Chapter 14
“Whoa, this is really cool,” I said, looking around.
“I was certain you would think so,” Vesta said as she led me out of the hidden entrance to the mountain. We had come out near the base of what she said was Mount Marshall. It was one of what was called the High Peaks of the Adirondacks.
“The nearest trail is almost a mile that way,” she said, pointing northeast.
“Let me guess… you all come out here to run?”
“Especially on the Solstice,” she said and began unbuttoning her shirt.
“And you’re going to run now?” I asked, my tone mild.
“Actually, so are the others. Ashling, Darci, and Levi will stay in, but you can walk with Dad if you want,” she offered, stripping off her pants, bra, and underwear.
All of which she handed to me with a smirk, including the shirt.
Then she Changed. I’ve seen werewolves shift a thousand times, maybe two thousand times.
I’ve never seen anyone shift like her. Fast. So fast. A shimmer, a blur, and she was suddenly a three-hundred-pound wolf whose head was level with my shoulder. All black but with electric green eyes.
“Shit,” I breathed out. “You are so fucking fast at that.”
She pushed up into my face, her eyes locked on mine. Then a tongue like a necktie swiped me from chin to forehead.
“Yuck,” I said, jumping back. “Wolf cooties, ewww.”
She tilted her head at me and I understood her look. I lost points for saying ewww. I doubled down. “Eww, yuck.” She backed up, a look of disgust.
I felt approaching intents and as the hidden rock and snow-covered hatch opened, she jumped forward and slathered me again.
Holly, Alex, Stacia, and Kristin piled out of the complex to see me wiping my face off with my sleeve as Vesta jumped around me on giant paws.
“Oh, it’s lick the boyfriend, is it?” Kristin said gleefully. Immediately she started stripping off clothing.
“Yeah, not playing that game,” Alex said.
“Oh, but I will,” Holly said, pulling off her sweater.
“Shit,” I said.
“Don’t run!” Alex said. “Under no circumstances should you run.”
I looked at him, my eyes wide, and ran.
What’s that? You tell me I shouldn’t run from born predators?
Do you also tell your parents how to conceive children?
I was born among werewolves, hunted pack birds for a living, and went into lava tubes after giant, venomous lizards.
I know predators. This wasn’t a hunt… it was a game of tag.
I was first it. Once they caught me, which was only twenty feet from the door, I was licked all over my face, and then the first to catch me, Kristin, was it.
Her turn to run, with all the wolves in pursuit.
I wiped my face off and discovered Vesta’s dad grinning at me.
“I am sooooo glad you are here,” he said archly.
“Yeah, I bet. How many times have you been it?”
“A vast and weighty number that would even slow Omega to calculate,” he said.
“Ah, well, new guy is always fresh meat for the pack,” I said.
He nodded, then waved toward a faint deer trail in the snow. “I usually walk about a bit while they roam the woods. Sometimes Darci or Levi or my aunt will walk with me, but often not.”
“Really? I used to do something similar on Greenacres. Had to be armed though because who knew what the pack would stir up on their run.”
“That wild?” he asked.
“Yeah. Mammals are smart, but axeheads and Mackdragons are not. Just aggressive.”
“So you’d carry what? A pistol?”
“Almost always have a pistol on me on Greenacres. Everyone else too. But for serious walking around, usually my little shotgun.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. I can see the utility of a stockless, short-barreled shotgun in a tunnel, but not anywhere else.”
“You’re right. It’s perfect for tunnels or inside buildings or any kind of close in combat that takes place within a dozen feet—for most people.”
“Ah. Your aiming protocol.”
“Yeah, that. If you ever watch any of those videos or see me shoot at things that matter, you’ll see I don’t aim at all.
Like, I lose all my marksmanship technique completely.
Not that it matters. I hit whatever I need to.
So the little pistol grip shotgun actually works better for me than a full stock version. ”
“That’s fascinating. You know, your ability to hit stuff like that is very similar to Chris’s.”
“Chris Gordon’s?” I asked, a little incredulous.
“Yeah. He shoots two handguns at once and is often not even looking at where each of them is pointed.”
“That does sound similar,” I said.
“Not exactly, though. He doesn’t feel hearts and minds.”
“Well, I don’t know anyone else who does either,” I said, stepping over the trunk of a small tree that lay across the path.
Suddenly the howl of a wolf lifted through the forest, and I knew without a doubt that it was Vesta’s mother. Other wolves howled back and I picked out each of the others easily.
When I turned to him, I found Declan watching me, wearing a small smile. “I understand, intellectually, that you were raised in a pack, but it’s another thing entirely to see how comfortable you are with a pack hunting around you.”
“Well, I know all the players. Unknown wolves would be cause to pay close attention. It helps that I can track them by both heart and mind as well as by intent.”
He grinned at that. “You are hard to sneak up on then,” he stated with a nod.
“Yes, which reminds me. Alex and Kristin are working their way up behind you. They are about forty feet that way. Holly has moved behind me, and your wife and daughter are creeping up on either side of us.”
“Oh, that is handy,” he said, waving a hand. The hairs on the back of my neck and on my forearms lifted as if static was present, a sign of power magic at play.
When the attack came, it backfired on the wolves, who all smashed into an invisible wall. Vesta, though, barked at the shield and I felt it fall apart on her side, just enough so she could pounce through. But I was ready and I sidestepped as fast as I could because the girl is uncommonly quick.
She jerked to sudden stop in a much shorter space of time than she really ought to have been able to, but I had enough time to leap onto her back and grab hold with both hands. I had just gotten my feet wrapped around her as tightly as I could when she bolted flat out.
In wolf form, she was over six feet long and I fit fairly well. With my head tucked against her neck, I avoided all the branches that scraped at me as she took a wolf’s path through thick winter woods.
The other wolves caught up and raced ahead or on either side of us. When she finally stopped, we were miles from the mountain. I fell off of her, my hands painfully cramped from hanging on for dear life.
She changed and stood in front of me, naked, arms crossed, face almost fierce. Almost—but not really. I was laughing.
“Now that was fun,” I said.
She opened her mouth and then closed it, her head tilting as she rethought her words. “I was gonna yell, but I realized that it was fun. And a way for you to be with me on a run.”
“Maybe not dignified for wolves, though. I used to do that to Burke, and he’d get so mad, he would roll over on me.”
“Something is only undignified for wolves if the wolf feels undignified,” Holly said suddenly, also changed back to human form. “Not sure why we’ve never done that before. Your dad could have been with us.”
“It would never have occurred to him to just jump on Mother’s back,” Vesta said in a tone that said she was still mulling the whole thing over.
“I didn’t think you’d run for miles,” I said.
Her brow arched up and an evil smirk flowed across her face. “Well, now you’ll just have to figure out a way to get back, won’t you?”
“I can find it,” I said.
“I’ll give him a ride,” Holly said. Both Vesta and I looked at her, trying to decipher her tone. Was that double entendre?
“Or I can,” Kristin said, also shifted back to nude human form. Her phrasing was very matter of fact.
“Hmmm. Mutiny in the ranks,” Vesta growled. “I don’t like it, but I’ll give him the ride,” she said, leaving no room for argument. The other two women gave me quick smirks as if they had known this would happen. Perhaps they had.
I expected a prank or two on the way back, and she didn’t disappoint. We took fifteen or sixteen unnecessary passes under snow-covered low-hanging hemlock boughs, and I was covered in the wet, cold stuff by the time we got back. It still beat walking five miles in the dark though.