Wolf Bride (20 page)

His yell sounded pained and surprised and I thrust again before he could move to stop me. All I could reach from my disadvantaged position on the ground was his leg just above the knee. Screaming, he pulled the knife out and smashed the hilt of it against my temple.

I held onto the moon as long as I could while the edges of my vision crumpled in on itself. Smaller and dimmer the moonlight grew until I gasped with relieving the effort, and gave into the darkness.

Luke

I’d arrived just in time to watch them die.

Jeremiah, whose face was bloodied and swollen, was already noosed to a tree with a fidgeting white horse under him. A Hell Hunter trotted out of the tree line behind the house with Kristina flung limply across his horse’s withers. A thin line of blood trailed down the white coat of the horse where her head rested and I covered my mouth to stifle the anguished sound that threatened to come from it.

I lay on my belly in the snow, loading my Peace Makers. If they were dyin’ tonight, then I was goin’ with them.

Evelynn French must’ve found us a real threat to send five Hell Hunters after us. If that woman had been anything, she’d been thorough. One was hauling Kristina into the house, the second was pouring what smelled like lantern oil across the outside. Another was checking the noose around Jeremiah’s throat while a man with his back to me stood on foot holding the prancing hang horse, and the last of the hunters stood lookout. It was him who was close enough.

I steadied the pistol over my forearm and took a deep breath, held it, and pulled the trigger. He dropped like a sack of flour and the others drew their weapons. Shouted orders flew this way and that and I pulled the hammer back and aimed for the man who was tightening the noose. Jeremiah was closer to the house and if he were free, he’d be able to get to Kristina quicker.

“You missed one,” a deep voice rumbled from behind me.

I rolled over just in time to see the butt of a rifle coming down on my head.

****

Kristina

The smell was what woke me up. You couldn’t mistake the smell of lantern oil for anything else. It filled my head. The throbbing that blasted through my eardrums pinpointed into a small space on my temple. With the back of my hand, I wiped blood away from a knot the size of a small egg. It had a pulse of its own. I retched at the blinding pain, and then retched again. Where was I?

I forced myself into a sitting position and my head lolled as I waited for my vision to clear enough to give me any clue on where that awful man had taken me. The fuzzy edges solidified little by little. Home.

A chair stood haphazardly beside me, and I used it to prop myself up. With all of my weight, I pressed against the back door but something had it firmly jammed closed. I stumbled to the front door with my hand shielding my nose from the nauseating smell. It too wouldn’t budge, no matter how much I pounded and flung my body against it. At the too small window, I shoved the curtains out of the way and fought for breath when I saw what they’d done to Jeremiah.

He struggled against hand restraints as he sat upon a large white horse by the big tree near the house. A gag filled his blood-soaked mouth and a noose hung around his neck. If my blood ran cold seeing that, the next realization froze it in place. A cloaked man, much stronger than he should’ve been, carried a man’s limp body over to a second horse and forced him into an upright sitting position before another cloaked man punched him across the face.

Luke.

A man on a horse tied a noose around Luke’s neck while I banged on the thick paned window and screamed for him.

It only took him a few seconds to grasp the situation before his wolf-lightened eyes swung in an arch to me and held understanding. His hands were already tied and he screamed something I couldn’t understand from behind his gag.

The cloaked man on the horse grabbed his chin and forced his face in my direction just as a tiny lick of flame flew through the air and hit the side of the house with a tiny
click
. Such a small and unassuming sound for the destruction it brought. The sides of the house were up in flames in a matter of moments, and I sobbed with the realization of what they intended to do.

A man stood outside with flickering fire reflecting off his smile.

“Did Evelynn French send you?” I screeched in anger.

His laughter grew louder. “God sent us,” he said.

They were insane. There was nothing right about these men. I had to think.

Flames licked the wall and smoke billowed into the cabin. I dropped down under the fog of it and scrambled to my room and then to Jeremiah’s collecting the Derringer and a loaded pistol. By the time I’d reached the living room, I couldn’t get close enough to the window to shoot the man laughing at my slow death. The back of the house was burning too, and rafters of the roof were beginning to splinter and fall. There was no point in screaming. No one would hear me but the people who would find amusement in it. And if my screams reached the Dawson men’s ears just before their own deaths, well, I didn’t want to send them into the next life with that sound echoing in their minds.

I broke out a back window but it was too small for me to fit through. As I sat on the hot floor and kicked at the back door over and over again, the guns in my pockets rocked with the rhythm of my movement. I scrambled out of the way as a rafter above the back door fell.

I was doomed.

