Latent Wolf: First in the Tobias Finch Series, page 1
Latent Wolf
First in the Tobias Finch Series
Elisha Kemp
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
Thank you for reading
About Elisha Kemp
Latent Wolf © Elisha Kemp
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
For information contact the author at her website
elishakempbooks.com
Cover art and design © Elisha Kemp
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, businesses or locales is coincidental and is not intended by the author.
For the underdogs.
For the fighters.
For the non-conformists and the question-askers.
This book is for you.
Chapter 1
Tobias Finch
I cringe inwardly as I step off the bus. Buffalo, Wyoming is exactly as I imagined.
Small. Old. Run-down.
A dry wind gusts through the deserted main street, kicking up dirt. The rusty sign above the hunting and fishing store swings on its hinges.
Sighing, I sit down heavily on my suitcase, pulling my backpack onto my lap and waiting. The building across the street looks like something out of a bad western movie. I snap a photo of it, then send out a text: Literally a ghost town.
A minute later my phone pings in reply. Is that a movie set?
I snort at Greg’s reply, then shoot back: Unfortunately, no. This is home.
Damn.
And that pretty much sums it up.
I rub at my eyes, the coloured contact lenses like sandpaper after two nights of traveling cross country.
My grandparents are late. After everything that has happened over the past couple weeks, this additional proof of bad luck shouldn’t surprise me.
An hour passes and I rise stiffly to my feet. Shops have started to open and the scent of bacon and eggs wafts temptingly from a nearby café. My stomach grumbles. I’m starving. Nothing new there. But I’m also out of cash.
Hefting my backpack across one shoulder, I start dragging my suitcase in the direction of my grandparents’ house. John and Susan Vance. 781 Cottonwood Avenue, exactly one point five miles out of town.
No doubt the wheels on my bag will be worn to stubs by the time I get there.
Cottonwood Avenue is a gravel road. The house marked 781 sits at the end, nestled against dun-coloured foothills that match the worn weatherboards.
Hoping this is the right house, I lift my fist to the door and knock cautiously. The door opens and a frowning wrinkled face topped with a mop of grey hair greets me. I step back involuntarily as the smell of stale cigarette smoke slams me in the face.
“What do you want?” The elderly man growls, his withered body propped against the doorframe.
He looks like death warmed up – if death wore a vacant expression and was featured on an anti-smoking campaign poster.
“I – I’m Tobias Finch sir,” I babble as I rub my face to stop the embarrassment prickling my cheeks, “I thought you were expecting me?”
I must have got the wrong house after all. Of course. That would be just my luck.
“The only one I’ve been expecting for the past ten years is the grim reaper,” the old man drawls, flashing yellowing teeth as he speaks, “and he ain’t in any hurry to get me out of this hell hole.”
“Oh. Okay…”
I frown, stepping back slowly to eye the numbers painted on the house. 781. Did I get the address wrong?
“You’re – you’re not John Vance?”
“Depends on who’s askin.” The old man’s eyes narrow, then he adds, his tone menacing: “Who sent you boy? You one of those government agents? I told ‘em to stop comin’ round here. I’m not talking. Got nothing for yeh.”
“Johnny, who you talking to dear?” A woman’s voice calls from within the house.
“Some guy who calls himself Tobias Finch,” the man shoots back.
“Tobias!” the woman exclaims excitedly.
Johnny – presumably John Vance, my grandfather - is suddenly pulled back and a smiling older woman surges forward, wrapping me in surprisingly strong arms. Short jet-black hair frames a friendly, wrinkled face.
“I thought you were coming tomorrow,” the woman says, holding me by the shoulders as she examines my face, her black eyes bright and perceptive. She shakes her head. “Can’t believe you’re really here.”
When John appears on the doorstep beside his wife she explains patiently: “Johnny, sweetie, this is Tobias. Your grandson. Remember, Marian’s son. We were expecting him.”
“Well, yah, I guess we were,” the old man frowns, eyeing me suspiciously. “But where’s Marian? Where’s my daughter?”
My gut wrenches at the question. At the sound of mom’s name.
I’m back there, just like that. With that one word. I can still see the blood. Remember the exact pattern it made on the linoleum floor in the kitchen. The angle of her neck. Throat torn out. Dad howling in rage and grief.
“She passed away, dearest,” the old woman says. “Remember, they had the funeral a week ago?”
The old man shakes his head, face crumpling as he gives an unintelligible gurgling cry. The sound makes my chest clench, a familiar nausea rising in my throat.
Susan gently comforts her husband, rubbing his arms and muttering unintelligible words to sooth him until the man stumbles back inside, hiccupping.
