats."
"Oh." His fingers were still.
"Cheated."
He didn"t say anything and after a while he began stroking her hair again, and she blinked at the moon, her eyes green, then yellow, then green.
BLENDED.
C.E. MURPHY.
The pack had been born savages and had, almost to a man, died that way.
Almost: almost. She had been a whelp the day the hunters came, dozens of them on their thundering black horses with the pack fleeing before them. Her mother had thrown her beneath a long-dead tree, and she"d watched dark legs flash by, dangerous broad hooves kicking up the snow.
She had seen the blood, from her hiding place. Had seen it when the hunters rode back, triumphant despite their own losses. Stripped skins still steamed in the cold, making their horses toss their heads at the scent of death. She hadn"t known, then, that it was her family, her cousins and her friends, who lay strewn across saddles and stuffed into saddlebags. Not until she was much older did she come to understand what had happened. That her family had run until they could run no more, and then had turned to fight. Beasts, turning tooth and claw against the men who hunted them. Horses died; men died.
But mostly, wolves died.
Fear had held the whimpers in her throat, even when the smell of men and killing was gone. Only when the forest went black with night did she creep forward on her belly and put her nose out into the cold.
A man"s big hand caught her by the scruff and hauled her into the air. She had never seen a man so close: he was huge and completely without fur except long gray crackling stuff on his head, and unlike the men on horses he wore no coverings to keep himself warm. Her tail clamped over her belly, wet with terror.
He curled his lip back, showing long teeth, though the wrinkle of his forehead was like her alpha"s: hiding amus.e.m.e.nt behind more obvious exasperation. Cubs, that expression said, and was always followed by a pack-wide chuckle that was as much att.i.tude of pose as vocalization. The tip of her tail relaxed from its clench to offer a tentative wag.
"Well," he said, and it was the first time she ever heard a wolf speak so, aloud and with words used by men. His voice was light, a thinness to it that said its howl would pierce the moon. "One left, of a pack. But a young one, so perhaps there"s some hope you might listen." He dropped her with the carelessness of any parent weary of carrying a wriggling cub. She scrambled back to the snow"s crusty surface and he crouched, brushing cold from her ears and nose. "Come, pup. We must teach you to survive."
Then he turned, and before his hand touched the snow it was a paw, and his gray grizzling hair thick fur, and his tail made a beacon for her to follow as they ran from where their pack had died.
"No ward?" The question cut through polite murmuring, briefly silencing it. Marketa knew already not to turn; not to admit she"d heard. It wasn"t that anyone imagined the sharp words hadn"t reached her. It was merely that humans, inexplicable humans, pretended rudeness and gossip didn"t exist, as if by so pretending they could excuse their own bad behavior. Few of them would survive a week, within a pack. They would be cuffed, stared down, and ultimately rejected, if they played at the back-biting which was a figurative, if not literal, part of human society.
The pack had been born savage, Marketa thought dryly, but humans had taught her the real meaning of the word.
"But she is too young to be a widow . . . !" The woman-an older one, with b.r.e.a.s.t.s of a size to feed a litter of puppies for all that she had only two-modulated her voice this time, but it made no difference. She might have whispered, and even through the ballroom"s endless echoing chatter, Marketa would have heard her. It was not a gift, the retention of hearing and scent in her human-changed form; humans stank, and covered it with perfumes that worsened the original stench. Worse, they insisted on gathering in huge packs, where their sweat and nattering voices blurred into a nauseating background.
Still, she would have humans change, not herself. She had gone far enough already in becoming as they were, a truth she was reminded of every time another woman learned her story and spread it as a bit of t.i.tillating gossip. She was quite young, she heard it emphasized, somewhere between seventeen and twenty-one. Old enough, certainly, to be married-but if not married, much too young to be on her own. But her guardian, if he"d ever existed, had died, leaving her to make her way as an eligible female amongst society"s snapping wolves.
Marketa snorted loudly enough to cause comment, and thrust off societal grace to elbow her way out to the manor gardens. They were too tame, too controlled, but they were also as close to wilderness as she would find so long as she maintained the fiction of polite birth. She was aware-as a human woman would not be-that two men followed her, both trying harder to avoid one another than find her. One was older, in his forties at least, and the other hardly more than a whelp of her own tender years.
