Ascension (10 page)

I waited until the mutt finished emptying his stomach. The smell of vomit almost dowsed the stink of blood and burnt flesh. Almost.

"You sick son-of-a-bitch," he whispered, still doubled over. "How could you—?"

He puked again. I waited until the retching stopped.

"He came on my territory," I said quietly. "From now on, any mutt who comes on my territory is going to end up like this. If you want to be the last mutt to walk away alive, then there’s something I need you do for me."

He shot upright. "I am not doing anything—"

I grabbed his hand. With a wrench, I forced it over the heart of the mutt on the table. The other mutt’s eyes went round and he jerked back.

"He’s alive? He’s still alive? You kept him—!"

The mutt swung at me, lost his balance on the blood-slicked plastic sheeting, and skidded to the floor. I left him there, grabbed an axe from the pile of tools, then finished the job on the unconscious mutt.

"There," I said, turning to the one on the floor. "He’s dead. I just wanted to show you that I
could
keep him alive. Think about that. I could do this to you, and let you live."

He lunged for my legs, but I grabbed the back of his shirt and swung him to his feet, then shoved him against the wall and held him there until his struggles stopped.

"Here’s what I want you to do," I said. "I’m giving you a mission. The price for your life is this: you need to pass on what you’ve seen. When you leave here, you’re taking the first plane out of New York State. You’re flying back to your friends and telling them what happened, every detail of it. You’ll warn them that if they come here, this is what they can expect. Then, once you’ve told them, you’ll find another mutt and tell him, and another, and tell him. If you don’t—"

"You’ll come after me," the mutt said between clenched teeth. His eyes blazed hate, but no amount of revulsion could cover the raw fear behind it.

"Yes, I’ll come after you, but not just if you don’t pass along the message. If anyone shows up here again, then I’ll know you haven’t done your job and I’ll come after you."

"What?" he yelped. "I can’t tell every last goddamned mutt in the world and even if I could, what’s to say they’ll listen to me?"

"If you tell the story right, they’ll listen, and they’ll do your job for you by passing it on."

"But what if they don’t believe me? Shit, what person in their right mind could believe that someone would—?" His gaze swept the room, and he swallowed. "They won’t believe me."

"Yes, they will." I dropped him, strode across the room and grabbed a handful of Polaroid shots. "If they don’t, show them these."

"You took pictures? Jesus Christ! You’re—you’re—"

"Someone you don’t ever want to meet again," I said.

I shoved the pictures into his pocket, and prodded him out the door.

And so the legend began. The mutt took my photos and took my tale and spread them as far as he could. The story snowballed, as all such stories do, and over the years I’ve heard dozens of versions of it, each more outrageous than the last. Yet I never deny any of them. If a mutt came up to me today and related the most sadistic exaggeration of the truth, I wouldn’t deny it. Why should I? What I did was bad enough. If he thinks I’m capable of doing worse, why say otherwise? Sure, he’ll go away thinking I’m the worst kind of depraved monster, but if it keeps him off our territory, that’s all that matters.

According to the legend, that day was the last day any mutt ever set foot near Stonehaven. Is that true? Of course not. The story didn’t spread fast enough to warn off every mutt. Even when it did, two or three who
had
heard the tale couldn’t resist taking a shot at this "wolf-monster." Yet none of those mutts ever returned, so even if their friends knew they’d come and that my victim hadn’t really been the last mutt to trespass at Stonehaven, they didn’t let this inconsistency to get in the way of a good story. The legend was allowed to remain and flourish.

The news of what I’d done eventually spread to the Pack. As for Jeremy, while I’m sure he heard about it within a year or so, he never mentioned it to me. I don’t think he knew how to handle it. He couldn’t endorse my methods, but the whole Pack benefited from the results, so how could he complain? Take me aside and say "that was a very, very bad thing you did, Clay, and I know why you did it, and I think it might have been the right thing to do, but please don’t ever do it again"?

