Black Wolf (50 page)

No point
adding to Jaisan's gloom, though. She simply shifted back to wolf
with an effort, and waited for him to join her. If another attack
came tonight, they'd probably never even wake up enough to
notice.

47

Gisela walked
along a path through a forest, her mind as passive and receptive as
the trees around her that dripped water to the soggy
needle-carpeted ground. Her feet squished softly as she stepped
around the many fallen branches. It was utterly dark, neither
moonlight nor starlight gleamed through the heavy clouds, yet she
could see reasonably well. Not that she could bear to look to
closely at the battered trees, the long ragged scars where boughs
had been wrenched off. Though the woods were spring-green, it was
bitterly cold, and some of that dripping water was melting ice.

The wind
picked up, howling eerily, and twined into it were inhuman voices.
She didn't understand why, but pure panic sent a surge of
adrenaline rushing through her veins, and she bolted. There was
something behind her, something terrible, and if it caught her she
would never escape it...

She stumbled
over something in her path, fell painfully, and scrambled to her
feet; her heart was pounding so hard that surely the bad thing
would be able to track her on that sound alone. She looked down at
what she'd tripped over, and pressed her hand to her mouth to
strangle a cry: it was a small black wolf with its throat torn out,
lying limply beside the path, eyes open and staring. Beside it lay
a chain of dark glittering stones and metal links; she snatched it
up and fled again.

With her back
against a steep hillside of glacial rock, she paused to catch her
breath and look at the chain. The links were tarnished silver; the
stones were deep purple. It was about the length of a collar for a
medium-to-small werewolf, but one link was broken, it was no longer
a circle. Amethyst and silver on a black wolf that size... That
could only be Jess, Jess was dead...

The menacing
presence drew near again. She looked around wildly, spotted a deep
nearly vertical crevice in the rock a few feet above her. She
climbed up to it and wedged her body in with little difficulty.

It went much
deeper than she thought. She edged carefully sideways along it, the
collar tucked safely down the front of her shirt. Somehow, she was
sure, it was more precious than anything made of metal and gems
should be.

The crevice
opened abruptly into forest again, and another path. The sinister
thing was somewhere on the far side of the hill; it had lost her
temporarily.

A sudden
weight on her chest made her cry out... Then she recognized the
thunderous sound as her cat purring...

She opened her
eyes, shivering. The grey-brown tabby cuddled against her, purring
hard; she stroked him with one hand, fumbling for the reading lamp
with the other. The glare was bad, but the terror of the nightmare
was worse. Another few seconds and it would have come over the hill
and found her.

Gradually the
panic faded, soothed by the dense soft fur under her hand, the
vibration of his purr, the brightness and warmth of the room.
Before the memory could fade as well, though, she reached for her
notebook and wrote it down in detail. Tomorrow she could find
someone to talk about it with. Kevin, or Liam, or Samantha.

Right now, she
switched off the light, and went back to sleep listening to the
tabby's purring.

* * *

Gisela knocked
on Kevin's open door, quietly. "Are you busy for a few
minutes?"

He looked up
from the books spread on his bed. "Nothing that can't wait.
Something wrong?"

"I don't
know." She came in, shifted enough books that she could sit down,
and settled herself with her knees hugged against her chest, her
notebook on her lap and pressed against her body. "I've been having
a lot of very odd dreams lately, and since a phoenix turns up in
some of them, I thought they might somehow involve you. The one
last night was the clearest and most intense yet, but it didn't
have a phoenix."

She watched
his expression turn thoughtful. "Chase dreams?"

"Mostly. You
too?"

"About every
other night. A few things keep repeating, although I can't make any
sense out of them. There's a silver and amethyst key, and a black
wolf I think is Jess, but he turns up howling a lot and doesn't
usually notice me. Sad howling, or to call someone, not singing for
fun. I can never see what's chasing me, but I know it'll be the
worst thing possible if it catches me. Where it happens varies
every time, but there's usually water around or involved."

"I see a
collar, like a wolf might wear for decoration furform, but it's
silver and amethyst, and it's usually broken. And a black wolf
sometimes, but not always. Most of the time I'm in a forest that
looks like the mother of all storms just ended. A northern-type
forest, mostly conifers."

"No one else
in my coven has been having them. I asked a while back, because
spill-over dreams that refract back and forth can get intense like
that."

"Well, I asked
Jess. He just says he has the usual kinds of dreams he's always had
in Haven."

"There aren't
all that many all-black wolves in Haven, it could only reasonably
be Jess. And the two of us are linked to him... it has to be
connected somehow."

"How is the
question. I really hope they're symbolic and not prophetic. I've
seen Jess, or at least whoever the wolf is, dead a couple of
times."

"Flynn checked
and didn't get anything except that same unfinished-business thing
he always gets with Jess. I'll ask him to check again, just in
case. Sam apparently warned him that direct demon involvement could
interfere with his ability to pick up on even immediate danger, and
lemme tell ya, that's a thought that
seriously
unsettled our
seer. And we are of course not going to ask how Sam would know
that. Have you been writing them down?"

She nodded.
"You?"

"Yes. Maybe we
should take a closer look and compare notes? We might be jumping at
shadows, but I think there's something to this. If nothing else,
maybe if we bounce some of what overlaps off Flynn, it'll trigger
something by association."

"Now?"

"If it works
for you."

With more
books cleared away, they settled down to see what they could
find.

48

Shaine glanced
up only briefly when Jesse sat beside him on the grassy bank, then
went back to his contemplation of the sun on the water.

