Binding: Book Two of the Moon Wolf Saga Read online

  It occurred to me that I knew of such a place, where the welcome was inscribed on a stone beside the path that led up to the house. Welcome. Friendship. Safety. I needed them all, right now. I wrapped my wounded wrist and ankle in the gauze and bandages I’d taken from the evil vet. I bought gas, and headed east on the 10 freeway for Mt Baldy.

  When I was well and strong, there were people I would track down and deal with. You do not shoot one of the wolf kind, you do not cage, bespell and wound the Daughter of the Moon Wolf. There were people out there who needed this lesson taught to them. I would need all my strength to do it.

  Mount Baldy is warded by a bunch of paranoid Buddhists up at the priory. I was forewarned this time, and only took one wrong exit and two wrong turns before I managed to point my car up the mountain and follow the roaring creek all the way to Baldy Village.

  I parked in one of the few remaining spaces at the trail head for Cedar Creek Canyon. A crowd of Japanese hikers, wearing the same-style snazzy clothes, and carrying identical high-tech metal water bottles, were just setting off up the trail. A big Hispanic family was sorting out itself, and their dogs, and they wandered up the trail next. I sat in my car, telling myself I was waiting until I could make the hike in solitude. In fact, I was hoping my ankle would stop throbbing.

  When they were gone I got out of my car. There wasn’t any reason for me to wait for the trail to clear. I wasn’t going to be loping up it in wolf form. Not that most people would notice. A surprising number of people will tell you that what they saw was a dog; a big dog, but still a dog. A huskie, usually. Or a wolf hybrid, which is true in a sense. Or even a German shepherd, for the gods’ sake. There are a fair number of hikers, where I grew up. But being lame on two legs, I would not be making the climb as a wolf.

  I picked up a discarded walking stick and started up the rocky trail, flapping in my too-big shoes. The roar of the creek, filling its banks at this time of year, flooding the trail in places, blocked out the sounds of the other hikers. If not for all the various and informative fresh scent trails, I could almost believe myself alone.

  I’d forgotten that the trail was so rocky. And steep. Cedars lined the canyon, together with pines. Flowers grew in the crevices between the rocks. Every now and then a cabin could be seen perched on some rare flat ground up the slope from the creek. The walls of the canyon rose high on either side, the tree line giving way to steep slopes of scree, until the trees commenced again at the top of the ridges.

  The scent of cedar, water and clean air was a balm. I’d chosen the city when I left home. But after all those months, I’d forgotten what air is supposed to taste like. It was a pleasant hike, which was good, because I was very slow.

  A pack of serious hikers strode up from below and passed me, offering cheerful greetings. I nodded to them, stopping off the trail so none of them noticed and commented on my limp. If you are wounded, after all, it's best if folks don’t realize it.

  The cabin I sought wasn’t far. Beside the trail there would be a large rock with a flat side facing the trail. On it were inscribed the signs I knew, Friendship, Safety, Welcome, entwined in Celtic knotwork, with wards repeating the same messages. These were beacons to the two-natured kind that help would be received there, if asked. Across the creek and high up the bank a cabin stood in a grove of cedars. The memory came to me with the scent of beef broth, and two women who had been kind to me. And to Richard. I could rest there. I could hide there, and heal up.

  The day was clear and bright, chilly between the canyon walls. I climbed slowly, looking forward to getting off my ankle, and sleeping off the wounds in my hip and wrist. There’d still been snow on the ground when Richard and I tore up this path only a month ago. When I found myself in trouble, Marge had invited me into their cabin, and helped me out. Marge and her friend Andy had made me welcome.

  I passed by the stone without sensing the ward. When I saw the big cedar ahead, where I’d discovered the scent marker of one of the folks hunting me, I backed up, as I had the last time I’d been here. I found the rock. The signs, painted and etched on the surface of the stone, were smeared with mud and gook from the stream, scratched through with a pointed stone. The wards had been marred and dispersed. I looked up at the cabin, barely visible on the far ridge above the stream. Gray Fox stood there watching me.

  Oh, shit. And I couldn’t even run.

  “Come up,” he said. Even from so far away, he didn’t raise his voice for me to hear him.

