Guarding Justice Read online

  Or is it simply knowing that tonight my world is changing?

  In the bathroom, I swipe up moisturizer and soap and toothpaste. Where will we go? How long will I be gone?

  I push the questions aside for now, eager to let someone else figure everything out for a while.

  Downstairs, Locke waits with mercury eyes that slide through me with inspection.

  My stomach flip-flops at his perusal.

  “That everything?” His forehead dips to the right in indication of the duffel bag I’m holding.

  I swallow the saliva culminating in my mouth. “Um. Yes?”

  I don’t know why it comes out like a question.

  He raises his eyebrow in arching doubt.

  “Yes. Yes it is.” I gather up my purse from the sideboard, dipping my hand inside it to find the house keys.

  “I’ll just need to lock up.” I take two steps forward when he reaches across me, his forearm brushing across my chest. He leans, taking the handle of my duffle. “I’ve already done it. Unless you need anything from the kitchen?”

  No, nothing from the kitchen. My mother’s workroom?

  “Just let me check.” I power-walk from the foyer to her space.

  The light gray of early morning is already coming through the huge skylights. That’s the color of his eyes. Light gray. Dawn.

  Stomach and nerves still all a jumble, I let my eyes ease over the space.

  I had been using the space as storage of the medical supplies I had been hoarding. Now, the cabinets beneath the wood countertop are still wide-open from when I ran in to grab them.

  I close the cabinets, picking up an old sage and lavender bundle from the bottom as I do so.

  I bring it to my nose and inhale.

  The scents are familiar and comforting.

  Opening a drawer, I pull out a lighter. I ignite the bundle, let it burn a few seconds, then blow it out.

  I quickly sweep around the room, doing something I haven’t in a long, long time. Cleansing the space. A final atonement to my mother.

  I hadn’t been able to protect her. I’m sorry.

  In a small bowl, I stub the bundle out the same way one would with a cigarette. Don’t want the house to burn down.

  If I decide to stay where I’m going, it still has value. Maybe Indy will one day want to move back here. Maybe we’ll put it on the market and split the profits.

  I walk to the front of the house. Locke is opening the door from the outside, where he must have went to stash my bag away.

  It feels like a re-do on our earlier frenzied encounter.

  A strange calmness descends upon me as I walk towards him.

  He holds the door open for me, and as I draw even with him, the fluttering of attraction erupts in my belly.

  He smells...amazing. Like bergamot and warm fur.

  When I insert the key in the lock, he waits there beside me.

  We walk shoulder-to-shoulder from the front porch to a waiting SUV parked in front of the house.

  He opens the passenger door for me, and I have to use the side rails and hand holds to lift myself in.

  Once inside, the presence of people has me twisting in my seat.

  Six of my pack mates. All the submissive ones. My discerning eye takes them in. None appear to be injured or look to be freshly abused.

  “Everyone ok?” I ask.

  I get nods all around.

  Celeste, the most extroverted, and the only other female besides Indy, Emily, and me, speaks up.

  “Locke came around to our apartment and picked us up! We’re going to council headquarters!”

  Chapter 4

  The werewolf Council, seven wolves charged with overseeing the werewolf packs of the Americas, have a strange campus-like collection of buildings that make up their headquarters. There’s the main building, a four story administrative type setup with offices, conference room and even a large gym. Then there’s the ‘dorms’ - a three story structure that is a cross between hotel suites and actual college dorms. A repurposed ‘restaurant’ that I’ve been calling the kitchen. There is a neat, large two-story library, and finally an old barn, renovated to house the resident witches’ coven. We call it the farmhouse and it sits on the eastern edge of the council lands, perched on a functioning wheat field.

  Within a week, we are settled in the ‘dorms’ - rooms which are curiously empty, but new and clean. I’ve become a kind of de-facto informational organizer and counselor among the council and our wolves.

  I had no intention of stepping into this role, it just kind of...happened.

