Rated: X-mas: Twice Blessed (8 page)

She was willing to lose herself in them, and every fiber of her being fought against that. She had not worked so hard to escape her father’s cage, only to be trapped inside another.

Jenny opened the door and stepped out, shutting it carefully behind her. Damien shifted the truck into gear as soon as she stepped away, and she stood in the street, watching until their tail-lights disappeared in the darkness.

56 Rachel Bo

Barren

Five days later, Jenny sat in the kitchen drinking coffee, staring into space. Plagued by strange dreams, she had hardly slept the last few nights.

Her mother glided gracefully into the room. “Good morning, darling.”

“Hi, Mom.” For the thousandth time since Damien’s revelations, Jenny thought how much her mother’s grace resembled the fluid movements of a wolf. Caught that whiff of odd scent -- an earthy smell, like a newly turned field. And musky, like sex. A scent she’d never noticed before, but which now permeated the house and originated with her mother. She pushed these unwelcome observations away, staring into her coffee cup.

Meredith fixed her own cup of coffee and sat across from Jenny at the breakfast bar.

“Mom, I’ve decided to go back a little early.

Meredith regarded her evenly. “How early?”

“Tomorrow.” Jenny looked away. “I guess I’m feeling homesick.”

“You’re afraid.”

Jenny turned back, startled. “What?”

“They’re Wolves.” It wasn’t a question.

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Jenny shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Meredith’s gaze didn’t waver. “My senses may have dulled over the years, but I still know a Wolf when I see one. And I don’t doubt that they’ve told you the Blood runs in your veins, as well. In fact, I’m sure of it. I’ve seen the way you’re listening lately. You hear it now. The whisper in your Blood.”

Tears sprang to Jenny’s eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“There didn’t seem to be any reason to.” She tilted her head, considering. “If we had lived on the farm, like your uncle, it would have been harder. But the city drowns the whisper. You never seemed to feel it, so I didn’t say anything.”

“Why wouldn’t you want me to know?”

“You wouldn’t have believed me. If you hadn’t met Devlin and Damien, would you ever have noticed?” She shook her head. “There aren’t that many of us. Chances were that you would never meet another. At least, more than in passing. I thought it would be easier if you didn’t know.”

“Dad’s not ...” Jenny raised her eyebrows.

“You know he isn’t.” Meredith stared into space for a moment. “I did meet some, once.

Other than the ones in our weyr, I mean. They were quite a gorgeous pair -- thick black hair, dark eyes. From an Italian branch.” She smiled. “It was a delicious diversion, but I didn’t love them.”

“Did they love you?”

Meredith laughed. “No. We parted quite amicably.” Her expression grew serious. “But what about you?”

“What about me?” Jen shrugged. “I already made my decision.”

Meredith took a sip of her coffee, then sighed. “You don’t seem very happy with it.”

58 Rachel Bo

“I’m just ... ready to get back to work.” Even to her ears, that sounded lame. “Sure, the sex is great, but I barely know them.” Meredith’s steady gaze seemed reproachful. “I don’t love them,” Jenny insisted.

Her mother stared at her for several long moments. Jenny tried to look away, but Meredith’s dark eyes were like molasses, sucking her in. Meredith leaned over the counter.

“Let me tell you what I think.” Jenny drowned in those eyes. She felt as though her soul were being laid bare and found wanting. “I think you do. That’s what scares you. You’re afraid of giving yourself to someone, heart and soul. Someone you might do anything for. Like turning away from the life you’ve worked so hard to build in California.” This pronouncement was so close to what Jenny’s actual thoughts had been that it raised goosebumps on her flesh.

“Why are you doing this?” Jenny fought back tears, her voice breaking.

Meredith reached out and clutched Jenny’s hands in hers, tears glittering in her own eyes. “When I married your father, I left my home, my family. Oh, we visit, but I no longer live the life. Everything is different. The Bond is still there, but the land is far away, and the city drowns its voice, every day. Even now, other Wolves ask why I was willing to give up everything that mattered, just to be with a human.” Her hands tightened on Jenny’s. “They don’t understand that no h

t ing mattered without him.”

