SwitchBack: A Paranormal Werewolf Romance (Knightsbridge Canyon Series Book 1) (18 page)

“
What the
–” Will cried as he slapped at Spanky with one hand, forgetting about splitting my skull. The Schnauzer dodged and barked, frantic.

I backed away and then slunk in a circle to where Amber was climbing to her feet, fairly certain Will wouldn’t attack her to get through to me. “Will, leave the wolf alone. Jeanetta just tried to kill me and Ashlee.”

“Where is Ashlee?” Will asked, looking around, still hefting the axe.

I held my pose and tried to will my sister to do what needed to be done. I guess some of it got through, or we simply thought alike, as she said, “Ashlee’s fine. Just tie that bitch up and gag her.” It warmed my heart to hear my sister call someone else the b-word.

Confused, Will put the axe down, bound Jeanetta’s hands, gagged her, and then threw a blanket over her. Our nemesis didn’t protest or resist, seemingly in shock.

“Honey?” Sean stumbled up behind us in the dark after giving up on catching the frantically dodging Spanky. Smoke continued to pour from the cavern as a wind drew it from the chamber. I leaped on him, driving him to the ground, and then Will tied him up too as I stayed out of the way. He kept looking at me, trying to figure it all out, but it was just too bizarre, I was sure. I mean really, if it was you, would you deduce some wolf was your girlfriend without a lot of persuading or proof?

Nearby, Spanky barked joyously around the ghost of my dead mother. She made a shushing motion and he calmed down and sat, staring up at her.

“What’s he looking at?” Amber asked me as she tried to brush her clothing clean, a hopeless exercise.

I gave a noncommittal yip as Mother put her finger to her lips. Why I couldn’t just tell Amber, I had no idea. Some kind of otherworldly rule, or something, I guessed.

“Fine, be that way,” my sister said, as if she understood. Which she probably did. “So much for an honest relationship.”

Ouch. That stung, but I wasn’t much on defying Mom when she was alive and I sure wasn’t going to when she was dead. Then I remembered Shane, and wondered if this all would mean that she would find peace and cross over.

Maybe that was why she didn’t want me to tell Amber. Maybe resolving all that would send her away, and I abruptly knew that I did not want that to happen, not at all. I’d rather have some of Mother here than all of her gone.

Maybe that was part of what family is about.

“Who are you talking to, Amber?” Will asked, still completely befuddled. He’d been all ready to rescue me and instead found most of the rescuing all done, and me apparently not around to be saved. That’s got to let a guy down for sure.

Suddenly, Spanky tore away and scurried down the hillside toward the trailhead parking lot below. I could see lights from a car, and after baring my teeth at our prisoners one more time, I sat down and leaned into Amber, huddling together for warmth in the chill November breeze. She put her arm around me like I was a dog or a child, and I rolled my shoulder and head into her lap while she ran her hand through my fur. Weird, I know, but it felt right. When in lupine, do as the lupines do, I guess.

“Well, what do you know?” Elle climbed up to the trail to the cavern, her hand on the .357 she carried at her hip. “Looks like the gang’s all here,” she said as she strode over to look down at the two bound miscreants. She didn’t seem at all discomfited by the sight of a hundred-pound wolf laying in her lover’s lap.

Lover’s lap, Lover’s Leap, whatever.

Spanky cavorted around her feet until she told him to calm down, at which point he went over to sit next to the very subdued Sean, as if guarding him. Or maybe he was making some kind of statement about his human captor, that he was just as much a dog as any domestic canine. Jeanetta had certainly treated him like one, I found out later.

My older brother Adam trailed behind Elle, a sword from his collection slung incongruously over his back. “Hey there, girl.” He winked at me and ruffled the fur on my head. What, did everyone know what I was, and no one bothered to let me know they knew? I felt like I was left out of my own secret.

I wondered if Dad knew. We kids had kept a lot of secrets from him growing up, or thought we did, but I had to assume one of my siblings or Mom had informed him. In his phlegmatic way, he’d probably just shrugged when he’d gotten the news and said something like, “Oh. That’s interesting.”

