Binding: Book Two of the Moon Wolf Saga Read online

  “The one she did when she turned away, that's right. Richard showed up.” His eyes met mine briefly. “I was in a bad way. Got sick.” He cupped his hands in front of him. I still remembered the smell of the infection on his palms. He shot me another look. “I dreamed that someone came.” He tried again. “A wolf. A woman in the form of a wolf. And she…” His voice lost some of its assurance. “Was that you? I thought that was you. But sometimes I can’t tell…”

  “You said that Richard came.” That was what I wanted to hear about.

  “Yeah.” He shot me another look, still not sure about me. “But that was later. He… did something. In the back of my head. Inside my brain. You know he's a demon, right? Right. Right!” His voice rose as memory returned. “You told me that. That's why I couldn’t scry him directly. Yeah. It was you. Hey, thanks.” He reached out and touched my hand, briefly, so I did not bite him.

  I’d cleaned his wounds, in the way of the wolf kind. But that was nothing, since he’d done his best to find Richard for me, when I couldn’t.

  “So, can you scry anymore?” I asked. “Now that you’re better?”

  He grinned. Now that was a new look for the Rag Man. “Oh, man, wait till I show you.” He kept talking, while he reached down and gathered up a leaf that had managed to stray onto the lawn, a pebble from the asphalt, a few short blades of grass, a rubber band and a bit of string from the pocket of his new jeans, and a receipt that he tore into little bits. “Richard showed me. He didn’t like me to call him Stan anymore, he told me why, no, I knew why when he told me. But watch this!” He dropped the tell-tales into the palm of his hand. “What did you come here to ask me?” I took a breath to answer, but he said, “No, wait. Don’t tell me. Wait.”

  He held the miscellaneous bits together in both hands and shook them up. Then he bent and stared down into his hands. His energy changed as his focus strengthened. His eyes went blank and his body tensed, and then there was a soft explosion, a burst of orange light between his fingers. He opened his hands, releasing a puff of black smoke and a few traces of ash. With a wide smile he held out his open hands to me.

  “And it doesn’t even hurt!” he exclaimed.

  “That's—just—”

  “Yeah,” he said happily. “Richard did it. So I’m not cursed anymore.” He rubbed his hands and smelled them. “I still can’t believe it. Man! I’ve had that all my life. All my life!” He looked away, out across the valley he wasn’t seeing. After a moment he turned back. “So, I told these guys the Snake's not coming. Some of them believe me.” He shrugged.

  The Holy Workers had been up on this hill chanting protection and deflection from the World Snake for months, in concert with other groups of power raisers all over the greater Los Angeles area, all dealing with the World Snake in their own way, some of which worked contrary to one another. Power raisers working together is pretty much a contradiction in terms.

  After Richard cured him, the next time one of the Workers came by asking for help, they’d succeeded in keeping the Rag Man with them.

  “This is Fendor's place,” he nodded at the trailer. “He had to go back to Wisconsin. That's where most of these guys are from, up around there. He gave me these,” he wiped his hands on his jeans. “And the shirt. Said he’d gained weight, couldn’t wear them anymore.”

  Fendor was a liar. The clothes still held the scent of a couple of young, tense women sweating over them as they worked their sewing machines. But that was all. The Holy Workers were treating the Rag Man all right.

  “But, did you see anything?” I asked. “About my question?”

  “Oh! Oh, yeah, sure. Two women.”

  “Andy and Marge?”

  “I don’t get names, mostly. Two women, right? Uh. One older, gray curly hair. One younger, fat, uh, happy. House, small house, stones everywhere, and trees. Uh, it's a cabin, up in the mountains, and it's empty, and there's—” his eyes shot to me. “Someone there. Dangerous. Waiting for you.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I met him.”

  “Not a man,” he was frowning. “No, he is a man. But… Oh.” He looked at me again. “Okay. It wasn’t a dream.”

  “No.”

  “You can turn into a wolf.”

  “That's right.”

  He smiled again. “Good! See? I’m not crazy! Ha! So there.”