There it was. The root of Jenny’s problem. Her feelings for Devlin and Damien made everything she’d done for the past thirteen years a waste. Nothing else mattered but them.

And how could she accept that? How could she accept that doing double shifts in a job she hated to pay for a second college degree, pulling up her roots and moving to the other side of the country, working twenty-hour days for the last seven years trying to help Hartmann Designs become what she needed it to be -- how could she accept that it all meant nothing without them? She couldn’t. She was thirty-five years old. Her life up to this point had to have meant something.

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The tears finally spilled, and Meredith hurried around the bar. She held her, rocking her daughter like she had when Jenny was a child. “Shh. It’s all right, baby. Everything will be all right.”

60 Rachel Bo

Blessings

Jenny’s parents drove her to the airport, even thought they couldn’t come in to see her off. “Promise you’ll come back soon for another visit,” her dad gruffed.

“I will.”

Jenny stared out the window during the entire flight, carefully keeping her mind blank. It was a relief to finally step through the door of her apartment. Here, she’d be safe.

Surrounded by everything she’d worked for, she would be able to put Devlin and Damien from her mind.

She tossed her keys on the table and dropped her bag by the door. She checked the answering machine, smiling when she heard Becca singing “I’ll be home for Christmas” very badly. Apparently, she had decided that her parents were aliens from another planet, her brother’s kids were demons from hell, and she was coming back early. “You never did say when you would be back, so I wanted to let you know I’ll be home on the twenty-second, if you’re in town and want some company.”

The message should have lifted her spirits, but instead left her feeling sad. It was a shame that Becca’s visit home wasn’t turning out so great, either.

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Jenny checked her fax machine and found a copy of the B&B Productions contract waiting for her. “I know how you are,” Carol had written across the cover sheet, “so I went ahead and faxed this over because I didn’t want you calling me at midnight on New Year’s Eve wanting me to bring it over right now.”

Carol knew her well. Jenny chuckled wryly, carrying the stack of papers into the bedroom with her. She set them on the dresser, intending to look them over after she changed. But once she was in her nightgown, she felt utterly exhausted and crawled into bed, praying for a dreamless sleep.

She didn’t dream, but still woke the next day feeling sluggish and irritable. Trying to shake herself out of it, she went to the beach and wandered aimlessly for a couple of hours, one of only a few hardy souls out braving the misty rain. She went to the mall, picking up a couple of presents for Becca and Carol, and some small gifts for the seamstresses Hartmann regularly employed. She ate dinner out and returned to the apartment after nine o’clock, worn out.

For the next several days, this became her pattern. For the first time, her apartment felt like a cage. Her space no longer seemed warm and cozy. It was cluttered. Suffocating. So she wandered the beach, the mall, the boardwalks, keeping herself busy and active. Outside, the restless whisper in her veins grew stronger, but the sounds of the city made it easier to ignore. She came home so exhausted, she fell asleep the moment her head hit the pillow, and the dreams stayed away.

But the twenty-second dawned a sickly grey. Dark, ugly clouds dumped buckets of rain, flooding the streets. She pulled on some sweats and made hot chocolate. She considered calling Becca to see if she was home yet, but some part of her still wanted to be alone, so she curled up on the bed with a book.

The steady rhythm of the rain, the warm chocolate, and the slow pace of the story combined to make her eyelids heavy. Setting the book aside, she closed her eyes, meaning to rest for only a minute.

62 Rachel Bo

She dreamed of the ocean. Or rather, the beach. She was a million grains of sand, washed by gentle wavelets, warmed by the sun. Crabs and clams, seagulls and minnows -- she had a thousand constant companions. But the water ceased its gentle caress.

Receding, it left her, baking in merciless heat. Her companions fled, leaving her to the grasshoppers and ants that now roamed her surface, but eventually even these left. She hardened, her surface shriveling, cracking in the white glare.

Every part of her was there. She was as whole as she’d been before the water went away -- even more so, because waves no longer carried tiny bits of her out into the ocean.

