Tarnished Read online

  “Sometimes someone has to be the one to get something done, even if people hate him for it at the time,” Silver said, obviously thinking in the same direction.

  “And there’s a difference between holding something together and being the first to unite it,” Andrew said. “One prevents upset, the other creates it. I’m trying to preserve the safety that already exists in Roanoke. Since I don’t want the power for power’s sake, there’s no way in the Lady’s name I’d want more of it.” Andrew let tense silence settle to see if Michelle would come up with any arguments he needed to counter, but she seemed content to consider his words, lips thin.

  “He’s telling the truth about when he challenged me.” John didn’t sound happy about it, but he was saying it. “I think he would have handed control back even if he hadn’t been injured. Nothing was easy or straightforward about dealing with that situation.”

  Andrew gave him a slow nod of thanks. A little less grudging would have been nice, but he’d take what he could get. Silence fell. Andrew finished his beer and started to peel off the label. Michelle’s scent was still too conflicted for him to pick out any one emotion.

  “I’ll think about it,” she said finally. “But it comes down to this, Dare. Sacramento’s on my border. If I support you, he’s going to make my life absolute hell. My people have jobs to go to, even if I could lock them in the house to keep them from being harassed by Sacramento’s bullies while going about their daily lives. If you can get him to give up his grudge about his son, in front of everyone, fine. I’m with you. But otherwise I can’t afford to.”

  “I understand,” Andrew said, his voice as neutral as he could make it. He did understand, after all. Borders in this day and age were always more a product of common agreement than something fought for and enforced. No patrol could keep someone from driving past on the freeway, smell contained by the car. You could only try to cover enough territory to notice when anyone left a vehicle. He didn’t blame Michelle but frustration still twisted his muscles. His problems kept circling around to Sacramento. It was clear he had to deal with the man somehow, but how?

  “Maybe you should think about taking over Sacramento’s territory,” Silver told Michelle. Michelle eyed her and Silver laughed. A moment later the other woman joined in. The joke broke the tension, though Andrew wasn’t entirely sure it had been a joke.

  Michelle lounged back in her chair and let the conversation lull long enough to make an obvious break between business and small talk. “Well, I’d ask if there were any exciting new additions to the pack lately, but it smells like you’re still with that same human woman?”

  John stopped with his bottle halfway to his lips, and Andrew stepped in to fill the silence. “Less work than a bunch of different ones.” If John wasn’t careful, he’d give Susan away with his jumpiness alone.

  “If it gives me a rest from the attention of one of the male alphas surrounding me, I’m not going to argue.” Michelle toasted the idea. “Hey, baby, wanna join territories?”

  John sputtered. “I was never that bad.”

  “You were.” Michelle shared a look of feminine communication with Silver and both grinned.

  The topics stayed lighter after that, and Andrew mostly remained silent, drinking his second beer, since he wasn’t familiar with a lot of the people they gossiped about. He listened, though. You never knew when something might be useful to know later.

  After about an hour, Michelle pushed to her feet. John followed. “We’re going hunting tonight, if you don’t want to drive back so soon?” he offered.

  Michelle shook out her thick black curls and tried to finger-comb them into some kind of order. She pointedly drew in a breath of the charged atmosphere of the dining room. “Four dominants, one hunt?” She smiled and shook her head. “I’ll take permission to run in a park down nearer your border and head out, I think, before any wrestling matches break out.”

  Andrew said his good-byes still sitting, and let John be the one to show her to the door. When the front door shut, Seattle and Portland’s voices continuing toward the driveway, he looked at Silver, who looked as frustrated as he felt. “If she’s an ally, I hate to think what the others are going to say,” he said, and she nodded.

