Page 14

14

Due to pieces falling off my truck, and fatigue after the harrowing chase, I didn’t visit Mom that night. After dropping Jasmine off at home and checking the grounds of Sylvan Serenity to make sure Radomir’s men hadn’t been by and the police weren’t staking out Rue’s apartment, I went to bed and slept for ten hours. Fortunately, on a Sunday morning, nobody pounded on my door early.

After drinking two cups of coffee and wolfing down toast and scrambled eggs—I was still working on the cartons Duncan had purchased for me—I visited my truck with duct tape to engage in a few temporary repairs. That done, I headed north to make good on my promise to Lorenzo.

It was still early enough that there wasn’t much traffic, and I made it to Mom’s cabin in good time. Numerous trucks and cars were parked out front, suggesting a meeting was going on. One that I hadn’t been invited to? Or maybe the pack had gone on a hunt the night before. Several of my relatives were sleeping in the backs of trucks or on Mom’s porch. A couple of them were naked, looking sated after feasting on whatever they’d caught as wolves .

One of the trucks I passed on the way to the porch had antlers attached to the grill, a gun rack in the cab, and coyote tails tied to the radio antennae.

“Jasmine is delusional if she doesn’t think any of our other relatives have explosives in their gloveboxes.” I climbed the steps, looking around to see if Lorenzo was on the grounds before I realized I sensed him inside with Mom. They both seemed to be in the bedroom. I paused before approaching the door.

What if they were engaged in post-hunt amorous activities? Did Mom still have urges for that? In her condition?

“Hey, Luna,” came a male voice from the end of the porch.

Emilio sat against the railing, his naked butt pressed to the boards. The nudity made it easy to see the scar on his lower abdomen, a gift from one of Radomir’s men who’d shot him with a silver bullet. Emilio was lucky to be alive.

“Hello, naked relative.”

“You’ll have to be more specific.” He grinned and waved at a couple other snoozing nudes. “Did you bring any salami?”

“No, sorry. I thought only Mom would be here.” I dug into my pocket and held up a bag of midnight-chocolate-covered goji berries, something I’d picked up for her. They were more tart than my tongue preferred, but goji berries, also known as wolf berries , were supposed to have health benefits. Mom could use health benefits.

“You don’t think she craves salty cured meats?”

“Not as much as she craves chocolates.” I pointed at the closed front door. “Do you know if she’s…”

“Home? Yeah, she’s in there. She came on the hunt last night.”

“I meant do you know if she’s busy ?”

Emilio looked blankly at me.

“With Lorenzo,” I added.

My clarification didn’t help with the blankness. Emilio only tilted his head .

“Having sex ,” I whispered.

“ Oh .” He drew back, clunking his head against the railing. “I’m sure they’re not doing that .” He lowered his voice and raised his hand to his mouth to whisper, “She’s injured, and they’re old .”

“Old people can have sex.”

“No way. I’m sure they can’t even—” he made a gesture that prompted me to roll my eyes, “—you know.”

“Apparently, Mom can still hold her own against a bear. I’m sure she can you know if she wants.”

Whether she wanted to was what I didn’t know. Being ill had probably sapped her of her libido. Still, I knocked quietly, not wanting to disturb them if they were being intimate.

“They’re probably in there rubbing liniment into each other’s achy hips,” Emilio said.

The door opened in time for Lorenzo to hear that. He was shirtless—thankfully, not pantsless —and looked quite fit and not in need of liniment.

“Thanks for coming, Luna.” Lorenzo shot Emilio a dark look before stepping back and waving me into the cabin. “I’ll let you two talk.”

“Okay.”

I thought Lorenzo might stick around, waiting in the main room, but there was a haunted look in his eyes, and he stepped outside soon after I entered. Not much had changed in the last day, I suspected. Or maybe Mom had gotten worse.

Uneasy, I stepped into the doorway to her bedroom. I smiled and rattled the bag of chocolates. Only when Mom glared in my direction did I realize it sounded like someone rattling a bag of dog treats to entice good behavior from a hound.

“I’m fine.” Mom sat in a chair at the end of the bed, working on the corner of a puzzle stretching across a piece of plywood set up to act as a table.

