Men of the Otherworld (35 page)

And then there was Malcolm…

There was no tidy ending to the story of Malcolm's life. No great final comeuppance. Instead, I think it ended that night when he lost the Alpha race, and lost it to the son he'd spent decades scorning and mocking.

Sometimes I think there was something Malcolm wanted more than Alphahood. A son. Not satisfied with the one he had, he tried to find that bond elsewhere and always in the wrong place. Maybe some would see tragedy there. All I see is the bastard who made Jeremy's life hell.

Whatever Malcolm got, he deserved. I just wish I'd been the one to take him out of our lives permanently. But I wasn't. Like I said, no tidy endings.

We never saw Malcolm again. We expected him to call for his things, but he never did. Over the next year we heard rumors that he'd been sighted here and there, tracking down the mutts with the best reputations and challenging them. Antonio thought that was his way of doing the “honorable” thing— suicide by mutt.

Eventually, he met one he couldn't beat. By the time the story got to us, it was six months old. Antonio went in search of the mutt who'd killed Malcolm to confirm it. Before Antonio caught up with him, Malcolm's killer became a victim of his own success—his victory having brought him a slew of challenges, including one ambitious mutt who didn't play by the rules, and had killed him.

For a few years after that, we waited, half expecting to return from a run one night and find Malcolm alive and well, stretched
out on the sofa, beer in one hand, sandwich in the other. We never did clear out Malcolm's room. Just shut the door and left it. Everything else of his in the house, though, we slowly threw out. Soon there was no sign that Malcolm had ever lived at Stonehaven. For me, that exorcised him from our lives.

For Jeremy, it wasn't that easy. His father's ghost haunted Stonehaven. But Jeremy would never consider moving. He'd argue it was the perfect location for werewolves, isolated and forested, and now that he had the money to keep it up, there was no reason to consider leaving. Besides, if we left, we'd only endanger the humans who moved in, should any mutts decide to come calling. The truth, I suspected, was more what Antonio would have said. Jeremy was stubborn. This was his home and, alive or dead, Malcolm wasn't chasing him from it.

Still, every so often, Jeremy would redecorate, as if that could banish Malcolm's memory. Jeremy might have beaten his father. He might be Alpha. And he might be a damned fine Alpha, probably the best the Pack ever had. But he was different. His father hammered that lesson in and Jeremy couldn't get over it. I think he always felt he lacked something, that he wasn't a real werewolf.

Or maybe, as we began to suspect years later when the werewolves rejoined the larger supernatural world, there wasn't anything missing from Jeremy, but rather, something added.

Someone
was watching me.

But as I stood at the window of our hotel room, I knew that was impossible. We were fifteen stories above the dark street, and five stories above the surrounding buildings. No one could possibly look in.

I was in New York with Jaime for a few days. A work visit for her—she had a few shows lined up. In our two years together, we'd learned to take our visits where we could. My Pack Alpha duties kept me close to home; her touring kept her on the road. As difficult as that could be, it suited us. Separate responsibilities, separate lives, intersecting as often as we could manage, gorging on each other's company, then diverging, happy, sated… and exhausted, to make do with daily phone calls until the next opportunity for a “stolen weekend” arose.

I turned from the window and looked over at her, curled up in bed, asleep. Seeing her, I smiled, in spite of my unease. A sharp shake of my head and I looked away, scanning the room, inhaling deeply. Clearly no one else here. Yet I couldn't shake that feeling of being watched.

I gazed out into the night, trying to empty my mind and focus,
find the origin of this disquiet. It wouldn't come, and the feeling of being watched just hung there, vague and amorphous.

I'd woken from a nightmare. I didn't remember what it was about, only that I'd bolted up, anxiety a band around my chest, pulling tighter with every breath. I'd hurried into the bathroom and called Elena.

As I heard her sleepy voice, I knew my first instinct had been wrong—nothing was amiss at home. Still I kept her on the phone while she checked Clay and the twins. I didn't need to ask her to. I had only to say I had a bad feeling and she was scrambling into the nursery, Clay's footsteps thudding as he stumbled after her, calling “what's wrong?”

