Wolfsbane Read online

  In Warsaw, they’d told her this woman had been slain with silver and risen from the dead, carrying the spirit of the Lady inside her. Like the Lady, she could heal others and grant visions. Tatiana had believed not a word, and she hoped her alpha hadn’t either. There was being religiously observant, and there was being foolish. The Lady no longer walked this land with Her children.

  She’d had higher hopes for the Alaskans, even drunk. Stubbornly independent, they weren’t part of the united pack, but Tatiana had expected them to have contact with friends and family in it. But apparently they spent too much time in wolf to bother with facts. The most talkative one had told her of the mate’s white hair and pale eyes, and how, though she maintained she couldn’t shift, a ghostly white wolf had been seen among the trees at the full when she was near.

  In person, the woman was beautiful, but in a way of clashing extremes. Her features were soft enough to be called pretty, but her white hair and confident posture could fit only with the word “striking.” Tatiana quickly pulled her eyes away from tracing her neck to the line of her collarbone and lower. No time for distraction. The woman’s eyes were a normal blue, tinged with a hint of gray, nothing pale or even striking there. Without thinking, Tatiana let her gaze settle on the woman’s and found dominance, all the sharper for its unexpectedness. Another alpha.

  Then Tatiana was in front of the Were, no more time to observe. “Sir,” Tatiana said and bowed, marking a crescent on her forehead with the side of her thumb. It never hurt to present yourself as low-ranked at the start when hunting information or applying influence. You could always switch to intimidation later, but you couldn’t go back the other way.

  She had no idea which of the pair to address the gesture to, so she aimed halfway between both. Not just a mate, but another alpha. And the North Americans had accepted that? She knew they were somewhat nonobservant in comparison to other Were, so she wouldn’t have thought propaganda about ghostly wolves would have swayed them. The mate didn’t look strong enough to have won any fights. She held her left arm a little stiffly, hand in her pocket. Perhaps from an injury that formed the seed of the “slain by silver” part of the stories. She smelled of silver in a diffuse way, but Tatiana expected that would be from some concealed weapon, wrapped carefully and carried to balance the fighting weakness the injury caused.

  The pair of alphas certainly had confidence. The woman pressed her thumb to her forehead, clearly answering Tatiana’s gesture, though she didn’t mark a full moon to indicate her rank. Tatiana had encountered that before with the Europeans, at least. Then her mate just bowed his head and made no gesture at all. How was she supposed to take that?

  “Roanoke Andrew Dare.” The man offered his hand to shake in the human fashion, and Tatiana accepted it carefully. “My mate, Roanoke Silver.” She also shook Tatiana’s hand. Andrew tipped his head to indicate the others. “My beta, John Powell, and my daughter, Felicia.”

  Tatiana didn’t know why the alpha bothered noting that the young woman was his daughter—her age made that obvious—but she was already hunting in a whiteout with everything else, so she set that aside to chew over later. “I am Tatiana. May I have permission to enter your territory?”

  Roanoke Andrew nodded formal assent, but Tatiana caught Felicia smiling. It sat well on her mobile features. She suspected it was her accent. She’d practiced her idiom in Anchorage, and she’d watched plenty of American TV at home, but she hadn’t yet been able to soften her Russian accent.

  Might as well use that, though. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Bond,” she said.

  Felicia laughed, the sound infectious. The two men joined in, though Roanoke Silver looked blank. Everyone relaxed. Tatiana smiled. She’d found a sense of humor was an excellent way to gain people’s trust.

  “Do you have any luggage?” Roanoke Andrew waited for Tatiana’s nod, then led the way toward an escalator. She didn’t know where she was supposed to walk, but he adjusted his pace to keep her abreast of him in easy conversational distance, so she took the hint. She couldn’t read anything specific about his mood in the close air of the terminal, so she supposed he wasn’t worried about his scent.

