Tapping the Dream Tree (31 page)

“I can handle that as well,” Tyrone told me and he went over to the computer.

I hadn't lied to Mona. I did deal with investments—on-line. I was on the computer for a few hours every day, but I wasn't the hacker Tyrone was. I watched as he hacked into the telephone company's billing database. Within minutes, he had an address match for the phone number. He wrote it down on a scrap of paper and stood up.

“This is my mess,” I told him. “So I'll clean it up.”

“You're sure?”

When I nodded, he handed me the address.

“Don't kill anybody unless you have to,” he said. “But if you do, do it clean.”

I wasn't sure if he meant Mona or her stalker and I didn't want to ask.

After I finished my toast and tea, I decided to go to bed. I wasn't really tired, but maybe I'd get lucky and fall asleep and when I woke up, it would be a whole new day. And it would sure beat sitting around feeling miserable tonight.

I washed up my dishes, then took one last look out the window. And froze. There wasn't one dog out there, but a half-dozen, lounging on the sidewalk across the street like they hadn't a care in the world. And they weren't dogs. I've seen enough nature specials on PBS to know a wolf when I see one.

As I started to let the curtain drop, all their heads lifted and turned in my direction. One got to its feet and began to trot across the street, pausing halfway to look down the block. Its companions turned their gazes in that direction as well and I followed suit.

He was dressed more casually now—jeans and a windbreaker— but I had no trouble recognizing him. My date. Mr. Stalker Man. Oh, where was Rocket Grrl when you needed her?

I knew what I should be doing. Finding something to use as a weapon in case they got in. Dialing 911 for sure. Instead, all I could do was slide down to my knees by the window and stare down at the street.

It was worse than I'd thought. A pack of cousins had gathered outside the address I had for Mona. From the smell in the air, I knew they were out for fun. The trouble is, skinwalker fun invariably results in somebody getting hurt. We're the reason true wolves get such a bad rap. Whenever we're around, trouble follows.

The alpha male rose up into a man shape at my approach. His pack formed a half-circle at his back, a couple more of them taking human shape. I could tell from the dark humor in their eyes that I'd just raised the ante on their night of fun. I realized I shouldn't have turned down Tyrone's offer to help, but it was too late now. I had to brave it out on my own.

“Thanks for the show of force,” I said with way more confidence than I was feeling, “but I don't really need any help to see my girlfriend.”

“She's not your girlfriend,” the alpha male said.

“Sure, she is.”

“Bullshit. That little chickadee's so scared you can smell her fear a block away.”

“Well, you're not exactly helping matters,” I told him.

He gave me a toothy grin, dark humor flicking in his eyes.

“I was walking by the Café when she dumped you,” he said.

I shrugged. “We had a little tiff, no big deal. That's why I'm here now—to make it up with her.”

He shook his head. “She's as scared of you as she is of us. But tell you what, back off and you can have whatever's left over.”

Some of us fit in as we can, some of us live a footloose life. Then there are the ones like these that went feral in the long ago and just stayed that way. Some are lone wolves, the others run in packs.Mostly they haunt the big cities now because in places this large, who's going to notice the odd missing person? People disappear every day.

“Time was,” I said, “when we respected each other's territories. When we put someone under our protection, they stayed that way.”

It was a long shot, but I had this going for me: We're a prideful people. And honor's a big thing between us. It has to be, or we'd have wiped each other out a long time ago.

He didn't like it. I don't know if I spoke to his honor, or whether it was because he couldn't place my clan affiliation and didn't know how big a pack he'd be calling down upon himself if he cut me down and went ahead and had his fun.

“You're saying she's your girlfriend?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Okay. Let's go up and ask her. If she lets you in, we'll back off. But if she doesn't …”

He let me fill in the blank for myself.

“No problem,” I said.

Not like I had a choice in the matter. This was a win-win situation for him. If she let me in, he could back off without losing face. And if she didn't, no one in the clans would take my side because it would just look like I was homing in on their claim.

He stepped back and I walked toward Mona's building. The pack fell in behind me, all of them in human shape now. I glanced up and caught a glimpse of Mona's terrified face in the window. I tried to look as harmless as possible.

Trust me, I told her, willing the thought up to her. It's your life that's hanging in the balance here.

But she only looked more scared.

Then we were on the stairs and I couldn't see her anymore.

“Don't even think about trying to warn her,” the alpha male said from behind me. “She's got to accept you without a word from you or all bets are off.”

The door to the front hall was locked when I tried it. The alpha male reached past me and grabbed the knob, giving it a sharp twist. I heard the lock break, then the door swung open and we were moving inside.

Did I mention that we're stronger than we look?

I was still trying to adjust to the fact that the wolves really had turned into people, when my stalker led them into the apartment building. He looked up at me just before they reached the stairs, his face all pretend sweethess and light, but it didn't fool me. I knew they were going to tear me to pieces.

Get up, get up, I told myself. Call the police. Sneak out onto the fire escape and run for it.

But all I could do was sit on the floor with my back to the window and stare at my front door, listening to their footsteps as they came up the stairs. When they stopped outside my door, I held my breath. Somebody knocked and I just about jumped out of my skin. This uncontrollable urge to laugh rose up in me. Here they were, planning to kill me, yet they were just knocking politely on the door. I was hysterical.

“We can smell you in there.”

That wasn't Lyle, but one of his friends.

I shivered and pressed up against the wall behind me.

“Come see us through the peephole,” the voice went on. “Your boyfriend wants to know if you'll let him in. Or are you still too mad at him?”

I didn't want to move, but I slowly got to my feet.

“If you don't come soon, we'll huff and we'll puff, just see if we won't.”