  I fall into routine. Mornings at the library. Afternoons in the kitchen. And nights? That’s when I come alive. Out of the confines of expectation and into my self.

  Tonight, I’m running. In the forests past the council buildings.

  There’s something about these small pockets of life, when you are in a place and time that isn’t where you are supposed to be. Tiny moments of freedom. I’ve had so few such moments.

  Tonight is one of the pockets. I’m running in the most beautiful of forests. All out. As fast as my legs can take me. And it is exhilarating.

  Earth’s scents burst with each strike of my paws. Cool earth, like dirt after a rain. Pine. Of course pine. Can there be anything else here?

  Yes. The drier scent of fur. Hooves. A deer or elk is around.

  I bound over a felled tree. Around the evergreens. Brush past low-hanging pine boughs, exploding fresh water droplets through the air. There might not be anything so pure and I revel in the joy of it.

  I pick up another scent. Old. Cat. Maybe a mountain lion or lynx. This forest trail is not exclusive. The elk and deer have beaten this path, cut through the trees, created a natural route to the communal watering hole.

  Animal instincts are fascinating. I could get lost in thoughts about evolutionary theories, natural selection ideas, and what that means, but alas, I want to forget such things right now.

  Right now I am focused on me. On my freedom. This pocket of time where I am in myself. My true self. My wolf.

  I want to jump off a cliff; I want somebody to love me enough to hold me back. It’s a contradiction that I don’t understand. A yearning I’m even perplexed to feel.

  I’m surrounded by a new pack. Humans, witches and other wolves. Yet I am lonely.

  My feet stutter to a stop, the trail has ended, and the only thing above me is bare jagged rock.

  Straight vertical. I’m not a monkey.

  I’m a wolf of the forest.

  Breathless, I pad into a small clearing, flopping down in the carpet of grass and dirt.

  Soon, I’ll have to go back to headquarters. Soon, I’ll have to go back to that room and into my routine.

  Soon I’ll have to go back to responsibilities. Get a job.

  Go to bed, go to work, wash, rinse, repeat.

  I sigh. This pocket of time hasn’t been long enough.

  I’m not alone anymore. This pocket of time has been intruded upon.

  I remain in my position of lying down, but it’s a relaxed deception.

  My muscles are ready to spring into action at the slightest threat.

  There’s no sound save the wind.

  There’s no sight save the rock and trees.

  There’s no smell save earth and air.

  Is my brain, usually so full of lists and to-dos, now inventing monsters in the forest watching me?

  No, I don’t think so. I felt a presence.

  The question is who is watching me?

  Chapter 5

  A field of wheat illuminated by a full moon. The wheat spreads out undulating in synchronicity with the wind. Natural small hills give further natural beauty to this idyll landscape. A large weeping willow on the horizon is the only thing to break up the white-gold sea of wheat set against the blue black of sky.

  The moon melts, a white dripping goo, down that formidable wall of sky. The puddle it makes? It becomes a lake on the horizon.

  My natu
ral curiosity propels my feet forward, even while trepidation stirs in my heart.

  In the moon’s absence, the wheat field is no longer discernible. Darkness and shadows are what I’m moving through now. But that illuminated lake, that’s what I keep walking towards.

  There’s no physical feeling of the earth beneath my feet, and it makes me think I’m floating to my goal.

  I don’t run, even though I can feel the creatures in the darkness closing around me. If I just make it to the lake I’ll be fine.

  That moon lake becomes my steadfast focal point. I am consumed by reaching it.

  After what seems an prolonged ‘walk’ I emerge, leaving the dark fields to find my feet in sand, on the edge of the moon lake, whose milk-white waters stir with gray ripples.

  The willow is on the right side of the lake, it’s branches sweeping, moving, stirred by a non-existent wind.

  The sand itself is an illuminated blue-white. I bend, pulling a handful of the granules into my fist.

  I turn my hand over, open my palm and watch as the sand doesn’t lose its glow as it sifts through my fingers.