But the children were fine, and I made light of it, as I always did, joking about too much wine with dinner, and apologizing for waking them.

Then I'd hung up, still left with a prickle at the back of my neck—the one that said someone was watching. So I'd moved to the window to look. But no one was there. No one could be.

“Jeremy?”

Before I could turn, warm hands slid around my waist. A warm body pressed against my back. Warm breath tickled my bare shoulder.

“You sense something, don't you?” Jaime whispered.

I didn't answer. Werewolves are supposed to deal in facts and tangible truths. We trust what we can hear, see, smell, touch and taste. We have no patience for “bad feelings” and “odd prickles.”

Jaime knew better. She also knew that saying “yes, I had a strange feeling” was still too big a step for me. It was enough to simply not answer instead of brushing it off, as I would with anyone else.

“Is someone down there?” she asked.

“I don't know.”

“Another werewolf?”

“I don't think so. I just…” I raked my hair back with a sigh and scanned the light-dotted streets below, searching for what I knew couldn't be seen.

She moved up beside me. “You should go out and look around.”

I shook my head and pulled the drapes.

“That's not going to fix the problem,” she said.

“It's nothing. Just a feeling. Meaningless.”

She slid between me and the window, gaze lifting to mine, locking on. “Your feelings are never—”

I cut her off with a kiss, lifted her off the floor and pushed her back against the drapes. A deep kiss, like touching wood, grounding myself and letting all those vague sensations and odd prickles flit away.

It took her a moment, but she finally recovered enough to pull back. “You should check it out. I'm serious, and I won't be distracted—”

“Yes, you will.” I scooped her up and carried her to bed.

“You'll take a look in the morning,” Jaime murmured, curled up against my chest later.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“I mean it.” She stifled a yawn. “I'll go with you.”

“All right.”

“You sensed something and it bothered you. You shouldn't just brush…”

The sentence fell to mumbling as she drifted off. I closed my eyes, hoping to join her, but after a few minutes, the languor of sex wore off and that prickling of nerves returned, as insistent as a swarm of mosquitoes.

I pulled Jaime closer and buried my nose in her hair, trying again to ground myself with her scent. But it wasn't working twice.

Wisps of the dream returned. A glimpse of dark sky and darker forest. The pound of running feet and labored breathing. The musky stink of… The scent eluded me before I could process it, but I knew where I'd smelled it before—in old nightmares I hadn't had since my first Change.

As a child, I had the dreams almost weekly, waking up shaking and sweating, hands clamped over my mouth so my gasps wouldn't wake my father, always certain he'd still hear my heart pounding or that the very smell of my fear would bring him.

The twins rarely have nightmares, but when they do, it only takes a whimper to bring us running to their bedside, waking them, holding them, comforting them and dispelling their fears. That's not why my father would have come. Malcolm guzzled fear the way a drunkard gulps cheap wine.

When I was twelve, Antonio and I had been camping out behind the cabin the Pack had rented for our summer vacation. As we talked around the campfire, he'd asked whether I'd started the dreams yet—the ones of running through the forest.

The relief I felt at that moment was indescribable. All those years I'd hidden those dreams even from him, my best friend. I'd been certain they were just another of my peculiarities, something to set me apart from my Pack brothers. To discover that they were normal, that we finally shared a common trait? Indescribable.

“So all werewolves have them?” I had asked.

Antonio reached into the marshmallow bag, frowning, then shaking the empty bag.

“Don't look at me,” I said. “I only had two.”

“I'll go inside and grab—”

I tossed him a bag of hot dogs I'd grabbed earlier.

He grinned. “Thanks. Don't suppose you snatched a couple of beers, too?”

I answered with a look. “About the dreams, they're normal?”

He looked over at me sharply. “What did Malcolm try to tell you?”

“Nothing,”

“That bastard. He said they weren't normal, didn't he?”

“I didn't tell Malcolm anything.”

“Good,” he grunted. “My dad says all werewolves get them before their first Change. We dream of running as wolves, chasing, hunting. Normal werewolf stuff.”

Normal werewolf stuff.

