Black Wolf (24 page)

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All the world
seemed dark and quiet, sleeping peacefully; Sam sat by the living
room window, gazing out over the vacant street below her. Alfari
lay on her lap, relaxed and alert at once the way cats had mastered
beyond any other creature, purring while Sam stroked her. The sky
was bright with stars, but this was the night the moon hid her face
from the world.

Things were
not as serene as they seemed on the surface. Out there, somewhere,
just on the fringes of her awareness, something searched that meant
only evil to the one it sought. How it had come here from the demon
plane to this, whether called for some purpose or lucky enough to
slip through a crack between planes, mattered not at all; it was
here.

Its presence
stirred old memories in her mind: the wolves descended from
Alessandria's seventh child Cassandra and her Native shaman mate;
the community that had formed a century and a half before, at first
to support Cassandra's line when they felt rejected and
misunderstood by Haven, then they'd found that it brought good to
them all; Unity that had been built on hope and love to be their
own
home, bringing them all together physically.

A terrifying
night of unearthly music from the lake, a storm like nothing she'd
imagined could be real, and by morning she was alone and feared
only she had survived.

Unity, she had
realized much later, had died at the hands—or whatever—of the bad
sort of demons and of something unknown that lived in the deep lake
Unity had been built at the edge of. Demons like the one that now
hunted in Haven for Jesse.

Surely here,
amidst so many other wolves and other races and seeking a target
who didn't even know himself, it would be unable to find one wolf
that still carried demon blood and thus was still a threat to any
hostile demon who manifested on the material plane.

"Sam?" Bryan
said softly. She didn't bother to glance back as he padded barefoot
across the carpeted floor to lay his hands on her shoulders. "What
is it?"

She started a
bit, then realized he wasn't asking about the presence outside,
only about what kept her up at this hour.

"There's
something out there that shouldn't be."

"Dangerous?"

Only to
Jess, only if it finds him. I don't matter, no matter what I know,
I'm only human.
"Not as things stand right now. I don't think
it'll find what it wants. Then it'll go away."
For a while, at
least. They must suspect something, to look here.

Absently, he
began to rub the muscles of her shoulders and upper back; she
hadn't known until then how tense she was. "I have a hunch I
shouldn't ask."

"I can't tell
you."

"All right.
Are you going to sit here all night?"

"Until it
leaves, I think."

"You'll be too
sleepy to open the shop tomorrow."

"I'll be okay.
You can go back to bed."

"Call me if
you want me."

"I will."

Bryan gave
Alfari a good-night rub under her chin, and went back to his room;
Sam listened, noticed in affectionate amusement but no surprise
that he didn't close his door. She'd been lucky a thousand times
over when he found her, she could ask for no truer friend.

Alfari
resettled herself more comfortably, quite content to hold vigil
with her. It couldn't stay past dawn. Only a few more hours at
most, before she could relax and know that once again Jesse had
escaped.

18

Here in the
city, with countless lights, there was no way to simply look up and
know that tonight was the night of the dark moon.

Patrick knew
it anyway. Keeping track of details like that ensured that he was
never caught by surprise by his demon servants. They'd turn on him
in a heartbeat, given the opportunity, and the night of no moon was
a time of demon power. Much better to have it used for his benefit,
rather than against him.

He walked the
streets of downtown, studying those around him measuringly. What
kind of prey should he choose tonight? Power or pain? Maybe he'd
just leave it up to chance, and see which he spotted first.

"Spare some
change?"

Patrick
glanced at the girl huddled in a doorway. Occasionally, he chose a
homeless teenager deeply mired in despair and self-contempt and
shame; it left them vulnerable to a kind word and an offered meal,
even at a cost. Each had willingly suffered to feed Patrick's
demons, pathetically grateful for praise and approval. It was much
easier than needing to hunt once a month, and he'd found uses for
them the rest of the time.

Of course,
they never survived past the death-offering the demons demanded
once a year, at the winter solstice, but then, it wasn't as though
their lives were worth anything anyway. It was probably a mercy,
really.

This one,
though, she still had a core of strength hidden beneath the
raggedly-cropped hair and the tattered layered denim and the faded
army blanket. She was no use to him. He shrugged, tossed her a
couple of quarters, and kept walking.

He walked past
a bar he knew was friendly to the leather and bondage crowd. The
concept of domination and submission and all its layers had seemed
like a godsend when he'd first encountered it, but he'd discovered
quickly that, for the most part, it was the worst possible place to
look for someone with the mindset of a victim. The so-called
submissives in those circles tended to have too clear an idea of
who they were and what they wanted, which made it much more
difficult to tie them into emotional knots. Why go to all the extra
effort, when he could find prey that was so much easier to break?
At least he'd picked up some useful ideas, though he saw no reason
for the great care for safety that obsessed that whole group.

Power tickled
the fringes of his awareness; he scanned the area, tracking it. It
was quiet, muted, he would never have noticed it at all had he not
been searching for exactly that sort of clue. That was a dryad
aura... there, coming from a young man with café-au-lait skin,
mahogany hair drawn back in a tail. In Patrick's experience, dryads
came in two basic types: small and slender, or tall and solid. This
one was the latter, but life in the city, where contact with the
earth and the trees was scarce, had turned what would otherwise
have been the sturdiness of an old oak into an illusion—this one
was hollow inside. Probably his mother had a brief relationship
with a male dryad, and this one had grown up never knowing why he
was chronically ill and depressed.