  After a few questions about her flight and banal comments about the weather, silence descended as they had to string out into a line on the escalator. At the bottom, Tatiana brought out her first real question. It wasn’t anything likely to help her craft her suggestions to them about stepping down, but she’d found that if she indulged her idle curiosity at first, it lowered people’s guard and they opened up more later. “Why Roanoke?”

  “Since we don’t live in that city, you mean?” Andrew dropped back and let his beta check the glowing flight numbers above the carousels while he focused on Tatiana.

  She nodded. “All the European alphas I have met take their title from their city.” People were clustered tightly around the carousel for her flight, so she fell silent. Talking in the roar of a crowd was reasonably safe as long as you weren’t discussing last night’s kill or throwing around the word “werewolf,” but speaking right next to someone was stupid.

  Andrew touched her elbow to stop her joining the crowd. “If you describe your bag, Felicia can wait for it.”

  Tatiana’s voice tried to tighten as she glanced over the slow parade of black cases sliding by. She caught herself and forced relaxation into her muscles before tension could reach her scent. The contents of her suitcase couldn’t be a secret if she wanted to use them. “Black, but with a blue ribbon on the handle and a crescent moon key chain. Careful, there are some bottles of wine in it.” Packed along with the wine glasses as carefully as a mother would cushion her cubs, so hopefully the baggage handlers hadn’t destroyed her mission before she could even begin it.

  Felicia nodded and wiggled her way to a place at the front of the crowd while Tatiana and the rest retired to a row of attached seats. The two alphas sat, so Tatiana joined them, though the beta remained standing. “Roanoke was the name of the colony that brought the first Were to North America.” Andrew watched Tatiana’s face as he explained, probably for any points of pronounced confusion. “And the Roanoke a generation ago was the first to unite the North American packs. It started with the ones in the east, and when Silver and I added the rest, we moved the Roanoke home pack here.”

  Tatiana had to smile at the cavalier way he said “added,” like it was nothing more than inviting a few people to a party. That was the sort of boasting she expected from alphas. The real challenge would be finding out how they’d actually done it, and what weaknesses that might have introduced.

  Silver seemed to realize the source of Tatiana’s amusement, and snapped her fingers. “Just that easy, of course.”

  “What do you call your own alpha?” Andrew was trying to be nonchalant about the question, but Tatiana knew when someone was dying for an answer. She hadn’t let it show that badly since she’d been practically a cub, out on her virgin mission, but she knew the feeling. She’d bet the question was also supposed to lead to her divulging where her alpha lived and what her place in the pack’s hierarchy was.

  “Father, generally,” Tatiana said, and looked off into the crowd. Which was technically true, since she called him that out loud, whatever she thought of him privately. Besides, while she’d warned her alpha that she’d have to give the North Americans some information in return, and he’d reluctantly agreed, she planned to make them work for it.

  “Ha!” Felicia came up, rolling Tatiana’s case along with exaggerated smoothness. She gave the exclamation a laughing tone, pleased about Tatiana’s answer for some reason. Tatiana couldn’t see why. “Guess I’m an apt third after all.”

  Tatiana took the case and crouched to feel along the seams as she sniffed. No moisture, no scent of alcohol. The wine should be all right. “Thank you.”

  Andrew stood too and held his arm toward the door. “Shall we?”

  Tatiana followed him promptly like the low mid-ranker she’d presented herself as. These North Am
ericans were certainly strange. She had her hunt laid out for her, understanding them enough to persuade them of anything.

  Chapter 3

  Silver didn’t like the way the Russian looked at them, and she didn’t like the way the envoy made Death laugh. She let her mate and his daughter do the talking as they left the place where humans gathered to travel. Silver knew she was the only one who could see both of a Were’s selves at the same time, so while the envoy’s tame self smiled at the others, Silver watched her wild self. The wild self was the dark gray of the beaches of Silver’s childhood, liberally mixed with black, and with a dusting of white like snow at the tips of the fur. As it walked at the tame self’s heels, it tried to look everywhere at once, ears locking onto the tiniest noise, and sometimes no noise at all. Watchful, not nervous. Watching for what? That was the question.

