He put a hand over his heart, and took the topic to the pleasant inconsequentiality of the season"s fine weather, but her gaze strayed to him time and again and she wondered what else he had heard, that she had not said.
Alistair Thomas greeted them with her mother"s pelt in hand.
Society had rules of engagement, meaningless twitter of words like so much hurried birdsong; Marketa knew she must be partic.i.p.ating in that, because there would be a resounding, deadly silence if she were not. She did not admire the pelt; that much she was certain of, because Thomas"s pleasure in displaying it faltered. Radcliffe was reserved, allowing precisely what Thomas had insisted on: that it was a new fur, recently taken, and so there had indeed been wolves on England"s sh.o.r.es more recently than he"d known. Marketa had no idea what she herself said, nor how she could say it with any degree of calm.
The fur"s scent was so long gone it might never have been, but even without scent, without life, it could be no one other than her mother. The darker grey streaks above once-yellow eyes had made her fierce, and stripes of white on her muzzle had given her canines extra length to threaten both prey and ill-behaved pups with. She had been mother to the pack, and to see her reduced to a flopping length of skin turned Marketa"s insides cold and hard.
"Did you join this hunt?" She barely knew her own voice, dissonance ringing through it. Worse than dissonance: she could hear the wolf in her voice, even if the men couldn"t. It wanted to howl, and only stringent human decorum kept her from letting it loose.
Disappointment flashed over Thomas"s face. "My father wouldn"t have it. I was a poorer shot than I might have been, and he wouldn"t risk me or the hunt on it. Three men died that day even so."
"And how many wolves?"
"Nine." Another man"s voice, deeper and richer than Alistair"s, broke in, and was accompanied by a clatter of footsteps on marbled stairs. Marketa startled, knowing it to be a violent reaction, but there had been nothing to her beyond her mother"s fur in Alistair"s hands. Only lately did she look upward, take in the echoing length of hall they"d been ushered into, its walls mounted with animal heads and its ceiling painted with scenes of the hunt. And this a town house, she thought; the country estates would be exhausting in their attention to murderous detail.
The man on the stairs was as unlike his son in form as could be, an oak to a sapling. He carried no extra weight, just size, and his chiding was good-natured. "Al, you can"t intend to leave our guests in the foyer all afternoon. Forgive my son, madam, master. His enthusiasm at times overwhelms his sense. I"m Alan Thomas, Lord Thomas if you must, though too much ceremony is tedious. And you must be Miss Alvarez. Master Radcliffe. My home is yours, won"t you come in?"
Radcliffe guided her forward when her own feet wouldn"t take her. Her breath was lodged in her throat, stuck there by tar and blackness as Alan Thomas"s scent rolled down the stairs with him. She had thought him a black devil, not fair and jovial, but the taste of blood and death clung to him without remorse. She managed a curtsy so stiff it hurt her knees, but Lord Thomas took no offense. Instead he looked her over, then threw a tobacco-stained smile toward his son.
"This is the young lady with the interest in the hunt? You could hardly have found better, Alistair. Look at her coloring, those eyes, she could be a wolf herself. Oh, Lord forgive me, I"m as rude as he is. I"m a man who speaks my thoughts, Miss Alvarez. Perhaps you won"t hold it against me."
"Do you favor women who speak theirs, my lord?" Her voice was strangled in her throat, and Radcliffe, unexpectedly, put his hand at her spine, a show of-not lending strength, she thought. Of solidarity, as her mother had once stood by the pack leader.
Lord Thomas"s eyes narrowed, making him suddenly wolfish himself. Not so convivial after all, for all that his gaze was the ice blue of a cub and not gold like an adult. "Would you think it fair, Miss Alvarez, if I said I"d met few women who voiced their thoughts? Whether they have none or whether society has trained restraint into them, I cannot say, but a woman of reason and consequence is a rare thing, in my view."
Her vision was not good: she saw few colors, and her focus was that of a hunter"s, honing in on a single individual. But it worsened now, until Thomas stood out against a blurred background, prey for the hunting. "Then I will endeavor to impress upon you that a few of us, at least, are as capable of matching wits as any man, my lord."
"I look forward to it. So you have an interest in the hunt. Do you ride, Miss Alvarez? Can you shoot?" Lord Thomas escorted them into sitting rooms so opulent Marketa might otherwise have laughed. Crystal turned sunlight to shards of light glittering across parquet floors, and overstuffed chairs were gathered to make different sitting areas. One was by the unlit fire, but they were guided to seats overlooking the gardens. A wolf"s pelt, older than her mother"s, lay across one of the sofas, and Alistair tossed her mother"s there with as little regard.