  “Me neither. But about the women. I just need to know, are they all right?”

  He frowned, thought a moment, then shook his head. He reached down again and gathered up some more grass and rolled it in his hands. “Remember when this used to hurt? Oh, man, it is so much easier now that it doesn’t hurt.” He rolled the grass in his palms and a moment later it burst into flame. “Ha!”

  “Andy and Marge?”

  “Oh. Right.” This time he walked to the end of the lawn where the sculptured landscaping ended and the hillside fell away to the natural California brown grass, low bushes, and aromatic herbs. He picked some mustard flowers, a few dead grass heads and a pinch of dirt, sat down on the edge of the lawn. He shook the stuff in his cupped hands, and then opened them. He studied the mix for a while, and then looked up at me. “They’re all right. They’re happy. Excited. They’ve taken the moon road. You won’t see them for awhile.”

  “They’re alive?”

  “They’re on a kind of journey.”

  “What's the moon road?”

  His eyes changed as he looked into the distance, but after a moment he shook his head. “I’m not sure. But they’re going to tell you all about it. Soon, that will be your road.”

  He offered to take me along to the barbecue where he was going to dinner, but I was ready to head home. He squatted down at my car door to say, “Hey. You tell Richard hi for me when you see him. And tell him thanks.” He stood up, so I didn’t get to ask him any more about how I was going to see Richard.

  If I did see Richard, I sure wanted to know when he’d managed to cure the Rag Man.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I drove home right into the rush hour, but after I finished creeping down the 57 and got on the 60, traffic was against me and I sped along nicely, while across the median the endless lines of people alone in their cars rolled slowly along. I wondered if the Rag Man was right, and if I could believe that Gray Fox hadn’t harmed Marge and Andy. I hadn’t smelled blood up at the cabin. I hadn’t smelled death. Neither of the women had been there recently. Maybe they had gone on some kind of long hike.

  I stopped at the grocery store before heading for my apartment. I was thinking about the Rag Man, and the change in him, about the moon road, and what that might be, as I carried the groceries around the building to my stairs. And then I stopped, because there he was. Richard.

  He stood on the steps, waiting for me. It wasn’t Richard, of course, but it was a damn good imitation. The face was right, the bright fair hair, the jeans and boots, even the leather jacket was almost perfect. The stance was not quite right. Richard stood straight as an arrow, and any deviation was a message. This one said, “I’m not actually Richard,” and I was trying not to read it. I stood there, taking him in. I couldn’t help smiling. I couldn’t even help the tears in my eyes, because I loved Richard, and he was gone. I tried hard not to look too closely at the details. I knew he was a fake. And I knew as soon as I came closer, his scent would be wrong, and that would ruin it for me.

  There are a number of different ways you can react if someone impersonates your lover and friend, tries to step into the place that belonged to someone so dear to you. I’d thought of several of them, from the first time I’d scented the place where I’d seen Richard standing, and it had not been him. In the first one, of course, the imposter ends up running screaming down the avenue, back arched against the blow he can feel coming his way. I was going to personally guarantee that there would be screaming. And of course there could be other scenarios first, and the screaming and the running might come later.

  I decided on the second course, because Richard looked so good to
me, so fine, almost exact. And I missed him, and for all intents and purposes, there he was. No reason to chase him away just yet.

  “Richard!” I said, and my voice resonated with love, and surprise, and happiness, all on its own. And my eyes widening, and almost starting to tear up, that wasn’t exactly voluntary either. “You came back!” I exclaimed, and I almost made myself believe, just for a moment, that it was true. I took a step toward him. “You said you never would, but oh, you came back!” I wouldn’t actually say something like that, but I thought I’d give the guy some encouragement. This might be fun.

  Fake Richard smiled, and it was almost his smile. “I couldn’t help it,” he told me. “I had to see you again. I missed you.”

  He’d said that to me a dozen times in the last few weeks, in my dreams. Of course Richard would not miss me. He was free. He was gone, he dwelt in other worlds now, as a different being. But I was still enchanted to hear what almost sounded like his voice say those words.