I stare at my shoes, unsure of whether I should say anything while my grandmother ushers the sobbing man inside.
When I spoke with her over the phone, grandma had mentioned grandpa’s “fragile mental state” as she had called it. The dementia is making him a little forgetful and paranoid, she had explained.
Well, hadn’t that just been the understatement of the year.
A few moments later, Susan reappears on the doorstep.
“I’m so sorry. Come in. Please, come in,” she says, shaking her head apologetically. “You must be exhausted.”
I nod and obey. It took me more than forty hours and five different bus transfers to get from New York to this hole of a town. I’m hungry and broke. And I’ve got nowhere else to go. Well, except the care of the state, I guess.
Which would be a disaster for someone like me, for so many reasons.
The cigarette smoke hits me like a wall as I step inside, completely overwhelming to my sensitive sense of smell.
Just my luck that my only living relatives are grandparents I’ve never met, who apparently chain smoke indoors. One of whom should probably be in a care home.
This is the least of my problems. My parents are dead. The scent of mom’s killer haunts my dreams. A charcoal, pine and animal scent. Another wolf shifter, and male.
Worse than the memory of that smell is the echo of my father’s whimpering as the once formidable wolf shuddered under the breaking of his mating bond. He didn’t survive his human mate more than twenty-four hours.
At first, my mom’s death sent me into a hot rage. The wolf inside me clawed and howled to break free. It wanted to follow her killer’s scent, tear him apart, exact revenge.
Stupid animal.
It hasn’t yet accepted that I am defective. A latent. A shifter who cannot shift. A beast caged in a weak human body.
Although thanks to my shifter genetics, I’m still significantly stronger than your average fifteen-year-old male. Bright-side, right?
“This will be your room,” my grandmother says, interrupting my thoughts. The room is faded pink with a single bed covered in a worn rose patterned quilt. I have a sinking suspicion it was once my mom’s, though her apple and mint scent has long faded, replaced by the acrid scent of stale cigarette smoke.
“Thanks.”
It’s all I can manage around the lump in my throat. I heft my suitcase onto the bed, keeping my back to her.
“I’ll leave you to unpack,” grandma says gently.
I flinch at the pity in her voice.
“They’ll be breakfast in the kitchen if you want it. Bacon and pancakes...”
It’s a bribe, of course. A way to lure me out, force me to make conversation. I know this, but I also know it is a bribe I will accept.
I am a teenage wolf shifter after all. A fact my human grandparents will have to remain completely ignorant about. But keeping them in the dark about what I am won’t be a problem.
After all, I’m used to keeping secrets.
Chapter 2
Tobias Finch
Screams rent the night air, piercing and raw, then abruptly stop. The silence that follows chills me to my core, even beneath the thick wool blankets. I cling to them, fingers frozen like claws.
“Marian! Oh gods, Marian!”
Dad’s voice is a chocked sob, quickly replaced with the sounds of snarling and bones cracking and popping. Dad has shifted.
An unfamiliar growl rumbles in response, low and menacing.
And then chaos erupts.
I know the sound is dad fighting another shifter. It’s a sound I heard once before when dad fought off a lone wolf who had accosted us in New Mexico on our one and only camping trip. My father’s wolf – a grey and black giant – had bested the lone wolf, forcing its submission and retreat.
What is another shifter doing here, in our apartment, three stories up in the middle of New York City?
Heart racing, I slink from my bed and make my way down the dark hallway towards the kitchen. Growls have given way to low snarls met with whimpering.
Stay back son.
Dad’s voice echoes in my head through our pack bond, clear and commanding. Our pack of two.
The words are full of alpha command that would have forced any other wolf to submit. I feel their force roll over my shoulders and shrug them off, like a dog flicking off water. I take another step forward, pressing my palm on the kitchen door.
Please.
There is desperation in my father’s voice this time. And something worse. Despair? Reluctantly, I obey, remaining hidden in the dark shadows of the hallway.
On the other side of the door, the snarling ceases and bones pop. Someone has shifted again. Then there is a human voice, pained and panting.
“Look Finneas,” the voice wheezes, “I’m sorry about your mate...”
A wolf snarls in reply. Dad.
“I submitted, I submitted, okay! Gods, I didn’t want to hurt her. Your human female took a knife to me – what did you expect me to do? It wasn’t supposed to go down like this.”
More snarling.
“You had to know this would happen. They’ll come back. You broke the law, you and Marian. They’ll come for the boy.”
I feel my blood turn to ice in my veins.
“He’s here, isn’t he?”