Only I didn't dream of chasing and hunting. In my dreams, I was the one being chased. The one being hunted.

The next morning, Jaime insisted I patrol the neighborhood, searching for any trace of werewolves or other threats. I resisted, but when I gave in, pretended to be humoring her, I was happy for the excuse.

We walked two blocks and I smelled only humans. The hair on my neck never prickled with that sensation of being watched. A perfectly normal, relaxing walk, unmarred by even a stray twinge of anxiety.

The rest of the day did not go as well. The feeling did return, surging and subsiding, as if someone—something—was sporadically watching me. Keeping an eye on me. Looking for a chance to…

A chance to what?

I had no idea, but I couldn't shake that feeling—the same one I'd had all those years ago, waking from the nightmares.

The feeling of being hunted.

*   *   *

Jaime had a show that night. And, as always, I went to it with her.

As much as Jaime loves what she does for a living, it also embarrasses her. She'll suggest I relax at the hotel. I insist on attending. She balks. I persist. She grumbles and relents, secretly as relieved and pleased as I was when she “forced” me on patrol that morning. Jaime may not be much more comfortable with her career choice than I am with my premonitions, but we both appreciate the chance to share that part of ourselves, to have one person who accepts and never judges.

I settled into my seat as the lights in the theater dimmed and twinkling, starlike ones appeared overhead. I had to shift my chair to see the darkened runway below. We were in an old playhouse and I had one of the box seats—the sort that look very prestigious and often have the worst sight lines in the house.

As Jaime's introductory voiceover began, I caught the movement of a dark form against the blackness below and smiled. The lights gradually rose as she walked, seeming to tread on air, an ethereal figure in a pale green dress, pinned-up red hair spilling over her back.

I'd seen her tread that runway dozens of times, but I still couldn't pull my gaze away. That ever-latent werewolf in me watched her with great satisfaction and, yes, proprietary satisfaction. She was mine. My lover, my partner, my mate—something I never expected to find, something I'd never realized I wanted. That other part of me watched with more bemusement, perhaps even a touch of surreal disbelief. This beautiful, eminently desirable woman was mine? Had chosen me? Had pursued me… and on catching me, hadn't decided she'd made a horrible mistake? Jaime likes to talk about karma, joking that I'm her reward
for good deeds. If there is such a thing, I suspect it's the other way around, that I'm the one being rewarded.

The potential investor sharing the box seat with me shifted closer for a better look, blocking my view.

“She's something, isn't she?” he said.

Jaime might joke that at forty-six, she still looked good… as long as they kept the house lights low, but even under the brightest floods, she was stunning. That was the first thing I noticed about her when we met six years ago. I regret to say it was the only thing I noticed. I wasn't starstruck by her beauty; it was simply a passing reflection. We'd been brought into a tense situation to discuss strategy. Jaime was there. They introduced us. I noticed she was a strikingly attractive woman—a dispassionate artist's eye assessment. Then I'd moved on to the situation at hand.

When Jaime joined the interracial council as the new necromancer delegate, I thought little about it. The Pack was my priority. To me, the council was like one of those annoying yet necessary committees a politician must join to represent his constituency. Whenever possible, I delegated my delegate duties to Elena.

If I did notice Jaime in those early meetings, it was only to reflect that she seemed quieter than I expected from someone who made her living on stage and screen, and when she did speak, she struck me as surprisingly inarticulate, given her career choice. Also, for a woman who cut such a poised and graceful figure onstage, she seemed oddly clumsy in person. I eventually learned there was a reason for these oddly jarring impressions … one that had to do with me.

“Yup, she's really something,” the investor said again.

He'd pulled his chair up to the box ledge and leaned over it,
watching Jaime as she moved through the audience below us. I considered pulling him back before his drool stained her silk dress. Or that was my excuse. As he ogled her, my wolf side narrowed its eyes and grumbled, prodding me to do something, assert my rights. But the other side only sat back, quietly gauging the threat potential and keeping my instincts in check.

“Those are great tits,” he chortled. “Do you think she's had work done?”

“No, I'm quite certain she hasn't,” I said, words clipped and cool.