Black Wolf (41 page)

"I mean it. I
can be a wolf when I try."

"'Least I
won't have to worry so much about whether you're safe."

There was
that.

"Drugs are no
good. They don't work anymore."

"All the
better," Shaine said. "Shut up and go to sleep."

35

Rebecca left
the bank at five, and decided to wander the village rather than
going home. The increasing tension within Whitethorn wasn't
something she really wanted to deal with just now.

Hm, it might
be worth it to see what was new at Donovan's shop. She walked the
three blocks to Arachne's Loom deep in her own troubled
thoughts.

Evaline and
Liam were there, Evaline holding up a rather attractive blue and
orange dress against her and waiting for Liam's opinion.

"I think you
should try..." He broke off, and glanced towards Rebecca. Evaline
echoed it, and growled low in her throat.

Rebecca
ignored her, and swept past them towards the back of the shop. She
stopped to look at a rack of bright-coloured vests, some magesilk,
some made by more conventional methods.

Evaline came
up behind her.

"We're going
to find him. We'll get him home somehow. You aren't going to
win."

"I really
don't care," Rebecca said disdainfully. "Find him, forget him, it
makes no difference to me." She considered telling Evaline how
interested the demon plane seemed to be in Jesse, but decided
against it. Why should she give them free information?

"Y'know, Sam
said something the first time she saw Jess. She said that he's a
lot more than a stray out of the city, and anyone who forgets that
is going to regret it. I wouldn't blame him if he decided it's his
turn for a little revenge once he comes home. And he will. That
bond between him and Kevin and Gisela is too strong."

"I'm sorry, I
must not have made this clear." She spun around, and met Evaline's
eyes levelly. "I do not care. At all. I do not need your pathetic
attempts at threats. I do not care what Samantha said. And
truthfully, given how easily manipulated that black wolf of yours
is, I am not especially worried about whether he hates me. Excuse
me." She stepped around Evaline, and stopped at a rack of long
skirts.

Evaline made a
disgusted sound. "Kevin's right. You are a coward. You've lost face
with every wolf in Haven for this."

Rebecca
gritted her teeth, acutely aware of that fact and hating it. Had
she challenged Jesse openly, beaten him in a fair fight and driven
him away from Haven, that would be acceptable behaviour. Not that
it would have endeared her to the other wolves, but she would at
least have not lost face. Being implicated as the voice behind
Avryl's treachery, however, was another matter, and it damaged her
standing with the Haven wolves badly. The opinions of non-wolves
didn't matter, but her status with the wolves did.

There seemed,
however, to be no way to negate it without making it worse.

"Evaline," she
said. "Surely you have something better to do with your time. Are
you really so bored?"

"You're not a
wolf," Evaline spat, turning away. "You're a dog pretending to be a
wolf."

Holding her
growing anger firmly in check wasn't easy, but this was neither the
time nor the place to fight Evaline. It would only make her look
even worse.

Damn this
whole mess. She was sorry now she'd ever laid eyes on Kevin Lioren
and thought she could have him to herself. Directly and indirectly,
he was the ultimate reason why she was now standing in quicksand
and had to hunt for a way to escape it. Elves were more trouble
than they were worth.

36

For the
hundredth time, Kevin settled himself on his bed with his homework;
for the hundredth time, he read the same paragraph, but it still
made no sense to him. For the hundredth time, he gave up, went back
to pacing restlessly around the room.

Deanna knocked
quietly on the door, and crossed the room to hug him.

"Are you okay?
You're broadcasting pretty strongly..."

"Sorry."

"That isn't
what I mean, and you know it. What's wrong?"

"I don't know.
Something's
wrong, but I don't know what, or where, but I
can't get it out of my head."

"Jess?" she
asked gently.

He sighed. "I
was trying not to think that."

"Give up on
the homework. Come on downstairs."

"Well, I'm not
accomplishing much up here."

Past Jesse's
empty room, a constant reminder of something rarely far from
anyone's thoughts anyway. The equinox was just past, it was less
than a week to Jesse's birthday...

How under the
sun had he made everybody love him so much, that two months later
they were still worrying about him all the time?

He found no
more peace in the cosy dining room with his coven-mates, Flynn
intent on a jigsaw puzzle on the table, Cynthia curled up in one
corner of the couch with her current knitting project, Bane dozing
furform on the rug by the woodstove. Restlessly, he picked up the
brush from the ledge by the woodstove, and sat cross-legged beside
Bane; he had to smile when the wolf woke at the first touch and
helpfully rearranged himself so Kevin could reach him more easily.
Deanna claimed the other end of the couch and retrieved an
oversized book lying open and face-down beside her, revealing a
notebook under it—research for something, apparently. Kevin
concentrated on brushing Bane's heavy fur tangle-free and
shining-soft, always a popular pastime for both wolves and
friends.

Even that
couldn't calm him as it usually did. He laid down the brush, and
got up. "I'm going for a walk."

Bane growled
halfheartedly, and went back to his nap.

He made no
effort to decide where to go, simply let instinct lead him where it
would, trusting to his own deeper self to take him where his
conscious self couldn't.

A wolf
snarling, somewhere ahead... he knew wolves well enough to
recognize it as defensive, not aggressive.

He ran down
the rest of that hill, up the higher one in front of him, and found
a small black wolf—with two unnaturally large grey wolves at his
heels. The black wolf staggered, all too obviously exhausted, but
he still spun around clumsily to attack. The grey wolf slipped to
the side, got around behind him and snapped at his flank, and the
other mirrored it. Jess tried again, with no more luck; the grey
wolves weren't going to let him stand and fight. They drove him
back into a faltering limping run again, matching his speed without
letting him slow.