"What are you
thinking about?" Jess asked quietly.

"The lake,"
Shaine said truthfully. "How many things are living in it, right
now, and how much simpler life must be. Maybe if you lived in water
cold enough, you wouldn't be able to feel anything... Maybe you
could even go to sleep, and not feel tired anymore..." It occurred
to him belatedly that he'd said more than he meant to, that he'd
done the forbidden and let his shields down, but he couldn't find
the will to strengthen them again.

Jess hugged
him, hard, and didn't let go. "Tired from what?"

"From being
alone. From being so completely totally fucking alone."

"I'm
here."

"Until they
figure out if you are who they're so scared you are and get really
serious about trying to kill you. Even if you aren't, they might
kill you anyway for the hell of it. And I'm all out of tricks to
keep you safe. And when they do that, I may as well kill myself,
because I can't go back, the water's still all blood..." He buried
his face in Jesse's shoulder, felt the walls crack for the first
time in years, felt the tears come.

Jess whispered
something too soft for him to make out, but otherwise just
tightened both arms around him and waited.

It felt as
though all the pain he'd denied so long suddenly demanded
acknowledgement, all at once; like all the waters of Niagara Falls
lived inside, and the pressure had finally eroded the walls past
any hope of holding them together. In a way, though, it was such a
blessed release...

"Feel better?"
Jess murmured, once Shaine quieted.

"No." That was
a lie; on some level he did. The deep depression remained, though.
He pulled away, struggling for some version of self-composure.

"Why is there
blood in the water?"

Haven had done
something to Jess; the boy Shaine remembered finding would have
taken it literally.

Done
something. Now there was an understatement.

"Because my
family fucked up your life. My family killed a whole village, your
family included, just because they were there and too close to
finding out that water has children too. My family and a bunch of
demons, actually, and nobody would tell me why in any way that made
sense." The rising wind blew Jesse's hair into his eyes; Shaine
reached out automatically to brush it away for him, gave him a sad
smile as any number of emotions crossed those dark eyes in rapid
succession. "I managed to make myself human enough to walk into the
middle of Haven and never get a second glance."

"Protecting
me." Jess growled softly. "I wonder if I know anyone who hasn't
been keeping things secret from me trying to protect me. Now it's
not just some psycho mage throwing tantrums and an unstable wolf
bitch with a grudge, now there's a bloody conspiracy behind it all?
It would've been real nice if you'd let me know this before
now."

"I know. But
all it would've done is help them find you. I wasn't about to
finish the job my family started."

The anger
faded, and Jess sighed. "You didn't do anything to me. Whatever
your family did, that wasn't you. And even if it was you, you've
helped me more than enough times to make up for it."

"You should
never have
been
on the streets! That bastard should never
have had a chance to hurt you! You should be with your real
family."

"Well, I'm
with the next best thing, so things haven't gone too badly. I'm
still alive, and I'm damned well going to stay that way. Especially
if I have information, for a change."

The wind
danced around them, made them both shiver. Shaine glanced up, and
frowned. He'd spent quite some time watching the reflection of the
clear sky in the water; where had all the grey heavy clouds come
from, and that too-cool wind?

Alarmed, he
closed his eyes, reached deep inside, forcing awake senses long
dormant.

Those senses
gave him a fuzzy impression of power at work, shimmering tendrils
of it running through the waves and the wind...

"Oh, shit," he
breathed. "No wonder I started thinking about that so much all of a
sudden." The demons were too cautious, they didn't want to mess
with Jess just in case, but the merenai were another matter...

Practicality
took over; he got up, and held down both hands to Jess. "We can
finish this conversation later. We have to get back to the
house."

To his relief,
Jess simply nodded, and accepted the help in getting to his feet.
"So let's move. Which direction are we watching for danger?"

"The lake and
the sky."

The sky kept
darkening; Shaine cursed at himself. If he'd been paying attention,
instead of giving in to feelings that did him no good at all, they
could've been safely back inside the walls by now.

Power surged,
and the water rippled, as though something large had made a dive
just below the surface. A surface that quivered, then collapsed,
drawing itself together and up into the form of a huge snake.

"Ah, hell.
Jess, stay behind me, got it?"

"Right," Jess
said, his voice shaking only slightly. Well, he must be getting
somewhat used to magical shocks by now, although they weren't
usually spreading cobra-hoods overhead and weaving back and forth
in a threatening dance. "What if we get away from the lake? Into
the forest?"

"They just
might switch to calling the lightning," Shaine said grimly. "Water
itself I can fight. Lightning is way too advanced for me, it'll get
us both quite dead."

"Oh.
Okay."

Shaine spread
his feet, and braced himself—this was going to
hurt
, might
very well kill him, but if he could keep them from getting Jess
anything was worth it. He turned his attention inside, to the
channels where power had once run freely. The little he'd used
since blocking off those channels had been a narrow stream, just
enough to keep them from drying up completely. Except that now, he
needed far more than that stream, he needed the full river to flow
again. The spring at the source remained, he knew that, the
challenge was to clear the way and set the power free...

The
water-serpent struck at them; Shaine let himself be distracted long
enough to shield, and the serpent was bounced harmlessly away.

He
had
to reach it, whatever it cost him, or Jess would die, this
construct of water would drag him under and drown him...

Deep inside,
something shuddered, and something shattered, and power surged
along the dry channels, power so cold it burned, raw against his
nerves... but it was there, waiting for him to use it.