  “I thought I’d never see you again,” my voice said, of its own accord.

  “Darling,” he said, “I couldn’t stay away.”

  Okay, that wasn’t Richard. The imposter recognized the false note at once, probably in my reaction, and tried again.

  “I missed you so much!”

  “I missed you too!” I indicated the door to my apartment. “Don’t you have your key?” I was playing with him; Richard had never had a key, but this guy wasn’t going to know that.

  “I—lost it, I’m afraid. And I wasn’t sure if you would want me…” He nodded toward the apartment.

  “Oh,” I said. I was trying to put off the moment when I would have to move closer to him, and the fantasy that this was really Richard would vanish. Ah, well. “Do you want to come upstairs?” I asked, and I canted my hips just a little, and I tilted my head and added just a hint of a pout. Because if you are going to play a role like this, you might as well play it to the max.

  “Of course!” he said, dropping his voice. “Why else would I have come?”

  I walked up to him, and he held out his arms for an embrace. I handed him the grocery bags and hurried past him up the steps. At my door I turned and looked down, giving him another one of those “come and get me” looks. He was disconcerted, shifting the grocery bags to get a good hold on them, but he smiled up at me gamely.

  His scent told me he was almost twice as old as he looked in Richard's form. Richard's hair was smooth and soft, with only the aid of shampoo. This guy, this imposter, whoever he was, had some kind of hair goop on, as well as conditioner, and a strong deodorant. He’d had a fast food burger for lunch, and French fries; Richard ate that stuff, but only when he was starving. I beckoned, smiling, and the imposter hurried up the steps.

  Inside, I took the bags from him. “Look what I got!” I told him, as I unpacked them on the table. “See how much I was thinking of you? Here's some of that pasta that you like, and basil and mushrooms. I was going to try and make that thing you make, but now that you’re here, I can watch you do it one more time. Oh, I’m so glad you’re here!”

  This time I grabbed him and hugged him, hard. Richard was not a big guy, when he was in human form. The magician who raised him made him look as unassuming as possible, so his frame was slight, though his musculature was, well, terrific. When I grabbed and held the imposter, I squeezed hard. I could almost feel his heavy flesh, his girth, under the illusion that played on my senses. Unfortunately for him, he was only managing to blind the senses of mine that were the same as his.

  “Now!” I said, letting him go, “let's see you cook!”

  His uncertainty, his blush, his stammer, added to the comedy as I waited for him to figure his way out of this one. He made Richard's eyes go dark and bedroomy. “Haven’t we got better things to do, after so long?”

  I remembered that look on Richard. I caught my breath. It had been a prelude to so many delightful hours. I shook my head. “The moon hasn’t set yet,” I reminded him, my eyes wide.

  I watched him do a double-take on that. “Of course,” he said. “I’m forgetting. It has been too, too long.” He moved to take me in his arms. Again I hugged him hard, avoiding his move to kiss me. Let him think the moon got in the way of that, too. For now, at least.

  “So, are you going to cook my favorite dinner?” I asked teasingly.

  “I will cook,” he said playfully, “a whole new dinner, that will become your favorite henceforth, I promise you.”

  “Oh, terrific!” I said. I wondered how far over the top I could take the acting before he figured it out and gave up. But he smelled confident, not fearful. He was excited, not nervous. I figured I could play him a long, long way.

  He made pasta, but he didn’t use both butter and olive oil, the way Richard did, only olive oil. He cut up green onions and mushrooms, and grated a lot of cheese. He covered his not knowing where anything was by giving me the role of assistant, and calling for each implement like a doctor in an operating room. “Garlic press! Cheese grater! Colander!” It was a good guess that I even had a garlic press. Richard had bought all the gadgets in the kitchen. I let him get away with it all.

  He put the yummy dinner on the table in front of me, and I grinned up at him like he’d done something amazing and clever. “Mac and cheese! I love mac and cheese!” I smiled to myself as he almost broke character.

  My Richard's response to a crack like that had been a lecture on food that went on all through dinner. Fake Richard put his smile back on and said, “I’m so glad.”