  I hesitated. Herald, scout, henchman, adviser, the gray fox kind have been allies of my family from time out of mind. When I left home, I knew they would seek after me. I’d left trails that led into the mountains, to make them think I was living as a wolf in the wild. There are thousands of square miles of mountains in California. It gave them quite a lot to search, while I made a place for myself in the city, where my trail was obscured every day by a million people and a million cars. But now, after only six months, Gray Fox had found me.

  “Come up, Lady,” he said again. He gestured, and I felt the compulsion he put behind it.

  I made my way over the board Marge and Andy used as a bridge across the creek, and up the steep path to their cabin. I tried not to limp. Gray Fox was watching me. I hoped he didn’t notice my shoes. When I reached the top, he was gone. The back door to the cabin stood open. Smoke rose from the chimney. I turned my head slowly from side to side, my mouth slightly open. Traces of Marge and Andy's scents were everywhere. They’d been using this cabin for years. But none of the traces were recent.

  As I looked around, Gray Fox emerged from the cabin carrying a tray. I smiled at him, as though I’d only been taking in the cabin and its surrounds. Anxiety is a weapon in your enemy's hand. I needed every advantage I could hold on to, against Gray Fox.

  He set the tray down on the weathered wicker table that stood in a stone-lined space on the ridge above the creek. Marge and Andy had decorated the make-shift patio with colored rocks and shards of broken plates set into concrete. Gray Fox set the bigger of the two chairs for me, and stood holding it for me. I moved toward him and he bowed.

  I stopped. “How's Mom? Is she all right?”

  “Your mother is well, I assure you. Please, sit down.”

  I went to the chair and sat down and I did not limp or wince. Gray Fox wore a dark green waistcoat, an old tight-fitting tweed jacket, heavy brown pants, and a faded white handkerchief tied at his throat. His gray hair always curled slightly at the ends, no matter how short he kept it cut. It struck me for the first time how odd he looked, dressed in such old fashions. At home, that had always been how Gray Fox looked. Now that I’d been away for awhile, he looked quirky to me, rather than familiar.

  His eyes looked like they were too close together. They held his usual expression, that he was thinking of a stupid joke about me, but was too polite to repeat it. You got the impression that even in his human form his ears were pointed, but if you looked closely they weren’t. His brows were gray. I’d never noticed that before. I wondered how old he was.

  He actually waited by his chair until I motioned him to sit down. He poured hot tea in both our cups, gave me a plate, and then offered me my choice from the platter of meat, cheese, bread and pickles that he’d brought out.

  “Where are Marge and Andy?” I asked him.

  “Who?”

  I looked around. “The women who own this cottage.”

  He shrugged, lifting his brows as though this matter were too unimportant for him to consider. “I’ve no idea. The cabin was open when I came. I’ve been borrowing its amenities while I waited for you.” He waited for my reaction. I decided not to give him any. He smiled slightly, as though in approval. “You found my scent marker. I followed your trail back down, and out to Redlands. If you want to know, I haven’t found your den there yet. But I will.” He looked smug.

  He always looked smug, I thought. I chewed on a big bite of bread, beef and pickle. His voice sounded like molasses ought to taste, sweet and
rich, lovely to listen to. I’d always liked his voice, but now it sounded affected. I’d never been to Redlands. Marge's daughter Hannah had made a scent trail out that way, to obscure mine, when I’d stupidly blundered onto Gray Fox's scent marker. I hoped that my chewing kept him from seeing any reaction I might have made.

  “You’re hurt?” he asked.

  “‘S’nothing,” I said. “Just a hunting accident.” I grinned at him, and he obligingly grinned back. He had a lot of teeth.

  “How's Luke?” I asked. My younger brother, the only one of us left at home. My older brother, Carl, disappeared when my dad did.

  “He's surviving,” Gray Fox said lightly.

  I felt a wave of guilt. Since my mother brought home Ray, as our new stepfather, I’d been Luke's protector. I realized on the heels of that wave of feeling, that Gray Fox meant me to feel guilt, just by the way he’d answered me. My attention rose a few more notches. Then I tamped it down. He could read focus, any hunter can read focus. And this conversation was, I realized too, another kind of hunt.

