Binding: Book Two of the Moon Wolf Saga (12 page)

I walked haltingly into Tamara's store, half-blinded by the evening light blazing in the windows, meaning to ask if anyone else had seen someone who looked like Richard, when I stopped at the sight of a big back-lit young woman in tight jangling braids, her dark skin set off by a blue, purple, and white African-style shirt over her jeans. I began to smile as I recognized her scent, until I realized she was very much not smiling at me. Her arms were crossed, and her face was hard, an expression I hadn’t seen since I first met her. Not too far away, just happening to be idly looming by the counter, was the second biggest bear, Jason, not quite paying any attention at all to the two of us.

“Hey, Yvette,” I said.

She was like iron, unyielding. “Tamara said you wanted to talk to me.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Come sit outside?” I glanced past her at Jason, who was looking a long ways down at me.

“No,” said Yvette. “You got something to say to me, say it here.”

“I’m going to go say it sitting out there,” I said, “because my ankle hurts like sin and I don’t want to stand anymore. So, come and talk to me out there, okay? Bring the bear if you want to. He's welcome to hear it.”

A little wall ran around the patio outside the shop to the right of the door. People used it as a seat to drink coffee, or drum, or just hang out and talk or jam. Where the wall ended, Tamara had recently added an iron bench to increase the seating area out there. I chose an angle where the sun wouldn’t be in my eyes, and sat down. It was also where I could see the spot where I thought I’d seen Richard standing only minutes ago. A little while later stony Yvette came out of the shop and stood in front of me, her arms still crossed.

I nodded. “Right over there, on Wednesday, after that meeting that turned into a jam—”

“Yeah?”

“You leaned out of your car window and called to me, ‘Are you coming to the party on Friday? The one in Malibu?’ And I thought you were going, so I went.”

“What party in Malibu?” Yvette asked, her voice mocking.

“The one where I was shot.”

“You got shot?” Yvette my friend was suddenly back, the iron gone in an instant. “You all right?”

“One of those darts they use on big animals. I was taken prisoner, kept in a cage.”

“Oh, shit,” she said, and sat down next to me, ducking from the blinding sunset. “What happened?”

“Well, I went to this party because I thought you asked me to.”

“Uh huh. Because I know all kinds of people up there in Malibu.” Yvette could do sarcasm so thick that it dripped. “So, tell me about my car?” I stared at her. She nodded when she saw I understood. “That's right,” she said. “You ever seen me drive a car?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“No,” she agreed. “That's because I don’t even have a license. In fact, I don’t even know how to drive.”

“It wasn’t you.”

“I’m glad we got that out of the way.”

“But it looked just like you.”

“From that far away?” She pointed across the street, where the figure in the car, whom I had been sure was Yvette, had leaned out to call to me.

“That's right. With your voice and everything, and that hat you wore all night.” I’d seen her, but I hadn’t smelled her. “Huh. Someone made me think they were you.”

“Okay,” she said. “Just so we’re sure.”

“I’m sure,” I said. “But what the fuck is going on?”

Jason came out then, and walked over to stand behind Yvette where she sat on the bench. “So,” he said, staring down at me, “everything all right out here?”

“Oh, yeah,” Yvette leaned back to grin up at him. “She mistook me for someone who drives a car.”

“A car?” He bent his head, so the two of them were face to face, Yvette grinning up, and Jason smiling down. He slid a look at me to make sure I saw this. I pretended I didn’t.

“Yeah—” Yvette broke off on a gasp, because the bench was rising in the air. I kept my balance, and continued pretending nothing was happening as Jason lifted the bench up over his head, and Yvette laughed and shrieked at him, until he put it down. And then there was kissing. Fortunately, a couple of drummers arrived and settled on the corner of the wall on the other side of the patio. Yvette broke away from Jason to duck inside the store and return with her djembe. The drummers greeted her as she took her place near them, hooking a leg over the wall and adjusting her drum on its strap over her shoulder.

Jason came and sat down on the bench beside me. Iron shouldn’t creak, but I’m pretty sure the bench did. I asked him, “What do you do when someone tries to take something from you?”

“I stop them.”

Well, it was a stupid question. No one takes anything from a bear. Except maybe another, bigger bear. Or two bears. Or a lady bear.