  It was pretty good, with all the trimmings he’d added. I ate with enthusiasm. “Umph! Oh, you are so right, this is just delicious, Richard!”

  “I’m so glad you like it,” he said, his hand creeping across the table to stroke mine. “And now,” he glanced toward the bed-room—not an inspired guess, since there was only the door to the bathroom to confuse it with. “Shall we?” he asked.

  Again, I made my eyes wide. “Aren’t you going to clean up?”

  “Sweetheart—”

  “‘Sweetheart?’” I winced. “You never called me that.”

  Now his voice went all bedroomy again. “There are so many things I never got a chance to call you. Sweetheart, darling, precious girl…” He came around the table toward me. “But now at last we will have time.”

  “Oh, Richard!” I gasped. “Oh, Richard!” I grasped his hands, effectively keeping him from taking me in his arms again. I pushed him toward the kitchen. “You get cleaned up in there, and I’ll…” I practically waggled my eyebrows at him. “… get cleaned up in there.” I headed for the bathroom. I looked back to blow him a kiss. He was smiling. That wasn’t Richard's smile. That was the smile of the guy who thought he was winning. I blew him another kiss. I knew just what that felt like. I almost smirked.

  I detoured to my bedroom to kick off the clothes Tamara had given me. I pulled on a t-shirt and a pair of sweats of my own, and that was satisfying, to be wearing clothes that smelled like me, and had my shape built into them by use.

  The imposter was making a racket as he did the dishes, whistling a show tune while he worked. I went into the bathroom and ran a well-deserved hot shower, and stood under it for a long time, laughing to myself about the guy who’d made me dinner, and was now cleaning my kitchen. I emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, dressed in my own clean sweats, armed with clean teeth and clean hair for the fight to come. You choose your weapons and your tactics according to the field of battle. That's what my dad taught me.

  I didn’t give him a chance to think or react. I walked right up to him and started unbuttoning his shirt. That brought on a big smile, and that wasn’t Richard's smile either. He reached for me, but I batted his hands away with a surprised look. “Richard!”

  He stopped and looked down, and that gave me pause for a moment, because that was something I’d seen Richard do a hundred times. Close up I could see that the bone structure was right, but the little scar under his eye was missing, and his
lips were odd. Close up, of course, I could smell the wax in the guy's ears, and the trace of athlete's foot in his shoes. Richard looked up again, and now the scar was there, and his lips were just as I remembered them. Huh. He couldn’t be reading my mind, exactly, or he wouldn’t think he was fooling me. But he had figured out about the scar.

  I finished undoing his shirt and slipped it off his shoulders. I undid his belt, and slipped it off slowly. I doubled it up in my hand and saw his eyes widen involuntarily as he wondered, just for a second, what the fuck he was in for, before I threw it behind me and reached for the button on his jeans. I could smell his growing excitement, which fed my excitement. And it was lust, in a way, brought on by his nearness, by his close resemblance to my sweet lover, and by the thrill of the game I was playing. I manipulated the button open, paused a moment, and then pulled down his zipper, my hand feeling the warmth of his arousal under his briefs. I bent and quickly tugged his pants down to his ankles, and then, while I was there, I tugged his briefs off too.

  Okay, that wasn’t Richard either. Richard hadn’t been anywhere near that—showy. And it wasn’t a big reach to guess that Mr. Imposter wasn’t nearly that well-endowed either. I wondered briefly whether, if I grabbed it, I would know its true size and shape. And I realized in the same moment that I really didn’t care.

  His pants and briefs down at his ankles, I looked deeply into his eyes, doing the bedroomy thing myself, and I took his hand. “Come,” I said, making my voice husky. “Come, Richard. It's time.”

  I turned away and led him firmly to the bedroom, and was satisfied first to hear the startled exclamation, and then the hard tug on my arm as he stumbled and went down heavily with a thump and a cry. “Oh, Richard!” I cried, turning back to him. He was on his hands and knees, scraping at his pants with his shod feet. “Oh, no! I’m so sorry! Here, let me help you, please!”