Wild Blood (20 page)

He woke up to find himself on the floor. He picked himself up, his legs as wobbly as a newborn cub's. He rubbed his aching forehead as he stared at the Wolfcane.

Rosie moaned again, drawing his attention. He had to get her out of the lodge before her disappearance was discovered. He glanced back at the Wolfcane. Without understanding why, he reached for it. The moment his hand closed about the staff his fur prickled and began to sprout without his willing it. He returned to where Rosie lay and picked her up, tossing her over his right shoulder so that his hands were free to carry the Wolfcane.

“C'mon, girl,” he said to his unconscious passenger. “It's time to get the Hell out of Dodge.”

They managed to get as far as the parking lot before being spotted. Skinner was moving fast and low, doing his best to keep to the deep shadows, when he was hit from behind. The force of the blow knocked him off his feet, sending Rosie flying. Instinctively, he swung the Wolfcane at his attacker.

The vargr danced backward, avoiding the blow. Skinner's guts cinched tight as he recognized the Mohawk crest running down the hulking werewolf's back. “I thought it was some fuckin' coyotero. But it's you!” Hew snarled. “Jag was right! You aren't one of us! You're some kind of fuckin' traitor!”

“Hew—Step down. I don't want to hurt you.”

“I'm shaking,” the werewolf snorted in derision. Suddenly his eyes widened as he realized what Skinner was holding. “You're trying to steal the Wolfcane!” Hew lunged forward, wrapping his talons about Skinner's throat and he snapped his fangs a millimeter from his nose.

Skinner dropped the Wolfcane as he tried to force the werewolf's slavering jaws back from his own throat. The struggling werewolves fell to the ground, rolling around in the loose gravel of the parking apron, growling and snarling like rabid dogs. Skinner fought like a mad thing, but it was no use. Hew was nearly twice his size and outweighed him by a good fifty pounds. It was only a matter of time before the bigger werewolf would get enough leverage to snap Skinner's neck like a dry twig.

Hew rolled his opponent onto his back, pinning his arms to his side. “You don't deserve to run with us,” he spat into Skinner's face. “You're nothing but a stinking, lousy traitor!” Hew reached out to grab the fallen Wolfcane and lifted it on high so as to deliver a single, killing blow to Skinner's skull.

But just as he did so, something big and hairy blindsided him, knocking Hew clear. He yelped in alarm, and then there came the sound of massive, powerful jaws tearing into meat and bone. Something warm, wet and sticky dripped into Skinner's face.

He stared up at the creature crouching over him. At first he thought it was a wolf. It wasn't until it whined and licked his nose that he recognized the ulfr he had freed from the trap a few days earlier. “Good boy,” he rasped, getting to his feet.

Hew lay sprawled on his back, his throat torn out and his head hanging by a few shreds of muscle. He looked like he was trying to make snow angels in a pool of his own blood. The ulfr trotted over to Hew's corpse, sniffed it, then raised a leg and let loose with an arc of steaming piss.

“I like your style, fella,” Skinner smiled crookedly as he retrieved the Wolfcane.

“You know they're not going to let you get away with this, pup,” Shaggybreeks said as he stepped out of the shadows, clothed in his human skin.

Upon seeing him the ulfr wagged its tail.

“They'll bring you down like a wounded deer for that,” the old Viking said, pointing to Hew's body. “You don't stand a chance against them—at least not on foot.”

“Are you going to stop me?”

“Why should I?” Shaggybreeks shrugged. “I have nothing in common with these inbred fools. The fact the ulfr has cast its lot with yours is a good sign, as far as I'm concerned.” He pulled a keychain from of his vest pocket and tossed it to Skinner. “Here. They're to the Caddy. It's yours—provided you take the Hound with you.”

“Isn't he dead?” Skinner frowned.

“As he'll ever be,” Shaggybreeks chuckled. “But that's not the point. I want you to take his body and once you've gone as far as you can in the Caddy, you set both it and him on fire. Ideally, I would have preferred to have set him adrift on a blazing funeral bark, but you can't have everything.”

Skinner and Shaggybreeks hurried to the waiting vehicle, Rosie suspended between them like a rag doll. Skinner placed her carefully on the floor of the back seat, draping an old car rug on top of her.