My skin was scorching like I was in the cast iron pot with the bear roast. Sweat ran down the sides of my face and pooled near my breasts as sobs wracked my body. It was a horrible way to die, knowing such pain was coming and with the knowledge the one I loved would die within moments. I’d never even got to say goodbye or that I was sorry.

I covered my eyes as the door exploded inward. With a tremendous crash, it opened completely. Through the flames and smoke, I could see the outline of a man.

“Kristina, give me your hand.”

I couldn’t breathe anymore because the smoke was so thick. Maybe this was what it was like to die—imagining someone saving you. If I took his hand, would I go to Heaven?

“Dammit, Kristina, move!”

Okay, there was no cursing in Heaven. I squinted through the smog.

It was Elias! In a burst of hope I ran for him but the flames engulfed the floors and wall. I wouldn’t make it. My eyes burned from the billowing smoke and I coughed over and over again.

“Jump. You have to,” he said.

And I did. The flames gobbled me up, licking at my dress and jacket. I quieted the screams of pain as I fell into the snow. Trudy, with her angel’s face, threw snow onto me until the burning stilled and Elias tore the flame riddled jacket from my body.

Luke, Luke, Luke
. “You need to go,” I cried. “I have to save them, but those men will kill you if they find you here.”

Trudy clutched onto Elias’s arm. “Help her.”

He nodded. “Run for the woods, honey. Stay inside of those tracks.” He pointed to the ones I’d made earlier. “Don’t jostle the baby.” He kissed her hard before she ran.

The shrouded men were all gathered around the horses that held Luke and Jeremiah. Their backs were to us as we ran low to the ground in front of the burning cabin.

The crack of my Derringer being cocked seemed awfully loud in that clearing full of death. I aimed it for the big man—the one with the uncanny strength.

“Traitor,” I growled as they all turned around. “You’re a werewolf, aren’t you?” I didn’t need an answer; his bright gray eyes were enough. “Hunting down good families of your own kind. It’s what you do, isn’t it?”

The devil was in his smile. “You sure you know how to use that, little lady?”

“Doesn’t seem to matter much where I shoot you, so long as it’s silver shot, right?”

His smile froze in place but dropped its humor.

“Release them, or so help me, I’ll blow a hole through you so soundly, I’ll be able to see moonlight through you.”

“Do as she says. Now,” Elias said from behind. I couldn’t see him, but I knew he had two pistols up and ready.

The other men drew their weapons slowly. “Now,” the wolf said. “Which one is your mate? They can’t both be yours, surely. We wolves don’t share so well.”

“Don’t,” I said as he moved steadily toward Luke.

“From what I hear, your monster has eyes so green, they’d blind you. At least that’s what Ms. French told us, and she heard it from someone he messed up pretty good. What was his name? Stringer? Struden? Streider. That’s it. Shame your man wasn’t here protecting you, Ms. Yeaton, but understandable. We wolves are also a fickle lot.”

He slapped the horse under Luke with an echoing smack and it flexed for just an instant before it thundered off. Luke’s body jerked as he dangled from the tree and I made the decision. I’d die if I took my aim away from the wolf, but I had to if I wanted Luke to have a chance at living. I swung my little pistol in an arch and aimed it on the rope that was strangling the life out of the man I loved. The sound was deafening as I pulled the trigger and the rope snapped in two. His brilliant eyes never left mine as he fell to the ground and a great weight pushed me backward into the snow.

Gunfire erupted from everywhere.

So this was what it was like to die. My lungs begged for air that wasn’t coming, but I accepted my fate. The end of my life would be spent looking at Luke’s face. It was much better than dying alone and burning in the cabin that lit up the clearing. Luke yelled around his gag and ripped his hands out of the tie behind him. He didn’t react to the ricochet of bullets that pummeled the tree bark and snow around us. I alone held his attention as he slid closer.

His weight was warm and solid, a comforting safety after all these months of cold. He protected my broken body with his own. “It’s okay, darlin’. I’m here,” he murmured over and over against my ear until I could finally breathe.

Jeremiah stood over us with pale, unnatural eyes the color of blue morning snow. “The wolf’s still alive,” he growled.

Luke’s mouth took a grim set and he took the pistol Jeremiah offered. The cloaked wolf dragged his bullet riddled body through the snow, leaving a trail of red behind him. He hadn’t gotten very far. An eerie chuckle of one not afraid of death echoed against the night air and I turned away as Luke pulled the trigger. It was his revenge to take, but I didn’t have to watch.

