Wolf's Vengeance (After the Crash) (7 page)

“I guess that’s why they call it The Empty,” she offered.

“Uh-huh. I wonder how many lived here in the Times Before?”

Mel thought “Times Before” was a stupid name, but that’s what everybody called the time before terrorists destroyed the world. Mama taught them how to read and write, and how to add and subtract numbers, and a little about geography, but her history lessons were sketchy. About all she said when it came to history was evil people blew up cities and killed millions of people back in 2014. She said some cities had a million people in them. Mel couldn’t imagine a million people in the whole world, much less that many in a single town, so she wasn’t sure if her mother was telling them the truth or making things up. Still, it was obvious lots of people died around here, leaving their ranches and farms abandoned. And the Woman Killer Plague was true. Mel knew that for sure.

“More than lived here twenty years ago when the plague came through,” she said to her brother. “It’s good land, Mike. I bet pretty soon a family looking to settle down will move in here, start up a ranch.”

Her brother gaped at her with obvious horror. “Who would be that crazy? This place is haunted for sure.”

Mel suppressed a laugh. It was sad to see so many houses abandoned, and maybe it was a little creepy to think of so many people dying, but that was a long time ago. “Well, let’s not think about that, okay? Let’s think about how wonderful it will be to have Mama home again.”

Mike’s smile was soft, not like his usual teasing grin. “I can’t wait to see her again. It’ll be good to come home after a hard day working the cattle and see Mom in the kitchen fixing supper.”

Just the thought of having her mother home made Mel forget the humid heat choking her. The coolness of morning gave way hours ago to the heavy heat that heralded a storm. It was past the usual time for supper, but Mel tried to ignore the hunger pains in her stomach, knowing they needed to put as many miles behind them as they could before stopping for the night. They must be getting close to the end of The Empty. Closer to finding her mother.

They’d left the D just after dawn yesterday, and they rode hard until full dark, and then got another early start this morning. She estimated they covered over sixty miles in two days. Spending hours in the saddle wasn’t anything new to her, but she privately admitted to being tired. The clouds to the north promised rain soon. She hoped Snake found a good place to stop for the night, where they could have a fire to cook supper and sleep out of the rain.

A gray smudge against the golden brown of the grass signaled her husband’s return. The wolf was half hidden behind his horse, so she didn’t see him go from wolf to man, but when he stepped around to take his clothes from the saddlebag, she saw enough of his bare brown body to make her breath shaky. The pressure of her groin against her saddle was almost painful. It was a pleasurable pain, one that wet her panties in an embarrassing way. Mel nodded to him quickly and resolutely turned her face forward.

Snake smiled at her as he trotted past her to Mike. “There’s a barn about three miles ahead. It’s still pretty sturdy, but no one has been there for a long time. Years, probably. With the rain coming on, it would be a good place to stay for the night.”

When they reached the barn, Mel agreed it looked to be long abandoned. The tall double doors were permanently rusted half open. The siding was bleached gray by time and weather. The house standing a hundred yards away looked equally run down, but it appeared sound. “Why not stay in the house?” she asked Snake.

“The dead are there,” he said briefly, unsaddling his horse.

“Dead? What do you mean?”

He lifted a shoulder, a faint frown putting a line between his eyebrows. “Whoever lived there is dead. Their remains are in the beds and on the floor in the kitchen. No one buried them.”

Mel suppressed a shudder. “When did they die? I mean, was it recently?”

He shook his head. “It’s been years. Since the Plague went through this region, I suppose. Four bodies, two men and two women. At least, by the shreds of clothes hanging on to the bones, I think two were women. Hard to tell. Not much left but bones. The bodies weren’t disturbed, so the animals haven’t been at them. They probably smelled off.”

Off? How else did the dead smell?
“Is that part of your wolf smelling magic? Don’t all dead bodies smell?”

“Well, yeah.” He set the saddle aside. “But the Woman Killer Plague smells really bad. Most animals are too smart to eat meat diseased like that.” He hunched a shoulder, casting a glance toward the house. “Or maybe their spirits kept the predators away.”

“Spirits? I don’t believe in ghosts. Do you?”

He took his time answering, concentrating on setting the hobbles on their horses’ legs so they could graze. He stood up and gazed at her out of solemn eyes. “I believe in the spirit. If the spirit isn’t released, it sticks around. I don’t want to mess with that.”

