Wolfsbane, page 6
“A reminder of what she’s not supposed to be talking about might not be bad.” Silver shrugged on her good side. “I doubt anything will keep her from playing chase if they’re both interested.”
Andrew looked out at the familiar trees, checking by sight what he already knew by scent. Everyone was still off running, except for—there. His daughter’s scent. Good. He’d asked her to circle back a little after him. He wanted to know what had happened in the house. “What do you think of Tatiana?”
Silver hugged her good arm across her chest, her version of crossing her arms. “She’s watching far too hard.” Her eyes flicked down to an empty patch of ground and she sighed. “And Death compliments me on my grasp of the obvious. So, yes, she watches. That doesn’t mean she intends harm with the information she collects.” Silver frowned. “I don’t dislike her.”
Andrew tore his gaze away from at the line of trees. He’d been staring hard enough he’d imagined Death into being again, laughing silently and padding through pools of shadow. He hadn’t expected that answer from Silver. “She’s got to be up to something. Her whole manner screams that.” Didn’t it? Or was that his paranoia fooling him?
“She’s judging us. But she hasn’t made the final determination yet,” Silver said, slowly. “And now we have her interest. Did you see her, when we spoke of cubs? That was important to her. I’d bet her father had other children.”
A reddish-black wolf, much more real than Death, loped out of the trees. Andrew and Silver both looked politely away from the intimate moment of her shifting back. Felicia strode the last few paces in human, picking needles out of her hair’s thick waves. “Lady. Sorry about Tom, earlier. I saw you glaring. But she invited me to chase so clearly I didn’t know what else to do. She practically stank of it. I didn’t want to piss her off by making it too clear I didn’t want a Russian’s teeth anywhere near intimate areas, even if I wasn’t with someone. So I refused politely and then grabbed him to be a buffer.”
Andrew clenched his teeth on an automatic order for Felicia to get out of the house and go back to roaming immediately. His daughter was an adult, and she’d handled the situation as well as anyone could have. Even if there was something to protect her from, she wouldn’t thank him for trying. He supposed he’d already been luckier than many parents, in that she was roaming with a boyfriend. He recalled a particular roamer’s chase of his own, a few weeks with a guy who’d been fond of starting bar fights with humans when he got bored. What at seventeen had seemed terribly exciting to Andrew now seemed dangerously stupid, but it had been his mistake to make.
Anyway, this invitation to chase, carefully turned down, didn’t put his daughter in any more danger than she or any of the pack was already in. With one Russian in a house full of Were, that wasn’t much.
Still, he didn’t like dangerous Russians inviting his daughter to chase.
Silver squeezed his hand, breaking him out of his thoughts. She looked sympathetic, and Felicia looked slightly amused. “Sorry, Papa,” she said. “Nothing much happened other than that. She was actually happy to play with Edmond and his stupid squadron, if that means anything.” She shrugged.
Andrew coughed. “I think we can assume her treatment of you is confirmation of what she wants with Sacramento.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Lady damn it. I wonder if it would be too obvious to send her home now, to keep her safe.”
Felicia looked off into the trees, probably in what she imagined was Sacramento’s direction. “Do you want me to fetch her for you now? If you want to stop her, you’re a little late.”
Andrew flicked a glance at Silver, and she nodded, echoing his own feelings. “Yeah, go ahead. We’ll talk to her at least. If she can get away without Tatiana noticing,” he said.
Felicia ducked her head in acknowledgment, jogging off into the trees in human to save shifting back and forth another time to speak to Sacramento. Since they’d probably have a wait until Sacramento could get away discreetly, Andrew turned to the vehicles and rummaged around in various bags in search of energy bars. All that shifting was making his stomach grumble.
Sacramento arrived after about half an hour, when they’d moved to sit side by side on a log on the other side of the clearing to keep downwind. She shifted under cover of the underbrush and came out with her hands already spread apologetically. “I can guess what you’re going to say, and I just want to say one thing first. May I?”
Andrew raised his eyebrows, and let his silence turn interrogative. Her scent and body language were respectful, and he had to admit his curiosity was piqued.