  6

  Susan stalled in the coffee shop for a whole ten minutes after John called her with the all clear, staring at the same page in her book. She’d grabbed one of her favorite paperback spy thrillers for a reread, but she hadn’t made it past the first chapter. She read whole paragraphs several times without remembering what they said, as a campy movie delivery of “If I told you, I’d have to kill you” looped in her mind. Now that it was real for her, she couldn’t imagine why she’d once thought it would be exciting, in the days when she and her brother would chase each other around the house with water pistols when their parents weren’t home. Susan finally gave up and shut her book with a snap.

  The stubborn feeling that flooded her at the thought of giving in and letting her brother declare himself winner hadn’t changed, though. She wasn’t going to leave her son, but she also wasn’t going to abandon what she had with John so easily. So they were dangerous people. So what. She couldn’t let them bully her and John both. Susan left the coffee shop feeling slightly more settled.

  She arrived back at the house to a scene of chaos in the foyer. A hunt, she realized, pausing to watch with her hand on the shoe cubby. Predators, out to kill something. She didn’t remove her shoes yet. Better to wait until the pack was out of the way. Even without considering their true natures, they were an intimidating bunch. Around fifteen adults lived in the house, though of course not all of them were gathered here tonight. Teens made up the difference in numbers from anyone still at work. It sometimes seemed a physics anomaly to Susan that they all fit, especially with memories at the surface of her mind of rattling around with her brother in their parents’ big, showy home.

  Watching the werewolves get ready to go out was like watching any other set of people in reverse. Rather than collecting possessions and coats, they shed them, getting rid of everything they could and still be decent. Men emptied their pockets, women who were built small enough wriggled out of their bras. Several were still in business clothes from the workday, and seeing the maneuvers done with slacks and crisp shirts and blouses made them seem even more surreal. They also looked likely to get awfully cold. It must have been in the fifties outside, but Susan supposed that didn’t matter with fur.

  Tracy waved at her from the foot of the stairs, clearly bursting with something she wanted to tell her friend. Susan hesitated a beat, then started nudging through the crowd. She’d decided she wasn’t going to let them get to her, after all. Most people were polite enough to edge out of her way, but the beta stayed a stubborn obstacle and eyed her, arms crossed, as she detoured past. Susan was used to that from him by now. The feeling was mutual.

  Dare came down the staircase as Tracy chattered in Susan’s ear about the dress that had won in the program after Susan left. He looked regal, standing above the throng with the white streaks in his hair. “Silver,” he called back over his shoulder. “Coming along?” Heads in the foyer turned to her as she came to the top of the stairs. Several of the people’s expressions surprised Susan. They looked annoyed, like Dare had invited his bimbo of a girlfriend along on an important mob hit. But Silver was a werewolf like the rest of them.

  Silver’s back stiffened. “I’ll stay and help with the cubs.”

  Dare shot everyone a look, but by then they all looked innocent. “Are you sure? I could stay, and we could drive out later to catch the end of it.” Even Susan could tell he wasn’t wild about missing most of the hunt.

  “I was going out too.” Susan wanted to wince under the pressure of all the eyes that switched to her. Predators. She pushed back through the crowd toward the door without looking at anyone. “Just shopping. But if you wanted to get out for a while, Silver?”

  John frowned, and drew Susan aside into the doorway to t
he kitchen. “That’s probably not a great idea,” he said, leaning in and lowering his voice. Susan frowned at him, trying to formulate her question. Whatever disqualified Silver from a hunt shouldn’t have anything to do with a simple shopping trip.

  “Thank you.” Silver said it loud enough to cut John off even from the stairs. “I’d love to.” She followed the remains of Susan’s path through the crowd, Dare on her heels.

  When John reached out to stop Silver, Dare got there first, blocking the man with his body. He pulled out his wallet, and extended a folded twenty to Silver. “If you find something you want.” Silver eyed him as if she had expected him to try to stop her too. When he just nodded to her, she smiled at him in a quick flash and took the bill. She turned it over in her fingers and examined it with concentration for a moment like it was some cryptic puzzle that had to be unlocked before use.

