Binding: Book Two of the Moon Wolf Saga Read online

  A couple of people near me said something, placating lies, pretending the drink was not poisoned or drugged, offering me another, offering me food, and other delights to come. I started away from the fire, stiff-legged, wondering if I should bite someone before I left, and who it should be. A couple of guys, egged on by the others, stepped into my way, held out their hands, and I’d had enough. I changed. The guys coming at me backed away, but not very fast. I realized that while fear spiked off them and the others, shock or surprise did not. They had expected me to change—not that a lot of them weren’t darned amazed nonetheless, because when I change, it's that impressive. I stepped forward in my wolf form, looking around to identify the ones responsible for bringing me here.

  People backed away as I turned, and I was about to give up and charge up the dirt road to my car, when I smelled the gun. Everyone was still. I turned, and I saw the barrel of what looked like a shotgun, a woman in the shadows raising it to bear, too far to reach in time. I managed one leap away toward the hopeful darkness when I heard a whoomph, and my hip exploded into agony. I spun in the air, snapping at whatever was causing the pain, and dropped awkwardly to the sand. I scrabbled to my feet, turning to look for the gun. Not a shot gun, a vet's dart gun. The woman, her hands shaking, was reloading. I tried to bare my teeth. I tried to start toward her and stumbled. I think I blacked out before I even hit the sand.

  And here I was, in both forms at once. How was that even possible? I’d never heard of such a thing. The throbbing pain in my hip—that was where I’d been shot with the anesthetic dart. And there was something that felt like it was hooked through the tendons of my wrist, and my hind foot. And the smoke was keeping me stupid, making me pass out. And someone had done this to me. Someone arranged the party, doctored the drink, laid the fire, ignited the smoke. Someone from the party? The woman with the gun? Or someone else, who had devised this trap, and the means to hold me helpless in both my forms. I moved my head away from the smoke and breathed as shallowly as I could. First, I had to defeat the smoke. Then, I had to get free. I brooded on hope. I lay my head on my aching and swollen right arm, stretched out my left hind leg as far as I could, and waited to kill someone.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A woman stomped around the kitchen, plopping food from one pot into another, talking to herself. No, talking to the cleaner guy. Cleaner guy stood by the counter and watched her every move. He had a terrific body: lean, taut and muscular, a long, straight nose, high cheekbones, curly black hair. He watched her with shining eyes, his mouth slightly open. I knew from her scent that she was the woman who lived here. She came over to me, walking heavily, stirring canned chicken and mushroom soup into the pot of noodles she held in her hand while she stared down at me. Cleaner guy turned to watch her, but didn’t move from his spot.

  “You’re awake!”

  When I am angry, my eyes turn yellow. You don’t want to see that. It bothered me a lot that right then I didn’t seem to have the energy. I just looked at her. Old corduroy jacket, scuffed and dirty boots, worn jeans, denim shirt, short, graying hair, none too clean, and the smell of sheep, and horses. A rancher. I was on a ranch. She bent over me, not touching the bars of the cage. Bad breath. I was right about her teeth.

  “Can you hear me?” She turned to the cleaner guy and her voice sharpened. “You keep the thing burning, right? She's not supposed to be awake. This is not good.” She leaned closer, still not touching the cage. “Can you hear me?”

  I rolled my eyes back and closed them. I didn’t need her upping the dose.

  “Baz, get that for me.” Baz hurried over to her, got down and reached under the stove. He handed her the incense burner, holding it with two hands, as though he were offering her the Grail. She walked out of sight and came back adding a little dark brick to whatever smoldered in there already, holding it away from her face, and then handed it to Baz to get down and push back under the stove. I slept again then. I woke when a door banged open, and I heard her tromp into the kitchen with a flashlight in her hand. It took me a while to realize that it was night, because the room reflected the glow of a high-powered critter-be-gone light through the glass doors and the window.

  “Get in here,” she said, calling to the cleaner guy. He hustled in after her. She came toward my cage, and I shut my eyes. She pushed the incense burner with her foot, so it was closer to my head. “Come on, Baz,” she said, and left me in the dark. The smoke thickened, and I went out again.

