Indigo Moon (27 page)

“Yes. Perfectly.” Hope nodded. “You are happy with life as it is. You don’t need another bolt on. I think that’s a sensible and mature approach.”

“What about you?” Isabelle asked her.

Hope pointed at her glass eye. “I had intraocular melanoma—eye cancer—and had to have my eye removed. My big issue is my ongoing health. No one has any idea how cancer cells react to lycanthropic mutation. I’ve had some good news recently, but I’d never risk my health doing something so potentially dangerous with so many unknowns. Jolie would never ask it of me. Plus, I don’t think a one-eyed wolf would be any more capable than a one-eyed human, so I’ll just stick with what I got.” She finished with a smile.

Hope and Godfrey finished their meal, but Isabelle still poked her steak around her plate in a pool of bloody gravy.

“Is the steak not good?” Godfrey asked, picking up the cell phone for the umpteenth time.

“I’m hungry but my stomach’s in knots.” Isabelle pushed her plate away.

“Your turn now. Tell us about Ren. Is she your partner?” Hope asked, finally getting the conversation to where she needed it to be.

Isabelle’s face closed over.

“You can trust us,” Hope said. “Are those her guys over there?” She nodded at the three young men hunched in a booth in the far corner. “Is she chasing you, Isabelle? Did she kill Barry?”

“No!” Isabelle jerked in her seat. “Ren is kind. She would never do that.”

“Kind? She burned your car, took your passport and money. Hid you away in some valley of the damned,” Hope said. “That’s not kind. That’s a dog with a bone.”

“She is kind. She has all these kids that belong nowhere—”

“They had to come from somewhere, Isabelle. How do you know she didn’t ‘make’ them, just like she made you?”

Isabelle was floundering. “I know she didn’t. She’s looking after them. She’s trying hard, but sometimes it gets to be too much. I’ve seen her worry about real things, like money, the kids, about work and the future… Look, I just know, okay? I just know.” She bit her lip and looked away. “You don’t fret about next season’s workload if you’re making werewolves for the fun of it.”

“So she has a pack of what? Runaways? Feral kids from the city? Where does she find them?” Godfrey asked.

“I think they find her. I’m not sure. I couldn’t…didn’t ask. When I found out what they were I ran, remember?” There was bitterness in her voice. “I wish I’d known you then. I wish I’d someone to talk to.”

This was not what Hope expected.

“But I do know this,” Isabelle said quietly. “Those kids adore her. Whatever they are, and wherever they came from, they are lucky to have found her and they know it. They’re nice kids. I don’t know how any of them could have survived without her.”

Isabelle stood. She was obviously upset. “I need the washroom.” She slid out of the booth. The young men watched her every move, then relaxed as the ladies’ room door swung shut behind her.

“Do you need to go with her?” Godfrey asked anxiously. “What if she makes a run for it?”

“I don’t think she will. Where’s there to go around here?”

Hope threw a look over to the three guys. They shivered over their glasses of tap water under the scathing eyes of the waitress. Two of them looked very poorly, their faces waxen under the harsh light. Hope had seen that look before, in lines outside homeless shelters. A great sorrow filled her. She thought of Ren’s pack. Isabelle was so certain they were the lucky ones. Yet she’d run away as—

Godfrey’s phone rang.

“It’s Claude,” Godfrey whispered excitedly. He passed on their information and listened carefully to Claude’s instructions. The three guys fixed on him, making Hope suspicious. They hadn’t minded while they sat and ate their meal, but now that Godfrey had received a call they were getting edgy. It dawned on her that they were waiting on instructions, too. Their job was to keep them under surveillance and in one place until reinforcements arrived. They became agitated when it looked like Hope and Godfrey might be making tracks with Isabelle in tow.

One of the youths caught her eye and bared his stained teeth; the other two tried to scowl menacingly but only managed to look more bilious.

“We need to get going.” Godfrey ended the call. “Claude says to get out of here and keep to the original plan. We’re a harder target if we’re moving. So much for brazening it out here and waiting for help. Go get Isabelle.”

