Silver Moon (A Women of Wolf's Point Novel) (21 page)

Almost every time the woman saw her, she was angry or wounded or turning back from being a wolf. Come to think of it, it was hard to imagine why the Nester leader thought she was vulnerable to persuasion. She must be sending out some confused vibes, visible only to wolf senses or something along those lines.

But perhaps starting out by asking that question was the way to go. She filed the thought away as she pulled up in Millie’s parking lot. As she’d hoped, the place was crowded but not too crowded.

She walked in and grabbed a table for two in a deserted corner. If Oya brought one of her thugs, he could just stand. For the first time, it occurred to her to wonder why all the Nesters she’d seen were guys except for Oya. Not that the woman seemed to be out to develop an empowering sisterhood of ex-wolves or anything but you’d think there’d be at least one other woman in the group.

She didn’t have long to ponder. Oya came through the door like she owned the place. Becca couldn’t see anyone waiting outside for her, but then, that didn’t mean there weren’t any Nesters out there. She tried not to think about Shelly as Oya sat down; it would too easy to get angry. Instead she and Oya faced each other like wary cats.

Finally, Becca spoke first, “Well, here we are again.”

Oya smiled. “It looks like things have changed quite a bit since then. But then, I knew it would. So what happened to make you reconsider?”

“And what’s always made you think I might be open to it? It’s not the most flattering thing anyone’s ever thought about me, that I’m a pushover.” Becca made herself not shout, not reach across the table to throttle this woman who was holding them all in her power.

“You’re the one I see most often. But apart from that, you’re a regular normal woman. Not like some of these fools who grew up here and thinks that growing fur and fangs once a month is part of their birthright.” The waitress interrupted her and took their orders. Becca couldn’t help but notice that Oya still liked her meat rare, whatever her current feelings about the wolves.

She tried to weigh what she knew so far. Oya resented the wolves and thought she was on a mission of some sort, that much was clear. Now how did she get to more? “I heard that you grew up here, maybe used to be one of those fools yourself.” She made her words a challenge. “So what made you break away? For that matter, what brought you back?”

Oya’s eyes flashed for a moment, then she seemed to remember where she was and who she was talking to. She smiled, almost like she meant it. “Yes, I did grow up here. That means that I’ve seen firsthand what it means to have monsters running your town. I told you what they did to my family, but I can understand that when you’re still one of them, that can be hard to believe. If I hadn’t lived through it, I never would have believed it either.”

You can say that again.
Becca stopped the words before they could get past her lips, and went with her second choice, “You came back for revenge then? Is that it?”

Oya gave her an enigmatic smirk and tapped her finger on her chin.

This wasn’t getting much out of the Nester, so it was time to try a different approach. She looked down at the table and rubbed her cheeks with her hands. It wasn’t too hard to remember how scared she’d felt changing the first time. “I don’t know what to believe. Changing is horrible…horrible. I never know what I’m going to do next or even remember most of what I did the last time. It’s like being two different people or something.”

Oya’s breath hissed through her teeth and when Becca looked back up, the other looked sympathetic, kindly even. It was hard to reconcile her expression with what Becca already knew of her. Right now, she looked positively saintly.

She reached out and covered one of Becca’s hands with her own. “I’ve been in the same place you’re in now. Back then, there was no one to help me. I had to gather allies and find a cure on my own. This time, you’ve got me.”

Indeed.
Becca forced her mouth to tremble, just a bit. Tears would be too much, even if she could summon them. She knew that instinctively. Instead she settled for squeezing Oya’s hand back, then pulling her hand away. She took a deep breath and rubbed her eyes like she was pulling herself together. Then she looked up at Oya. “I want to see your proof before this goes any further. I have to know that you can really make me better.”

Oya gave her a sidelong glance, then nodded. “Okay. You’ll need to come with me to see what you want to see though. Are you ready to do that now?”

Becca nodded just as the waitress arrived with their burgers. They ate them quickly and silently. Becca put money down for her tab, then after a moment, picked up Oya’s as well. “After what you’re willing to do for me, this is the least I can do.” She smiled across the table, managing not to flinch as Oya’s expression shifted to suspicious, then blank. Had she done something wrong? It was hard to tell.