“What if a number of people are trying to take something from you, and assault you in the process?”

He broke his gaze away from the drummers and turned a long look on me. “What's going on?”

“My demon is gone, you know.”

“So I heard.”

Huh. He didn’t sound like he believed it. And that made it just about unanimous. “Even though he is gone,” I emphasized, “people still want my demon. They think they can make me give him to them.”

“Can you?”

I raised my lip at him, in the human version of a snarl. “You, too?”

“Hells, no, I don’t want your demon. Too much trouble. But folks have been asking how they would get it from you.”

“Have they? They ask you?”

“Oh, no. But we’ve all heard them. Folks are worried.”

“I know,” I said, with an edge in my voice.

Jason's mild look took on a hint of amusement. “They think your demon can help.”

“He
did
!”

“So you say.”

“No one is getting him from me. Even if he was mine to give.”

“So what are you asking me?”

“I think I’m asking what to do to get everyone to stop.”

He shook his big head. A smile grew on his face, but that was because Yvette across the way was laughing and talking with her hands, her voice, and her drum, and then the three of them got down to it. The drums sounded out in exhilaration. The bright notes of Yvette's djembe rang out beneath her fast-moving hands. He caught her eye and grinned. Yup, I was looking at one infatuated bear.

The sunset left pink stripes reflected across the sky that intensified as the sun went down. “They’re not going to stop,” I said. I pulled my knees up to my chin and wrapped my arms around them, looking up at the changing colors in the sky. I thought when I left home, and got myself away from my abusive stepfather and his horrible sons, that my problems would be over. All I had to do was keep out of sight until I turned eighteen. Now, I had a whole new set of enemies after me, and Gray Fox still lurked in the mountains, waiting for me to show myself. I had to convince people that trying to take me was really not a good idea. I had to seek out everyone who was after me, and set them straight. Hunting was something I was good at, after all. This could actually be fun.

I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud, until I heard the sound of my voice: “I will find them out. And I will teach them not to mess with me.”

I looked over at the bear, but he hadn’t heard me over the pounding of the drums. Or he didn’t listen. But still, my words sounded against the drums’ resonance, and the harmonies rang out, doubling and redoubling in the open air.

S
o, the first thing I did to get ready for my hunt was rest and heal up. That was only smart, after all. Tamara made it clear that if she was going to house me and feed me for a few days, then I was going to have to make myself useful, which is why I spent Saturday perched on a stool in the back room of her shop, unpacking boxes and checking their contents against the manifests. It was relaxing, and since I wasn’t moving much, I was hardly in pain at all. I had time to think, about Sarah and her ranch, and seeing Richard again, and other things.

Tamara, with long-suffering patience, took me into town at lunch time to a place where I could buy some new tennis shoes. I got a couple of pairs of socks and some underwear as well, since I didn’t know how many changes I’d need. At least, when she asked me if I needed money, I was able to tell her I could handle it. I spent the evil vet's camel money. I felt I’d earned it.

Aaron came to the house that night with a huge order of Chinese food. Sol joined us, and he and Aaron told of their adventures in the mountains, and in coming to and from the mountains, and Tamara told of some of her travels. I tried six different dishes, and felt left out. The places I had traveled, I couldn’t talk about.

After another round of cleaning and ointment, and whatever extra healing was added by Tamara's concentrated touch, the following day I was back on my feet without too much pain. In the early morning I changed and in my wolf form trotted around the lot between the house and the shop, making myself small to avoid excited calls from the neighbors about seeing a wolf wandering loose.

I still felt a twinge when I put weight on my fore and hind feet and flexed them, but it didn’t seem that I was going to be crippled, and that was a relief. If they had crippled me, I probably would have had to kill someone, though, if I were crippled, I didn’t know if I could. What was I going to do to these people, in return for what they’d done to me? There's lots of biting you can do which creates lots of mayhem, blood and pain, without causing death. I thought about all the possibilities as I nosed around the lot, grinning to myself. Probably, when I met up with them, I’d just wing it. And that would be fun.