  So I didn’t ask him what he was going to do, now that he’d found me. I asked him, instead, something I wanted to know.

  “Where is my dad?”

  He smiled, lifted a hand. “Please, Lady. Don’t ask me questions you know I’m not allowed to answer.”

  “I go by Amber here.”

  “Very well. Amber.”

  “And I will ask you anything I damn well please.”

  For just a second he was taken aback. Great, something that wasn’t in his script. Then he bent his head to me. “As you wish, L—Amber.” He showed his teeth for a moment as he replied. “You will excuse me if I don’t always answer you.”

  I nodded, as though it wasn’t a big deal. As though this wasn’t a kind of battle.

  “Are you staying long?”

  That brought a smile. “Lady, we have been hunting you for six months.”

  “You have a message for me?”

  “Of course.” He opened his hands. He wasn’t eating anything, I noticed. I wondered if I should have surreptitiously sniffed the food more carefully, to see if he’d doctored it. That would be a point to him, though. “‘Come home.’” His eyes glinted. “‘Now.’”

  I put my sandwich down. This was serious. “Okay,” I asked. “Who sent you? My mother?”

  He looked at me gravely for a moment, and shook his head. “Ray sent us. All the fox kind. He wants you back.” He grinned, showing his teeth. “Right now.”

  I grinned back, but I was lying. I wondered if he was. I didn’t ask him what my mom said, because I didn’t want him to tell me. My mother is the Moon Wolf, Lady of the Wolf Kind, and I am her Daughter. Disobeying a direct summons from her, well, that was something I wanted to avoid.

  “Ray wants you back,” he continued, turning his mug in his hands, “because by the time of the next Gathering he must be seen to be in control.”

  I nodded. It didn’t take much figuring to know that.

  “The Rapsons have left the valley,” he continued.

  I raised my brows.

  “The Shorburns went last month. The Ipsitts are selling up.” He sipped his tea, watching me. “And your cousin Claire left about the same time you did.”

  “Did she?” I sipped my tea, too.

  “Yes,” he smiled. “She did.” He put his cup down and opened his hands. “I must tell you, Lady—Amber, I don’t like Ray's sudden appearance, his faction, nor his influence any more than you do.”

  I studied the dregs of my tea. It was not possible that this was true. Gray Fox had not lived in Ray's house. He had not been a girl who Ray and his sons believed needed to be taught a lesson. Needed to be taught her place. Needed to be taught this as often as necessary. There was no one who wanted Ray gone, who wanted him dead, more than I did. And his sons with him. When I lifted my head, Gray Fox almost started back. My eyes had gone gold. “Oh,” I said, “I’m not so sure about that.”

  He nodded understanding.

  “If you try to take me back there now, I will fight you.”

  He shook his head. “But, Lady, have you considered what your absence means to your family? Your mother, pardon my bluntness, is not considered to be a strong leader. Her acceptance of Ray, her allowing him and his cloddish sons to throw their weight around—”

  I cracked a laugh. “Sorry. That's what we’ve always called them, Luke and me. The clods.”

  Gray Fox leaned toward me for emphasis. “The line depends on your mother's successor. We all look to you. Grow quickly, grow strong. Be wise. It may be sooner than you think before everything depends on you.”

  Tears pricked my eyes, so I looked away. I couldn’t figure out why his words made me so angry. They were true, of course they were true. But something was wrong about how he said them, or why. Or that he brought it up now.

  “I have to report back,” he was saying. “But, thanks to the way in which you escaped, I have a lot of ground to cover before I must do that.” He smiled at me. “One would not want to leave any trail unchecked, for where you might have gone, or what you might be doing. That would leave my report incomplete, after all.”

  I almost smiled back. “I need a year. I will be eighteen a year from August. I need until then.”

  “I can’t give you that long,” he said, his voice filled with regret. “I’ll need to bring back word before the Gathering.”

  I nodded. I had until the fall, then. Unless he was lying. Why did I feel that he was lying?

  He checked the teapot, then rose, gathered it up together with my cup and his, and said, “I’ll make more tea. You look like you could use some.”