Marketa sat there so she would at least not have to look at the furs. Alistair Thomas sat beside her, casting a subtle glance of victory toward Radcliffe, who gave no signs of noticing as he settled into a chair across from them. Lord Thomas dropped into another armchair, but leaned forward, gaze avid as he awaited Marketa"s answer.
"I"m afraid I"m a poor rider, my lord. Horses do not like me. And the sound of a rifle hurts my ears."
Polite doubt crawled into his expression. "How then can you be enamored of the hunt?"
"I can track." Again, Marketa barely knew her own voice. She had spent so long training the snarls and yips out of it, so long working away the growl so all that was left was a pleasant alto. But she bit off the words as though her teeth were long and sharp, and no man who called himself a hunter could mistake the challenge behind them. "What I track, I can kill. What else is there to the hunt, my lord Thomas?"
His lips peeled back from his teeth in what might have been a smile. "No one can always kill what they track, Miss Alvarez. Not even I, and I have many more years experience than you."
"Almost always," Marketa whispered, "is often enough."
Alistair shifted uncomfortably on the seat beside her. "Surely this isn"t an appropriate discussion to hold with a young lady, Father."
"Oh, on the contrary." Wicked delight gleamed in Radcliffe"s eyes. "I think it most fascinating. Perhaps a wager, if Miss Alvarez is willing. You have extensive gardens here, Lord Thomas. Dare you pit your tracking skills against the lady"s?"
Curiosity burgeoned in Marketa"s breast, distracting her from the reminders of her family"s death. Lord Thomas could hardly refuse such a wager without a degree of humiliation, which Radcliffe surely knew. She knew her own reasons, certainly, for needling at Thomas, but it had not struck her that Radcliffe might have his own. Nor was there a discrete way to ask, but if they had a common goal she could at least apply more pressure to the suggestion Radcliffe had laid down.
Her smile was brief, but genuine. "A challenge," she said lightly. "How delightful. I accept."
Emotion flew across Thomas"s face: chagrin and pride and a willing-ness to humor the poorer folk. "I cannot refuse, if our guest is so certain of herself. You must promise to forgive me if I should come out ahead in this wager, Miss Alvarez. It"s ungentlemanly, but I hate to lose. I cannot make allowances for your s.e.x."
"I wouldn"t want you to, my lord. And if I should win, I trust you will be as forgiving. What shall our quarry be?"
"I"ve seeded wild boar on the estate." Thomas watched her carefully, and Marketa made no effort to hide the lifting of her eyebrows.
"Boar is an animal harried by packs, even packs of men, my lord. Would you dare the kill, all alone?" She would not; she was not, even in the face of vengeance, that great a fool. It had been decades and more since boar had roamed Britain freely, just as it had been so long since wolves had. Pack memory told of stolen piglets, delicious to eat, but also told of the size and speed and rage of a full-grown boar. Marketa"s people were larger by some significant part than their single-aspected brethren, but boar met them weight for weight, and sometimes better than. One wolf against a boar was madness.
But one man, unarmed, was dead.
"I have a horse, a gun, and no fear of the creatures. Are you so bold, Miss Alvarez?" Thomas"s smile was the wolf"s again, though no wolf had such a streak of cruelty in it. That was a human trait.
"I had thought a deer, or even a game of hide and seek," Radcliffe said, dryly enough to almost hide the note of concern in his voice. "Miss Alvarez has made no pretense of tracking differently than you, my lord. She would have no horse, no gun. Surely you wouldn"t pit her against a monster capable of killing a man with a single blow?"
"No," Marketa said. "Thank you for the concern, Master Radcliffe, but I believe I accept. I should like to prove to Lord Thomas that the hunt can be carried out in more than one way." This time her smile was as false as firelight was to the sun. "And prove, perhaps, that a woman can be equal to a man in many ways."
Thomas stood with a clap of his hands. "I"ll have my men harry a boar from the wood, then."
"Oh, no, sir." Marketa came to her feet as well, as full of wide-eyed innocence as she could be. "Not on my behalf. I shall enter the wood myself and find my own boar. Perhaps he who returns with the kill first will be declared the winner?"