  Baz washed the kitchen cupboards the next day, the bandana square on his head. He’d put his t-shirt on backwards today. It was annoying. At noon he ate two pieces of toast that had sat waiting for him on the kitchen counter all day. Just before two he stood staring at the wall clock again, and at two o’clock, he put everything away, and went to the couch for his nap. I waited until he had just settled down, and then I growled, “Baz! Ge’ off the couch!” He slunk off before he realized who was ordering him around. Then he turned on me, his lips open in what would have been a snarl, if he weren’t in the form of a man. I knew it. I knew it! Baz was a dog.

  He came over to the cage, his lip still raised. I leaned into the smoke, pretending to suck it up. “Oh, yes,” I tried to make my sleep-thickened voice sound like a moan. It sounded distorted, whether because of the smoke, or the weird shape I was in, I didn’t know, but I made sure he understood my meaning. “Give me that smoke, it is so good.” I looked up at him sharply. “Don’t you take any of that. She gave it to me. It's not for you, you don’t get any. I’m the one who gets it, all of it. Not you.”

  He stood looking at me, his mouth open. I knew I had him when he turned to look out the glass door. I went into my moaning act again. I closed my eyes partway, and watched under my lashes as he opened the burner, broke off a big chunk from the gray brick smoldering inside, and removed it. He paced to the glass doors and back. He went to a shelf next to the television and brought down a wooden box and pawed through it carefully and took out a little square of incense that resembled the stuff in the burner. He switched it out, and wrapped the purloined piece in a dampened paper towel. Then he looked around, and stuffed it under the couch. He gave me such a look! I thought he was going to turn his back and scrape dirt at me. I closed my eyes, smiling.

  In less than an hour my head cleared. Baz polished the heavy, slightly lopsided wooden table, right down to the feet. He set up a stepladder, and wiped down the top of the cupboards. He cleaned and chopped a busload of potatoes and carrots. I felt exhausted just watching him.

  I woke from a doze to hear the woman on the phone. She was standing over me. I kept my eyes shut.

  “She's fine. She's asleep. Yeah. I thought she was waking up yesterday—she just opened her eyes. But she's been out all day. Come on, Elaine, I can’t keep her here.”

  Ah, hah. I knew it wasn’t her. Elaine. I would remember that.

  The woman continued, “How much longer before he gets back?”

  This I wanted to hear.

  “Friday? Three days? You owe me, you so owe me. And Cecil owes me double!” She snapped the phone shut, grumbling to herself. “What does Holly think I am, a zookeeper? Her and her stupid Cecil.” She stomped around some more, and then called, “Come on, Baz!” and the two of them went out.

  Well, I was certainly going to be out of there in less than three more days. I pulled at my manacles, wrist and leg at once, and stopped, gasping with the pain. Okay, I thought. Okay. Not by strength was I going to get out of here. Figure this out. I was in both forms. Right. So, I could reach my manacled right wrist with my left forepaw, but a paw wasn’t of use to get me loose. And my right foot wasn’t able to loose my left hind paw. The chains were strong.

  Nine tenths of magic is distraction. Richard told me that. The smoke wasn’t the magic. The smoke was a drug to keep me asleep, to keep me stupid when I wasn’t asleep, and make me sleep most of the time. Asleep, they didn’t think I was dangerous. Okay, so I could beat this if I was awake, and if I was smart. And I could b
eat this if I was in human form, or in wolf form, but not in both. Right.

  The manacles would not work if I was in wolf form, because I could slip out of them. The cage would not work if I was in human form. The cage and the manacles were not what were keeping me a prisoner. They were merely a distraction. So it was necessary that I remain in this strange hybrid form, in order to be a prisoner. What was keeping me like this? As if in answer, the tendons throbbed in my wrist and my heel. Yes, that something that was hooked around them. Something cold, or hot, or both. And it hurt. Everything else was a distraction. This was what was keeping me prisoner. This was what I had to beat.