“This is where you specify that while you told me to distract her on the hunt, distraction shouldn’t go too far, right?” Sacramento grimaced and looked at her feet. “I know I’ve made bad decisions about women in the past, and then growling at Craig today was a bad idea too. He reminded me of that particular bad decision and I let my embarrassment get the best of me. But look.” Her head came up. “For good or ill, playing a ditzy role is something that I got a lot of practice with, years ago. And it’s not a ditzy one, but the Russian’s definitely playing a role. I can tell.”
“We thought so too.” Silver answered her, leaving Andrew to watch her face. He was impressed, though he probably shouldn’t have been. Sacramento was good with her pack, and that took observational skills. Just because she got carried away and let her own emotions influence her actions too much sometimes didn’t mean she couldn’t read others’.
“I figured.” Sacramento crossed her arms over her stomach. “Here’s what I was thinking: she’s not going to talk to you guys. Ever. But she might talk to a lover.”
“Are you sure?” It wasn’t quite as visceral, but Andrew definitely felt an echo of what he’d felt with Felicia earlier. Sacramento was one of his people, and Tatiana presented an unknown amount of danger to someone who got so close to her. On the other hand, she was an adult and could make her own choices. “Really sure, Allison? That’s not something we’d even considered asking of anyone.”
Sacramento’s lips twisted into a smile, starting at self-deprecating, and ending up somewhere sharper. “If I do tend to chase women too quickly, why not own it? I mean, you guys weren’t even surprised to see me flirting with her, were you? I doubt many others will be. And I’ll be really careful. I won’t let anything slip in return. Even if I don’t get anything out of her, she’ll still be tied up trying to question me rather than anyone else.”
Silver took Andrew’s hand and squeezed it, so he let her take the lead. She smelled reluctant, but also impressed, and he agreed. “Be careful. Very careful,” she said, and paused as Sacramento blew out a breath in triumph. “And see if you can bring up Edmond again. There’s something there.”
Sacramento bobbed a quick bow, one knee bent, to informally evoke kneeling. “I will.”
Andrew wasn’t sure how Tatiana’s reaction to North American family structure helped them, but he’d trust Silver’s instincts. Silver shoved his shoulder until he stood. “You should both get back before she notices. Go find a deer or something big to take down and impress her.”
“I don’t think she impresses that easily,” Andrew said, and shifted to run on four feet back to the hunt, to be judged once more.
Chapter 7
On their return from the hunt, the pack left the vehicles for the house chaotically, not in precedence order as Tatiana had expected. It took a little maneuvering for her to slip into the house just after the alphas. Now seemed like a good time to speak to them alone, if she could. “I brought some wine from home,” she said with a diffident smile. “If you two want to try some.”
“I didn’t know Russia was particularly known for its wines,” Andrew said, tone lightly teasing.
“In the Caucasus region, they make it,” Tatiana explained. And then the Were took it and added something of their own, but she wasn’t going to mention that to the North Americans. When Andrew nodded, dubious but not particularly suspicious, she tipped her head in the direction of the guesthouse. “I’ll go get it.”
The walk back through the yards was enlivened by small lanterns set into the sides of the path, like a little road flanked by stars. Tatiana didn’t need them to see, but she could appreciate why the pack had added them nonetheless. She rather liked walking among the stars, imagining each humming their snatch of song, shattered pieces of the Lady’s first child who liked to sing.
She used the time to review what she knew, and consider what suggestions she should make. She still needed to get the story of Silver’s injury out of her. No point appealing to her vanity by referencing the stories about her being Lady-touched. Tatiana didn’t know what Silver would think on her own, but Andrew would definitely influence her with his loud scoffing. And maybe Silver would consider it blasphemous if Tatiana implied that anything—like their stepping down, for example—was the Lady’s will.
They were both clearly effective alphas, but they did not necessarily look that way. Tatiana suspected they must know that, so perhaps she should foster that insecurity. But all that would depend on what else she found out when she spoke to them alone.
She gathered up two bottles, one under her arm and one in her hand, leaving her other hand for the glasses. Fortunately they were Ceremony glasses, so they stacked within each other.
