Black Wolf (37 page)

They searched
for an hour, took a short break, spent another hour hunting. After
the third hour, Kevin objected.

"That's enough
for tonight."

"He's right,"
Cynthia admitted reluctantly. "We'd better call it quits for
now."

Samantha
nodded. "Tomorrow night I'll meet you here at six. And every night
until we find him."

* * *

Gisela bolted
awake in the middle of the night. Heart pounding, she tried to calm
herself and sort out where the rush of fear came from.

She heard
Deanna's bed groan, heard her scrambling around. The healer
slithered out of bed, and darted down the hall.

"Dia? What is
it?"

"I think we've
got a fix on Jess. Nightmare that caught the whole coven, and
Flynn's cards say it was real. Hang on, Kev's going to..."

She didn't
even have time to finish the sentence before Kevin's gate exploded
into the room. Deanna sent Gisela across, and followed her. A
second gate swirled into sight, and Lori sent Sam and Flynn and
Naomi with Gwyn across ahead of her before following—Flynn must
have gone to Sam's to give Kevin an anchor, and found Lori and
Naomi there. There was no sign of either Bane or Bryan, though.

"Wolves?"
Gisela asked.

"Out for a
run," Naomi said.

"They're on
their way back," Kevin added, "but they can't do much anyway and we
can't wait or waste the power right now for another gate. They'll
be here."

The house had
a definite chill at this hour; most grabbed for magesilk blankets
to throw over various combinations of day and night clothes, and
they settled in a ring close to the woodstove.

All things
combined, nightmare and triangular connection and all the power
they could muster, gave them just enough that they could gain a
focus of sorts after days of coming up empty. And once Flynn had
that much to work with, it was a matter of time, and not much of it
at that.

"Oh, hells,"
Flynn said. "Kev, you need to get there, now, with as much power as
you can grab from us fast."

"Without
Bane?" Lori protested. "Kev a hundred miles from Bane..."

"... will
still be close to a wolf, if Flynn hits the right spot," Kevin
interrupted, already getting up. "Worst comes to worst, you gate so
I can get back here. If Jess is in danger now, then I'm not
waiting."

31

A curious red
squirrel nosed around in the underbrush, rattling in the soggy
leaves kept snowless by the dense evergreens above. Something
caught its attention, something out of place, which of course meant
that investigation was in order. It sniffed at the pile of soft
stuff, and smelled something that wasn't quite like the scent left
in a campground nearby, but wasn't quite part of the forest either;
it smelled something tasty, too, so it began to gnaw at the soft
barrier, which yielded delightfully easily.

A large black
rock, mostly invisible in the shadows cast by the light of the
setting sun, stirred, and divided into two smaller mud-splattered
black shapes. One raised its head, snarled, and lunged to its feet,
directly after the squirrel.

Indignantly,
the squirrel bolted up a tree and sat on a branch to scold the
wolf, tail flicking.

Aindry yawned,
got up and stretched languorously, while Jaisan padded over to
examine the damage. He shifted to human, growling in annoyance.

"You're
breakfast," he called to the squirrel above them. "You set one paw
out of that tree and you are
food
."

The squirrel,
unimpressed, chattered at him a little longer, then went bounding
away through the tree branches.

Aindry changed
to human, and came over to untangle her clothes from the pile.
"That's what you get for leaving a bag of trail mix where they can
smell it," she commented.

"How many
animals are stupid enough to come that close to two wolves? And it
chewed a hole in my backpack!"

"So fix it,
just like you fixed the other holes in it. Come on, get dressed and
let's move." She tossed him his faded, many-times-patched blue
jeans, his ragged navy sweatshirt. Still grumbling to himself, he
caught them neatly. Her own camo pants were under that, and an
equally tattered sweatshirt she thought had once been red but was
now a sort of dull pink. Winter coats and boots lay beneath.

Looking more
or less human again, they scooped up the two packs that held
everything they owned, and made their way back to the highway.

Occasionally,
a car drove by, a brief blinding glare of headlights, then the
distant glow of tail-lights. Otherwise, the highway was silent,
bathed in silvery light by a moon just past full. They didn't
bother trying to hitch a ride; at night, on a mostly deserted
stretch of road, who was going to stop and pick up a wild-looking
pair like them? They just walked quietly, not talking much. The
next town would still be there, whenever they reached it.

She saw Jaisan
toying with something in one hand, but didn't have to ask what.
He'd bought the cherry-sized amethyst in a lapidary shop for a
dollar a few weeks ago. It wasn't the first, and she doubted it
would be the last; amethysts were simply irresistible to him. He
said they gave his luck an extra boost, but that wasn't what she
figured the attraction was. She had to get his mind back on the
present; left too long to brood, he'd slip back into that
frightening depression.

"Jais? How are
we doing for money?"

"Hm? Oh. We've
got the twenty that guy gave you a few nights ago for fixing his
car, and some spare change."

"Maybe we can
find a bar between here and Falias that won't ask for ID," she
suggested. "Complete with the usual fool who, in all his macho
confidence, just
knows
I can't possibly drink him under the
table."

That got her a
quick smile. "Maybe so," he agreed. "Or maybe something else will
come up. Even if nothing does, at least we won't be wandering into
Irminsul as broke as usual. I don't care how good an actual meal
tastes, I hate begging for it." His expression turned distant,
wistful. "Maybe, one of these days, we'll find him..."

No need to ask
who he meant by "him"; she heard the prayer at least once a
day.