At thirty-one, Jeremy was still coming to terms with the ugly side of leadership, the thought that he might need to commit or sanction acts of violence to reduce the violence in our lives. As he’d said five years ago, the better we could fight, the less we’d have to. In killing the mutt so horribly, I’d tested his theory in a way I’m sure he’d never anticipated but, in the end, he saw that it did work. One act of extreme violence bought us two decades of peace at Stonehaven. No one could argue about that.

Changes

Jeremy turned thirty-two that spring. For his birthday, I decided to get him some special art supplies. In the past few years, he’d been devoting more time to his painting and I wanted to show him that, even if I couldn’t really share his enthusiasm, I fully supported it. The problem was that I had no idea what "special art supplies" were, or what type Jeremy needed. So I called his mentor in New York. That was tough for me, phoning a human stranger and asking for help, but I was determined to get the best present I could for Jeremy, regardless of the monetary or psychological cost.

Jeremy’s mentor was an artist whose career had been side-railed by arthritis, so he’d opened a gallery in New York City. Jeremy had met him five years ago. Presumably, Jeremy had been browsing or admiring in the gallery, and they somehow managed to strike up a conversation and he’d been advising Jeremy ever since.

I knew Jeremy’s mentor’s name, but had never met the man; Jeremy kept that part of his life separate from ours. Yet the moment I called and introduced myself, the man knew who I was. He promised to put together a bundle of supplies and mail them, and I could send him a check when I received them.

"It must be pretty exciting around there these days," he said after we’d arranged everything.

"Ummm, yeah," I said. "I guess so."

He chuckled. "I don’t know how Jeremy stays so calm. When I first—" Another chuckle. "But you don’t want to hear an old man reminisce. I’m just so happy for him. It’s wonderful to see. It’ll make things so much easier for the two of you. Young people can always use extra money."

He promised to get my supplies into the mail that week, then signed off. I hung up, then stared down at the phone. Extra money? What was that about? Financially, things
had
been going much better for us lately. When I’d been younger, Jeremy had spent many a late night hunched over a calculator, trying to juggle the bills. These days, he turned down work. We certainly weren’t wealthy, but we were comfortable.

Maybe he’d been referring to the investments. Once Jeremy had begun earning extra money, he’d done the financially cautious thing and invested the extra. Some of it went into conservative stuff like bonds, but at least half had gone into the stock market, under Antonio’s direction. A few years back, Antonio had taken over the new technology sector of the family business, just as Dominic had been ready to abandon micro-technology as an unprofitable fad. Although Antonio knew nothing about computers or technology, he had an instinctive grasp of trends and business needs, and had turned a department on the verge of extinction into a thriving part of the company. He’d also invested his own money in the technology sector, and persuaded Jeremy to do the same. Just this summer, a dividend check had bought us a two week trip to Vermont. From what Jeremy’s mentor said, maybe another one was on the way, and maybe another trip in the works. I could live with that.

Jeremy’s birthday came and went. No dividend check or special trip was mentioned, but he loved my gift, so that was enough. The next month, classes gave way to exams, bringing with it the prospect of four whole months to call my own.

After my last exam, I bolted for the parking lot . . . and found my car missing.

I stood in the lot and looked around. Had I been so preoccupied with my exam that I’d accidentally parked somewhere else? Not likely. My pass was for this lot. I was certain I’d parked right there, in my usual spot in the far row. But now I was standing there, in front of the spot I could swear had been mine, scowling at a black Mustang convertible. A beautiful car, and any other time, I’d have lingered to appreciate it, but right now I just wanted to go home, and this was, unfortunately, not my car. Had someone stolen mine? Yeah, as if anyone would want a fifteen year old Chevy that needed a swift kick to get started on cold mornings. Had it been towed? Shit, I
had
paid all my tickets, hadn’t I?

A sharp tinkle of metal on asphalt cut short my thoughts. Following the sound, I looked to see a set of keys between my feet. I frowned down at them.

"Well, pick them up," said a voice behind me. "I’d have aimed for your hand, but I didn’t want to startle you."