Tamara owned the lot behind the vacant one as well, that faced onto the next street over. On it stood a big old house surrounded by an eight-foot fence, that Tamara rented out. These days her tenants were the bears. A gate with a latch high near the top of the fence allowed them to cut through the yard between the house and the shop. Jonathan wandered through while I was trotting along the fence, and eyed me blearily. Bears tolerate wolves, but they are never happy about sharing their territory. I could see that I wouldn’t be staying much longer.

Tamara went off after breakfast to the hospital to sit with her mother, as she did nearly every day. She had two or three employees who minded the shop at various times. There were also a dozen or so people who hung around and occasionally lent a hand because they were there, just as I was, while I convalesced. Today more and more people kept arriving, organizing, bringing in supplies, running errands, consulting about arrangements, hurrying around, putting up decorations of wreaths and flowers, setting up candle lanterns on the patio, stringing Chinese lanterns across the lot. A pickup truck carrying a load of wood backed over the curb and onto the vacant lot, and people gathered to unload and build the bonfire. Today was Beltane, one of the eight great holidays, so tonight there would be a gathering. There would be fire and food, dancing and drink. Power wielders planned to use the energy raised by the dancing and the drumming to help to strengthen the wards they’d been building all over the city against the World Snake. Well. It wouldn’t do any harm.

I held things and carried things. I climbed up on the roof at one point to help string colored lights. I don’t know why this annoyed the bears, but it did. I went inside and looked busy by grabbing a duster, a feather duster, made from the feathers of distant and probably long-dead ostriches. I dusted the shelf of foreign gods, the shelf of books about, guess what, music, and the thumb harps, the xylophones, and the many drums. I ignored the growing number of people arriving, gathering, greeting one another, carrying instruments, carrying plates or trays or covered dishes of food. I felt the rising excitement resonate with the magical buzz in the air. I kept near the walls and thought about Richard, who hadn’t been Richard, and Yvette, who hadn’t been Yvette.

By noon, my ankle was aching again, and despite there being so many people around I kept bumping into bears, whatever I was doing. So I went back to the house to lie down in the back room and take a nap on the quilt that smelled so comforting. I could hear some of the growing hubbub outside, as I rose from sleep to awareness, and relapsed into sleep again. I curled into a ball and wrapped the quilt around me. It wasn’t that I was chilled, or lonely, or in pain. It's just that I still missed Richard.

Lying half asleep I remembered the smell of him in his wolf form; the scent of grass on his fur. The thoughtful, attentive look on his face that contorted into protesting laughter when I pretended to bite him. The evil, self-satisfied smile he had when he worked his long-honed wiles on me until I moaned. The smell of him, in his wolf form, the scent of grass on his hair…

Tamara came into the house, bringing with her four or five chattering friends. They laid out a buffet of ham, cheese, bread from the bakery, potato salad with dill, sodas and a bottle of wine, and talked and laughed while they ate. I went back to sleep. After a while I woke to the change of sounds, and heard them go. Tamara called and talked to some of them from the porch, and then she came back inside. I opened my eyes as she stopped in the doorway of my room.

“Come into the kitchen. I’ve saved some food for you.”

Before I sat to eat down she took my wrist in her hand, felt the air over it with the other hand, and nodded. It had been giving me twinges, but now it subsided. When we sat down she held out a hand for my ankle, and with relief I lifted it, and felt the pain leak away. Wonderful. They’d left lots of ham. The bread was crunchy, and the potato salad was delicious.

Tamara offered me a cup of coffee. It was not as awful as the coffee they brewed in the shop and kept going all day, but it was pretty bad. Quantities of milk and sugar made it just about drinkable. Tamara sipped hers with apparent enjoyment, and picked at the last of the potato salad. She watched me take slugs of my coffee with laughter at the back of her eyes. I didn’t seem to be fooling her one bit.

“I have taken counsel with many of the people who are concerned about what our next move should be. No one has yet been able to divine whether the Great Worm has changed its course. After tonight, I planned to meet with some friends in the desert. When we scry the stars together, we often receive a stronger, more powerful reading.” She looked away into the distance, as though seeing the desert under the night sky. “But that isn’t possible while so many are clamoring for action now.” She met my eyes. “You are going to have to call that demon of yours. You’re going to have to make him answer questions, to either set everyone's minds at rest, or figure out how to carry the battle further.”