  A dark shape in the smooth sand down the beach catches my eye.

  It’s round edge of wood sticking up, worn down to a smoothness. My hand plucks the wood from the sand with no resistance.

  It’s half a wooden shield. I inspect the edges.

  The wood is frayed. Split into chips and slivers.

  This shield has been ripped apart.

  And cold fear grips my heart.

  Is it me or my sister that is facing this threat?

  I wake slowly, the dread and anxiety pulsing my heartbeat to a fast and erratic pace. My skin is balmy, that strange and sickly sense of cool-warm and wet.

  I swing my feet onto the floor, and flap my shirt against my chest, attempting to dry the sweat and dissipate my nerves with fidgeting action.

  The moon melting replays in my inner eye. That didn’t scare me. It was surreal, sure, but it was the fear of the things in the darkness of the shadow fields that hastened me to the safety of the lake. And when I got there, what really spun the horror up to new levels?

  The broken, obliterated shield.

  Two shields and the sword. The light, the dark, the in-between. In the final war, one death to win. One death to lose. One death to go on.

  The last time I’d seen a broken object? Indy had been challenged and stabbed.

  Near death, just the few short weeks ago, I’d gotten word from Glory that she was on the mend.

  Functioning anyways.

  So this shield? It resonates a great trembling fear in me.

  It’s barely four a.m. but I can’t go back to sleep. I shuffle down the hall to the bathroom, and splash water on my face and brush my teeth.

  Still feeling shaky, I turn on the shower and climb beneath the scalding spray.

  After twenty or so minutes I feel more myself.

  I dress in a simple robe and pad back to my room. I fold up some clothes for later in a nice pile and cradle them in my arms as I descend the staircase to the bottom floor.

  Outside, I leave the sidewalk, and cut across the meadow to reach the more forested part of the compound. I look for the moon, and find only a small sliver of it above the tree line to the north west.

  It’s still dark and my feet make no sound on the dirt and pine needle ground. Dropping my robe from my shoulders, I fold it up and set my other clothes on top of it.

  I shift.

  I can’t help but pouncing the ground and wagging my tail, feeling the changes out.

  It feels doggone good to be in my furred-form.

  I take off. In the opposite direction of the compound.

  Running, running, running. Soaring on pure energy. That’s what my wolf is. Pure life energy.

  I bound over a creek, and up a hill on the opposite side.

  Dawn is coming, pale orange and white.

  It’s high summer now, but there is still snow in the darkest pockets of the forest. Granite and elk are the scents of earth’s essence in this part of where forest meets meadow.

  I walk the edge of that forest, listening to the winds, watching the light change with the sunrise.

  It's a balm to my anxious mind. Indy was right to give me those wild underwear.

  This is where I belong. Where I am most at home. In the wild, being wild. Free.

  I’m not sure what spikes my alertness first - the sound or the sight - but as I come around a bend in the woods, another wolf all white like me, breaks out of the forest to my left and pads slowly into the meadow.

  Regally, slowly, as a predator in charge is want to do, he relaxes on his hunches.

  He blinks his eyes at me, and lifts his nose into the air sniffing.

  Instinctually, I know this wolf. Its Locke.

  He’s telling me to go no further. He wants me to know he is watching me, and doesn’t find me a threat.

  I pad forward, ignoring him. Nose to ground, I almost miss the narrowing of his eyes, but I have great peripheral vision.

  He lazily gets up and walks into my path.

  Not in the mood to be pushed around by a bigger wolf, I move around him.

  He nips my heels before putting his body alongside my own and pushing me off course.

  I’ve crossed some unseen line. My heart hammers inside my chest, not from physical exertion but from the nearness of him.

  I mark this spot in my mental map for later. I can always come back to it. For now, I speed up and lope away - nerves getting the better of me.

  Locke lets me go.