They left Millie’s together and walked toward the parking lot. Before Oya could open the door to the familiar white van, Becca jerked her head. “My car. I’m not ready to get in that thing yet.” After a minute, Oya followed her over and got in. Becca took a deep breath. “Okay. So where am I going?”

“Head out to the highway. I’ll give you more directions once we get there.”

Becca pulled out, hoping that Erin was somewhere nearby and following. She was startled to see the white van pull out immediately after them. It followed them out to the highway but turned right when Oya gestured to her to turn left.

In the mirror, she could see another car follow the van. She wondered if it was someone from the Pack and her stomach churned with anxiety. It was lonely out here without back-up. She glanced at Oya. Her passenger looked more relaxed than she had back at the diner. Time to try again.

“So you said you left to find a cure, but not why you came back. Once you found what you were looking for, why return?”

Oya studied her for a moment, then looked back outside. “If you found a cure for an illness, a cure that might save people from hurting others, wouldn’t you want to share it? I’m from here, Becca. I cared about this town growing up. Once I knew that the cure worked, I couldn’t just abandon them.”

Which would make more sense if you didn’t seem to be trying to kill us most of the time.
Becca frowned like she was turning over Oya’s words in her mind. “I guess I can understand that. But you went about it all wrong, attacking us like that. I bet a lot of us would have been willing to listen to you if you’d just come down to the Women’s Club and talked to us.”

“Really?” Oya laughed. “I don’t think so, Becca. Wolf’s Point hasn’t changed that much. The wolves who killed my parents, they’re still around. As is the sheriff who looked the other way.”

This time, Becca let her astonishment show. The sheriff didn’t know about the wolves. So why did Oya think he was covering anything up? She wondered how to ask without sounding too incredulous.

“Turn here,” Oya gestured at a side road.

Becca turned the car with another glance in her mirror. Nothing back there that she could see. She was on her own. It was an empty, scary feeling. “Where are we going, anyway?”

All she could see up this way were a couple of scattered houses, and something that looked like a farm off in the distance on the lower slopes. They were going up the mountains from Wolf’s Point into a part of the valley that she didn’t know at all. She looked around, hoping to find enough landmarks that she could find the place again.

It seemed that her efforts hadn’t gone unnoticed. “This is just a temporary base where we’ve been doing some of our work. We’ll move out of here in a few days to a better spot.” Oya jerked her head. “Pull over here. We’ll need to walk the rest of the way.”

Becca pulled into a mowed patch at the end of a dirt road. “Road” didn’t really quite describe the overgrown trail in front of them. There was no way her car was going up there and it didn’t look like the white van would have made it either. She wondered how they got in and out. Maybe there was another entrance somewhere else.

Once she got out of the car, she reluctantly followed Oya up the trail. The Nester leader didn’t look back. It was as if she just expected that Becca would keep on following her wherever she went. Becca thought about tossing a pebble at her back just for the fun of it, then realized that she was onto something that might be helpful later. She pretended to stumble and trip, catching herself with her hands and making sure to rub her palm on the rock in front of her.

When they went a little further up, she caught a tree branch in her hand like she was pushing it out of the way. With any luck, she was leaving enough of her scent behind that she could find the trail again once she got away. Or the Pack could find her in case something went wrong.

They came around a curve into a clearing occupied by a big white trailer. There was a sudden sharp noise as a man in camouflage rose from behind some bushes and pointed a rifle at them. Becca flinched and growled, part of her wondering if she could move fast enough to take him out before he shot her.

Oya held up her hand. “She’s with me, García. Stand down.”

He lowered the rifle but kept watching Becca, suspicion clearly written on his features. “What’s she doing here?” His voice had a growl buried deep inside it and Becca sniffed the air around him, carefully rubbing her nose to hide it. He smelled like Scott and looked like him too, when she met his eyes. There was something lurking there, a wolf in hiding. She could feel her lip curl over one incisor.

