Winter Wolf (41 page)

“Alex is correct,” my father rumbled. “The ritual magic simply doesn’t work if the victim doesn’t
want
to become a Fenerec. It’s been tried and it’s always failed in the past. A Fenerec can’t attack a human to the point of death and have any expectation that their victim will survive and become one of them. That’s a human story. A lethal myth. You’re either born a Fenerec or you choose to become one.”

“Or a sorcerer switches your body with a Fenerec’s?” Lisa asked in a wry tone.

Richard cleared his throat. “Sorry to interrupt, but you should know this. When I found out where Nicole was after she left, I wanted to ask her—that’s when I learned about her accident.”

“Accident?” Lisa asked. My sister lifted her hand to touch the fading scars on her throat.

“I don’t know all of the details; there was only so much information I could get… but I found out she was diagnosed with some form of amnesia. Whatever gave her those scars took a large chunk of her memories. She was hospitalized in Florida for almost a year.”

My twin paled. “A
year
?”

Richard nodded.

I refused to meet anyone’s gaze, keeping my eyes lowered. I knew some memories were fragmented, but how much had I forgotten of when I had lived as Nicolina Desmond?

“That is something we can address another day. There is no proof that she’s anything other than a human in a wolf’s body at the moment.” My father’s neutral tone stung. “She’s displaying none of the usual Fenerec instincts, which is a big part of who and what we are. Without the wolf, she’s merely a human occupying a wolf body.”

“She smells like a Fenerec to me,” Richard said.

“That could be Lisa’s scent,” my father pointed out.

A buzz interrupted whatever Richard was going to say. “Saved by the bell,” she muttered. Amber stood, stepped over me, and pressed a button on the intercom.

~~*~~

Not long after dinner, Amber ordered everyone except me to go stay at the nearest hotel. While she cleaned the condo, I made myself comfortable in an out-of-the-way corner. I doubted she wanted wolf slobber all over her things—or teeth marks.

Sometime later she poked me awake with her foot.

“You figured out how to slow the plague, didn’t you?”

Blinking the sleep out of my eyes and yawning, I nodding.

“I got a rather excited call about an hour ago from one of the local witches. They were expecting a lot of bodies this morning, but no one died. Any ideas?”

I shook my head. I remembered doing what I could for Alex, but I hadn’t done anything for the
other
Fenerec—not even my twin.

“But you did something to Alex, right?”

I nodded.

“Can you do it again?”

Considering her question, I shook my head once and nodded once.

“You’re not sure but you think so?”

Nodding, I lurched upright and shook myself off. A cloud of dark-colored fur flew from my coat.

“Nicole!” Amber made a disgusted sound. “That’s going to be hell to get out of the carpet. Thanks.”

Stretching out the aches and kinks from having slept on the floor, I shook myself off again. I missed having a human body and vocalized my displeasure with a warbling noise.

“It’s five in the morning and I have an idea I’d like to try,” the witch announced, grabbing her purse and keys. “Up for a ride?”

Pricking my ears forward, I trotted to the door and waited for her to finish getting ready. Ten minutes later, I took over the back seat of Amber’s car, which was barely big enough to fit me. Taking advantage of the lighter traffic, she headed north along Highway 101.

“I noticed last night you were drawing a lot of electricity around the same time it started snowing. So, I asked one of my witch friends to see if she could find out if anything unusual happened between certain hours. She confirmed there was a notable spike on the grid. If you were curious, there were reports of freak snow flurries all over the city. My friend figured out that there was a direct relationship to where it snowed and the lessened severity of the plague.” Amber chuckled a bit, increasing her speed. “So, I had an idea.”

I huffed my impatience for her to get to the point.

“Los Angeles isn’t exactly the most stable place for electricity. If you, by accident, managed to somehow curb the plague with the limited resources you had access to, what could you do if I put you in a place with unlimited power? So I got to thinking. Where could we go that would allow you to tap into enough electricity to repeat whatever it was you did to Alex? If you can, you’ll buy a
lot
of Fenerec time.”

The hope in Amber’s voice hurt. My success with Alex had been born of desperation. But I’d try because she was right. Maybe I hadn’t found a
cure
, but I could slow the illness’s progress. Then I would have the time to find a way to eradicate the plague. Richard wouldn’t have to live without Alex and my father and I wouldn’t lose our family either.

If Amber believed she knew a place where I could make this dream a reality, I would follow.

Amber took us west and north of L.A., beyond Santa Maria, to an access road twisting through rugged brush and foothills. After thirty minutes or so, she drove her car off the paved road until she found a place she could hide the vehicle.

