Walking Wolf Road (Wolf Road Chronicles Book 1) (35 page)

Fen’s eyes were amber twenty-four-seven. That wasn’t their natural color, but he wasn’t always shifted, he and his inner wolf were just very integrated with each other. We’ve all tapped into some of that berserker strength and speed, sometimes with a light mental shift. Also… No other pack has ever mentioned anything about a patron spirit, much less a territory in the spirit world. Yet we always have.”

“So what if I asked to join your pack?”

I laughed. “I’d say ‘Wait your turn, pup’. You need to prove yourself before I’ll even
consider
changing you.” Which wasn’t entirely true, but he didn’t need to know that.

“So how does the change work? Is
a bite like in the movies? Or is it more of a ritual, like in the old legends?”

I shook my head smiling, “Sorry, that’s all for today!”

“Bastard…” He glowered at me and snatched his notes back, even though I’d already memorized them, “Who the fuck would I tell? You and Loki are the only people who still talk to me anymore. I don’t even have anyone to tell about this.” He picked up a manila mailer envelope and tossed it at me. I slid a stack of papers out and glanced at the first page.

Letter of Acceptance; University of Colorado College of Arts and Sciences.

“Oh my God Bo, you got in!” I shouted and tackled him with a huge bear hug while he laughed. “Congratulations! What are you gonna study?”

“I’m thinking cultural anthropology.”

“Sounds right up your alley.” I grinned with him, and tried to ignore the small worm of envy that squirmed inside me.

You chose your road, now you have to follow it. It’s too late to change your mind, just be happy for him.

Bo helped me study through the week. School reached a meltdown point of stupidity. The halls were filled with bragging gossiping half-wits obsessed with dresses and limos and who was taking so-and-so. Of course, my exhaustion didn’t help my foul mood at all.

Every night, instead of sleeping, I practiced phasing into the Lowerworld. I looked everywhere I could, exhausting myself night after night in the hunt for Fen’s spirit.
Desperate to find him, I journeyed to our Pack’s lake and howled.

Fen didn’t answer, but Lupa did, and she met me on the lakeshore.

“Lupa, please, do you know where Fen is? Have you seen him?”

“No Jimmy,” she answered and my ears drooped, “but I’m not the one you should be asking either…”

A shadow crossed the moon as Raven flew over the water and plopped down on the shore beside us with a dignified ‘klok’.

I sat down on my haunches and looked at him, “Um, Brother Raven, can you help me fi—”

“Your friend never came here,” Raven cut me off in mid-question. “So, sorry kid, I can’t help you find him.”

“Well, where else could he go?” The thought of Fen’s soul dissolving into nothing, trapped in some nowhere land filled me with dread.

Raven answered with an indignant fluff of his feathers, “Jimmy, every afterlife ever imagined exists within this world. From Heaven and Hell, to Valhalla and Hades. Believe me, if your friend were in
any
of them, I would know. So use your head kid, where do
you
think he is?”

Raven hopped up and pecked me hard in the center of my forehead, slamming me back into my body. “
Oww!
You’ve got to be kidding me…” I moaned as I held my pounding head. At least now I knew where Fen
wasn’t
.

Fen never crossed the veil. He was still here somewhere…

After school, I drove Loki home. As she let me inside, she seemed to remember something, “Hey, did you get an email from Geri?”

“No, why?”

“He wrote me a couple days ago. He said he was going to try and make it back down this weekend; right around Prom! I heard a few other ex-students are going to be there, I wonder if we could find a way to smuggle him into the dance. Didn’t Geri write you too?”

Doubts and suspicions stirred in the back of my mind as I shook my head.

“He didn’t? Weird.”

I stayed quiet until we were safe in Loki’s bedroom, “Hey Loki, can I talk to you about Geri? I feel weird even thinking this, but before he left I went over to Geri’s house. When he told me he was leaving, he also told me about how Fen used to treat him…”

Loki dropped her eyes as she sat down on her bed, “It was pretty bad… Whenever Fen lashed out, Geri was always in the line of fire. That was his ‘job’ in the Pack but…I wasn’t able to do much to help it.”

“Loki, I know about Corwin…” I whispered.

She flinched as though I’d slapped her. “What? Did Fen tell you?”

I shook my head and rubbed my temples. Even with her this was going to sound crazy, “Corwin and I have been uh… chatting since just before Halloween. He made me promise not to tell any of you about him though. He was trying to reach Fen through me—”

“He tried to use you to get his revenge on Fen?” she squawked, and I winced.