  I let myself slip into sleep again, but this was a wolf nap, not unconsciousness. I registered the woman and her… companion…

  coming in again, and the aggressive rattle of pans and cutlery as she heated up rice and canned stew, and slopped it in a bowl. And suddenly, I was really, really hungry. Something in the smoke must have kept my metabolism quiet. I hadn’t eaten in days, and didn’t notice until just now. And more than that, I was suddenly, overwhelmingly, painfully thirsty.

  “She's drooling,” the woman said. She was standing over me, shoveling food from her bowl into her mouth. “Did you top up the fire? Smoke seems thin.” Baz must have responded satisfactorily. She peered down at me, but didn’t ask him to reach her the incense burner. “Huh.” I kept my eyes closed, and slowly let my mouth relax. “Drooling in her sleep,” the woman concluded, turning away.

  “C’mere, Baz!” She handed the guy the bowl, and he stuck his head into it and scarfed up her leftovers. She sighed heavily. “All the stuff you can do, and you can’t use a spoon. Stupid dog.” But her voice was forgiving, caressing, even. I let myself fall asleep again as the two of them curled up on the couch and turned on the television.

  I snapped awake when they came in from night rounds, and Baz turned off the lights, and followed the woman down the hall. He had an annoying prance to his walk. It made me want to bite him. It was an hour before all the sounds died away. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. It made me wish for a bit more of that smoke, though. Honestly.

  At last the house was asleep. It was my time.

  I needed my left foreleg to be my left hand again. Then I could deal with the bandage that held the hook into my wrist. So, all I had to do was change… But I couldn’t change. I tried again anyway, because that was me, that was my power, and if I gave it everything I had, it had to work somehow. I gathered myself, aimed for that place where the change always happened—and broke into a cold sweat as the place receded infinitely and the tendons of my wrist and ankle went from a cold dull ache to a sudden, breathtaking, fiery flare.

  Okay. That really wasn’t going to work. I lay still, panting for a bit, trying to think. This was the heart of the magic that held me bound. I wasn’t supposed to be able to change. Or rather, I was stuck, changed both ways at once, and held there, by these hooks. For a hook to work, it has to be the right size. And one thing I’d learned, during my recent adventures, is that I can be just about any size I want. So, all I had to do…

  I made myself small, in both my forms. The hook in my tendons flamed a little, sensitive to my powers but not geared for this. Then I stifled a cry as my arm and leg were stretched against the hook and the manacles because I was nearly too small to reach the edges of the cage…

  Okay. I went back to my usual length, about five feet nothing as a human, about the same as a wolf. And both at once. I breathed for a few minutes, summoning my anger from the place it lives just above my heart. When I thought of this cage, and lying here practically helpless, and someone doing this to me— my fury peaked and I got larger, curling as much as I could to keep from breaking out of the cage right away. I didn’t want the dog waking up or the woman interrupting my escape. I wanted this to be quiet.

  When my wrist and hind leg were pressed hard into the cuffs, and the tendons were three times their normal size, I felt the hook slip from the enlarged tendon of my rear paw, but it did not quite dislodge itself. I made myself even larger, ignoring the bite of the cuffs, scrunching down to make more room, and then felt the hook slip from the tendon of my right wrist. I felt a huge wave of relief, and took in a deep, involuntary breath, and reverted to my usual size. Whatever this device or spell was, it was leeching into the heart of my power, of my self, and it had been doing it for days. And now I was able to change, and it was easy, as it should be. I took my wolf form, feeling the power of my wolf nature engulf me. I slipped my right forepaw from the manacle, and pulled my left hind foot free too. I ripped the tape off my wrist with my teeth.

  Under the tape and the surgical bandage I was wearing a tight braided leather band, woven with copper wire. The wires all met and threaded through a silver eye that pierced the leather bracelet and then, I assumed, me. I bit at it, feeling the tingle of power on my tongue, and managed to part the strips of leather, but the wire held firm. I nudged at it with my muzzle, but that wasn’t going to do any good. I stopped, and changed back to my human form, ripped the tape from my left ankle, and found another bracelet there, humming with power. I reached my fingers through the bars and unclipped the latch of the cage. The door opened.

  I was naked. Huh. Whoever had taken me prisoner had taken my clothes off when they put me in the cage. When my kind changes, ordinarily, we take whatever we’re wearing next to our skin with us, and it comes back—mostly—when we change back. So someone had stripped me while I was in human form. I looked forward very much to meeting whoever that was again. On my terms, this time.