Hope entered the ladies’ room. It was small, just a waiting area with a sink and a lockable door to the toilet cubicle.

“Isabelle.” Hope rapped on the locked door. “Claude called. We need to get going.” Her knock was greeted with silence. She grew uneasy that Godfrey had been right, and Isabelle had run for it. She knocked again, more vigorously. “Isabelle!”

This time she was answered with shuffles and some wet sniffs. It sounded as if Isabelle was crying.

“Let me in. Let me help,” Hope said softly. The lock snipped and she gently pushed the door open and froze.

Isabelle stood in the middle of the small room, her face wet with tears, her thin body trembling. Her fingers were stained dark with blood and a sour smell assaulted Hope’s nose. The floor was littered with the contents of the sanitary bin.

“Oh, honey,” Hope whispered, shocked.

“I couldn’t help it.” Isabelle choked on a small sob. “I just had to tear it apart. I’m insane. I’m crazy for the smell of blood, yet I can’t eat the steak I’m craving. This morning I emptied your fridge, this afternoon my guts are on fire. I’m changing and it’s going to kill me. I know it will, and I don’t know what to do, Hope.”

“I know you’re going through hell. I’ve seen it with the young Garouls. The first time is hard, but once we get you to Little Dip, Marie will have potions and stuff to help.” What else could she say to make this any better?

Hope wrapped her hands in toilet tissue and scooped the contents back into the bin. She dragged Isabelle to the sink and briskly scrubbed her face and hands with cold water and ran wet fingers through her disheveled hair.

“Okay?” Hope rested her hands on Isabelle’s skinny shoulders and gave her a small shake of encouragement. “We need to get going. Godfrey will be freaking out.”

They left the washroom arm in arm and strolled back to their booth and Godfrey’s fretful face.

“Those guys were snarling at me. They need some serious dental work,” he said as they sat down beside him. “What the hell kept you?”

“What happens in the ladies’ room stays in the ladies’ room.” Hope patted his arm comfortingly. “What’s the scoop?”

“We run for it. That’s the scoop.”

“It might be difficult shaking these guys on the way to the car,” Hope said.

“We need a distraction. Oh! Maybe we could set fire to the tablecloth? It deserves it,” he said.

“That would bring everyone’s attention on to us. Hardly ideal for sneaking out.” Hope shook her head in disbelief.

“Order them some food,” Isabelle said quietly.

“What?” Hope turned to her.

“They’re broke and famished. Look at the way they’re watching everyone else’s orders pass their table. They’re practically salivating. Have some burgers sent over. If their hunger is anything like mine, they’ll be distracted all right.”

“But you didn’t eat your steak,” Godfrey pointed out.

“I don’t feel good. I’m starving, but I can’t eat.” Under the garish lighting Isabelle was paler than ever.

“Why’s that?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s shock,” she said.

“Okay. Let’s do this.” Godfrey waved for the waitress. “Excuse me, miss.”

“When we make a run for it, will you hold my hand?” Hope asked Isabelle. “My depth perception is out of whack. When I move too fast, I get disoriented and fall over my own feet.”

“Deal.” Isabelle reached over and gave Hope’s hand a reassuring squeeze.

Fifteen minutes later the young men were staring in confused longing at the food set before them. While the waitress unloaded her tray and explained the people at table two had already paid, Hope, Godfrey, and Isabelle slid outside as quickly as possible.

They were halfway across the parking lot when the diner door crashed open behind them. Godfrey reached the car first, jumped in, and revved the engine savagely into life. Hope and Isabelle, running hand in hand behind him, piled into the backseat, squashing Tadpole.

Godfrey shot out of their parking space before the rear door was shut, narrowly missing their closest pursuer. Hope looked out the back window, puffing with exertion and relief. All three guys had backtracked and were piling into a beat-up Ford Escort.

“I think we’re okay,” Hope said. “They’ll never catch us in that old bonerattler.”