“The Hound's in the trunk,” Shaggybreeks explained. “I've already wrapped him in his winding sheet and put the coin under his tongue. The rest is up to you.”

“What happens if they discover you helped us escape?”

“If it is my time to die, so be it. But they'll have to find me first. Much has changed since I came into this world, Skinner. I have watched its boundaries grow until I no longer had a place in it. So to hell with everything—both human and vargr!”

Skinner opened the driver's side door. Before he could climb in, the ulfr bounded into the car ahead of him, positioning itself on the passenger's side of the front seat, wagging its tail. Skinner paused then looked back at the old werewolf.

“Shaggybreeks—It's not too late. You can come with us.”

The Viking laughed and clapped Skinner on the shoulder hard enough to nearly knock him to the ground. “Don't worry about me, pup! I might be unafraid to die, but I'm far from digging my own grave! I think I'll drop my human skin and run Wild. Who knows? Maybe I'll find myself a nice little she-wolf to spend my declining years with? Now clear out of here, before the rest of the lodge finds out what you've been up to!”

Skinner slid behind the wheel and closed the door. The engine turned over immediately. Skinner was duly impressed. Compared to his stepfather's old pickup, the Hound's Caddy was a mechanic's wet dream.

Skinner threw the Caddy into gear and headed away from the lodge. As he drew close to the front gate, he could see two guards talking into their hand-held radios. Suddenly, one of them caught sight of the approaching vehicle and pointed. The second dropped his radio and reached for the automatic weapon slung across his back. Skinner floored it. The first guard let fly with a barrage, taking out the passenger-side rearview mirror and blinding one of the high beams before the Cadillac struck him. The ulfr stood with its front paws on the dashboard, barking enthusiastically and wagging its tail.

Skinner was so excited he didn't even realize he was still in his Wild skin until they were on the main road and a truck passing him from the opposite direction nearly skidded off the highway.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“I knew the cur was trouble from the start,” Feral growled.

“You should have let me kill him,” Jag snarled, fingering the black velvet patch that covered his ruined eye.

“I heard you both the first time,” Lady Melusine sighed. She turned to fix Rend with a disapproving scowl. “I hold you personally responsible for all this. It was you who brought that
traître
into our midst!”

Rend lowered his gaze, unable to meet the others' glares. He had failed the pack and everyone knew it.

“But I don't want him dead!” Jez sniffled into one of her dame's lace hankies.

“Now-now,
chérie
,” Lady Melusine said with a cluck of her tongue. “You can't have
everything
your way.”

“Why not?”

The Bitch-Queen sighed and shook her head, then returned her attention to Rend. “As penance, you are to track down the traitor and kill him and the coyotero bitch he ran off with. You will also return the Wolfcane to its rightful place. Failure to any one of these things will be punished by death. Is that understood?”

“Yes, milady.”

“Now get out of my sight. I don't want to see you again until you have Skinner's head in one hand and the Wolfcane in the other.”

Whatever Shaggybreeks might have been in his post-Viking life, it most certainly wasn't a poor man. A search of the Caddy's glove compartment produced several credit cards in different names and a roll of bills big enough to choke a pygmy hippo.

Skinner stopped in Durango long enough to buy himself some clothes that actually fit, as he had been forced to clothe himself in dirty laundry he'd found in the backseat. Luckily, no one working at the Wal-Mart Supercenter gave the barefoot young man with the silvery hair, dressed in a shirt three sizes too big and pair of pants so large they were held up by a length of cord, a second look. Forty-five minutes later, he walked out with a pair of cowboy boots, jeans, a couple of flannel shirts and a denim jacket, and flowered print dress for Rosie, although he had to guess her size, since she was still unconscious.

An hour later, the ulfr turned around and peered into the backseat and began to whine. A few moments later, Skinner heard Rosie groan. As his eyes checked the rearview mirror, he saw her sit up.

“Wh-where am I?”

“You're in a 1959 Cadillac, headed west.”

She rubbed at her puffy, swollen eyes and frowned at the back of Skinner's head. “Who are you?”

“Don't you remember?”