  Did she even understand what it was? Susan had bristled at Dare’s attitude, but she lost the feeling to confusion now. Silver grimaced at the money a final time in incomprehension and shoved it into her pocket. She tugged on Susan’s arm.

  Since she still had her coat on, Susan let Silver propel them both outside without protest. “I don’t actually need anything. I thought I’d wander around the store when I can do it without calibrating the timing between feedings and naps.” Back when she was single and grocery shopping alone, she’d actually rather enjoyed it. She wondered what John would think of her old comparison of it to the thrill of the hunt, discovering what new items the store held that day.

  “I might pick up some ice cream to eat before we get back. Food enters this house and it’s gone before I blink, never mind eat any. I don’t know how interesting it will be for you.” Susan gave Silver an apologetic shrug.

  Silver nodded but didn’t answer as they got into the car. Susan let silence reign for as long as she could stand as they drove through darkness. Light slipped and slid off the dampness on every surface from drizzle earlier in the day.

  The trouble was, she saw no good way to work what she wanted to ask Silver into a casual conversation. Every time she thought of an opening, the question filled her mind again, choking out the innocuous comment.

  Silver turned away from staring out the window, a smile banishing her residual frown. “Please don’t explode,” she said.

  Susan blinked. “What?”

  “There’s something you’re pent up about. I can smell it a mile away. Was there something you wanted to ask me?” Silver smoothed some flyaway strands of her fine hair down to her head, then gave Susan her full attention.

  “Have you ever killed anyone?” Susan blurted it out and immediately regretted it. If the werewolves were that dangerous, pissing one off with rude questions was a bad idea. But no matter how she tried to think of predators, she couldn’t reconcile the idea of a secret society of stone-cold killers with Tracy’s delight in modeling shows. “I don’t mean— But you talked about them killing me, and you’re the only one who seems halfway … well, someone I could ask—”

  “Halfway safe?” Silver smiled as she interrupted and saved Susan from digging herself deeper. She didn’t seem offended. “You’ll find many Were will automatically consider you weak too. I make it a policy to take the assumption and use it against them. You might want to do the same.” She looked out the window. “As to your question—yes and no.”

  Susan swallowed convulsively, trying to imagine how one could only sort of kill someone. Fortunately, Silver continued before she had time to come up with anything graphic. “The man who did this to me.” She took the wrist of her bad arm and laid it over her lap. In the uncertain light, the raised texture of the scars extending upward from the elbow showed better than the color. “Poured the fire into my blood and killed all my pack. Dare and I killed him together when he returned for me.”

  Susan picked a side street and pulled over in front of a house. Only the upstairs lights were on at this time of night. She shoved the car into park and allowed herself two breaths of openly staring at the scars. The scars themselves didn’t look so bad, but the limp stillness of the arm itself was upsetting on a subconscious level. “You’re serious?” she demanded. “This is how Weres—Were?—live?”

  “No more than most humans live that way.” Silver scooted in her seat and tucked one leg up. Despite the relaxed position, Susan got the sense that she wasn’t entirely comfortable talking about that incident. “If not for the monster, I wouldn’t have killed anyone. Dare would, but that’s his job. To do that kind of thing so others can keep their hands clean.”

  “So is he the one—”

  Silver growled and took Susan’s chin in a strong grip. “No one is planning to kill you at the moment, I swear upon the Lady. Dare has too much honor for it. If someone else tries, defend yourself. I’ll show you how. You have no wild self for me to see the sharpness of her teeth or strength of her jaw, but humans have that spark. They just keep it somewhere hidden.” Silver released Susan’s chin and tapped a fingertip somewhere around her solar plexus. “But I think Death sees it. He hasn’t said I should stop wasting my time on you, which is telling.”

  Susan choked a little. “Death?” Half of that hadn’t made any sense, and she was starting to doubt her choice of source for Were information. Wild self? Was this werewolf stuff, or was this Silver?