“Elias!” Trudy screamed as she came running from the other side of the burning cabin. The worry was thick in her voice, but it needn’t be. Elias was standing next to the sheriff, talking in a low voice. The sheriff? I blinked hard but he was still here.

“She’s hurt,” Elias mumbled when Trudy reached him.

“Oh, sweet girl,” she muttered over me.

“I don’t feel anything,” I said. It was true. I was numb to everything except the warm tear that trickled down the outside corner of my eye.

“You will once we get you away from this snow and thawed out. We need to get her to a warm bed. I have a salve at home that’ll help, but we need to go now.”

“I’ll stay back and take care of the bodies,” the sheriff said. “I’ll get you all cleared of this.”

Luke shook the lawman’s hand and thanked him before running to the barn to strap the team to the flat bed buggy.

Luke cradled my head in his lap in the buggy while Elias drove and Jeremiah rode his horse. Trudy fussed over me, but really I was fine. I still didn’t feel anything but a dull ache on one side and up my neck.

“Jeremiah,” Trudy said. “I need you to track me down a possum. We need the fat.” He disappeared into the woods without a word and Luke shed his jacket and started to put it over my shivering body.

Trudy caught his arm. “Don’t you dare,” she breathed. “The second she warms up, she’s going to be screaming and you’ll want to be far away for that. Help me keep the burns packed with snow.”

Burns. That must’ve been what caused the dull aching. I must have been burned worse than I thought in the cabin. Luke’s eyes were shielded and calm and he wouldn’t look at me. I closed my eyes against the pain in my chest. Nothing had changed. He’d come back in hopes that I’d already moved on and away from here. He didn’t come back because he wanted me. He’d come back because it was his home.

“Will I scar?” I asked.

The air was filled with the sound of snorting horses, and squeaking wheels, and wood that groaned against shrinkage in the cold.

“Yes,” Trudy finally whispered.

I sighed. The breath in front of me looked like the smoke that billowed from the remnants of the cabin. “How will I ever find a husband now?”

No one ever answered, so I lost myself in watching the stars twinkling around their mother moon.

Luke

How was she supposed to find another husband? Those words were a slice across my innards. I was right here! But maybe she’d changed her mind after I left. Maybe she wasn’t here for me. Maybe she’d stayed for Jeremiah. The thought of her loving another man made me sick inside.

She’d changed in the months I’d been gone. Winter always changed everyone but she was different in other ways. Yes, she looked thinner, but it wasn’t from not eating. Jeremiah would’ve provided for her so she wouldn’t go hungry. Her thinner frame was from being outside and helping with the ranch. I’d bet my pistols on that. Her eyes had changed too. I hadn’t ever seen anything but bottomless happiness and humor in them, but now they held the shadows of doubt and sadness.

I’d done that.

Her head was a solid weight against my thigh but this could be the last time she let me near enough to feel the warmth of her shape against my clothes. She shook like the tail of a rattlesnake, and the clatter of her teeth pulled on my heart with every mile. I wanted to lie down next to her and warm her with my own heat, but I was helpless to do anything but watch her suffer and know it was going to get so much worse.

But for now, she was safe in my arms. I could reach out and touch her skin if she’d let me. She was breathing, and her heartbeat was a steady comfort in the dark. It became my lullaby as my eyes drooped with heaviness. I couldn’t remember the last time I slept, and with the burden of imminent death for everything I loved lifted, I gave into the drowsiness.

The wagon came to a stop and the rock of it woke me. The shop lanterns had all been extinguished and Elias’s home stood stark and lonely at the end of the dark street.

“Kristina, you still awake?” I asked gently.

She turned her head up to me and the moonlight caressed her cheek and neck. Her voice took a dreamy quality. “I’ll never sleep again.”

“She’s in shock,” Trudy said. “Get her out but be gentle about it.”

Kristina’s eyes grew wide, like a frightened rabbit, as soon as we were inside. The lanterns were out of oil from burning so long, but Elias lit candles and started a fire in the hearth.

I lay her on Trudy’s bed and squatted down next to it with my hands clasped under my chin.

“Out,” Trudy clipped as she pulled tatters of clothing away from Kristina’s burns.

“I’m not leaving her. Not until she tells me to go.”

Kristina stared at a crack between the boards of the wall.

“You seen her naked yet?” Trudy asked.

I shook my head.

“Then get out.”

“Give me a job to do,” I begged. “Something to help her.”

“Go wake up Buddy and tell him to let you at his general store. I need beeswax, honey, and white cloth. The softest you can find.