But nothing moved on her parched surface. Nothing stirred within her. She was empty.

Dead.

Gasping, Jenny sat up in the bed abruptly, clutching at her sweat-soaked shirt. She stumbled into the kitchen and fixed a glass of ice water, drank it down, then poured another and carried it back into the bedroom.

The Blood was pounding in her veins. Desperate for a distraction, she grabbed the contract on the corner of her dresser. She never had gone over it. She sat down in a chair by the window and began leafing through the pages. Each and every clause had two sets of identical initials by it, albeit in very different handwriting: D.B. She idly flipped to the back page, looking for names to go with the letters.

Her head swam as two signatures leaped from the page.

Devlin and Damien Blake.

Blake and Blake.

B&B Productions.

Her hands shook as she dropped the papers in her lap. Had they known? Of course they had known -- she told them where she worked. Why hadn’t they said anything?

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Because she’d never see them, that’s why. They owned the company, but probably had very little to do with its daily operations. She ran an unsteady hand through her hair. There was no reason to freak out. This didn’t change anything.

But it did. She stared down at the lines below their signature. At Devlin and Damien’s address in Wyoming.

She was as parched as the desert in her dream, and just as empty. Jenny hesitated only a moment more before folding that page and sticking it in her pocket. She pulled a jacket from her closet, grabbed her purse and keys, and headed out to buy a map.

* * * * *

The only place open was a small diner on the main street. She slid into a booth and ordered coffee, then sat there, head in her hands, tears streaming down her face.

“What’s wrong, honey?” Her waitress asked when she brought the coffee out. “You’re not lost, are you?”

Jenny wiped away the tears and shook her head. “No. I was ... I was trying to find Devlin and Damien Blake.” She dug in her pocket and pulled out the crumpled page from the contract. “I have an address for them, but it turned out to be a real estate office.”

Her waitress -- Jenny glanced at the nametag pinned to her chest -- Tara, nodded.

“Yep. That’s ’cause they live so far out. No proper address. All their mail goes to Glen. They pick it up once a week.” She fiddled with her pen for a minute, staring. “You’re not from around here.”

Obviously, Jenny thought, but she just said, “No.”

64 Rachel Bo

“We got some nice fresh snow for Christmas.”

Jenny remained silent, wrapping her hands around the coffee cup for warmth.

“That jacket doesn’t look too warm,” Tara observed.

“It’s not.” The girl evidently wanted to strike up a friendship, but Jenny really just wanted to be left alone to wallow in her misery.

“I don’t suppose you want to know how to get there ...” Tara mused.

Jenny looked up in surprise. “You’d tell me?”

Tara shrugged. “I don’t think some slip of a girl is going to be able to cause them any harm.” The way she spoke, Jenny almost thought she might know what they were. “I’ll tell you. You won’t even be able to get in, unless they let you.”

That sounded ominous, but Jenny decided to worry about it later. “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

Tara smiled. “You just let me know how it all works out, okay?” She winked and pulled a page off her notepad. “It’s a bit of a drive. Takes about two hours, but at night, with you not knowing the roads, it might take a while longer.”

Jenny nodded. Tara bent down over the table, drawing out a map and explaining to Jenny where to go. Jenny finished the rest of her coffee, more for the warmth than for anything else, then got back in her car and headed out again.

At eleven o’clock, her car labored up a winding gravel road somewhere in the Absaioka Range. At least, that’s what Tara had called it. Jenny’s headlights hit something grey ahead, and she stopped, stepping out to look.

A seven-foot-high fence marched across the road. It was made of some kind of flexible metal mesh, drawn taut between steel posts set at five-foot intervals. Tara had loaned her a flashlight, and she turned it on now, finding that the fence threaded between the trees and meandered off into the distance. Jenny studied the gate. Three heavy chains secured it -- one each at the top and bottom, one in the middle. There was no intercom of any kind, or any

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cameras that she could see. So they wouldn’t know she was here, because they weren’t expecting her.