The snarling turns feral then, and I can hear the snapping of teeth. The man yelps, and then there is the sound of the front door opening and clicking shut.
That’s when the howling begins.
I wake with a start, throat hoarse and mouth dry.
Had I been howling in my sleep? It wouldn’t be the first time my father’s howls in my nightmares have voiced themselves on my own lips.
I rub at my neck, half expecting to feel fur instead of clammy skin.
Moonlight pours in through the open window, illuminating the pale pink walls of mom’s old room.
I take a deep breath, trying to inhale fresh night air and getting a nose full of stale cigarette instead. I shake my head, as if to rid myself of the scent that has permeated the walls, carpet and furniture of my grandparents’ home. Even after two days, the smell of this place still riles my wolf.
I throw the covers aside and pad to the window, leaning to rest my arms and chin on the wooden frame. The scent of dry grass and sage caresses my senses, at once calming and invigorating. The wolf within me stirs, wanting to run in the sprawling foothills, bathe in the light of the waxing moon.
For the hundredth time, I wonder what my wolf would look like if I could shift. Would it be grey and black like my father’s? Or would it be a chocolate brown to match my own brown hair?
It is a stupid thing to wonder about.
The sound of a wolf howling snaps me from my reverie. It’s faint, likely coming from mountains beyond the foothills, far enough away to be inaudible to ordinary human ears.
A second voice joins the first, and then a third. I feel an inexplicable ache in my chest.
What would it be like to have a pack? To shift and run with other wolves? To join my voice with their own?
I’ll never know. Honestly, given what I am, it’s probably for the best.
Born alpha.
The label rattles around in my waking consciousness, like the spare part to a car engine that just doesn’t fit. Wolves like me, well… we’re not supposed to exist.
I can still feel the night air and moonlight on my skin though.
Soundlessly, I throw one leg and then the other out the window, landing with a light thud beside the house. The dry earth feels harsh on the soft soles of my feet, and I take a moment to spread my toes in the dirt.
I can’t recall the last time I’ve walked outside barefoot. It feels right.
Sparing a quick glance to the house behind me, I set off across the open field that backs my grandparents’ house. I will just go to the first ridge of the foothills, I tell myself. It isn’t that far. I can be back before the dawn.
“You need to have a shower before we leave this house, young man,” my grandmother chides over breakfast. “You’ve got enough dirt and twigs in that mop of yours to build a nest.”
I grunt my acquiescence and shovel down another mouthful of scrambled eggs. Really, there should be a law against conversation before breakfast.
“Now it’s only natural you’ll be worried about your first day at school here,” Susan goes on, “But just be yourself, and the other kids will take to you in no time.”
I almost choke back a laugh.
There is literally no one living, shifter or human, who I can be myself around. The penalty for letting humans know about shifters? Death. And if any shifters find out I’m a born alpha? Yep, also death.
“We don’t get many new families in this town. No doubt they’ll want to know all about you, but they’ll be friendly enough. You’re a good-looking kid, just like your momma was, and a friendly face goes a long way to making new friends.”
Susan pauses to flick two pancakes from the griddle onto my plate, and I respond with a muffled, “Thanks.”
“Course, dear,” Susan smiles, wiping her hands on her jeans before turning to pour more batter on the pan. “It’s good to have someone to cook for other than my Johnny. He don’t eat as much as he used to.”
My grandfather grumbles something incoherent from across the table, shooting a glare at me. Right back at you, old man.
“He’s not a government agent,” Susan counters patiently, apparently in response to whatever her husband said. “He’s your grandson, remember. Look, he’s got Marian’s pretty blue eyes.”
I put in blue contact lenses that morning, like I have done every day of my life since I was old enough to wear them, even living in New York City.
Humans might just think the golden colour was unusual, but otherwise take no notice. Another shifter though? My eyes might as well be a flashing neon sign shouting out “Hi there, I’m a threat to your whole pack and society as you know it. I was supposed to be killed at birth, but wasn’t, so you should do the shifter world a solid and eradicate me.”
At least shifters are rare. Super rare.
We hardly ever came across them in New York, so it’s unlikely that there are any in Buffalo. But you can never be too cautious. That was rule number one of staying alive – always assume there were shifters around and always keep the truth of what I am hidden.
You broke the law, you and Marian. They’ll come for the boy.
My stomach clenches as I recall the words of mom’s killer. Even with all the precautions, even with the obscurity that comes with living in the centre of a big city, they had found us.
Suddenly, the pancakes taste like ash in my mouth. We had followed the rules, and Mom still paid the price of breaking some archaic shifter law. Guilty of letting me live.
I push my plate aside, no longer hungry.