Tension flushed Lord Thomas"s face, but he nodded. "And tomorrow we"ll dine on the fruits of-our," he conceded graciously. "Our labor. If you would be so good as to remain with us overnight, Miss Alvarez? Master Radcliffe? I a.s.sure you, the estate can absorb you with no thought."
"It will be our pleasure." Marketa spoke for Radcliffe, thoughtlessly, but he chuckled and made a murmur of agreement. Smiling, she bobbed a curtsy. "Shall we hunt, then, my lord?"
Boars grunted and squealed, distressed by the scent of a half-forgotten predator. They were complacent, unaccustomed to being hara.s.sed by any but men on horseback, and therefore less inclined to fight than to trot heavily through the wood, grumbling without being genuinely afraid. It helped that she only wanted to direct them; one wolf was not enough to hunt a boar, but with canny foresight and enough speed, she could herd a pack.
The numbers mattered: there was the king and his mate, and a handful of half-grown piglets old enough to be both delicious and dangerous. An armed man might succeed against any one of them, but anger the lot and weapons would do little good. That was why hunters, human or otherwise, separated one from its pack.
That was why Marketa did her best to drive them all into Thomas"s arms. Not just for vengeance, though that was key, but because it was good to run, to hunt and harry, to leap from one side of the offended herd to another, snapping her teeth and catching wild scents. She hadn"t stretched her legs so well in months, and playing at a whole pack of wolves was work enough to keep her thoughts honed and focused wholly on the moment.
Even she was shocked when Thomas came out of the brush. He had used the wind well, staying upwards of it, while it had been to her advantage to keep the pigs downward, where their crashing and snorting might carry as well as their scent. She had been at the boars" heels, far enough back to not anger them; far enough, now, to meld into the low undergrowth and watch as panic struck hundreds of pounds of pig flesh.
The piglets broke in every direction but hers, one rushing for Thomas"s horse. Its mother struck out after it, too late; hooves flashed and the smaller beast"s skull collapsed. It rolled forward, dying body tangling in the horse"s legs, and Thomas fired his gun as the mother boar charged at him. A single shot, and he made it count; few men might have struck the pig"s eye, though her momentum carried her forward and brought the horse and rider down even as she fell.
Thomas leapt clear, the blood that spattered belonging to the horse, not himself: it was done for, belly split open by the female"s bite as she died. The male, screaming fury, rushed Thomas, who flung his gun away and drew a long knife, his pigsticker spear broken by the horse"s fall. There was no fear in his scent, nor could there be, should he hope to survive.
A snarl rose up in Marketa"s throat. She turned it to the sky in a howl, sharp sound of warning and loss, and trotted out of the brush to let the hunter see her.
For a deadly instant surprise took him, and in that moment, so did the boar.
She had never seen one throw a man. It caught his gut easily, and turned its weight against him, flinging him a distance only aborted by the presence of an oak tree. Thomas. .h.i.t it with bone-cracking force and slid down, blood turning his shirt and hands to crimson. The boar snorted, charged again, then veered away into the broken underbrush, chasing after its offspring.
The horse lay on its side, thrashing. Marketa darted around its dangerous legs, scampered back from bared teeth broader and stronger than her own. There were other predators better suited to this kill than wolves; her jaws were strong, but she had seen how big cats could strangle their prey in mere seconds. Wolves tore and shredded at haunches, only taking the throat last, when the beast was already weakened, and the horse was still too strong with fear to be called weak. Still, it deserved better than the death coming to it, and she lunged in when silence took it for a moment.
It took a long time, blood hot and sweet on her tongue. As its gasps died, she heard Thomas"s increasing, and rolled her eyes, desperate to see but unwilling to release the horse and extend its death any longer. The gun was gone: Thomas had flung it well away, and was bleeding too heavily to search for it. But he was strong, and mercy shown to the horse could count against her own life.
It finally shuddered and died, strength gone from its great muscles. Marketa backed off, head lowered as she swung toward Thomas.
He was white-faced, drained of blood but not emotion; rage etched deep lines in his skin.
"What is man but a pack animal?" The words came from Marketa"s throat distorted, harsh, angry; a wolf was not meant to form human speech. She changed again, staying where she was, lithe on all fours, horse blood drooling down her chin. She had abandoned her clothes before taking lupine form; they would not change with her, and she knew now she looked a wild thing, monstrous human bathed in blood.