Which were far more tender than the gossiping women within could ever imagine. Wolves lived only a short span. It was an ancient beast indeed who saw fifteen summers. Marketa was three, breeding age to be sure, but there were almost no others of her kind left with whom to mate. The hunters had seen to that. The hunters, and her people"s determination to live the free life of wild things, no matter what the cost. The memory of scent rose up, bitter, black. The hunt"s leader had smelled that way, like hot tar sitting at the back of her throat. She would never escape its flavor.
"Miss Alvarez." Her name sat awkwardly on a British tongue, but she"d had no sense of how human names were put together, when she"d chosen it. She"d merely liked its sound, Marketa Alvarez, and had only later realized that they were not two names that the English race expected to lie cheek and jowl. She might have been Margaret Allard and satisfied them, but by then it was too late.
Its advantage was that, like everything else about her, it offered no answers, but miles of gossip-satisfying questions. She was surely not dark enough for the Mediterranean descent her last name implied, nor square-faced enough to be from north of the Danube, as her first name suggested. Her eyes were distressingly yellow-a hallmark even the change couldn"t disguise-and her hair, s.h.a.ggy and thick, was too many colors to be called one. Light, they tended to decide; she was light-haired, but sharp-featured as a Spaniard, and no one could name a family of merit whose bloodlines ran to such extraordinary lengths.
But meritous she must be, else men of various wealth and standing would hardly bother following her into the gardens. Marketa nodded to her suitor without turning his way: his scent was of more use in identifying him than sight. "Master Radcliffe. Surely you endanger my reputation by encountering me unescorted."
"Surely I"m too old and dull for anyone to think your reputation in any but the safest of hands, with me." There was not a single note of deprecation in the older man"s voice; he sounded as utterly sincere as any man could. But his posture, half-glimpsed, shouted amus.e.m.e.nt, announcing he didn"t for a moment believe himself. "If I were some handsome young rake, perhaps . . . "
"And now I must protest your attractiveness, sir, a boldness which is no fit thing for a lady to do."
"I should hardly ask you to belie yourself, Miss Alvarez. I have, in my time, made use of a mirror."
Now she turned to him, smiling, though his att.i.tude would still tell her more than his face ever could. "And what does the mirror show you, Master Radcliffe? A well-dressed gentleman still possessed of a leonine head of hair, whose face bears the wisdom of a man in his prime?"
"My mirror," he said with a bow, "is not so kind."
If only his eyes were yellow, and not dark, he would be a man worth mating. Her pack leader had made that clear, as he"d taught her how to cast off the wolf and pretend at being human. There were some few of their people wise enough to put aside the beast in a world growing increasingly cruel to wolves. Some few who had become as Marketa now was, wearing sheep"s clothing in a rather literal sense. Not that her ball gown was wool: it was summer and warm, but she had more often made a dress of what she would have once considered a meal than she liked to think.
It struck her for the first time, as she gazed at Master Radcliffe, that her years were limited. Even with whole seasons spent as human, she might not extend her lifetime beyond two or three times its natural length. She would be dead by thirty, and long since too old to breed by then; that was a duty that should be given over to her daughters as she aged.
Daughters she might never have, if she couldn"t find a mate of her own breed. The pack leader hadn"t told her what to do, should that come to pa.s.s. Die alone, without a pack and family of her own, or risk all on a human? Wolves, like humans, largely mated for life. It would be impossible to take a human mate without telling him the truth, even if she were willing to remain human and bear one cub at a time through a pregnancy that lasted most of a year, instead of a blissfully short two months.
The forest and its hunter threat sounded suddenly far more appealing than it had since the day her pack had died. A short and savage life, to be sure, but a simple one too, without the complications of society or the difficulties of cross-breeding. Some of those thoughts were perhaps reflected in her gaze, because Radcliffe stepped forward, a question in his pose.
For the first time in her own memory, Marketa stepped back, avoiding the confrontation of entanglement.
Radcliffe hesitated, surprise and disappointment marking his stance. Before she could speak, another man"s voice said, "Master Radcliffe. Miss Alvarez."