The walk back with the wine was just long enough for Tatiana’s thoughts to turn to worry, instead. She squashed it firmly. Nothing would go wrong because there was nothing to go wrong. If the wine and her suggestions didn’t work, no one would realize she’d done anything. But there was no reason it shouldn’t work. That kind of worrying was useless.
She eyed the back door when she approached it, not eager to juggle everything again, but it opened for her. Andrew gestured her gallantly inside. Silver was seated at the dining table, and Tatiana led Andrew to join her. Without the whole pack clustered around it, the table looked much more imposing, old, solid wood undiminished by an accumulation of scratches. A good Were table. Silver sat at one oval end, and Tatiana chose a seat near her. She set the bottles down first, then the glasses, still swathed in the Ceremony cloth. This wasn’t a Ceremony, but it padded them nicely, and it felt like a little bit of the Lady’s protection to offer them, and herself.
She supposed it looked a little like a wide silk scarf to the North Americans. They had no Ceremony, she knew that, whatever else had taken her by surprise. The dark blue almost vibrated through some optical trick, it was so vivid against the scarred wood. Yellow moon and star patterns twisted in the center, though fortunately the Lady Herself was not pictured.
Andrew set a corkscrew on the table in front of her, then seated himself, and Silver picked up one of the Ceremony glasses to look it over. Its base was as round as possible while still allowing the glass to stand upright, and the Lady’s phases were etched around the rim. “Pretty,” Silver said, then set it back down for her to pour.
Tatiana sat and splashed wine into three of the set of four glasses she’d brought, set the bottle aside, and waited for the others to choose theirs before she lifted the remaining one. She sipped generously from it immediately, keeping herself relaxed as if she hadn’t carefully thought out each step to reassure them. One source of the wine, so that couldn’t be dangerous. She let them dictate which glass she took, so nothing could have been in the glasses. She drank first. “Reminds me of home,” she said with a small smile.
Silver sipped next, and Andrew followed soon after. They probably hadn’t even needed all that reassurance; it was a rare poison a werewolf couldn’t heal. Of course, wolfsbane wasn’t a poison, as such. Tatiana wasn’t looking to kill them.
Silver grimaced, and though Andrew didn’t react visibly, she noticed that his second sip was smaller. The process of adding the wolfsbane concentrated the alcohol, so it probably didn’t taste like they thought it should. If they tasted the wolfsbane, they wouldn’t know what it was, though she doubted they could. She sipped again, searching for it, and found the tang of acidic sweetness more quickly than she’d expected.
“Interesting,” Andrew said dryly. “The Northwest is known for its beers. We’ll have to have some kind of exchange.”
Tatiana nodded. She’d stalled long enough the suggestibility should be beginning, she hoped. “It’s good, yes?” she said, catching both alphas’ eyes briefly as she said it. Not long enough to be challenging, but enough to set the suggestion, powered by wolfsbane, into their minds. “A little strong, but that just makes it more fun.”
Silver’s eyes widened, as if at a sudden realization. “It is good.” She lifted her glass and tipped it back. Andrew looked amused at her, but his swallows grew more generous as well.
Tatiana continued to drink, but very carefully. She’d brought the Ceremony glasses because she knew how much of one she could drink safely. The effects of wolfsbane accumulated, and she’d done a Wisdom Ceremony a little over a month ago, just before she left home. A Wisdom meant she’d drunk less wolfsbane wine than for a full Vision Ceremony, but she still had to watch how much she had now. She didn’t want her mind to drift so far it never returned.
Not that she’d gotten much wisdom out of that Ceremony, but then she never had. She felt the Lady’s presence only lightly in her visions, and the right answer never floated into her mind as others said it did for them in the Wisdom Ceremony.
Her mind was certainly wandering now, though. Tatiana frowned at her glass. She could safely have a little under one and a half glasses, which was good because Silver and Andrew needed two for the effects she wanted. Refilling their glasses and not her own would look odd.
“I feel like we’ve been circling around each other in our questions all evening.” Tatiana made her smile rueful. “Perhaps we could just answer. I promise to answer yours.” She pressed her thumb to her forehead, promising on the Lady.