"We are only those who chose to heed the wild, so long ago. We learned to stay away from your penned cattle, your easy sheep, your fine horses. We hunted in the wood, and ran as one, while you our brothers constricted yourselves into dull unsensing human form. We did not threaten you, hunt your children, ruin your lives, and yet you came for us. That was my mother!"
She forgot, in springing forward, that she was only a woman, and had no teeth to tear his throat with. Instinct older than thought judged her and made weapons of her hands, curved to dig fingers in where tooth would not do. She might not have bothered; her weight was on his belly, where the boar had seized him, and the man screamed.
It drew her up. Not from mercy, but because to talk, to threaten and to posture, was the human and not the lupine way. A wolf hunted and killed, rather than allowed its prey to linger.
A pity, then, that this man, and others like him, had obliged her live so long in their world. "My mother," she whispered again. "My family. My pack, dead for sport."
He smiled, b.l.o.o.d.y and brief. Drew breath, held it, and spat it: "Dog. Do you think . . . we didn"t know . . . what we hunted? Mongrels. Monsters. Sinners. You are the last . . . in England . . . and my son will carry on the hunt in Europe!"
She ought to have been wary. Ought to have known he would carry another weapon; that a second knife could be secreted more easily than a gun. He moved faster than a dying man should, but the surge of muscle warned her. The blade glittered and she turned into it, ducking low, body transformed without a thought. The horse"s neck had been ma.s.sive in her jaws; his wrist was fragile, and bone shattered all too clearly beneath his scream.
She tore the sound out with a single bite, spitting away flesh she had no desire to feast on. A wolf would have taken his throat before, and never learned that he"d known what he hunted. That was worse, worse by far, than she might have imagined. She would have to leave Britain, find her brethren elsewhere and warn them.
A branch cracked, folly of human intrusion. Marketa snarled and fell back from Thomas"s body, lost between knowing whether to run or to take human form and bluff. Run; she would run, away from England"s sh.o.r.es, but first there were other men to be dealt with.
Radcliffe stood at the edge of the clearing, a gun held loosely in his hands as he stared at Thomas"s body. "His father stole horses from my grandfather," he said eventually, softly, though there were no other humans nearby to hear him. "I had hoped for some satisfaction in that. Some mark of watching him embarra.s.sed by a woman out-hunting him. I had not imagined . . . this. It is you, Marketa, is it not?" His gaze lifted to her, almost apologetic. "I saw, when you . . . when you spoke to him. When you took human form. You are a . . . "
"Wiaralde-wulf." Those words, so ancient they were made for a wolfen tongue, still hurt her throat. Marketa changed, cautiously, to her human form, to speak more easily. "A world wolf, by our own name. Werewolf, by yours. As old as man, and closer to the world than you now are."
"Mother of G.o.d." Radcliffe fell back a step, gun clutched to his chest like a woman might clutch a kerchief. "Marketa?"
"Please, sir." A whisper of humor bent her smile, though she could feel blood drying around it. ""Miss Alvarez.""
He drew himself up, gun still held like a bludgeoning weapon. "You are naked in my sight, dear woman. I believe I might call you by your given name."
"Only if you intend to make me your wife." Her gaze flickered to the gun. "Will you shoot me, if I run?"
"Would you have me?" he asked at the same time. They stared at one another, Marketa still primed to run, and Radcliffe"s eyes dropped to the gun he held. He cast it away with a shudder, then looked to her again. "You said to Thomas that you were the ones who chose to heed the wild. Can a man make that choice even still? Can he become . . . wiaralde-wulf even now?"
"Not in memory." Marketa hesitated, creeping forward a few steps. He was unarmed; she could kill him, if she must. "But in legend . . . ."
"In legend, as we tell it? Through a bite?"
"And through the tending of the wound. Why would you want it? We are hunted." Marketa spat at Thomas"s body.
Radcliffe smiled faintly. "What man would want a wife capable of such astonishing feats that he could not himself achieve? Would you have me, Marketa Alvarez?"
She glanced at herself: naked, b.l.o.o.d.y, fingers caked with gore and her face and throat no doubt worse. Beneath the horror, well-enough endowed in human standards, her frame neither overwhelmed nor embarra.s.sed by the curves she possessed. Then she lifted her gaze to Radcliffe"s, watching his face and stance as she shifted to her wolf form. Scenting for his apprehension, preparing herself to face fear.