Her name had a crack in it, wide as a board; her second suitor was barely a man at all. She had been introduced to him earlier in the season, at another ball so crowded his scent was indistinguishable from the ma.s.ses even when they had danced. Twice, if she recalled; he was handsome enough, and struck her as a man who would spend his life doing her bidding without ever wondering why. Thomas, his name was; the young Master Alistair Thomas. His father and his fortune were of note, and those combined with his affable nature made him the apple of many a young lady"s eye. It would not endear Marketa to her compet.i.tion that he had come to the gardens seeking her.
She regretted her retreat from Radcliffe already, and all the more as he took a discreet step back, appointing himself the position of elder and guardian with that single move.
"Miss Alvarez," Thomas said again, then stopped, evidently fl.u.s.tered by her silence. Marketa curtsied toward him, letting the action take her a half-step nearer Radcliffe. The older man"s posture improved very slightly-there was no room for improvement beyond that; he stood straight and tall as a youth already-and Thomas managed to falter again, even without moving or speaking.
"Master Thomas," Marketa said. "Do you find the gardens to your liking?"
"Gardens?" He blinked, as though unaware of his surroundings until she mentioned them, then rallied with a smile that understandably set hearts a-flutter. "Truly, Miss Alvarez, their beauty diminishes into nothing when such a flower as yourself stands among them. I should hate to take you from your company," he added, all polite form that had nothing of truth in it. His expression took Radcliffe in, weighed him, and dismissed him as too old and probably too poor. "But perhaps when you return to the ball you would care to dance."
He irritated her, for some reason. For dismissing Radcliffe, for intruding on the moment she and the older gentleman had shared. It would never do to scold him for his behavior, but there were other ways to make displeasure known. Marketa turned her gaze full on Radcliffe and spoke as clearly as she ever had. "I should like that very much."
Thomas was affable, perhaps, but not a fool. He stiffened and took one sharp step in retreat. "Then I shall see you inside."
Marketa nodded, a cool smile already in place as a breeze carried the scent of his tension to her. Black, tarry, thick: a familiar smell strong enough to taste, lingering at the back of her throat. Her remoteness scampered before shock and an upswell of anger. She ought not have mocked Thomas for the break in his voice, for it was hers now, shrill and unattractive: "Do you smoke, Master Thomas?"
Surprise splashed across his face. "I can"t say that I do. What-" Clarity rolled after surprise, and he bent his head to sniff at the shoulder of his coat. "My father"s tobacco. He"s only just back from France, so perhaps I"d have not smelt so strongly of it when first we met. My apologies, Miss Alvarez, if it offends you."
"It"s . . . " Marketa closed her eyes, willing away the memory scent brought, though in truth it was her nostrils that needed closing; vision would never offer her as much information as odors could. A moment pa.s.sed before she looked on the young man again, ready to trust her voice. "It"s an unusually pungent breed of tobacco, I should say. I imagine I"ve encountered it before. Your father hunts, perhaps?"
Delight lit Thomas"s smile. "He does. Are you a hunt enthusiast, Miss Alvarez?"
"I have an unusual interest in hunting." So softly spoken, eyes downcast, anything to keep the words from the wild honesty they were. It had been so long, so long since she had taken to four legs and chased rabbit and deer; since she had used her senses and her body the way they were meant to be used. And there was more besides, threat in the softly spoken admission; threat which dull human ears couldn"t be permitted to hear.
Nor did Thomas hear it, his zeal entirely for the topic he believed at hand. "How splendid. That is, in fact, why Father"s been to France. He hunts there; the sport here has grown weak, with the eradication of wolves."
"Come," Radcliffe said abruptly. "There have been no wolves in England for centuries, Thomas. Watch your tongue; you"ll alarm the lady."
"There have been a few," Thomas corrected, but without aggression. He kept his eager eyes on Marketa, not so much as challenging Radcliffe with his gaze. "It is the story put about that there have been none, but there were, indeed, packs left roaming until only a few years ago. They are startlingly canny, wolves, and seem to go to ground for years at a time. But my family has hunted them for generations, at the throne"s behest. Here, in Scotland, in Wales, even in Ireland, and now in France because there"s nothing left to hunt in the isles."
"I do not believe it." Radcliffe huffed, and Thomas finally looked away from Marketa, patience in his bearing.