I stood swaying in the middle of my living room, hugging myself. Wishing so desperately that I'd never left the apartment this evening.

“Or maybe,” the mocking voice went on, “we'll go chew off the faces of the nice couple living below you. They do smell good.”

I was moving again, shuffling forward, away from the phone, toward the door. It was too late to call for help anyway. Nobody was going to get here in time. If they didn't just smash through my door, maybe they really would go kill the Andersons who had the downstairs apartment. And this wasn't their fault. I was the one stupid enough to go out on a blind date with a werewolf.

“That's it,” the voice told me. “I can hear you coming. Show us what a good hostess you are. What a forgiving girlfriend.”

I was close enough now to hear the chorus of sniggers and giggles that echoed on after the voice had finished. When I reached the door, I rose slowly up on my tiptoes and looked through the peephole.

They were all out there in the hall, my stalker and his pack of werewolf friends.

God, I thought, looking at Lyle, trying to read his face, to understand why he was doing this. How could I ever have thought that I liked him?

I knew it was over now. There was no way Mona was going to open the door—not if she had an ounce of sense in her—but at least I'd gotten the pack into a confined space. I couldn't take them all down, but maybe I could manage a few.

I could smell Mona the same as the pack did—smell her fear. She was numbed by it. But maybe once I set on the pack, it'd snap her out of her paralysis long enough to flee out onto the fire escape I'd noticed running up the side of the building. Or perhaps the noise would be enough for the neighbors to call the police. If they could get here before the pack battered down the door, there was still a chance she could survive.

She was on the other side of the door now. Looking out of the peephole. I tried to compose myself, to give her a look that she might read as hope. To convey that I meant her no harm.

But then the alpha male gave me a shove. Without thinking, I snarled at him, face partially shifting, jaws snapping. He darted back, laughter triumphant in his eyes, and I knew what he'd done. He'd shown Mona that I was no different from them. Just another skinwalker. Another inhuman creature, hungry for her blood.

“All you have to do is answer a couple of questions,” the alpha male said, facing the door. “Do you forgive your boyfriend? Will you invite him in?”

There was a long silence.

“Why … why are you doing this?” Mona finally said, her voice muffled by the door. But we all had a wolf's hearing.

“Tut, tut,” the alpha male said. “You're not playing by the rules. You're not supposed to ask a question, only answer ours.”

I knew she was still looking from the peephole.

“I'm sorry, Mona,” I said. “For everything.”

The alpha male turned on me with a snarl. I drew him aside before he could speak, my back to the door.

“Come on,” I told him, my voice pitched low. “You know we had a quarrel. How's this supposed to be fair with you scaring the crap out of her and here I haven't even apologized to her? I mean, take a vote on it or something.”

He turned to his companions. I could see they didn't like it, but my argument made sense.

“Fine,” he said. “You've made your apology.”

He turned to the door and let his face go animal.

“Well?” he snarled. “What's your answer, little chickadee? Your boyfriend says he's sorry so can he come in and play now?”

I almost died when Lyle's face did its half-transformation. The wolfish features disappeared as fast as they had appeared. He turned to me with those beautiful dark eyes of his, and I couldn't see the same meanness and hunger in them that were in the eyes of the others. And I was looking for it, believe me. Then, while I was still caught in his gaze, he went and apologized to me, like none of this was his doing. Like he was sorry for everything, the same as I was. Not just for what he'd said to me in the Café, but because we'd liked each other and then we'd let it all fell apart before we ever gave it a chance to be more.

Call me naive, or maybe even stupider still, but I believed that apology of his was genuine. It was something he needed to say, or that I needed to hear. Maybe both.

I was so caught up in the thought of that, that I didn't even start when the other guy did his half-wolf face thing and began snarling at me. Instead, I flashed on something Lyle had said to me earlier in the evening, back at the Café.

These days most of us just like to fit in, he'd told me. Live a bit in your world, a bit in the animal world. But it wasn't always like that. There have always been those among us who considered everyone else in the world their private prey.

Most of you? I'd asked.

I remember him sighing, almost like he was ashamed, when he'd shaken his head and added, But there are still some that like to hunt.

Like this guy with his animal face and snarl, with his pack of wolfish friends.

But I was done being afraid. I was Rocket Grrl, or at least I was trying to be. I concentrated on this question the wolf-faced leader of the pack kept asking, focusing exactly on what it was he was asking, and why. It felt like a fairy tale moment and I flashed on “Beauty and the Beast,” the prince turned into a frog, the nasty little dwarf who'd moved in on me until an act of kindness set him free. All those stories pivoted around the right thing being said.

That doesn't happen in real life, the rational part of my mind told me.

I knew that. Not usually. But sometimes it did, didn't it?

“Time's up, chickadee,” the alpha male said.

I got myself ready. First I'd try to knock as many of them down the stairs as I could, then I'd shift to wolf shape and give them a taste of what it felt like being hurt. I knew I didn't have a chance against all of them, but I'd still be able to kill a few before they took me down. I'd start with the alpha male.

Except before I could leap, I heard the deadbolt disengage. The door swung open, and then she was standing there, small and blonde and human-frail, but with more backbone than all of this sorry pack of skinwalkers put together, me included. We all took a step back. Mona cleared her throat.

“So … so what you're asking,” she said, “is do I forgive Lyle?”

The alpha male straightened his shoulders. “That's it,” he said. “Part one of a two-parter.”

She didn't even look at him, her gaze going over his shoulder to me.

“I think we were both to blame,” she said. “So of course I do. Do you forgive me?”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I wasn't even worrying about the pack at that moment. I was just so mesmerized with how brave she was. I think the pack was, too.

“Well?” she asked.

All I could do was nod my head.

“Then you can come in,” she said. “But not your friends.”