“It hurts,” Kristina whispered as I walked out of the room. “It really hurts.” The panic rose in her voice. “Trudy, make it stop! Please, it’s getting worse!”

“Luke,” Trudy said quietly. “If the general store don’t have no laudanum, best you track down a doctor who does.”

I walked out the front door to the sound of Kristina’s panic, and her fear followed me down the street like a humming, uninvited companion.

Buddy didn’t have any laudanum at the store, but he swore he’d put an order in for it first thing. Until then, he gave me a small vial of his wife’s personal stash of it that he claimed she took for headaches.

By the time I arrived back at Trudy’s, Jeremiah sat on the front steps skinning a possum. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what possum fat was going to do for her, but Trudy’s confidence was catching. I didn’t know treating burns from treating the grip so if she was certain, that was good enough for me. And besides, I’d seen our drunken town doctor’s work before. He was a big fan of bleeding his patients and that wasn’t going to sit right with me or my wolf.

I had to know.

“Did you bed her?” I asked.

“Nope,” my brother said void of hesitation.
Scrape, scrape, scrape
sounded the knife.

“Did you kiss her?”

“Nope,” he said again. The truth of the word rang clear as a bell, and a little piece of me relaxed. “She’s here for you,” he said.

“I messed up,” I said, like the admission could soothe my agony.

“Yep.”

My boots were loud against the front porch and before I could disappear inside, Jeremiah turned. “Did you kill her?” he asked.

I knew who he meant. He might not have bedded Kristina, but it didn’t take an intelligent man to see they’d formed a bond over these cold months. He wanted her safe, too.

“Evelynn French is dead.”

Jeremiah turned back to the possum. “Good.”

The small bedroom had warmed considerably since I’d left. Kristina was drenched in sweat and dressed in a night gown I didn’t recognize. Trudy looked up with wide eyes, but I came in anyway.

“I’ve seen her in a nightdress,” I assured her.

The white cotton was loose on her and one of the sleeves was ripped off to expose the burns on her arm. Trudy mixed an odorous salve in a glass jar. She added the ingredients I’d tracked down for her in turn.

“What else is in it?” I asked, refraining from the urge to put my hand over my nose.

“A little bit of everything that’ll sooth the burns and help them heal. We used to spread it on the girls who’d been whipped. It takes the fire out.”

I sat heavily into a rocking chair in the corner. “I looked for Elias when I came through town. I wanted his gun slinging abilities with me but you were already trying to get to her. How’d you know?”

“I’ve seen Hell Hunters before.” She ripped the cloth into a small strip and dipped it into the salve. “As soon as I seen those men riding through town, I knew they were headed for your place and nothing good was going to come of it.”

She knew an awful lot about an awful lot. “Where’re you from?”

“The bayous, Mr. Luke. Lots of dark magic out by the bayous.”

Huh. I bet I knew the family of werewolves she’d met and her earlier story of the girl who disappeared didn’t surprise me. “Thank you for coming for her.”

“She’d have done the same thing. Oh!”

I jumped up like I’d been buckshot. “What’s wrong?”

She laughed a little breathlessly. “It’s the baby moving is all. You mind putting this on her burns. My back’s killing me.”

Straining my ears, I heard Trudy’s heartbeat, strong and steady if a little rushed from her scare. Faintly came the steady, faster rhythm of the life inside of her. “The baby’s heart is steady. It’s okay.”

“You can hear it?”

Hear it? I couldn’t take my eyes from the swell of her belly. How many times had I seen Ma swell with child?

“Show me what to do.”

“See there? The laudanum has put her to sleep. Best wrap her fast before she wakes up.”

We watched her in the dark—the rise and fall of her chest, the nonsensical mutterings on her lips, the bandages that hid her injuries. Time and time again my gaze drifted to the letter I’d left her with, folded neatly on the table next to her bed. She’d carried my abandonment in her pocket. How many times had she read those words?

“Kristina told me about you not wanting children,” Trudy breathed. “I know it ain’t easy for your kind to breed, but you’d do best not to take the option away from her.”

“That was part of the reason I left. I don’t want her suffering like my ma did.”

“Suffering? You’re mother raised three boys to adulthood. Heartache is the burden of every mother, but give her the choice.” Trudy grabbed my hand and pressed it against her undulating belly.

Her growing baby kicked and pushed against my palm and the strangest feeling came over me at touching a life so small and fragile.

“Tell her the risks and give her the choice. Don’t take growing your baby in her belly away from her, Luke.”

The walls of the room were coming to crush me. I couldn’t bear the thought of watching Kristina cry like Ma had while burying all of her daughters in their tiny graves. I couldn’t bear the thought of her never holding our sons.