"Perhaps you would like to visit our manor, Master Radcliffe. There my father keeps pelts from all his hunts, and you will see the newest of them has hardly had time to let dust settle. He prefers the alpha male, but in his last English hunt that beast escaped him. It was old, though, and will have died since then, and he has its mate"s fur instead."
"I should like to see these furs," Marketa said distantly. "If I may be so bold as to invite myself along, Masters Radcliffe, Thomas?"
Smugness rushed through Thomas"s posture and scent, and the glance he threw at Radcliffe was triumph embodied. "I shall have my coach fetch you on Thursday next, if it suits?"
"That will do," Marketa whispered. "That will do very well."
She wanted so very badly to shed her human form and hunt the hunter. For almost a week she"d waited, keeping herself confined in her townhouse, because to leave was to invite temptation. Even cobbled streets and the sour wind carrying civilization"s stench through the city was close enough to wilderness when she had the temptation of a hunt at hand.
It was temptation she could not risk. The thinking part of her-the part her pack leader had tried so hard to develop-recognized that. A wolf wouldn"t go unnoticed in London"s streets, and even if by chance it should, she dared not meet the hunter who had destroyed her family in her lupine form. His gift was killing wolves. Her only chance lay with striking as a woman.
So she paced before the windows until the servants blushed with discomfort; a well-bred young woman did not stare into the world so hungrily, as if waiting to invite it in to ravish her. As if waiting, she thought, to be loosed on it, so she might savage it. It was preposterous, playing the role of a maiden fair, dressed in soft white muslin and pointed shoes. She would have herself barefoot in red and black, the colors of blood and death, but no, no, no. She had to think, keep her mind clear; the man she went to see would be her family"s murderer, and she the only one left to seek vengeance.
"Mum." The housemaid"s voice stopped Marketa"s stalking. She swept up her cloak, adjusting it crookedly over her shoulders and throwing off the maid"s attempt to help. The girl"s words followed her, their information already imparted by her arrival in the parlour: "The carriage is here, mum . . . ."
"Hold supper," Marketa commanded. "I don"t know when I shall return." When, or if, though she would never add fear to the maid"s scent by saying such a thing. The maid agreed, and Marketa was out the door to the coach before her manservant could lend a hand.
The pair of matched bays before the carriage tossed their heads and whickered uncomfortably. Marketa quenched the urge, as she always did, to put her hand beneath their noses and drive their discomfort to madness. Animals knew; they always knew. Horses shied from her, and even the most aggressive dogs snarled and backed away. Cats stood wary, one paw lifted, then disappeared into darkness. Only humans saw nothing more than the girl she presented as; only humans were so blind.
"Miss Alvarez." The coachman opened the door, but it was the man within who offered his hand to help her up. Radcliffe, not Thomas, and his expression lit with sly pleasure at her surprise. "I was so cra.s.s as to insist I be allowed to escort you, Miss Alvarez. My town house is so much nearer your home than Master Thomas"s. It seemed unkind to make his man come all this way, when I was obliged to pa.s.s you regardless."
"I"m delighted. The journey will go so much more quickly with pleasant company." Marketa drew her skirts in, childishly pleased she hadn"t frightened the horses after all. "Your horses are very fine."
"Thank you. My family breeds them on our country estate. It is, I"m afraid, the source of our income: gross commercial ventures in horseflesh. Are you shocked, Miss Alvarez?"
"I should think a man able to persuade a thousand pounds of beast to his will would be a firm and fair hand with a household as well. What woman would find that anything but enticing? You must have a fair stretch of land, then, Master Radcliffe." For a moment the city houses outside the window slipped away, turning in her mind"s eye to pastures and rolling green hills.
"Enough," Radcliffe admitted. "My favorite stretches are the woods. We have several, some of them very old and peaceful."
"And unriddled by wolves," Marketa said softly. "How lonely for them."
"For the woods, or the wolves?" Radcliffe wondered, and when she glanced at him, lifted his eyebrows. "You disapprove of the hunt."
"I believe I said I had a peculiar interest in it, sir."
"You did, but it was my thought that the words said something entirely other than the heart felt. Forgive me my presumption. I did not mean to offend."
"No," Marketa said, softly once again. "You have not."