Kevin felt
pure heat surge along every nerve—a sensation he recognized, the
wild mad ecstasy of power, stirred and fed by strong emotion. He'd
learned the seductive joy of it along with the satisfaction of
taming it under Thomas, surrendered himself to it with Rebecca, and
mastered it again.

This time, he
was in control of it, not the other way around.

He crossed the
road so he was directly in their path.

Jess almost
hit him; he stumbled again, this time fell and simply lay there,
sides heaving.

Kevin stepped
between Jess and the grey wolves. They were neither werewolves nor
true wolves, mage-sight told him, they were constructs, mage-made,
something that he'd only ever heard of as a theory since it took
immense amounts of power and a high level of skill.

"Come on," he
told them, his voice dangerously quiet. "Try to get him now."

They
hesitated, pacing back and forth; their programming probably didn't
include what to do if they were confronted directly by someone
other than their prey.

Gisela darted
out of the trees, and made directly for Jess. Somehow, he wasn't
surprised she'd felt the same call that had brought him here. The
healer dropped to her knees beside the collapsed black wolf.

Kevin reached
into the sunlight, let that combine with the rage, felt the
brilliant heat of more raw power than most mages could hope to
survive unscathed.

Part of it he
used to shield Jess and Gisela; he heard Gisela whisper, "Uh-oh,
brace yourself, Jess."

The rest, with
no attempt at shaping it beyond directing it to its targets, he
turned loose on the two constructs. The intoxicating strength of it
washed over him; what he
knew
would have put most mages on
their knees in agony was to him an electric high.

The
constructs, with yowls of protest, melted back into the formless
solid-energy masses they'd been made from, then even that
disintegrated back to its natural state.

The power was
still there, begging to be used, there wasn't
anyone
who
could stop him if he chose to take what it offered...

"Kev?" Gisela
said softly, her voice shaky. Not afraid, exactly... but not far
from it.

Grimly, he
leashed the power, channelled it away, back into the sunlight. It
obeyed; it was himself he had to fight to do it.

He turned
around, and scooped Jesse up carefully, using enough of the
lingering power to lighten his weight. "I'm okay, kitten," he said,
surprised at his own hoarseness. "I'm not going to lose it."

"I was
starting to wonder, for a minute, but I didn't really think you
would."

"Near miss,
but not quite." That faith felt better, in a way, than the ecstasy
of being at the heart of so much power. With his arms full of a
weakly-struggling wolf, he had to shape the gate with his mind
alone. He waited for Gisela to step through, then followed. The
road vanished, replaced by the solid familiarity of the living
room.

The rest of
Sundark were in the dining room still, but everyone was talking at
once; when he and Gisela came in, abrupt silence fell, then came a
dozen questions all over-top of one another.

"Be quiet for
a minute," he told them sharply, and laid Jess down on the
now-vacant couch. "Is he okay, 'Sela?"

She perched on
the edge, rested a hand on his side, and closed her eyes. Hob
jumped up to investigate, unsurprisingly, but Cynthia picked him up
and held him in her arms where he could watch without being in the
way.

"I think so.
He's hurt in a few places, but nothing really bad... there's traces
of some kind of poison, it did an awful lot of damage before his
body recognized it and countered it, I don't know what it was, they
must've had poisoned teeth, these look like bites. Mostly just
exhaustion. Kev, they must have chased him for
hours
! It's a
wonder he made it here at all!"

"Who chased
him?" Bane demanded, more than a hint of growl in his voice.

"I'll see what
I can fix, but mostly he just needs to sleep. And not do much when
he wakes up. At least he can't run away again for a while, I don't
think he'd make it out of Janicot." More silence, no one willing to
break her concentration while she was intent on healing.

"That's all I
can do," she pronounced finally. "Can you take him to his
room?"

Wordlessly,
Kevin gathered him up again. He heard Gisela tell the others to
stay there, then she joined him.

Gisela flipped
back the blankets, so Kevin could lay Jesse down again, this time
in his own bed. The wolf stirred restlessly, and his form fluxed to
human, Kevin didn't think he was even entirely conscious; he
nestled into the blankets Gisela drew over him, and relaxed
completely. Hob darted in the door, launched himself onto the bed,
and curled up next to Jess, glaring defiance of anyone who might
dare try to move him again.

On some
level, he knows he's home safe.
Gently, Kevin brushed
raven-dark hair away from Jesse's face.
I promise, Jess, I'm not
going to make you sorry ever again for trusting me, just please
give me a chance...

"Your turn,"
Gisela said, and motioned to the loveseat. Kevin decided not to
argue, sat down and let her examine him.

"No more
stretching for a couple of days," she told him. "You've got a mild
case of backlash, it's been a long time since you used that much
power all at once. Why don't you stay here and catnap a bit? I'll
explain to your coven and make sure someone brings you something to
eat."

"Okay." He
coiled himself so he could rest his head on his arm, his arm on the
loveseat. Gisela settled a magesilk blanket over him, kissed his
cheek fleetingly, and left the door ajar a couple of inches for Hob
behind her.

37

Gisela made
her way back downstairs, to the dining room. Sundark hadn't calmed
down noticeably; she was all but attacked.

With proper
healer composure, she leaned against the doorway and waited for
them to stop all talking at once.

"There were
two constructs shaped like wolves chasing Jess," she explained
calmly. "Kev and I got there at almost the same time. He destroyed
them. Better yet, he did it without losing control. He's pretty
badly shaken up, though. They're both up in Jesse's room, I'm going
to get Kev something to eat, and after that, don't even think about
disturbing either one."