She found curiosity in his cant, and wonder, easily read as a puppy"s. Eagerness, like a pup"s enthusiasm for exploration, though he was a man fully grown. Caution threaded through it: he saw her as the predator she was, but extended wary trusts. Beneath it all, though, a line of confidence was struck, familiar tone seen in any pack leader. He was certain of the choice he was asking both himself and her to make.
Humans were clearly mad. Marketa changed again-she hadn"t made the change so many times in a day in years, if ever-and sat staring at Radcliffe with a wolfish gaze, waiting for him to falter. Minutes dragged on, and he remained steady, until she herself looked away and gave a short sharp laugh. "Then I suppose we should find water that I might wash myself in, and my clothes, and then go to young Lord Thomas with the sad news about his father. And then I think we shall visit France, Master Radcliffe, there to further discuss our future."
"Randolf," he said absently, and offered her a hand to help her stand. "My given name is Randolf. Will you call me by it?"
Marketa froze, then laughed and put her hand in his. "Randolf. Wolf"s shield. Did you know the meaning of your name, sir?"
He drew her upward, only smiling when she was on her feet. "I did. It bodes well, does it not?"
"If one is bound by superst.i.tion and coincidence, perhaps."
Radcliffe"s eyebrows rose. "And are you?"
"I"m wiaralde-wulf, Master Radcliffe, a creature of superst.i.tion myself. I suppose I must then be bound by it." Her teasing faltered. "It"s been a long time since I"ve had anyone to walk beside, Randolf. Are you certain of this?"
"I am certain," he murmured, "that there is a world awaiting us that we cannot yet imagine. Let us not disappoint it, Marketa. Let us see what discoveries lie in store."
And what future her people might find, she did not say, if there were men even now willing to embrace the wiaralde. There would be time enough for those thoughts in the years ahead, and she had spent so long thinking as a human did. It would be good, for a little while, to embrace the wolf.
With a smile and a loll of her tongue, she leapt forward, not to abandon, not ever to abandon, but to scout ahead of her shield until he might learn to be a wolf himself.
LOCKED DOORS.
STEPHANIE BURGIS.
"My dad can"t come to parent-teacher conferences on Monday," Tyler says. He keeps his voice calm and steady as he meets his English teacher"s eyes. "He has to work."
Tyler is a pro at this. He can tell exactly when doubt flickers in Mrs. Jankovic"s eyes and when his open, friendly expression settles it for her. There are too many eighth-graders in her cla.s.s for her to chase up worries about every one of them. Too many kids in this middle school, period.
That"s why Tyler"s dad chose it for him.
When Tyler gets home, he hears his dad moving around in the bas.e.m.e.nt-probably getting it ready for next week. Tyler scoops out some ice cream for himself and settles down at the kitchen table to do his homework early. His friend Paul is coming over later, and Tyler"s dad has promised to rent them a DVD. They"re hoping for Tomb Raider, but he"s told them not to hold their breath.
Footsteps sound on the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs, behind the closed door. They pause for so long that Tyler turns around to check that the industrial-strength bolt hasn"t accidentally locked itself into place. He"s craning around to look, vanilla ice cream still sliding down his throat, when the door bangs open.
The first thing he notices is the smell, acrid and unmistakable.
"Sorry," his dad mumbles. He averts his eyes from Tyler"s shocked face, stumbles into the kitchen. He"s already losing coordination, his movements shambling.
Tyler finds his voice, but it comes out as a squeak. "It"s not supposed to come for a week!"
"I guess it"s starting early this month." His dad shrugs, paws at the freezer, sighs heavily. "Can you get the ice cream out for me?"
Tyler shoves his chair back, hurries to the fridge. All his senses p.r.i.c.kle as he pa.s.ses close to his father. There"s no visible sign yet-not unless you know how to read his dad"s expression-but all his other senses can tell that the Change has begun.
Enemy, they whisper. Gooseb.u.mps crisscross his skin. Run away.
Dad, he tells himself, and slips between his dad"s big body and the fridge. He feels his dad"s uneven breathing ruffle his hair as he opens the freezer. He doesn"t let himself look back or edge away. He pulls out the carton of ice cream and scoops out three dollops into a blue bowl. Only then does he allow himself to turn around.
Yellow streaks have already appeared in his father"s eyes. The smell of heavy musk is growing.
How long does he have left?
The phone rings. Tyler shoves the bowl at his dad and darts for it.
"Hey, Ty." It"s Paul, his voice bright and cheerful. "What movie are we gonna watch? Did we score Tomb Raider?"