  Silver looked away as if embarrassed. “Death walks with me. We were lonely, he and I. Me without my wild self, and Death without the Lady. You don’t need to worry. He doesn’t deal with humans.”

  Susan turned off the engine to avoid wasting fuel and turned on the dome light to supplement the watery orange glow of the streetlight down the street. Crazy or not, this woman was offering to protect her—teach her to protect herself, even. Teach a man to fish and all that. Something in Susan’s gut-level read of Silver told her to accept. All right, then. Fair enough. The first thing to do seemed to be to start collecting information.

  Susan tried to formulate her next question. What Silver had said about Death made her sound like a morbid goth teenager. If anyone looked the opposite of goth, though, it was Silver, with her fine features and soft white hair. “By ‘the lady,’ you mean the moon, right?” The other werewolves mentioned a lady often enough, but Susan knew nothing besides her connection with the moon.

  Silver’s lips thinned. “Your mate is a fool. I can’t imagine what harm he thinks you’d do with that information. The Lady is our goddess. She made us as Her children, as your human gods made you. It’s Her light that calls us to ourselves.” Silver pointed upward. “That’s why we call it our Lady ceremony after we shift for the first time. It’s the time when a cub first truly meets the Lady.”

  Susan’s attention sharpened. That, at least, John had talked to her about, given that it concerned her son directly. “That’s at puberty, isn’t it?”

  Silver nodded. “For girls, it’s soon after the first blood. For boys, it’s harder to predict.” She smiled suddenly. “Though it’s easy enough for everyone but the cubs to tell when they’re getting close. It’s the itchiest feeling, and you’re cranky and restless for weeks. Unmistakable. Then when the Lady is near full, it builds and builds until it almost hurts and then you fall into your wild self, and it doesn’t hurt anymore.” Silver drew in a jagged breath, and her muscles spasmed. “Oh, Lady—” she gasped. “That’s a memory it does no good to call.”

  “Are you all right?” Susan frowned.

  “My wild self is dead. It builds, but there’s nowhere for me to go—” Silver held her breath and clenched her hand for a moment, and then collapsed. “Lady, that hurts.” She curled up, pressing her cheek into the seat. Silence fell, until she broke it again unexpectedly. “That’s why they don’t want me to run with them, because I can’t keep up with human legs. Dare will run with me anyway, but they won’t.”

  Susan remembered her earlier analogy. The bimbo girlfriend screwing things up indeed. What was a werewolf who couldn’t turn into a wolf? Back when she’d been a lowly
teller at the bank, she’d had laryngitis for a week. Her supervisor had tried to find her clerical work to fill her hours, but Susan remembered the feeling of watching her coworkers chat with customers while she waited to struggle her way through communicating something simple and silly to one of them. She couldn’t imagine the sheer frustration of being stuck with that forever. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sometimes things happen, and eventually you have to get up and keep hunting.” Silver straightened herself out in her seat, and Susan started the car.

  They reached the twenty-four-hour grocery about two minutes later. It was still reasonably busy with people picking up a bottle of wine or late-night snacks. Silver trailed behind Susan, watching the people and examining the food with the same casual curiosity. She only broke away once in the produce section after sniffing the air. She returned with a couple of pears, surprisingly ripe for grocery store produce, held in her good hand rather than bagged.

  After all the trouble of carting them around half the store, Silver set the pears down on a display table in the bakery area. Susan switched her basket to the other hand, but Silver grabbed her wrist before she could pick them up.

  “He shouldn’t be here. Dare warned him once already.” Silver’s voice was difficult to hear. Susan leaned in only to be jerked up as Silver dragged her toward an emergency exit door. Where was the danger? Susan scanned the bakery and the sections of aisles she could see, but no one looked threatening.

  “We have to pay.” Susan braced her feet and hefted her basket to illustrate. Silver pulled the basket from her, slid it beneath another display table, and kept dragging. Susan resisted the urge to suck the skin of her fingers that had been burned by the basket handles. Silver was strong. “Where are we going?”