  I nearly fell back when I lifted my right leg out of the cage. The wound in my hip where I’d been shot was deep though not wide. It started to bleed again. It smelled of blood, pus, and tar. A livid bruise rose round it wider than both my hands, and it hurt like mad when I stretched my leg.

  The bright porch light reflected through the windows. I limped into the kitchen and found a sharp knife in the dish drainer. I sat down on the floor, favoring my right hip, and sawed away at the bracelet on my ankle, and when it fell loose, I gently pulled the silver hook out of the wound. Oh, what a relief. I cut the one off my wrist as well, and sat for a moment examining them.

  The copper wire was twisted into curious patterns, and wound around the bloody little silver hook. It still tingled to the touch, alive with the power, whatever it was, that had worked on my ability to change. I pulled them apart, tore the wires into a tangle and then balled them up. The silver hooks still tingled. That was the spell. The leather bracelet, the copper wire, were just a distraction. And I was losing time. I needed to get rid of them. And I needed to get away.

  I unlocked the glass door and pushed it open gently. I slipped outside into the open air. Whoever had wanted me naked, helpless, drugged, caged, manacled, and bespelled, had better watch out. I was the hunter now.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I stepped out onto a wide porch made of splintery pine boards that hadn’t been painted in years. The brilliant porch light, besieged with bugs, made it impossible to see further, but I could smell… sheep. The night was cool, but not cold. After the smoke, the cleaning fluids, the cooking odors, the dog, and the woman's fetid breath, the open air tasted wonderful. I limped to the steps and down into the yard to get out of the light to where I could see, and get a sense of how to get out of here. On the right, a beat-up old pick-up and a dented green hatchback stood parked on a sparse layer of oily gravel. It was too much to hope that my car had been brought here as well. But I would be happy to take one of hers.

  She had not conveniently left the keys in either the truck or the car. And the doors were locked anyway. What an untrusting nature. Beyond the cars, a dusty gravel drive sloped up the hillside between two fences, and around a bend toward the ridge beyond. The sound of traffic, never distant anywhere in the greater Los Angeles area, came from beyond those hills, and a little to the south. A pale smudge in the dark sky indicated the direction of the city.

  My feet were bare.
They’re fairly tough, but probably not up to miles of gravel road. My ankle hurt, my hip ached, and I was limping hard to favor them both. Blood was dripping from my ankle and wrist, though the puncture in my hip had closed up again. I would be slow, easy to track. Wounded and naked as I was, it would be hard to blend in once I reached traffic and habitation. Walking away up the road was not my best option.

  Across the yard a large building loomed in the shadows from which emanated the scent of horse, hay, and old wood. I limped on past, because from beyond I caught the scent of water. I was so thirsty it hurt. I changed with relief to my wolf form and dropped into the brimming horse trough on four feet. I hunkered down, lapping and lapping, letting the water wash my sores and clear my head as I filled my stomach. The darkness was not very dark. I was in a shallow valley, northwest of Los Angeles, not far from the ocean. The ridges all around were dotted with lights indicating scattered houses. Heading off toward the darkest ridge was probably my best bet. My ankle throbbed at the very thought of so much walking or running, but it was a better choice than the road, at present.

  I stood up on two feet and stepped out of the trough, which was much quieter than heaving out on all fours. The dog might be man-shaped, and sated with sex, but I didn’t want to risk being heard. Once out of the trough I changed again to my wolf form and shook off the water. I padded along the side of the barn until I reached the fence where the sheep pens began. I opened my mouth to draw in the delicious scent of many, many sheep, of wool and lanolin, manure, milk, and blood… and lambs.

  It was the tail end of lambing season. The pen right in front of me held about two dozen big fat ewes on the verge of dropping the last lambs of the season. Half a dozen dim solar lights, strung on fence posts, gave just enough light to see if there was a new lamb. The sheep lay about the yard in little groups, sleeping or chewing. One was off in a corner, wandering back and forth. Probably about to drop. My mouth watered.