Oya stepped between them. “Stop it. She’s come for our help, Bob. I brought her up to show her what we’re doing, how we can make them all normal again. Come on, Becca.”

Becca glanced at García again. He’d been in the van with Scott, she realized now. He’d been the one who’d shot at them. She wondered if Oya knew about that, wondered how much control Oya really had over these guys. García bared his teeth at her in something approaching a wolf’s snarl on a human face. It was all she could do to walk past him without lunging for his throat.

But she thought about Shelly and forced herself to follow Oya up to the trailer, which sat on a ridge in the middle of the clearing. Oya rapped on the door, the three knocks clearly a signal to someone inside. After a moment, the door swung open. A burly looking man in a doctor’s coat stared down at her like he was trying to decide whether or not to let them in.

He must have decided to go for it, since he stepped back as Oya moved forward. She climbed the rusting steps and Becca followed, the hairs on the back of her neck tingling. Once inside, it was clear that the Nesters had knocked out the walls to make more room; she could see the rusting bolts and stains where they used to be. The kitchen was still in place but now there was a kind of makeshift lab set up in it, with glass jars and a microscope and some kind of heating device on the countertop. Becca wished she’d paid more attention back in high school chemistry so she’d know what some of it was.

Then a movement caught her eye and she turned to see Scott strapped down on a table in one corner of the room. He stared at her and growled softly. It didn’t sound like a greeting but it did help to distract her from the fact that he was naked. Becca looked over at Oya only to find the Nester watching her for her reaction. “He getting a little out of control or something?”

This time Scott snarled but went silent as Oya turned and frowned at him. “Some of us require more frequent doses of the drug than others. I only need it every six months now—” Oya smiled triumphantly—“but Scott still needs weekly doses. Eventually, that will go to a monthly dose. It depends on how long you’ve been changing and how much control you have.”

Scott convulsed, his back bowing against the straps that held him on the table until Becca could hear them creak. His widow’s peak was more pronounced now and when he looked at her, she could see the wolf in his eyes. She couldn’t stop herself from glancing outside. It wasn’t dark yet, let alone moonrise, so why was he starting to change? His hands were scrabbling on the table fabric, their nails growing into claws when Becca looked down.

She grabbed a flimsy metal frame chair and held in front of her as a shield. Oya laughed. “That won’t stop him if he breaks free.”

Becca gave her a quick cold glance. “I just aim to slow him down long enough to even the odds. If he breaks free. Why is he changing now anyway? That a side effect of the cure?” Oya and the Nester doctor or whatever he was ignored her and she didn’t ask again. She’d just have to learn what she could by watching them.

The man in the lab coat finished filling up a syringe at the counter and walked over to the table. Becca couldn’t help but notice that he moved cautiously as he approached the table, turning himself sideways to make a smaller target.

They’d done this before, obviously, but then she knew that. But it didn’t always work the way they planned and that was very good to know. The Nester doctor reached out to hold Scott’s shoulder and she could see white scars on his arm. A few looked pretty recent. So much for the cure’s being permanent.

The needle sank into Scott’s neck and he screamed. He shook so hard it looked like he was having a seizure. The blood drained from his face, making him even paler and his eyes rolled back in his head. Becca thought he was going to pass out.

But after a moment, his hands began to look like hands again. He sagged back against the table, the fight draining out of him. His eyes opened and she saw the scared boy he’d been, probably back before he got bitten, staring out of them. It was almost enough to make her pity him.

Then his eyes closed and he went limp.
In more ways than one,
Becca thought as she realized that he’d had en erection when he started to change. Clearly it had been a while if she’d been able to ignore that until it went away. She shoved the thought into the back of her mind to take out and examine later.

Oya and the medic exchanged comments, their voices too low for Becca’s human hearing. She took a moment to look around the trailer while she strained to listen. It didn’t look like there was anything more to the place than what she could see: one room with a kitchen. Even the bathroom was open, shielded from the rest of the room by a curtain. This couldn’t be where they were holding Shelly. A wave of disappointment hit her hard. But then, she’d suspected it wouldn’t be that easy.