  “So suspicious.” Death paced wherever he liked, and at the moment he was too gleeful to fall in beside Silver as he sometimes did, walking the steps that should have belonged to her dead wild self. He nipped at the envoy’s wild self’s ruff, chuckling when it jerked away from him. “Anyone might think you fear strangers.”

  Silver shivered. She hated the weakness, but she couldn’t stop herself reacting to the voice of the man who had killed her pack, burned away her wild self, and left her forever scarred. Death had no voice of his own, yes, but he only used the voice of that particular dead man when he was feeling particularly cruel. She took his point, however. The man who had killed her pack had been a stranger, one who had wormed his way into her pack’s trust, but that would not happen here.

  A human bumped into her, pulling Silver back to the present. She hated the human traveling place. When she wasn’t concentrating, her mind tried to tell her it was a grove of trees, the canopy soaring high above. It caught the noise and cupped it around the hundreds of humans who trampled beneath. They, at least, were comprehensible in their ebb and flow whether she concentrated or not. But since this was a traveling place, that ebb and flow was fenced with rules she couldn’t keep straight. Go here, not there. Do not pass that door. She could follow Dare, but she did not like knowing that should he or the others be called away, she would likely be ensnared by some forbidden passageway.

  “You could have stayed back at the den.” Death switched to his more habitual voice, a male Were Silver did not know. Perhaps it was the first Were to ever die. Death strode ahead, then turned to watch with an ironic flip of his tail. “Like a good alpha’s mate. Did you see her surprise? She did not expect a woman to stand equally dominant.”

  Silver refused to be drawn into answering Death where the envoy would hear and think her crazy. Silver had seen the woman’s face when their eyes met to measure dominance. She’d been surprised, certainly. But had there been more? Did she think Silver weak for her bad arm? Dare weak for the silver scars the white in his hair hinted at, even if they could not be seen beneath his clothes? Would she take that impression back to her alpha, her father, before they could show her differently? Silver did not doubt her own strength, but she knew she did not wear it splashed across her fur. Or was their appearance a good thing, likely to convince the Russians to leave them alone as no threat?

  The group paused at the many river branches that surrounded the traveling place. Dare and the others watched the river, so Silver watched the envoy when the woman thought the tumbling water kept their attention from her. She had high cheekbones, giving her face an elegant, oval shape, but her body had more comfortable, rounded lines. Her hair was a warmer, deeper golden than the bleached color that human women seemed to favor. When she wasn’t smiling, she looked more calculating, colder. Then Tom forded the river to meet them, and the envoy smiled once more.

  “It will take time to make the arrangements, but in a week or so, we can gather the sub-alphas for you to meet,” Dare said, smiling himself. Silver nodded. They’d discussed that at length, as part of the larger question of whether it would be better to minimize their strength. But in the end they’d decided that nothing could hide the fact that they’d united most of North America, and so it would be better to emphasize the fact they had the numbers to protect themselves.

  The envoy frowned. “Sub-alphas?”

  “We can’t be everywhere at once.” Dare gestured with a flourish for the envoy to seat herself so they could travel home. He and Silver sat next, leaving her cousin and Felicia to fit themselves where they could. The envoy accepted the arrangement easily, and Silver finally realized how unbalanced she’d been about nearly everything else. Confused about the customs, probably.

  “Nor could we keep track of the concerns of every pack member the way a sub-alpha living with them can,” Dare continued. “What does your father do?”

  “Trusts to his betas.” The envoy’s expression sharpened with concentration, and Silver presumed she was picking her way through a thorn thicket of information she did not want to reveal. How many betas? How many Were did the Russian alpha lead? Did they live in one place, or in many? “There is only one alpha, in name and in power.”

  “Names have great power, but to bolster someone’s strength, not create it out of nothing.” That came out more acidic than Silver had intended. “And we would rather see our sub-alphas strong, in any case. Because we use their strength, we don’t crush it before it threatens our own.”