Then I wondered what other things I didn’t know that the others were keeping from me. I mean, if I had this werewolf thing going on, and Amber had her visions, and Mom was a ghost, and here my brother was carrying a very real and very sharp sword, ready to smite our enemies…it hardly bore thinking about. Really made my eyes water with that cringey feeling I get when I’ve been stupid or oblivious for quite a while, and suddenly realize it.

I heard Elle talking to Chief Hernandez on her cell, directing a unit up the canyon to the trailhead. “Yeah. The old Indian cave. Will Stenfield saw the fire up here and called me.”

Moments later we saw flashing lights wending their way up the road’s switchbacks toward us.

Elle called, “Hey Will. Why don’t you meet the Chief down at the trailhead. And look for Ashlee while you’re at it. She’d bound to be around here somewhere.”

Will obeyed like the beta he was.

As I didn’t have human speech just then, Amber filled Elle and Adam in on what our kidnappers had done. They walked over to Jeanetta and Sean, who lay on the ground in their bonds, defeated.

Elle took the woman’s gag off. “You’ve been a very bad girl, Macdonald. You too, Gottlieb.”

“She made me do it,” Sean said.

“Shut up, Sean,” Jeanetta said without heat.

“No, Mi-…no,
Jeanetta
.” He spat her name like a curse. “You can’t make me do things anymore.”

“Oh, Sean,” she sighed. “I never made you do anything you didn’t already want to.”

I thought as I watched, isn’t that how life’s devils always do it?

The bound woman turned her smarmy smile up toward Elle. “Actually, for the record, I didn’t do anything at all. In fact, I tried to rescue these two from this nut here.” She jerked her head at Sean.

“Save it,” Adam said. “If Sean testifies – and I bet the city attorney here will offer some kind of deal – there will be multiple witnesses telling all about your crimes, not to mention the physical evidence, such as misused tranquilizer darts from the Animal Clinic’s inventory.”

“But if it goes to trial, I’ll tell everyone what
she
is.” Jeanetta pointed her chin at me, and I pulled my lips back from my teeth.

“Right,” Adam laughed in that superior way he had that I had always hated. Right now, though, I could have kissed him. Or at least licked his face, whatever. He continued, “They’ll just cart you off to the nuthouse. Unless that’s your strategy? Insanity plea?”

Jeanetta sagged and lowered her eyes. “Just get it over with,” she muttered.

When we saw the cops climbing the trail, Will in tow, Amber suddenly shook me. “You gotta go,” she whispered, and I realized she was right. “I’ll tell them you got away first and must be out there somewhere. That’s not even a lie,” she grinned.

I chuffed once, nuzzled her neck, and then ran up the hillside. Spanky barked, and I could see my mother waving to me from her position floating above the whole scene like some Christmas angel.

“I guess there really are wolves in Knightsbridge Canyon after all,” I heard Adam say as I loped off into the darkness.

“Hey,” he replied as he strapped it into place. Not looking at me. Thoughtful. Pensive. Piccadilly Park was nearly empty on a school day, at least in this corner of the sprawling green space, and the overcast day made everything turn gray, muting the sounds of town around us.

“Lunch?” I asked. I’d jogged over from Amber’s where I’d stayed last night, after slinking back in wolf form.

“Sure. Taco truck?” Will took off his battered straw cowboy hat, wiped his head and neck with his bandana, then put the hat back on.

“Sounds good.” I climbed into his Chevy, and then buckled in. Didn’t look at Will. He didn’t look at me. A wall seemed to stand between us, some kind of barrier that could only be torn down by talking about things neither of us seemed to want to talk about.

A few blocks away Will pulled the truck and trailer into a parking lot and looped it around in an open space at the back, away from the people crowding up close to the taco truck at one end. Several of these plied the lunch crowd in town, providing cheap Mexican food to Hispanics and gringos alike. For five bucks you could get a kickass lunch better than most of the restaurants around. The smell of grilled beef, peppers and onions drifting downwind got my mouth watering.

I expected us to sit down at one of the picnic tables there under the awnings after we got our order, but Will took the bag of food and walked back to the truck. Taking down the tailgate, he hopped up on it and patted the spot next to him.

I sat. Woof.