“We aren’t exactly supposed to be here,” she announced after parking. From the trunk, she pulled out an assault rifle and several handguns. She buckled a pistol around my neck like a collar, slung the rifle over her shoulder, and started walking. Following after her, I wondered where we were going that needed such precautions.

It took us an hour of hiking over barren, unstable crags and through scrub. When we crested a hill, I felt the thrum of electricity wash over me. Gargantuan power lines saddled the neighboring rise. In the distance, I could make out a large warehouse-styled building partnered with smaller installations.

Electricity roiled from the place, charging the air. My skin tingled with the plethora of power begging to be used.

“Welcome to Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant,” Amber said in a smug tone.

Her phone rang. The witch muttered a few curses and stepped a discreet distance away before answering, “Hello?”

A grin tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Oh, hello Richard. Good morning—”

I heard a burst of noise through the phone and a wordless growl.

“My, aren’t you in a temper this morning. It’s barely after ten, Richard. Yes, yes, we’re fine. We’re running an errand. I got a call and I needed to deal with it. No, there’s nothing wrong. Yes, she’s with me. She’s fine.”

Amber stared up at the sky as if begging for patience.

“A few hours is all we’ll need, I’m sure. I thought you needed your rest. How is Alex doing? Still feeling fine? That’s good. Yes, I’ll bring her back intact, don’t fret. Go get breakfast before you bite someone’s head off.” Without waiting for a reply, she disconnected the call. “That man can be a downright fiend in the mornings. As
if
I’d tell him where we were going. It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission, right Nicole?”

I bobbed my head.

“How close do you need to get to tap into that? This is the biggest source of electricity I could find. Think this is close enough?”

The power plant was a wizard’s dream come true and the Inquisition’s worst nightmare. I marveled at the amount of damage I could cause if I really wanted to. I understood, then, why the Inquisition wanted wizards gone—considering how easy it was to access the place, a wizard could ruin hundreds of thousands of lives if provoked.

A wizard could also save hundreds if not thousands of lives, too.

Fortunately for the Inquisition, I fell in the second group.

I sat, closed my eyes, and concentrated on the power crackling from the electric lines. Warmth flooded through me. Remembering the hungering virus and its need for heat, I searched for something similar to focus on.

I found it, somewhere distant, a tickling faintly against my senses. As with Alex, the virus hungered for warmth, so I summoned the cold—a chill frigid enough to contain the plague without killing the infected host.

When the wind blew, it carried the crisp scent of snow.

I fell into a trance as I searched for the plague and didn’t stop until the power plant’s endless supply of energy failed to hold my exhaustion at bay. With my body stiff and aching, I opened I eyes. Judging from the position of the sun behind hazy clouds, I’d spent at least an hour or two hunting the plague.

Amber huddled next to me, shivering from the cold. Frost caked the desert in a sheet of blue and white. The first flakes of snow drifted down.

Amber nudged me with an elbow, pointing to the west. “Look,” she said through chattering teeth.

A massive storm front loomed in the distance, stretching as far as I could see. I yipped my surprise.

“T-that s-started a-about an hour ago. L-let’s g-get back to the c-car and g-get home before Richard k-kills us…”

I staggered upright, shaking the frost from my coat and wondered if the storm was from the magic I wrought or a consequence of it.

Epilogue

We hadn’t quite made it back to Amber’s car before the storm hit. A wall of dust and sand churned over the dry hills. With a dismayed cry, Amber sprinted to her vehicle and yanked open the back door. I launched into it, rocking the car as my weight hit the seat.

Amber fought the gusting wind and choking dust, sprawling onto the driver’s seat. The storm slammed her door shut. A haze engulfed the car. Sand, dust, and snow hissed over the windshield.

Amber twisted around in the seat to face me, her mouth opened as she panted. It took her a couple of minutes to control her breathing enough to speak without gasping. “I think we’re stuck.”

I nodded in agreement; considering I couldn’t see the ground outside the window, driving anywhere was impossible. I shuddered at the thought of anyone being caught in the storm.

“I’m going to assume you didn’t mean for that to happen.”

I nodded again.

“Well, nothing to be done for it now. Let’s just hope the temperature doesn’t drop too much.”

It would, but without a way to communicate that, I watched the snow whip outside. If the storm didn’t provide enough electricity for me to work with, the power plant radiated enough latent energy to ensure I’d have enough to keep us both warm.

It didn’t take long for me to summon enough strength to heat the air in the car until Amber’s teeth no longer chattered and she relaxed. She thanked me with a smile and we settled down to wait. Amber dozed while I kept a tired guard, warming the car enough she was comfortable despite her light clothing. The wind settled, allowing fat flakes of snow to accumulate on the windshield and cake the windows.