“What? No! No, that’s just the thing, he
doesn’t
blame Fen; he wanted to
apologize
to him!” she blinked in surprise, “He tried for years, but you know Fen was a psychic brick. Plus, you blocked him out, so he was pretty much screwed until I came along! Unlike you two, I wasn’t blocked by memories of him.” She seemed to calm down just a little, though she still had this scared gloss on her eyes like an animal about to run. “I swear Loki, he just wants to apologize for the pain he put you two through.”

“That’ll be difficult now, won’t it?” she whispered.

“Well, I’ve got a couple ideas; but I got off track. Back to Geri. Geri resented Fen a lot and only stayed because the Pack was all he had in this town. Anyway, you know better than I do what it was like for him, do you think Geri could have been angry enough to… murder Fen?”

Loki was speechless for a moment, “Jimmy, how could you say such a thing? Your own Pack
-brother!”

I held up a hand to ward her off, “He’d already stopped considering himself part of the Pack long before he left, and remember, he never told us where he was that night. Just answer me; do you think he could have hated Fen enough to kill him?”

“I—I don’t…” The fact that she couldn’t immediately say ‘no’ said it for her. She realized it as well and lifted a hand to her mouth.

“When I was leaving his house, I saw hunting rifles hanging over the fireplace in their living room, within easy reach. Also, you said yourself; no one outside the Pack knows what we ar
e, and who else knew where the den was?”

“What about the car you told me about at the school when you fought Fen for Alpha?” Loki said.

“Geri had a car didn’t he? Also, you didn’t see what happened after you ran off that day in the hall. You didn’t see the look on Geri’s face after Fen shoved him into the wall.”

“Oh my god… Jimmy, oh my
god!
” she whispered and wrapped her arms around herself.   “Maybe that’s why they were in such a rush to move afterwards too…”

I wanted to be merciful and leave it there, but there was one more thing I needed to ask. “Loki, do you think Geri ever had a crush on you?”

“What? Why?” she stuttered.

“Please, it’s important!” I urged her.

“I… I don’t know, it’s possible I guess… He never said anything about it—”

“Do you really think Fen would have let him?”

Loki’s jaw dropped open, “Goddamnit! As if high school drama wasn’t bad enough; we have freaking ‘Days of our Teenage Werewolf Lives’ going on here…”

“We don’t know anything for sure yet, but when we see him this weekend we’ll just have to get him alone somewhere and get our answers from him. I’m probably wrong.” I hoped I was wrong…

“And if you’re not?” I didn’t want to answer her, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to hand him over to the authorities.
Intact
anyway… And then there was the other problem; if Geri didn’t email me, only Loki, what if he was coming down this weekend to finish what he started with Fen…?

“We’ll deal with that when the time comes…” I said to both her question and my own thoughts, and a picture on her dresser caught my eye, “Hey, when was this taken?” I picked up the picture and frowned. A much younger version of Loki smiled out of the frame with chocolate brown hair, with a couple other girls her age under a bright blue sky.

“Oh, that was seventh grade. Those were my friends in Montana, they promised to keep in touch when I left, but they never did. Not a big loss…”

“Your hair’s not black?” I asked, feeling stupid.

She just laughed though, “No, that’s my real hair color there. I’ve been very diligent about maintaining my color since we moved here, so I’m not surprised you didn’t know. I don’t think anybody here even remembers me with brown hair…” she quirked an eyebrow thoughtfully. “Nope, doubtful…”

“That’s strange; you look so familiar from somewhere…”

That night I tossed and turned, restless, as I plunged in and out of nightmares. Some felt more like memories than dreams, and others I wasn’t even sure were mine.

The bullet tore through my leg as I ran for the tree. I tried to drag myself the last few feet to safety, until the hunter’s shadow fell over me and he kicked me onto my back and pinned me with his foot. I stared up past the barrel of his gun at the obscured silhouette of his face, and then the muzzle flashed and I watched my blood spray over the trunk of the tree as the bullet punched through my skull—

The familiar girl with the soft brown hair wrapped her arms around me. I promised to protect her, even as my own birthmark doomed me to sacrifice her. I loved her, and she would die because of it—

My breath steamed in the cold winter air, the early morning pall felt all the colder as icy light edged toward the horizon.

—“Cleansed by any means necessary…”—“Bless me father for I have sinned”— I didn’t recognize the voices, but the world dissolved into images of violence, helplessness, and a seething sea of buried resentment and blood.

I shook my head to clear it and returned my gaze to the eyepiece of my rifle’s scope, a seemingly haphazard pile of bracken and fallen wood centered beyond the drifting crosshairs.

—All his fault—All his fault—

Despite the distance, I watched Fen and I crawl out of the den while the rifle scope’s reticle danced over us and my finger tightened.