  “Names will count for nothing when it is your teeth against this Russian alpha’s.” Death loped beside them with long, easy strides. “Do not forget that in your word battles with his envoy.”

  Silver clenched her hand to remind herself not to look at Death. This envoy would see her staring at nothing at all, and think her another kind of weak: weak-minded. Dare set his hand briefly over hers for a moment, and she relaxed it. This envoy was judging them, but together they had much strength to show her.

  Anything else was useless worrying, but Silver indulged in it anyway.

  ***

  The Russian envoy was not at all what Andrew had expected. She was considerably older than Felicia, of course, but Andrew couldn’t imagine sending his daughter into possibly hostile territory. Not when he had an entire pack of Were to choose from. Or several packs’ worth. He’d noticed the way she’d dodged that question.

  When he pulled up in the driveway, Tom jumped out of the pack’s minivan first to hold a door that was perfectly capable of staying open on its own for the envoy. Andrew circled around to the passenger side door and opened it for Silver, since she sometimes had trouble with handles.

  The strange thing wasn’t that the envoy was attractive—and she certainly was—it was that she seemed so determined to present herself as neutrally ranked, Andrew decided. She could have used her attractiveness aggressively, a mocking challenge to look at what you couldn’t have. Or could have, if she decided to let you. But instead she was being so very careful. He’d thought Russia would be trying to threaten them, send them a warning about what waited for them if they expanded their territory beyond their continent. Instead, she apparently was going to be extremely polite at them. Perhaps she was simply sticking very close to her cover story.

  Andrew tipped his head at Tom to indicate he was allowed to slip in through the garage and avoid additional politics, earning him a grateful flash of a grin. Then he stepped up to Tatiana and gestured for her to follow him to the house. She dipped her head in agreement and rubbed at a spot between her shoulder blades like it itched. “What exactly is the heirloom you’re looking for, anyway?” he asked.

  “It is an icon.” Tatiana held up her hands, illustrating an object about a foot or foot and a half square. “A painting, on wood. We are not certain it is on this continent, but the family who had it last immigrated here in the nineteenth century, so perhaps we can track it to its final location from here.”

  Her accent threw off the rhythm of her words in places, so Andrew had to concentrate to follow her, but her grammar was certainly very good. “You came all this way for a piece of human religious art?” A laugh bubble
d up at the absurd image of a Russian Were as a collector of human art, but Andrew suppressed it.

  He ushered her inside the house and lingered in the foyer. The staircase curled up grandly, the showpiece that was the living room to the side, taking up the full two stories. The soaring architecture and sleek furniture oozed money in a way that he hated, because the Roanoke he’d defeated had lived this way too, but it was a quick way to impress people. The shiny new feeling would wear off soon, he assumed. They’d moved in only a few months ago. The last owners may have kept it like a magazine, but Were children had a habit of gnawing on banister posts, and Were adults had a habit of roughhousing their way to dents in the walls.

  “Human art?” Tatiana gazed around her in a satisfyingly impressed manner, and laced her fingers loosely together behind her back. She seemed slightly offended by his question. “Of course not. An icon of the Lady.”

  John and Felicia entered too late to understand the context, but Silver went pale—a beat late, after Death explained what an icon was, Andrew assumed—and even as an atheist, Andrew had to swallow his exclamation. He rounded on Tatiana. “How could you have made an image of the Lady? Are you all insane? Or is that why you want it back, for damage control? If they immigrated in the nineteenth century, you’re Lady-damned late.”

  Tatiana rocked back a step and raised her eyebrows. She seemed genuinely taken aback. “I . . . don’t understand. Are you not also followers of the Lady here?” She brought her thumb up to her forehead, but rather than press the pad to her skin, she drew a half circle with the side, as she had before.

  “Yes, but we don’t make images, or write things down, just waiting for a human to get their hands on it and get confused about this strange religion that they’ve never heard of before that has so much to do with wolves and shape-shifting.” Andrew found himself gesturing violently, and he forced himself to drop his hands. How could the Russians be so stupid?