She suppressed a smile. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be superstitious.”

He paused in turning to the barn. “Not superstition. It’s a Lakota thing.”

First Mike, now Snake. Mel followed him to the fire ring just inside the barn where Stone was unpacking the supper. She smothered a chuckle. Her fierce werewolf husband, who had no trouble tearing rapists apart, was afraid of ghosts.

* * * *

Snake stood at the half open barn door, listening to the rain lash the earth. After Mel put away the remains of supper, she went out to attend to what she called girl business. The barn was big enough for her to do her business in a corner, but he supposed she was worried about modesty. The horses, bunched in the front corner of the barn, would have been a perfectly good privacy screen. Stone stood beside him, staring out at the silvery curtains coming down, the scent of his melancholy a light tinge in the cooling air.

“What has your tail in a knot?” Snake asked.

Stone shrugged. “Just missing my mate,” he said in a voice so low even Snake’s wolf hearing almost didn’t catch it.

Mike hunched over the fire ring near the door. “I’ll take the first watch,” he offered.

Snake nodded. “I’ll cover second watch. Stone, you have third.”

“I better get some sleep now, then.”

As Stone slipped off to the near corner of the barn, Mike put on his slicker. “I better find my sister. It takes women a god-awful amount of time to pee, and she’s gonna drown if she doesn’t get back here soon.”

Snake made a bed for Mel and himself near the rusted monster in the far corner of the barn. It was some sort of farm machinery from the Times Before, but Snake had no idea how it was used and didn’t care. What he cared about was the extra shadow it cast, where Mel would be hidden from the sight of any strangers who stumbled upon them. He wasn’t expecting any strangers in this place, but only a fool didn’t take every precaution when it came to his mate’s safety. He wasn’t a fool.

His eyes had no trouble seeing clearly in the dark, but Mel walked cautiously on her way to the corner, hands reaching in front of her. “Snake?” she said in quiet inquiry.

“Here.” Snake sprang up from the blanket he was smoothing to take her arms and guide her to their bed. Her flesh was chilled. Her shirt was soaked through, the tip of her braid below her hat was dripping. “Right over here. You’re cold! We have to get your wet clothes off you.”

“Yeah, I can’t get warm. The fire is covered, and we’re out of dry wood anyway,” she said through chattering teeth.

He silently rejoiced when he found no resistance in her to his hands. She stood on one foot and reached to pull off a boot. When he brushed her hands aside to do it for her, she used one hand to balance against him and let him tug her boots off. Just doing little things like this for her was a victory for him. Her fingers fumbled at the buttons on her shirt. After a few agonizing moments, the sodden cotton dropped to the floor. Followed by the long strip of cloth she used to bind her breasts.

“Damn it,” Mel grunted. She bent down to find it, showing Snake the long line of her bare spine.

Heat that had nothing to do with the coals of the distant fire ignited in him. Her throat and arms were brown from the sun, but her back was pale. When she straightened, he saw her breasts and belly were pale too, except for the crinkled tips of her breasts, which were pink. Beautifully pink. He was grateful to the darkness for hiding his hardening cock. He doubted Mel would appreciate his body’s reaction to her, and now was not the right time for their wedding night.

“You’re looking at me!” she accused.

“Uh-huh,” he admitted. “Give me your shirt.” He took it and draped it over the machine to dry. “Okay, here’s a blanket for you to wrap up in. Can you take off your jeans?”

“Of course I can take off my jeans. I’ve been doing it since I was three.” The haughtiness in her voice was spoiled by convulsive shivers.

“Well, hurry up. I want to get you heated up.” He winced as soon as he said it, hearing the unintended innuendo too late. She must have missed it though. “You and me both.”

She handed him her gun belt first and then her jeans. Finally, he wrapped her completely in the blankets from both their bedrolls. Even through the thick blanket he could see her nipples like round pebbles pressing against the wool. He had to set his back teeth tightly together to control his urge to run his fingers over those peaks. He wanted to feel the weight of her breast in his palm, to taste those nipples.

He swallowed hard and took her braid in his fist to squeeze water out. When she was as dry as he could make her, he put his hand on her arm to guide her down onto the saddle blankets he had spread for a mattress. “Lie down,” he urged. “It smells of horse, but it’s softer than the floor.”