Patrick
followed him, twining light mental fingers into the dryad's mind.
Yes, the emptiness he'd expected was there, a sense of something
missing, a weariness from yet another battle with poor health. He'd
won, had recovered, but was beginning to wonder whether it were
worth it—hm, that he was doing as well as he was implied that he
might be healer-gifted, which would make it all the better.
Somewhere, he'd come across the idea that he must have done
something in another life that he was paying for in this one, and
while he only halfway believed it consciously, some deep part of
his mind had latched onto it—any explanation was better than none
at all. Even now, he was wondering again what he could have done
that was so very terrible.

This would be
almost too easy.

He followed
the dryad, reaching deeper into his mind, encouraging the fantasies
of atrocities he might have committed in another life. While he was
in there, he picked up his name, as well: Troy.

The dryad left
the busier streets, making his way through a quieter area. Around
them were offices, for the most part, all closed for the day; there
was no one in sight.

Patrick
wrapped an illusion of absence around himself, and nudged Troy's
mind with apprehension, enough to make him stop and look around,
checking behind him. That gave Patrick a chance to get in front of
him. As soon as the dryad faced him, the mage traded that illusion
for one that wrapped him in white and gold light, turning his
everyday clothes to blinding white, with a suggestion of bright
wings.

Troy cried
out, shielded his eyes with an arm.

"Peace, Troy,"
Patrick said, pitching his voice to gentleness. "There's nothing to
fear."

Cautiously,
Troy lowered his arm, eyes watering from the brilliance. "What...
who are you?"

"I've come to
help you. Nothing ever goes right for you, does it? Somehow, no
matter what, you always get sick again, or you stop feeling that
anything matters, and your life falls into pieces again."

"How do you
know that?"

"You did
something you shouldn't have, in your last life, and you never paid
for it. The universe demands balance, so you've been atoning for it
in this life, right from your birth. But you know that already,
don't you? Something inside told you that was what was happening,
that was why the world and even your own body seem to turn against
you every time it looks like something might work out."

Troy lowered
his gaze. "Yes," he whispered.

"I've come to
give you a chance to free yourself from that. A chance to do your
full penance all at once, so you can be free of it for the rest of
your life, and continue on from here with no old business
outstanding. What happens then is entirely what you can make of it.
But it's your choice to make. It's no easy thing to do a lifetime
of penance in a few hours. And once you choose, there's no turning
back."

"All at once?"
Troy looked up, hope dawning in his eyes. "Then everything will
stop going wrong all the time?"

"Yes."

"Anything! I
don't care how hard it is, I'll do it. Please, tell me what I have
to do..."

Almost too
easy. But that was just as well. He had no stomach for dragging
people off by force if he could possibly avoid it.

"Go home,"
Patrick said. "I'll come to you there." He switched illusions
again, from brightness to invisibility, and waited while Troy's
eyes adjusted to the twilight again.

The dryad
lived in an apartment building; small wonder he was sick so often,
half a dozen stories up from the earth. Patrick stayed near him,
unseen; it took only slightly more illusion to slip in the door
past him.

"Now what?"
Troy asked the empty apartment.

Patrick let
himself appear—still haloed with light, enough to blur his
features, but not enough to completely blind the dryad. "You're
certain?"

Troy nodded
mutely.

Patrick
smiled. "Strip."

He bound the
naked, shivering dryad with chains made of fiery light, and turned
his imagination loose, describing for Troy in ruthless detail the
supposed crimes for which he was being punished. His primary demon,
Sikial, came at his call, in the form of a slight, white-clad,
blonde youth of about twelve, and watched avidly, drinking in the
dryad's guilt and shame and fear.

When Patrick
decided Troy was ready, he turned to more physical forms of
penance. There was a certain satisfaction in this, in the control
it gave him over another person's body and mind and emotions; this
aspect of his bargain with Sikial's kind he'd taken to eagerly.

Hours later,
near sunrise, Patrick looked down at the sobbing, exhausted dryad.
He'd done nothing that wouldn't heal—physically, at least. It would
be months before he recovered from Sikial and the others feeding on
his healing gifts, but even that would pass. The odds that Troy
would ever tell anyone about this were low at worst, and even if he
did, who would believe him?

Patrick
sighed, and strengthened the illusion of light, backing it with
sunlight warmth.

"Troy," he
murmured. "You've done well, and you've atoned for what you did,
the balance has been restored. Leave the city, move to a place
where you can get back in touch with the earth and the cycles of
nature, and go on with your life. You have no further debts to pay.
Your life and your future are in your own hands now. Do you
understand?"

"Yes," Troy
whispered. "Thank you."

Patrick laid a
hand on his forehead, and sent him into a deep sleep. By the time
he woke, the edge of the pain would be gone.

"Sikial, go.
Wait back at the motel."

Sikial nodded,
and vanished.

Patrick let
himself out, laid a hand over the lock and gave it a telekinetic
nudge so it snapped shut, and began the walk back to his motel
room.

19

A dream
shifted, led Jesse back to the waking world; he opened his eyes on
moonlight.

The dream had
been very vivid, his dreams often were in Haven, but the nature of
it now escaped him, leaving only the memory of intense joy.

He uncoiled
himself, regarded his own hand against the white sheet in the
bright pale light. He'd never, he felt sure, truly looked at
himself before. His body... what was it? Bone and skin, blood and
muscle, but what made it his, made it obey his thoughts, made it
exist in this form? Slowly, he closed his hand, relaxed it,
entranced by the subtle shifting under the skin. He kicked off the
blankets, sprawled on his back, stretched languorously; without
conscious thought, his hands caressed his body, and somehow his own
touch brought him pleasure that made him sigh to himself, eyes
closing again. Yet it was easy to imagine he could feel the
moonlight, cool fingers playing over his skin, calling to him.