  He went into the cabin before I could figure out a polite way to tell him I didn’t much like his tea. It had a strangely bitter aftertaste for something with so little flavor. I thought in a moment I would get up and go after him, just to get a look inside the cabin. I wanted to go in and sniff my way around, to find out what I could about what had happened to Marge and Andy. If their dead bodies were rotting inside the door, I could certainly smell that from here, even in my human form. As a wolf, I could sort out all the old traces of their comings and goings, from the last time they left. I might also be able to tell if they were frightened when they went. I could tell which way they went. I could check the stone by the path, and find out who obliterated the wards, and smeared out the signs.

  I badly wanted to know all that, but I realized, looking after Gray Fox, that I very much didn’t want to change in front of him. I didn’t want him to see how badly wounded I was. If he’d watched me come up the trail, and I assumed he had, then he’d seen me limping on two legs. I wouldn’t let him see me limp on four. I was forming some plan of how to find out all I wanted to know, that became entwined at the back of my eyes with the Celtic knotwork that connected the three signs on the stone by the path. With a start I sat up and opened my eyes. Gray Fox sat across from me, pouring the tea. He smiled. “Here. This will help.” His smile looked smug.

  I didn’t need to change to my wolf form to know that he had touched me. He’d checked my pockets, moved my keys. I didn’t look at him. I didn’t want him to know that I knew. I cleared my throat and said, “What will you do now?”

  He laughed. “Don’t you know better than to ask the Fox his business?”

  Ask the Fox a question and he will waste your time. “I told you, I’ll ask you whatever I want.”

  “Very well. Amber. I will be here for awhile. I have several scouts out, who will report to me here. If you need anything, come and see me. I’ll do whatever I can.”

  “You’re staying in the cabin?”

  He shrugged. “It's convenient. It has a few wards. The nearest neighbors are…” he lifted his nose, “a quarter mile away.”

  I didn’t drink any more of his tea. I got up to take my plate into the cabin, thinking I could at least get a look inside that way. I headed for the door.

  “Leave that,” he said, not quite sharply. I turned and
looked at him, and he lifted a hand. “I’ll get that in a minute. Come,” he gestured. “I’ll walk you down.”

  As he started down, he changed to his gray fox form. The fox kind, like the wolf kind, take no time at all to change. He set a foot down as a human, and the next foot down as a fox, sliding from one form to the next like water from one vessel to another, almost too quickly to follow. Then he turned and looked at me. Strange. I’d never noticed before how small he was, as a gray fox. He was above average height as a human. I wondered if he took pains to make himself look larger than he was.

  He stood looking at me expectantly, his bright eyes challenging. He wanted me to change as well. I pretended I didn’t see the look, and continued down the slope after him, picking my way along the rocky path, and trying not to limp. Aside from not wanting him to see the shape I was in, if I changed, I was sure I’d lose those damn stupid shoes.

  In any case, when we got to the creek, my decision seemed prescient instead of defiant, because at that moment a crowd of hikers came laughing and chattering up the trail. A few of them waved. I waved back and smiled. When they had passed, I turned to look for the Gray Fox, but he was gone.

  It was a long walk back down the trail. Hikers passed me every few minutes, going either way. My ankle hurt, but I couldn’t limp too much to spare it. Gray Fox was out there somewhere. He would be watching me.

  It was a good thing I’d lost my I.D. He’d have gotten my address from it, and my new name. I tried to feel grateful that he promised to hold off before telling my family where I was, but I didn’t. It was a while before I realized he’d promised no such thing. He’d given the impression that's what he would do, but he hadn’t said so. Then I realized what he had done. He had offered to deal with me, separately from my stepfather, but most of all, separately from my mother. He was playing me, as though I were a piece on a board that belonged to him. And that was just wrong.

  When I thought it through like that, then our whole meeting made a lot more sense. I must be growing up. I could see what he had done. Like a good hunter, he had separated me from any allies I might still have at home. He had blocked me from my covert. He’d gotten me into the open, and now he would watch me and see where I ran. He was hunting for himself, and I was his prey. When he was ready, he would drive me to his chosen ground, and then he would come in for the kill.