"We'll find
him," Aindry assured him, as she always did. "Demon-luck is weird
stuff, it might take us a while, but we'll find him. And you know
Jess. One of these days, we'll come around a corner and he'll be
there. Probably asking what took us so long."

"Maybe." He
shook himself out of that mood, back into the here-and-now. "Wonder
how everything's going in Irminsul. Should be interesting to find
out what we've missed since we were through Endor."

Aindry hugged
her brother with one arm. "Just think, another day or two, and we
can have a warm bed, and hot showers, and real food, something
other than fresh-killed and junk food. Hey, I think I see lights up
ahead. Look."

Jaisan looked.
"I think you're right."

Quiet again.
Aindry relaxed. Jaisan would be too busy thinking of ways to part
fools and money, he'd be all right now. For another night, at
least. It was growing harder all the time to keep him out of the
melancholy, though. What was going to happen when she could no
longer help?

I wish I still
believed in something I could pray to, that Jaisan's right and Jess
is still alive, and that we'll find him before Jais goes too deep
for me to reach him. I don't even want to think what being apart is
doing to Jess, too...

The lights
proved to belong to a village of reasonable size. They scouted
around it, and found it generally average. There were, in fact,
three restaurants, and one advertised a bar on the sign.

"Still too
early," Aindry said; the clock on the bank said it was only a
little past nine. They'd be more likely to find the kind of sucker
they wanted more towards midnight.

Jaisan nodded,
counting through a handful of coins. "What've you got?"

She turned up
two tens, a toonie, a loonie, three quarters, two dimes, and a few
nickels and pennies.

"If we use the
change, we can get fries and a drink to share at one of the other
restaurants, and we'll have twenty dollars to bet," Jaisan
suggested.

"Sounds
good."

* * *

Morning found
them some distance farther along the highway, with forty dollars
between them, thanks to a farmer who couldn't believe that a
slender girl would be able to out-drink him, and his friends who
had been more than confident about making bets with Jaisan.

They left the
road, wandered into the woods, and found a comfortable-looking
place to strip and shift to wolf. Together they hunted a porcupine,
enough meat to give them both a heavy meal, then they returned to
where they'd left their belongings and curled up into a single heap
of black fur to sleep the day away.

32

Shaine prowled
the streets, all senses alert while his mind mulled over possible
sources of money for rent. His luck was no longer as good as it had
once been. He knew why: his lack of purpose in life without Jesse
to watch over was eroding the carefully-erected self-control that
made it possible for him to function in what was, to him, an alien
environment. If Jess only knew what it had cost him, to provoke
that fight to drive Jess away to Haven to stay...

Any cost was
worth it. Jesse was there and had the life he deserved, finally.
However lonely that left Shaine. There seemed little point now, no
more reason to try.

Yet he
continued to fight for survival.

A well-dressed
man of about forty caught his eye. Shaine contemplated walking up
to him and asking for money, backing it with just enough charm to
make it sound like a perfectly reasonable request... he'd gotten
anywhere from ten dollars to fifty by doing that on other
occasions. He took a few steps in that direction, planning out not
only words but inflections and tone as he moved.

A familiar
sensation tingled up Shaine's spine.

Suddenly
losing interest in money, he left the area swiftly, let himself
disappear into the darkness of a back alley. What was going on?
Jesse was supposed to be in Haven!

It took time,
too much time. He couldn't track Jesse properly, there was
something interfering, making him lose his focus repeatedly. His
frustration increased, held in check only by firm self-discipline;
it was taking so long...

The feeling of
the interference was familiar, nagging at him. Something beyond the
fact that Jesse was full-healed and aware of himself now.

He found a
name for it, abruptly, and that name was
elvenmage
.

He all but
stumbled across Jesse with no warning. Jesse, in a back alley,
huddled in a corner, eyes closed, breathing alarmingly fast and
shallow.

Jesse, with an
elf coming unhurriedly closer.

With no
hesitation, Shaine stepped between.

"Get out of my
way," the elf commanded.

Shaine folded
his arms across his chest, feet spread for balance. "No."

The elf
blinked in surprise. "What? I told you..."

With a
powerful magical suggestion behind it, at that. "I heard you. I'm
not moving. Leave him alone."

"I promise
you, I'm not someone you want to mess with." Light shimmered around
the elf, blurring details, making it hard to look at him directly;
Shaine focused a little to one side. Who needed to actually see,
anyway?

"I'm supposed
to be impressed? Go ahead, take your best shot, elf."

The light
gathered around the mage's hand, and he threw it.

Shaine held
quite still, forcing himself to stay calm, but only with
difficulty. Gazing at the ball of fire intently, he called the
moisture of the air around it tightly, suffocating it and dampening
it. Before it touched him, it vanished.

"That was your
best shot?"

The elvenmage
backed off a pace, warily, the halo of light fading away to only a
faint outline. Shaine grinned to himself. Yes, the elf would be
uneasy: to all appearances, it was an entirely ungifted human
facing him so coolly. No mage survived long if he were foolhardy
enough to challenge something he had no way to judge.

Cautiously,
the elf gestured, and coloured light swirled around Shaine,
coalescing into a dome-shaped cage.

Shaine
shrugged, offhandedly. "Yeah, so? What next?"

To judge by
the elvenmage's growing annoyance, he was used to his theatrics
provoking more of a reaction. Another gesture, and the cage began
to constrict.

Shaine sighed,
and closed his eyes briefly, reaching inside. Using anything but
the most basic of his gifts was hard, after so long and after
having locked everything down as ruthlessly and absolutely as
possible. He could do it, though, he just had to find the place
inside where the magic came from, and...