Despite her proclamation, there were bags under her eyes, her skin was pale, and a bandage wrapped her left hand. To cover one of the wounds Lorenzo had mentioned not healing as quickly as usual? A scar on the side of her neck, half-hidden by her white hair, was also new, though it had sealed up and didn’t need a bandage.

Ah, was that a jewelry chain around her neck? Maybe Lorenzo had given her the longevity talisman.

“And I don’t need a talking to,” Mom added. “If you try to lecture me, I’ll boot you out faster than a fox in the smokehouse.”

Lorenzo must have admitted that he’d invited me up—and why. Or she’d sussed it out on her own.

“I came for advice, not to give a lecture.” I sat on the edge of the bed and groped for something I could ask that wouldn’t make that a lie. “And to deliver these chocolate-covered berries.”

“If my chocolate is going to cover something, I prefer it be bacon.”

“The berries have health benefits.” Reading off the back of the bag, I said, “They promote immune function, better sleep, and protect cells from damage caused by free radicals. They may even engender a feeling of wellness and calm.”

Judging by the baleful look Mom sent me, she didn’t put much stock in candies promising calm or wellness. And she thought I was an idiot for falling for the marketing hype.

“They sound like they’ll taste awful.” She picked up an edge piece to find a spot in the puzzle for it. That seemed to imply she would only half-heartedly pay attention to me if I brought up her solo bear hunt. Maybe she would ignore me altogether.

“They’re tart,” I said. “Not horrible. I would put them at the same notch on the delight scale as chocolate-covered crickets.”

“Those sound like they’d be better.”

“Do you want me to bring some up next time? I have a new supplier.” I almost mentioned Austin and that he had come to visit for the holidays, but Mom barely acknowledged that my human children existed.

“No. What advice do you want?” She looked balefully at me again, seeing through that story. “And what the hell is a free radical ?”

“Something malevolent that swims around in your bloodstream.”

“You have no idea, do you?”

“Not really. I’m trying to figure out how to get Duncan back from the artifact thieves.”

Mom put down her puzzle piece to look fully at me. Jasmine must not have mentioned our previous night’s adventure to the family yet. I couldn’t remember exactly what I’d told Mom about Duncan’s past before, so I summed up the magical control device, his scar, and his relationship with Abrams.

“They’re using him for his treasure-hunting skills,” I said to finish. “For some reason, they want him to find the male match to your medallion.” I waved to the bedside table where she’d been keeping it the last time I’d seen it. “They probably still want your medallion too.”

“Oh, I know they do. Now and then, their thugs drive slowly past the property and peer in this direction. I’m sure they’re waiting for an opportunity to attack when there isn’t much family present, but Lorenzo has pack members visiting around the clock to keep an eye on things. And on me now.” Her mouth twisted.

Ah, maybe it hadn’t been a hunt that had prompted all the visitors outside. Or not only a hunt.

I wondered if her sneaking away to confront a bear had been as much about what she perceived as overprotection and smothering as a desire to die on her own terms. Maybe some of both.

“We also have more of those booby traps that you triggered,” she added .

“ I didn’t trigger them. My cousins triggered them on me. There was a remote that Orazio used to zap me while I fought Augustus.”

Mom waved away the details. “Yes, yes. I know.” She lowered her arm and smiled slightly. “Though it was a shame to lose fit pack members, I’m glad you got the best of them. I knew you had the power to do so, if only you’d untether it.”

“Duncan helped,” I said.

“Have you mated with him yet?” She looked hopefully at my abdomen—my womb .

I rolled my eyes. Not this again. “No. That’s hard to do when the bad guys have him. I’m sure they wouldn’t allow conjugal visits.”

“You’d think that sex would invigorate him so that he would treasure-hunt better. But that medallion was lost long ago. I doubt it’s in this area.”

“I guess their research suggests otherwise. You don’t know anything more about it than what you’ve told me? Anything that could be helpful in finding it?”

She shook her head. “I can ask the family archivist if she knows anything.”

“Okay, good.” I hadn’t known the family had an archivist, but that sounded promising. “I want to get Duncan away from those guys, but I would also prefer to keep them from acquiring more werewolf artifacts. It worries me that they want them. They’ve got to be up to something.”

“It is strange that someone would put so much effort into stealing them. Men with money and means.”