She lay on her side, knees pulled up to her chest. “I don’t care what it smells like. This is so stupid! I can’t get warm. There isn’t another blanket, is there?”

The almost inaudible chattering of her teeth agitated his wolf. “No,” he said regretfully. He lay down beside her and curled his body around her. “If I hold you, it might help.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

It gave him a lot of satisfaction to have her welcome his arms around her. When she squirmed close, he could feel how chilled her skin was and how tiny tremors shuddered through her. He pulled her harder against him and arranged the blankets to give her the best coverage.

“Don’t you have a blanket?” she asked. “Or is this one yours? Don’t you need it?”

“No. I’m a wolf warrior. I don’t need it.”

She struggled to unwind a blanket. “I’m not a blanket hog.”

He stopped her with gentle hands. “I don’t need it. Here, feel me. See?”

Her icy fingers clutched his bare shoulder. “You are warm, even though you’re practically naked!”

He wasn’t glad she was cold. No, of course not, but he loved being able to hold her. Mel hadn’t rejected him outright, but she made it plain she didn’t want to share her body with him. Letting him hold her to give her his warmth was allowed, and he’d take what he could get. Gradually the tremors quieted, leaving her pressed against him, her body soft with relaxation.

“Snake?” Her voice was a whisper in his ear, sending a shiver of barely controlled lust down his belly to his balls. “What’s it like to be a wolf?”

He forced his teeth to unclench, willed his body to cool. “I’m not a wolf. I have a wolf,” he clarified.

He was so attuned to her he felt her eyebrow twitch against him. “Okay, then when you’re a wolf…Or when the wolf is out, do you know what’s happening? Can you see? Or is it like you’re sleeping?”

One of his braids was trapped beneath her arm. He gently pulled it free. “I don’t sleep. I can see what the wolf sees, and I can send him back whenever I want.” He faltered, remembering the first time he saw her in the hotel room in Ellsworth, when his wolf reacted so violently to the threat to his mate Snake lost control. Was she thinking about that too? He swallowed. His cousin Paint found a mate, but she utterly rejected him because he wasn’t human. “Why do you want to know?”

“I’m curious. I’ve never known anyone like you. So you aren’t a wolf? When the wolf is out, that’s not you?”

His mate wanted to know him. The knowledge made him smile in the dark. “No, he is a spirit who lives inside me until I let him out. When he’s out, I live inside him. He’s not me, and I’m not him. Lots of boys of the Clan are born with wolf spirits inside them, and when they are older, the wolf makes the change. It takes time for us to learn to control the wolf.”

He remembered his first change. Terror of never being human again had gripped him. But his wolf wasn’t as strong or defiant as some. Neither of them were Alpha. He saw how his Alpha cousins had to fight to dominate their wolves. When both the wolf and the man demanded supremacy, it was a battle to determine which would be in control. No, his wolf was usually happy enough to retreat when Snake told him to. The only time he forced Snake into the subordinate position was when he saw his mate being abused. And really, Snake had been so furious at any woman being manhandled, much less the woman his wolf chose for him, he did nothing to keep the wolf back. His memory of it was murky, yet some things were vivid in his mind, and one of the things he remembered was the sour scent of his mate’s fear.

“Mel, are you remembering the hotel room?”

She lifted her head from his shoulder, eyes staring blindly in the dark in the general direction of his face. “Sometimes I think about it. But I’m not afraid of you or the wolf, if that’s what you’re thinking. Not really. He didn’t hurt me. He protected me.”

His breath came out in a controlled sigh. “He’ll always protect you.”

Her hand gave his forearm, resting lightly over her waist, a squeeze. “I’m glad.” She yawned hugely. “Sorry. I guess I’m wiped out.”

“Sleep, Mel. I’ll stay with you until it’s time for my guard shift, and then I’ll come back.”

“Good night,” she murmured, sleep already slurring her voice, and dropped off with her head on his shoulder, his arms holding her securely.

* * * *

Mel woke hours later from a sound sleep to find a warm furry body pinning her under the blanket. Her heart leaped into her throat and pounded there for a minute before she realized it must be Snake. She lifted a bleary head to try to see him better. It was too dark to see anything but the unearthly shimmer of wolf eyes, but she knew it was Snake.