After we’d demolished half a monster burrito each, he turned to me with that look a guy gets when he has to put his hand into the fire, like he’s getting ready for pain. “So…”

“So last night,” I interrupted. “What can I say? Jeanetta still blamed me for Shane’s death, and wanted to take revenge.”

“But what was all that Indian stuff?”

“She was just crazy, that’s all.”

“Ash, she tried to burn you guys alive!”

I shook my head and almost explained to him that the fire was just to provide extra power for the magic, as well as to try to force me into wolf form, but I just couldn’t. Not yet. “She’s nuts. Look at all the stuff Sean was babbling about – whips and S&M and the occult. Who knows what she believes?”

Will stared at me over the remaining half of his burrito, then wrapped the foil around it and put it down. “You’re not telling me everything, Ashlee.”

“Nope,” I said, surprised at myself for being so blunt. Maybe it was just that kind of day.

“Why not?”

“I tried to tell you that you didn’t know me, Will, but you didn’t listen. You just pushed what I said aside, as if I was telling you that out of fear or something, like I didn’t know what I was talking about and you know best. Guys do that, you know.”

“Do what?” I could see him getting annoyed with me lumping him in with other “guys,” but I couldn’t help it.

“They want what they want so they don’t listen. They discount girls’ – women’s – insights, especially about themselves. Think they know best.”

“Maybe it’s because the women won’t just talk plain to them. Won’t tell them what the hell is going on, in words us dumb guys can understand.”

My eyes narrowed as I took another bite of burrito, feeling the burn of fresh grilled jalapenos that was nothing like those pickled ones most people are used to. I bought some time to think by pulling out a little clear plastic container of chopped cilantro to add to the juicy goodness in my hands, making a ritual of it.

“How bad do you have to know?” I asked.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m serious. How much would you sacrifice to find out everything, all at once, right now?” See, I was getting sick of the dance, too, and I was tired and still hurting from everything that happened yesterday. I guess what I mean is, I was about ready to say to hell with it and just dump it all on him and damn the consequences. Double or nothing, roll the dice.

“I…I’d do anything for you, Ash.”

“But what if the price was me? What if by learning everything you lost me?”

“That’s impossible.”

“Here we go again.” I chucked the rest of the burrito in the bag, suddenly not hungry anymore. “You love me but you dismiss me and what I say. That’s not love.” I hopped off the tailgate and started walking away.

“Ash! Ash, I’m sorry. I’ll stop asking. Really. I love you, and I don’t care about your secrets.”

I stopped. Turned. “Yes, you do.”

“Okay, I do, but not as much as I care about you. I’ll wait for you to explain, okay? You’re the most important thing in my life, and if that’s the price…okay.”

“Okay?”

“Whatever it takes.”

He looked so forlorn there, twisting his straw field hat in his hands like some kid in a Dickens novel, that my resolve crumbled. “Okay,” I said, and came back to him. Once I had returned and we were standing there, I just had to kiss him, right? Kiss him stupid, as Amber used to say, though this time I got kinda stupid too.

We only broke up the clinch when a bunch of boys on BMX bikes started on the wolf-whistles. I smiled in embarrassment while Will winged a dirt clot at the road by their tires, and they took off, hooting.

“Want to take the afternoon off?” I asked with a sidelong grin.

“I think I can arrange that, seeing as I am the boss…just gimme a minute to call Rodrigo.”

On the way back to Will’s house, my house, I took my shoes off and stuck my feet out the window, rolling off my newly skewered butt cheek and laying across the bench seat to put my head in his lap. He stroked my hair and all was right with the world again, at least for today.

Amber took some convincing but I knew Sean was under Jeanetta’s spell, not innocent but almost as much a victim as we were. That enchantment may have been metaphorical or may have been literal but no matter what, it was true and Amber agreed, and if Amber agreed, eventually Elle would too, I knew.

Jeanetta got eight to ten in the state women’s prison down at Chowchilla – I know, funny name, sounds like they should make cheap fur coats there, but look it up – and so for at least that long I don’t have to worry about her. The next time I went up to Lover’s Leap and waited, Shane didn’t appear. I even took Spanky with me, but he didn’t seem to see any ghosts.