“But who aren’t magical themselves. Most of these artifacts regular humans wouldn’t even be able to use, I don’t think.”

“Perhaps if you get Duncan back,” Mom said, “they’ll be handicapped and unable to find any more of them.”

“That’s not the main reason I want him back, but it would be a perk. ”

“I’m sure.” She smiled at me, looking smug.

“If you start talking about mating and offspring again, I’m going to pelt you with these berries.”

“Is that how the health benefits are delivered? Through physical contact?”

“That’s how the free radicals are knocked out of your body, yes.”

Mom shook her head and gazed out the window in the direction of the road. “Those men have been attacking us and stealing from our kind and others for weeks now. They deserve to have their throats torn out.”

“Probably, but I haven’t had the opportunity to do so yet.” I shifted on the bed, worried she would suggest I plan their murder. Maybe they did deserve that after all they’d done, but it still disturbed me that I’d lost control of the wolf and killed the underlings that had attacked me at Sylvan Serenity.

“Perhaps you should seek that opportunity out. You said you have a list of their addresses?”

“I have a list of properties that Radomir’s company owns. Whether he and Abrams live at any of them…” I tilted my palm toward the ceiling.

“Search them. You need to find those men and deal with them before they deal with you .”

After the previous night’s attack, it was hard to deny that logic.

“And if you could take or destroy that control device, you wouldn’t need to worry about Duncan turning on you or working for them.”

I blinked. That hadn’t occurred to me. Of course, it wasn’t as if I’d had the opportunity to take it—I hadn’t seen it since the night I’d escaped the potion factory, and I’d been busy staying alive then. Still, it might make as much sense to try to find it as Duncan. Assuming they sent him out again to search for the werewolf medallion, he could end up anywhere in the state. Or anywhere at all . Those guys would presumably be at one of their facilities around Puget Sound.

“Probably not destroy it,” I murmured, “since I don’t know what that would do to Duncan . He’s linked to it through some magic embedded in that scar of his.” I touched the spot on my forehead where it existed on his.

“But if you took it, they could not control him.”

“Yeah.”

“ You could control him, though he is a strong werewolf and would not appreciate such.”

“No, I wouldn’t do that. I could just… hide the device in the heat duct under my bed.”

Mom’s eyebrows twitched.

“Or in my sock drawer next to my hormone cream. That would ensure no guy would ever touch it.”

“Your time among humans has made you odd, my daughter.”

Out front, someone let out a sound similar to, “Yeehaw!”

Emilio yelled, “That was a fat one.”

“Varmint hunt!”

Thuds sounded on the porch as my family leaped off to chase whatever had stirred their wolf blood.

“You think it’s humans that made me odd, huh?” I asked.

“Absolutely.” Mom smiled.

Her curved lips warmed my heart, even though the gesture didn’t last. She looked sternly at me and said, “You’re welcome for the advice. Now, go find him. And don’t come harass me if I choose to hunt on my own again. I can still handle myself when the magic infuses me.” She didn’t admit, as she had done before, that the wolf sometimes evaded her now when she reached for it.

“Don’t do yourself in, please, Mom. Taking on a bear alone is unwise. And Lorenzo?—”

“Is a nag,” she said firmly.

“Then why are you spending time with him? ”

“Most of the time, he’s decent company. And he’s good in bed.”

I groaned and dropped my face in my hand. “I knew Emilio was naive about that.”

“He’s naive about a lot. I bet he would fall for the hokum on the label of that bag. Why don’t you give him those berries?”

“He prefers salami.”

“Go home, Luna. I’m fine. Make some plans, and go retrieve your old-world wolf. And the device that controls him. Perhaps he’ll be so grateful that he’ll?—”

“Don’t say it.” I jerked my hand up, palm toward her. “No more talk about offspring. Please.”

“He’ll be a loyal protector and companion going forward,” she finished, though I believed I’d guessed right about what she’d intended to say.

“He’s already that,” I said softly. Then, because she looked tired, I rose to take my leave. I left the chocolate-covered berries. Just in case.

“Another reason he would be a good father to werewolf pups then,” Mom said softly.

I heard the words but didn’t look back, not wanting to argue further.

Besides, I had something else on my mind. The beginnings of a plan to find Radomir and Abrams and steal that device from them.