I turned to see Jeremy leaning against his truck. He waved at the keys. I picked them up, still frowning.

"What are you doing here?" I said. "Did something happen to my car?"

"No, it’s right there. Where you left it."

I turned to the Mustang, looked down at the keys in my hand, then back at the car. I can imagine my expression because Jeremy burst into a rare laugh.

"I thought you might like that," he said. "Any speeding tickets you earn with it are still yours, though."

I looked from the car, to Jeremy, and back again. "But how—where—?"

"I came into an unexpected bit of money and thought you deserved something new. Well, it’s not new, but
newer
, and hopefully nicer."

"Shit, yeah," I said, still staring. "Thanks. Thanks a lot."

"You’re welcome."

I jangled the keys in my hand, itching to try them, but knowing that before I did that, I needed to be sure this was okay, that Jeremy hadn’t gone into hock because I’d been bitching and moaning about my car this winter.

"The stocks?" I said, tearing my gaze from the car.

He shook his head. "A long-term investment of another kind. I sold my first painting. Two paintings, actually. One this winter and another last month."

"Sold—? When—? I didn’t even know you had any up for sale."

Jeremy brushed his bangs from his face. "I wasn’t ready to admit to it. Not until something sold. Remember when we were looking for schools—or, I should say, when
I
was looking for schools? I knew your teachers thought you’d get a full scholarship, but when I saw the tuition prices, I was still worried. I didn’t want something like lack of money to hold you back. Don had been pestering me to put a few paintings in his gallery. Eventually I decided to give it a shot."

"So they sold?"

A tiny smile. "For far more than they were worth. And since you took care of your tuition with your scholarship, I thought it only fitting that I use the money on you."

"You didn’t need to—"

"No, but I wanted to. Now get in and let’s go home."

I grinned. "Race you."

He shook his head and walked back to his truck.

And so our lives underwent another slow change. Over the next couple of years, Jeremy sold more paintings. He still kept up his translation business, in case the art didn’t work out, but he retained only his best clients and turned down all new work.

Malcolm continued to train me. By the time I was eighteen, I’d learned all the tricks he had to impart, but kept up the lessons for practice. That seemed to make him happy—as happy as Malcolm was capable of being. I always knew that part of his reason for training me was political. He saw in me a potentially valuable ally for his fight to become Alpha, and hoped that we’d somehow bond over these sessions and he’d woo me away from Jeremy. Never happened, though. I came to tolerate Malcolm, but would never forget what he’d done to Jeremy, and never trust him not to do it again if things didn’t go his way.

And what about his failed ploy to get me to persuade Jeremy to drop out of the Alpha race? Being out in the world so much, Malcolm was first in the Pack to hear what I’d done to that mutt. Was he angry that I’d found another way to stop trespassing mutts, one that didn’t help his cause? If he was, he never gave any sign of it. Instead, it seemed to give him something new to brag about, that his pupil had proven not only a vicious killer but a clever strategist. Although my original plan had only been to keep mutts away from Stonehaven, after hearing what I’d done, most mutts decided they’d better not take the chance of trespassing on any Pack wolf’s turf, just in case they’d misunderstood my message. So, by the time I was twenty, our sanctuary extended throughout Pack territory.

As for the Alpha race, it was more of an Alpha crawl. Dominic had moved Jeremy into the role of advisor, and consulted him on every matter of Pack policy. This seemed a monumental step. An Alpha traditionally acted alone or, if he consulted anyone, he did it on the side, so no one knew—he certainly didn’t openly ask for opinions as Dominic now did with Jeremy. Yet it was all for show. Dominic might seek Jeremy’s advice, but certainly didn’t feel obligated to follow it, or even seriously consider it. As Malcolm had said years ago, Dominic was playing a game, slowly moving Jeremy into a leadership role, while holding fast to the reins of power. Jeremy knew this. He’d always known it. But he allowed it to happen because it put him into a position he might never attained otherwise—that of a serious Alpha contender.