Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
NELL
Iwas small. Toddling through the tall grass. Behind me, I heard the padding of something large following. The shadow let me get just far enough ahead to feel the thrill of almost-escape before—
It pounced.
The gentlest possible version of a pounce, which was still considerable given the size of the thing doing it.
I went down into the warm weight of black fur.
Heard myself giggling, which was not something I did as a grown woman.
This was the helpless, whole-body giggling of a child who had not yet learned to contain joy.
The tongue found my face. Wide and warm and rough, the same tongue I had felt on my cheek in the cabin dream. The same tongue I had felt on my palm in the dream forest of palm trees. I grabbed fistfuls of black fur, buried my face in it, and felt completely, unreservedly safe.
The black wolf picked me up by the scruff of my neck. I dangled in its mouth and giggled louder. Then I was deposited into a lap.
My mother's lap.
She was young. Younger than I had ever known her.
Her face unlined. Her eyes bright. Her hair loose around her shoulders in a way I had only seen in sepia photographs taken by missionaries during the time she lived in the witch colony with my grandmother.
She was laughing. The full version of her laugh that I had heard so rarely in waking life.
It started in her chest and arrived on her face entirely free and unburdened.
She gathered me up and cuddled my small body against her. I felt the warmth of her. I pressed my face into her neck and breathed.
"Will you be upset if she never shifts, Jabari?"
The answer was a low growl. The grumble communicating that the great black wolf couldn't care less.
The beast came closer. My mother reached out.
She cupped its face in her palm — the enormous black face, the bronze-gold eyes — and she looked at it the way I had watched Fenrir look at Mei Ling across a kitchen.
The way Vidar looked at Addie, ignoring everyone else in the room.
The way Magnus had looked at me in the dark of my apartment in the small hours when he thought I was asleep.
Love. Unguarded, complete, entirely her own.
The wolf's eyes closed under her hand. Something in its enormous body settled; the same settling I had felt when Magnus pressed his lips to my temple. The animal's recognition of being exactly where it was supposed to be.
Wolves mate for life.
Magnus's voice, from somewhere outside the dream, came to me. There will be no other woman for me.
The black wolf began to fade. My mother's smile followed it. She held me tighter as the wolf became less present. Her arms around me changed in quality from joy to loss. The grief she had carried my whole life was back.
The last time I had seen her awake — the last real conversation, the last evening, the last cup of tea she made and only half finished — she had been sitting at the kitchen table with the claw necklace in her palm, running her thumb over it.
I had kissed her cheek, gone to bed. In the morning she had not gotten up.
She had gone to sleep with a smile on her face.
I had hated that smile for years. The peace of it. I understood it now. She had loved a black wolf and lost him. My father.
How had I forgotten my father?
I jolted awake. Everything hurt. My ribs. My shoulders. The side of my head.
The room was moving. The steady, rhythmic movement of something on water. The faint sound of an engine beneath me. The smell of river water and diesel. I was on a boat.
I lay still for a moment and took inventory.
Even though I was awake, I kept my eyes closed to process my condition.
My hands were not bound. My feet were not bound.
I was on something soft — a berth, a cot.
I was damp, which meant I'd been here for a while as I wasn't still drenched.
I remembered being dragged through the water by Magnus.
Magnus.
I remembered the bridge. The trucks. The car going over. The water — black and cold and shockingly fast, filling the car with a speed that left no margin.
And Magnus.
I opened my eyes. Magnus was not in the room with me. But he was nearby; I could smell him.
The cabin was small and functional, everything bolted down. A single lamp. A porthole showing darkness outside. Across from me, in the only chair the cabin contained, a woman.
She watched me with a blank expression. She was perhaps in her mid to late twenties, with the kind of bone structure that would age well. Her blonde hair brought to mind icicles, pulled back with military precision. She was dressed practically, all in black.
"You're harder to kill than you look," she said. Her accent was thick Slavic; the consonants landing like decisions. "Most humans don't survive a car going off a bridge."
I sat up. My ribs formed opinions on the motion. I ignored their protest.
"Katya Volkov," she said, with the flat delivery of someone who expected the name to land. "You've cost my family a considerable amount of money."
I kept my face expressionless, letting my resting bitch face ask Am I supposed to know you? Problem was, I did. At least on paper. Katya Volkov. The business I had gone nuclear on in order to secure my name on a New York sky rise.
"It would appear that you're worth more alive than dead. If it were my decision, I would break your neck and drop you back in the river. But no one said I couldn't take my frustrations out on you."
She was out of the chair before I finished processing that she had moved. The first hit caught me across the cheekbone — open hand, not a fist. The impact snapped my head to the side. I saw white. I tasted copper.
It hurt, but it didn't make me go down. I swung back. My fist connected with her jaw. Katya's head moved. For one satisfying second she looked surprised.
The surprise did not last.
She hit me again. This one was a fist. The punch landed in my ribs. The air went out of me in a rush. I grabbed the edge of the berth and stayed upright through what was essentially an act of pure stubbornness. I turned back to face her.
Katya's free hand came up. Her fingers elongated. The nails darkened and extended past any natural length. They curved slightly, extending approximately four inches from my face.
I did not close my eyes. Closing my eyes in front of predators was the one thing I was not going to do. Whatever happened, I was going to see it.
The claws came closer. My gaze narrowed, but my eyes remained opened. The door opened.
Darius Omondi walked in.
My first thought was that he was here about a missed meeting.
His face had the operational focus I had not seen in my office, the expression of a man running multiple calculations simultaneously in a situation where the margin for error was small.
He was not wearing a suit. Just a t-shirt that exposed his collarbone.
At his throat, on a cord against his brown skin, rested a claw.
Black at the base. Pale ivory at the tip. Identical to mine.
"I negotiated for Ms. Odhiambo to be delivered unharmed."
Katya held my gaze for one long moment. Her lips had the petulant pinch of a child being scolded for making a mess. She lowered her hand. The claws retracted.
"It's fine. I'll go and take it out on her boyfriend."
Katya walked to the door. Darius stepped aside. She passed him without looking at him. The door closed behind her.
Darius crossed to me. His eyes moved over the cheekbone, the ribs I was holding with one hand. "Sorry, I'm late."
He lifted his hand and touched my cheek where Katya had hit me. I winced. Darius' eyes flashed like a cat's. Just like the black wolf in my dreams.
"Who are you?" I said. Not a question exactly. More the shape of something I already knew and needed to hear confirmed.
"I'm your knight in shining armor."
"I'm not a damsel."
"No, Nell, you're a princess."