When Amber woke, I channeled enough power into the car to turn on the radio. According to the clock it was four in the afternoon. We listened to the reports of heavy snowfall throughout most of California with flurries reaching as far north as Seattle. Amber draped her arm over the back of her seat, shaking her head as she listened.

“Unbelievable,” she muttered.

I yawned and showed the witch my teeth.

“I hope you’re happy, Nicole. We’re stuck. I’d never find the access road. The last thing I’d want to do is drive off a cliff into the ocean.” Amber drummed a beat on her seat with her fingers. “At least there’s some good news.”

I tilted my head to the side and pricked both ears forward. The witch grinned at me and left me waiting for several minutes.

The noise I made at her delay was a mix between a growl and a warble.

“Okay, okay. You’re looking much better now. Not nearly so frayed around the edges. Because I’m so wise and wonderful, I even thought to bring a spare change of clothes.” Amber reached over to the passenger’s seat, grabbed a bundle, and threw it at me. I ended up with a pair of shorts and a tank top draped over my nose. “You’ll probably need that, unless you want to sit around naked once I’m finished.”

My tail thumped against the seat. The wolf within was quiet, and I got the sense that she slept—I wanted to join her, but I wanted to be a
human
again first.

What type of human I’d become, however, was a mystery. Would I remain a wizard with a heightened sense of smell? The wolf didn’t seem inclined to leave. I wasn’t in a hurry to make her disappear.

Amber reached for me. When she touched me, pain seared through me.

~~*~~

It only took Amber a few minutes to force my body to twist, bend, and reform from a wolf’s body to a human one, but it felt like an eternity. The pain robbed me of my ability to scream. I heard the murmur of Amber’s voice, soothing and reassuring, but I couldn’t understand what she said through the gonging in my ears.

When the agony subsided, I felt raw from head to toe, but I
had
toes—human ones. I stared at my shaking hands in amazement.

True to her word, I was
human
—mostly.

A overwhelming number of scents assaulted my nose, stronger than when I had been in the wolf’s body, as though the process of transforming from beast to human had somehow enhanced my sense of smell. I sneezed and pain rippled through my back. My skin felt tight and raw.

Within, the wolf slumbered contentedly.

“Get dressed,” Amber said, her voice loud enough to pierce through the ringing in my ears.

It took me several minutes to situate myself enough that I could wiggle into my clothes; while I hadn’t been a wolf for
that
long, the transition from four legs to two was harder than the other way around.

“Thank you,” I said. The hoarseness in my voice was gone. I touched my throat, my eyes widening.

“Well, well, well,” was all the witch said with a smile.

Gaping at Amber, I struggled to comprehend why my voice didn’t sound as though I had swallowed nails and sandpaper. Tears blurred my vision. I tried to say something, but I couldn’t force a single word out.

“Come sit up here now that you’ll fit,” Amber said. I climbed into the front and slumped into the passenger’s seat. “I was hoping something like that would happen, but I didn’t dare tell you—didn’t want to get your hopes up.”

I opened and closed my mouth several times. At a loss of what to say, I rubbed at my eyes and tried to keep the tears at bay.

It didn’t work.

Amber waited in patient silence, and when I finally managed to control myself, she offered me several tissues. “If Richard wasn’t panicking already, he probably is now,” she said wryly.

I sniffled, cleared my throat, and replied, “What do you mean?” My voice shook with emotion, but it was
mine
; I was a little hoarse from crying, but it was nothing a few minutes and a cough drop wouldn’t cure.

“You’re dense.” Amber grinned at me. “It’s cute. You really haven’t noticed, have you?”

I narrowed my eyes at her as I blew my nose again. “I haven’t noticed what?”

“Poor Richard.”

“What? What are you talking about? Answer me.”

Amber covered her mouth, but I heard her giggling.

“
Amber!
”

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry.” Amber hesitated, staring at the snow caking the windshield. “I’m not sure how much I should say.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I thought about what Richard had said yesterday. After… after you went to sleep, I made some calls and pulled a few strings. I wanted to find out what he was talking about.” Amber reached over me, opened the glove box of the car, and pulled out a thick envelope of papers, which she handed to me. “This is what was faxed to me before we left my condo this morning.”

“You’ve been busy,” I muttered, wondering just how she managed to get anything faxed to her in the middle of the night. Instead of opening the envelope, I turned my full attention to Amber.

“Richard lied,” Amber said. She refused to meet my gaze.

I waited.

“Last night, he lied about a lot of things.” Amber shook her head. “What a daring man.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t lie to Fenerec.”

“It’s very, very difficult to lie to a Fenerec. It’s not impossible, though,” the witch admitted. “Everything you need to know is in that envelope.”