“I remember plenty,” Rosie said bitterly. “But I don't recall you.”

“We met at your grandmother's house.”

He could see her looking at him in the rear-view, and his heart leapt as their reflected gazes met. “I'm sorry I pointed my gun at you. I thought you were just another vargr trying to get Root Woman to lead you to my people.”

Skinner wanted to ask her some more questions, but before he could, Rosie rolled down the window and stuck her head outside, so she could be loudly and violently sick. The ulfr thought this was an excellent idea and, using its prehensile thumb, rolled down its own window as well.

It was going to be one hell of a road trip.

Skinner pulled into a tiny off-brand motel in Tuba City later that same night. He registered using the name from one of the myriad credit cards he'd found in the glove box. As he signed the register, the motel manager squinted in the direction of the Caddy parked outside the office door.

“We don't allow pets in the rooms, mister. You're going to have to put your dog in the kennel overnight.”

“Dog?” Skinner turned around to see the ulfr sitting in the front seat. In the poor light, it could almost pass for a particularly large German Shepherd. “Oh! The dog! He's so much a part of the family I forget he's not, you know, not human.”

The desk clerk smiled and nodded. “My wife's the same way with her Chihuahua. The kennel is located behind the motel, near the swimming pool. Here's the master key; it'll unlock any of the three pens. I hope you and your wife have a pleasant stay.”

“Look, I don't like this any more than you do,” Skinner whispered. He squatted down so that he was eye level with the ulfr, ruffling the thick fur about its neck as he spoke. “Until we reach Rosie's people, we're all going to have to pretend we're something we're not. We can't draw any attention to ourselves, do you understand?”

The ulfr whined and glanced toward the kennel, which consisted of a bare poured concrete slab surrounded by a six-foot-high hurricane fence and subdivided into three individual units four feet wide and eight feet deep.

“C'mon, fella,” Skinner said, touching the half wolf's muzzle with his own nose. “It's important.”

The ulfr whined again, licked Skinner's face and, with a heavy sigh, walked into the pen.

“That's a good fella!” Skinner said as he closed the door of the pen, smiling at his friend. “I'll buy you a nice fresh T-bone tomorrow, to make up for it. How's that sound?”

As he walked back toward his room, Skinner noticed a middle-age man lounging in an open doorway a couple of units down. The man's suit was rumpled and his tie askew and he held a smoldering cigarette pinched between his fingers. Skinner guessed him to be the proverbial traveling salesman.

“You really got that dog of yours trained! I wish I could get my beagle to behave like that.”

“Yeah, well, it helps that he's a really smart dog.”

“What's his name?”

“Uh—Fella.”

“That's a good, solid name for a dog that size. I can't stand it when people name their dogs shit like Chloe and Nathan, like they're their kids. So—what is he? I've never seen a dog that big before.”

“He's half wolf.”

The salesman raised an eyebrow. “Really? Wow! Is he dangerous?”

“Not to me.”

Rosie was sitting cross-legged on the double bed nearest the wall, watching the television. She was wearing the dress he'd bought for her earlier that day. Her hair was freshly washed and fanned across her shoulders to dry. The bruises had vanished from her face, but she still looked pale, despite her natural complexion.

“You feeling okay?” he asked solicitously.

“I feel a lot better than I did. Thanks for getting me out of there. That was very brave of you.”

“It was just the way I was raised,” he explained. “If someone's in trouble, you try to help them.”

“I see. And what about the ulfr?”

“He's my friend. I freed him from a trap on the lodge grounds, and he saved my bacon when I was trying to rescue you.”

Rosie barked a tiny laugh. “You are a strange vargr! Do you always go out of your way to help others?”

Skinner felt his cheeks color. “Is it so strange for a vargr to show compassion?”

“To something besides a fellow vargr? I think you already know the answer to that question.”

“So, tell me—why do the vargr hate your people so?”

“They don't hate us; they fear us because we still have our magic.” When she saw the look of confusion on his face, she smiled apologetically. “There is a story among my people that a long time ago, all of the shifting kind possessed magic. The coyotero had coyote magic, the kitsune had fox magic, and the berskirs had bear magic, and so on.