A huge, hulking shadow dashed across the road before them, just out of range of the headlights. It was a meaningful charge, more for show than an attempt to halt the car.

“What the hell was that?” Hope asked, her heart sinking. She clambered in beside Godfrey. “Reinforcements?”

Godfrey tightened his grip on the wheel. “I don’t know. But I don’t think they’ll be coming after us in a bonerattler, somehow.”

Ren stood on the roadside opposite the trim, well-ordered house with its happy yellow door and neat flowerbeds. She could tell by its quiet demeanor, from its blank windows and general stillness, that no one was home. The air around it, though, that was a riot. Wolven musk, den markings, warnings, mate claiming, there was a lot of werewolf activity at this house.

She glanced up and down the street. It was empty of people and traffic. Lunch was long over, and the schools had not closed for the day. The early afternoon lull in neighborhoods such as this would continue for at least another forty minutes. Taking advantage of the quiet, Ren crossed over and disappeared around the back of the house.

In the secluded yard she took her time and soaked up the multilayered smells. It was a wolf den, calm and well-ordered, and Isabelle had been here. Had this den taken her in? Ren growled, but it came out sad and lowly. Not the aggressive claiming growl that had rumbled from her chest at the strangest, most inappropriate moments. The one that had alarmed fellow passengers on the plane, or the line at the car rental kiosk, and the ATM. Even the staff at her motel were avoiding her.

Ren hung her head. This home shamed her. It was happy, full of love and positivity. It shone with all she had failed to bring to her own den. This house had become a cornerstone of the Portland circuit she constantly trawled looking for Isabelle.

She had started by skulking around Reed College and the surrounding area. She hung out around Isabelle’s old address in Billinghurst. But the For Sale sign, and the weaselly little man who stormed in and out, became another dead end. In desperation she had taken to following Barry Monk. To his work, his parents’ house, the gym, his therapist…anywhere. But he never went near Isabelle.

She had done this for weeks. Going over the same old ground, ever hopeful of a new clue. One whiff was all she needed. Around and around she went in her self-styled circuit. At night she’d change and do it all again, only better. And she’d found her. A trace of her in Sellwood Park. Sweat and stress poured out off her. She’d been running, and Ren knew what she was running from and that it would eventually catch her. She had to find Isabelle first. She had to be there for that first change. It was dangerous for Isabelle to be alone.

Ren looked at the scratches on the patio door. The only discordant note about this den, and this time her growl came out sounding right. A snarl of pure white rage. The scents were old, they were weak and sour, but she recognized them and the story they told. This was bad. This was dangerous.

Isabelle was on the run again, and rightly so. This den was helping her, and Ren was jealous and morbidly downcast. She wanted to be the one Isabelle turned to. Ren knew this pack scent. It told her who lived here, and who came and went. And it told her where to look next.

*

“How fast can these things run?” Godfrey glanced warily out his side window. The Lexus zoomed along night roads. Rain beat on the windows, the tires threw up water, and the wipers slammed back and forth at high speed. Every so often a shadow would detach from the surrounding gloom and race toward the car. Godfrey hauled on the wheel and swerved to avoid it.

“They’re playing with us,” Isabelle murmured, an oasis of calm in the tense atmosphere inside the car. Her mind was relaxed where her companions were on the verge of panic. The attack plan seemed crystal clear to her. She wondered how she could see it while Godfrey and Hope couldn’t.

“Why don’t they just jump and try to stop the car?” Hope asked.

“I don’t think that’s the plan. They can chase alongside for short bursts, but we’ll always outrun them.” Isabelle watched as another beast came crashing out of the trees. Rainwater flew off its coat; its eyes gleamed in the approaching headlights.

“Shit, here comes another one.” Godfrey gripped the steering wheel tighter.

“Don’t swerve this time,” Isabelle said. “They want us to swerve away from them. These lunges are just distractions.” She glanced off to the opposite side of the road but could see nothing through the rain-beaded glass. “Remember, they have better night vision. You don’t know what you’re driving toward every time you swerve.”