  Chapter 6

  A burly Frenchman from Quebec, a bitten wolf, is the head taskmaster of the kitchen. Gage is especially peculiar about his sauces, his breads and the cleanliness of his kitchen, but under all his blustering bark is a gentle soul.

  He always seems to be in the kitchen. If I come in the morning he sets me to work chopping vegetables for dinner. If I come in the afternoon, he puts me to work making breads or whipping cream for dessert.

  I’ve been studying under his tutelage - and tutelage is the nicest word to describe his constant stream of French profanities as I emulate all his movements - to learn how to make croissants, baguettes, and macarons.

  We’d formed a solid working relationship, and the French profanities have died down some. In its place, he usually fills the kitchens by singing French songs in a round, rich baritone.

  It makes my time and work pleasant and enjoyable. Perhaps too, there’s a simple satisfactory pleasure in serving all the people that come in for dinner, good food. They rave about the breads or confections, not knowing I made them, and I glow from the praise.

  I like baking. I like baking for people. It's a huge deviation from the world I’d been working in before, but I can’t find it in me to feel guilty.

  I’d had my eye on Gage as he made hollandaise one day, and was looking forward to trying my hand at that next. He also makes the most delicious roast dishes. Which is what I’m smelling from the oven now.

  The rosemary and sage have me salivating as I do a few quick kneads and folds on my dough.

  This afternoon, Gage and I have been working side by side, the only two in the kitchen. It’s a week till Samhain and the witches that are usually helping us are busy elsewhere. I finish kneading, put the dough in my bowl, and cover it, waiting for it to rise.

  I check to make sure the oven is on the right temperature. And when I turn, Gage is popping the cork on a bottle of wine.

  On the long, stainless steel table, amid the assembly-line crème brûlée he’s just finished, is a cutting board with cheese and bread.

  “Cher, let’s take a break. Hmm?” He pours the wine into two glasses.

  Every now and then Gage likes to slow down and enjoy his simple fare. These moments are how we’ve formed a more happy and productive working relationship.

  “That sounds like a fantastic idea.” I spread a little bit of the soft cheese onto a piece of crusty-soft French bread fro
m my first finished batch.

  “Are you doing any work with the witches for Samhain?” He inquires while sitting down his wine glass.

  We are both leaning against the long workspace, looking at the row of ovens, the side door open to let in a fresh cool breeze.

  The kitchens get hot when we have the ovens on all day, and we often prop open the side door to alleviate the heat.

  “No.” I shake my head and lift the wine glass to my nose. Gage has taught me a new appreciation for French vintages.

  He always has the best, and when I travelled into town and hit the grocery store, I’d looked for the labels he shared with no avail. Either he’s got a stockpile or a great supplier.

  “Probably for the best.” I know Gage has some unspoken thoughts on the ‘things’ our resident coven gets up to. For the most part, he’s live and let live, but I think he has appointed himself a kind of lookout to me. He doesn’t want to speak any negativistisms, but he wants to make sure I don’t involve myself in any mischief either.

  I’d wondered, before I met Locke in the woods on my morning run a week ago, if the presence I’d felt watching me on other running trips had been Gage. But it didn’t feel like him.

  For one thing, I’d have smelled his always present bread and butter warmth.

  Having eased his mind about Samhain, he happily spreads some cheese on his own slice of bread and bites into it with a savory relish.

  After a few minutes and a full glass of wine, he breaks into the first few lines of his favorite French song.

  La Vie en Rose.

  I can hear the piano chords in my head and join in with him on the second verse. Stumbling over some words - sure - but he doesn’t correct me, just sings louder.

  I sing louder and soon we are bellowing it loudly together in a spontaneous duet. He swings me into his arms, and hums the instrumentals.

  For the final verse, he spins me around and twirls me out so that we belt out the last line together. I laugh at the end and wipe my forehead, out of breath and flushed.

  “Ahem.” It’s not cheering applause that punctuates our performance but a clearing throat from the doorway.