My hands shook, but I managed to pull out the folded sheets of paper within. The first few pages were copies of receipts for hospital bills. “These are paid hospital bills.”

There was no name on the bill or receipt to indicate who had paid for it.

Amber leaned over and pointed at the date. “You were released about a year after you were admitted. This bill was paid six months before when you were still in a coma. Someone was paying the hospital on a weekly basis from the day after you were admitted until you left. I have a two hundred page medical file on my fax machine.”

“You took my records.”

“Damn straight I did,” Amber said in a curt tone. “Something wasn’t adding up and I needed to know what was going on. I can’t protect you if I don’t know who—or what—might be coming for you.” Her tone softened, and when I didn’t say anything, she laughed a little. “Honestly, I was expecting your father to be the one behind the payments, not
Richard.
”

“Richard paid my bills?” I asked in a whisper.

“Hand me those.” Amber claimed the papers from my shaking hands. She flipped through them before handing me a sheet. It was a print out of a bank statement. “Richard will murder me if he finds out I had an Inquisition friend print out statements from his US banking account.”

“This is really from Richard’s account?” I looked over the statement, which covered a six month period. It showed transfers into the account and payments to a hospital in Florida. Richard’s name and address was listed at the top of the page.

“If he had paid directly from one of his Canadian accounts, I never would have been able to get the proof. I bent the rules a little.”

“But why would Richard…?” I folded the statement and handed it back to Amber.

“That’s what I wanted to know, too. About the only thing that wasn’t a flat-out lie was the fact that you have trauma-induced amnesia. According to your medical file, you suffer from moderate to severe memory loss over a five or six year period. What I wanted to know was why would someone who was known to fight and argue with you all of the time pay for your hospital bills? Why would he pretend like he didn’t know who you were or where you had been? He even lied about the car. Here, look at this.” Amber handed me another sheet of paper.

It was a receipt from a tow company, billed to Richard Murphy.

“That’s how much he was charged for pulling his Porsche from a ravine in Georgia. So I asked to have the tags run and found something very, very interesting.”

I narrowed my eyes but took the bait. “What did you find so very, very interesting?”

“The car was registered to a Mr.
and
Mrs. Murphy.”

“Richard’s
married?
” I squeaked.

Amber slapped a sheet of paper onto my lap. “Yes. To you.”

I gawked at the marriage certificate . With shaking hands, I picked up the sheet and read it three times. According to the Canadian document, I had married Richard at age sixteen in Ontario. “How is this even possible?”

Amber laughed so hard she hiccuped. “I wanted to know that too. Ontario requires parental permission for a minor to get married. Since it was pretty obvious your father wouldn’t have consented, I called your mother. She confessed.”

“My
mother
? You called my mother? How in the hell did you do all of this in one night?” In a daze, I folded the marriage certificate. If the documents told the truth, I had been married to Richard for over a
year
before the car accident. Why couldn’t I remember any of it? Why didn’t I remember Richard at all?

“It didn’t take me many calls to get the ball rolling. I napped while waiting for calls and faxes back. Anyway, I spent about an hour on the phone with your mother. Richard had asked her if he could marry you. You two, apparently, had been playing
everyone
, making it look like you two hated each other. Your mother’s quite fond of Richard, so she was more than happy to go to Ontario and take care of the consent forms. She forged your father’s consent. But since she turned in the papers in person, with both you and Richard in attendance, they didn’t think to check to see if your father had actually consented.”

“Oh my god.”

“From what I can tell, Alex didn’t even know.”

I ran my hand through my hair. My fingers got caught in a tangle. “Oh my god.”

“Who would have thought you were such a wild child?” Amber asked before laughing. She gathered the papers, returned them to the envelope, and shoved it back into the glove box.

~~*~~

It was long after dark before the snow ceased falling and the cold front retreated, allowing for the heat of the Californian night melt away what had accumulated during the storm. Widespread power outages kept the skies clear. A sprinkling of stars gleamed through tattered clouds.

While Amber drove cautiously along the access road, she ran off the shoulder more than a few times due to the obscuring layer of mud caking everything. An idling SUV blocked where the road met the highway.

Amber tensed and pointed at the glove box. I pulled out the pistol buried beneath the envelope, checking the ammo and disengaging the safety. Parking the car, Amber stepped out, taking the keys with her.

A rumpled and tired Richard emerged from the SUV, followed by Alex and my sister. “There you are.”

I turned the safety back on and shoved the gun back in the glove box.

“Did it work?” Amber asked, sitting on the hood of her car.

Richard ran his hand through his hair. “I think so. Mr. Desmond’s going to tan my hide and use me for a rug for letting you two disappear.”

“You’re looking better, Nicole,” Alex called, waving to me.