Silver snorted. Her body language was softening as she drank, probably from the alcohol, and she relaxed back in her chair. “You want to know what happened to me.” She set her glass down and used her hand to pull her opposite arm across her lap.
Tatiana tipped her head down. “Among other things. I’d love to hear the story of how you two became alphas.” She swirled her wine. They would want something from her first. Pack numbers, maybe. Or the general location of her alpha’s home. Her alpha had even given her permission not to lie.
“You have siblings?” Silver smiled when Tatiana’s head jerked up. “Half-siblings? A brother in particular, perhaps? Is that why Edmond bothers you?”
Tatiana bit her lower lip. The alcohol and wolfsbane brought the answer close to the surface. She should be glad that they hadn’t asked after anything tactically important, but this was something that belonged to her alone, not her alpha. “I have no idea if I have half-siblings, since I don’t know who my real father was. And I want to know.” She felt the next part bubbling up, but she diverted it into Old Were, because she didn’t want to tell them but she couldn’t help herself. “I want to know he wasn’t killed because of me.”
Silver’s expression eased into sympathy. Tatiana saw an assumption of a mother’s infidelity there, and didn’t bother correcting it. It would be too complicated to get the North Americans to understand, if they took parents acknowledging their children so much for granted.
Andrew frowned at her for the rest of her answer. In relaxing, he leaned back, but his hand also strayed unrepentantly to Silver’s knee. “What was that language? It sounds familiar, almost.”
“Like the children’s rhyme.” Silver tapped her fingers on the table and recited something. It took a couple repetitions for Tatiana to sort through the horrendous pronunciation. “Full-half-new-half. New-half, full-half.”
Tatiana repeated it for her properly. “It’s Old Were. The original language all of you have lost.” She’d always looked down on the Europeans for not even knowing the language of their people, but now she was starting to wonder what the North Americans had gained instead. “Your turn. What happened to your arm?”
Silver set her glass down and rolled up her sleeve to just above the elbow. White lines of scars showed, beginning at the inside of her elbow and climbing up her arm. “There was a Were named Stefan. More than a century ago, humans injected him with silver to cure him in the name of their God. He grew to believe it—that he had been cured, and others should be cured like him. He escaped from where his pack held him, eventually, and came here. He found his way to my pack. I was beta, and my brother was the alpha. Stefan—”
She looked at Andrew, face tired from old pain, and he picked up the story for her. “Injected them all, like he had been. Silver was the only survivor. I stumbled on her after she escaped, and we killed that monster together.” He squeezed her knee.
“Injected them with—” Tatiana stared, trying to wrap her mind around the idea. Humans, she could understand, but one Were doing it to another? How could one of the Lady’s children even conceive of such a thing? “But how can you shift?”
Silver laughed, a sharp jolt of sound. “I can’t.”
Andrew murmured a soothing sound. “She gets seizures if she tries,” he said, leaning on the word “seizures” like its scientific tinge would distance Silver from the emotional pain.
Silver smiled like the sharp edges of the expression were aimed to cut herself. She lifted her dead arm with her opposite hand to set it along the tabletop. “But there are some benefits.” She reached into her hip pocket and brought out a necklace chain, ordinary enough. She threaded a length among her fingers and dangled the rest over the table, then lowered her hand so it curled into a shiny pool of links. Then she waited.
It took Tatiana several seconds to realize what her nose was telling her. The chain was silver metal, separate from Silver’s own strange scent. An effect of the injection, she supposed. The chain was silver metal, and Silver wasn’t burned.
Tatiana drank again to give herself time to think, though her thoughts were already too slippery. Maybe it was the shock. A Were who could touch silver? None of the gossip had mentioned that. But more importantly—a Were who couldn’t shift? How could she stand it? Tatiana tried to imagine what it would be like to lack half of herself, and couldn’t. Silver didn’t seem empty and despairing. Far beyond that, she’d helped her mate win and hold a pack—for years? And not just as an alpha’s mate, as an alpha in her own right. “So your name—?”