I grabbed my hat and left without another word.

No choice kept us from losing.

****

Kristina

My mouth felt like a cotton ball on a cactus. I’d been riddled with fever dreams I couldn’t quite escape and in the dark before morning, the burning in my body brought me back.

Trudy lay beside me but I couldn’t bring myself to wake her. Luke sat in an old rocking chair in the corner, slumped over with his face resting on his hand. He looked like death warmed over. I didn’t remember him being so skinny, and even in the relaxation of sleep, he still somehow managed to look exhausted. Whatever he’d been doing all these months hadn’t been good for his health. The moonlit window showed enough jaw to tell me he hadn’t shaved it in days. His nose and cheeks were red, windblown, touchable. His neck was raw and open where the rope hung him and his eyes…I gasped. Green pools of color stared back at me.

“I thought you were asleep.” Why was I slurring? This hadn’t been the reunion I’d dreamt about. That one included less clothing and more sobriety.

His voice was gruff and full of sleep. “I heard you wake up. Are you hurting?”

I tried to be quiet and nod but I sucked air in through my teeth at the pain in my neck. “Does it look bad?” His answer mattered.

“You look beautiful.”

“It feels like it looks bad.”

A deep rumbling chuckle came from his corner. “Do you want some more laudanum?”

“Is that what gave me all those terrible dreams?”

“Probably.”

“Then no, but thank you kindly. I’m thirsty.”

The sound of his boots faded into the kitchen and I tried to make sure I was dressed decently. The skin at my neck screamed as I tried to turn my head, so I gave up. Surely Trudy would’ve covered me up well enough.

Try as I might, I couldn’t help the pitiful whimper that burst from my throat when he helped me sit up. I drank more than I needed in an effort not to have to do it again for a long time.

“Can I lie on my good side, so I can see you?”

His eyes traveled the length of my dressing gown. “Your side was burned. The gown will hurt it.”

Like I couldn’t tell my side hurt. It was screeching. “Please?”

He lay me on my side and pulled the rocking chair close, and then gently, slowly, he slid his hand up the thin cotton of the gown leaving a trail of soothing coolness where his touch met mine. His fingertips brushed across my skin as he travelled from knee to hip to waist and stopped just shy of the burn. His hand rested there, creating a barrier of space between my nightgown and blistered skin.

My voice trembled. “Why’d you leave me?” His face dropped but I wanted to see his answer as well as hear it in the rich tone of the voice my ears had missed so much. I rested my hand on his cheek and pulled him back to me. “Why?

“I was scared. I’d never been scared before and I panicked.”

“Scared of what?”

“Letting myself love you. If I lost you, I’d be broken, just like Jeremiah. I thought if you moved on you could be happy, have children, live in the city where you’re safer, find a nice human man to keep you out of the danger you’ll always be in with me. I thought I’d go find you, years from now when you had a babe on your hip and a man, and I’d be able to see how happy you were and maybe I’d be able to live with leaving you then. If I saw I done right by you.” His throat worked as he swallowed. “I saw how you looked at me.” His voice caught. “At
it
. When you saw me change, I couldn’t get the horror on your face out of my head. You were disgusted with what I was. I didn’t want to trap you in a marriage that scared you.”

Tears ran little rivers from the corner of my eyes and I bit my lip to stop it from trembling. Quietly, so only he could hear, I said, “I can’t read.”

He frowned. “So? It don’t make no difference to me if you have words or not, Kristina.”

“Now we both know the other’s biggest shame.”

“But…I turn into a monster.”

“So?” I tried to laugh but it came out a sob. “Your wolf isn’t half as scary as Jeremiah’s.”

He leaned closer and held my hand in his. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, his wolf tries to eat me every few days. I have to sleep with silver shot in my Derringer.”

Luke looked horrified. “Why would he do that?”

“Because his wolf is crazy.”

“Kristina, you weren’t safe. Why didn’t you just leave?”

“Because if I left, I’d never see you again. And because it felt like accepting all of Jeremiah somehow made up for how I reacted to you when you changed. I’m sorry, Luke. I’m so sorry. I was shocked and scared because I’d been having nightmares of the wolf attack that first night, and I panicked. You left before I could think about it or apologize and I thought I was going to burn alive last night without having made it right with you. It gutted me.”

He pressed his lips to my hand as he watched the dark, blue, dawn light creep in through the window. “I went to Chicago.” His brilliant gaze collided with mine. “That’s where I’ve been. I’ve been hunting.”