Dreamwalkers (7 page)

Remy nodded. “It must have been a confusing
time.”

“So this guy shows up, and I knew something
wasn’t right. He wasn’t driving a florist truck or anything. He
said, ‘I heard about your father, and I’d like you to give these to
your mother. Geo would like to express his condolences.’”

When I say that name, “Geo,” Remy
stiffens.

“The guy handed me the flowers, then leaned
over and kissed my cheek. I was so surprised that I didn’t even
have time to react. He stroked my cheek and said, ‘I’ll be sure to
tell Geo all about you.’”

“Jesus,” Remy says. His reaction shows that
he knows exactly who Geo is, and what Geo is capable of.

“Mom was pretty upset when I told her what
had happened. ‘Who’s Geo?’ I asked her. She wouldn’t tell me. More
random guys started showing up and lurking around. There were a
couple of them at the funerals, all in black suits with sunglasses
on. I thought maybe my Dad had been involved in the Mafia or
something, until I figured out they were from an enemy pack.”

“Geo is worse than the mafia.”

I pull out the coffee and filters and start
brewing. I can hear Mom finishing up, and I don’t want her to hear
me talking about Geo. Not after what happened.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget things when you
don’t want to remember them.

“What’s for breakfast?” Mom asks, sauntering
into the kitchen.

I cough pointedly at the cloud of perfume she
leaves in her wake.

“So far, just coffee,” Remy says. “I can get
some eggs going.”

“A man who cooks, too,” Mom purrs.

I roll my eyes and ease myself out of the
kitchen.

While the coffee percolates, I sit on the
back steps. It’s way too cold, yet a whiff of spring is in the air.
Snow drips from the roof and trees. Soft thumps come from the woods
where clumps fall from tree branches. It’s peaceful out here, if I
can ignore my mother’s cloying laughter coming from the
kitchen.

I just don’t understand how she can be like
this. Remy’s right–we’re strong women. We don’t need men. If Mom
thinks we need a man to take care of us, why didn’t she just accept
Geo’s offer?

I went along with the idea of bringing Daniel
back to be our pack Alpha, because he was part of our pack. I
trusted what Daniel’s grandmother said about Daniel helping us. I
figured it couldn’t hurt to have a strong fighter with us–he killed
three grown werewolves his first time out, he had to be a strong
fighter–and having grown up with Daniel… well, I didn’t know what
he was like now that he was a wolf, but I’d rather have an Alpha I
knew rather than one I didn’t know.

Somewhere along that journey, realizing that
Daniel really wasn’t a born leader, and reflecting on my father and
his father and Uncle Red, I came to the conclusion that none of the
male werewolves I’d ever known were any stronger or better leaders
than myself or my mother.

I loved my dad. He was way nicer than Uncle
Frank, but like both of my uncles, he drank too much. I guess I was
lucky he was more of a happy drunk. When I think about him I can
smell Budweiser. He liked to sing Irish drinking songs and ballads
he learned from Uncle Frank, and he treated me like I was a
princess. I think he always hoped I’d find someone else other than
Daniel. He never acted like I was mated to Daniel the way my mom
did.

I just wish my mom would realize what I did:
that you don’t need a man to be a strong woman.

“Coffee’s ready,” Remy calls out the
window.

The following days pass by uneventfully, if
you don’t count the blisters I get from all the wood Remy makes me
hack up. “It’ll give you some upper body strength,” Remy
promised.

I took the axe from him doubtfully. “What’s
next? ‘Wax on, wax off’?”

He just gave me a confused look, which made
me remember that he’s lived his life off the grid. “Karate Kid”
references weren’t going to fly with him. Yet the situation, as I
chopped near to a cord of wood, was definitely reminiscent of those
crazy tasks Mr. Miagi dreamt up.

In the evenings, Remy and I practiced
sneaking up on each other. We didn’t do it formally, like we had
that first time. One day after dinner Remy surprised me when I
turned the corner to go to the bathroom, and after that it was like
a game of getting him back.

It probably wasn’t a good idea to hide in the
shower, in retrospect. I figured I might surprise him brushing his
teeth or flossing. When I heard him unzip his jeans, I knew this
was a bad idea.

Be silent, I told myself. Stay silent. Don’t
breathe.

Be thankful he’s just peeing and not taking a
shit.

Of course, then I heard the pants drop, and
then his hand reached into the shower and turned on the water.

For a split second I considered continuing
the game, but the jig was up. It was either fess up now, or end up
in the shower with Remy.

“Cold!” I shrieked, and flailed a bit, giving
Remy time to grab a towel to cover his manly parts before I leapt
out at him.

In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have run out
of there quite so fast, because Remy definitely hadn’t had time to
grab a towel.

“Really, you had no idea I was in there?”

“Not a clue,” Remy tells me.

We’re standing outside, waiting for Mom and
Aunt Jenny. It’s been a week since we came here, yet this is the
first time we’ve decided to hunt. I’m more than a little anxious
about stripping down in front of Remy. I don’t remember feeling
this way when I changed in front of Daniel. Maybe because we grew
up together. It felt… natural? Plus we were alone in a snowstorm
and kinda in a rush since we were about to be attacked by an enemy
pack and all. Also, cold.

Now, though, it’s muddy and broad daylight
and my mom is standing right there.

Not exactly sexy times.

Coupled with the near nakedness bathroom
fiasco of an hour ago, this has all the makings of an Awkward
Moment.

“Why were you taking a shower anyway? We’re
just going to get all muddy and gross running around in the
woods.”

Remy shrugs. “Maybe because I knew you were
hiding in the shower.”

I narrow my eyes but can’t help smiling. I
can never tell with Remy if he’s telling the truth or not. With
members of my pack I can usually get enough from our bonds to tell
if they’re lying, but even though Remy is a descendent of the
original five werewolf families that emigrated here from Europe
with my ancestors, he’s not a pack member. We’ve never added anyone
to our pack, so I’m not quite sure how that works.

I’m not even sure Remy wants to be a member
of our pack. Which only makes me question why he’s helping us.

“Are we ready to go?” Mom asks, stepping out
of the house and starting to unbutton her shirt.

I look away into the trees.

“Jen’s not here yet,” Remy says.

“I’ll be done with the dishes in a minute,”
Aunt Jenny calls from the kitchen.

“Leave it to Jenny to need the house picked
up before a run,” Mom sighs, and starts unlacing her boots.

Leave it to Mom to start stripping, just so
her naked body can be in Remy’s sights for that much longer.

“What’s the plan? Big game?” Mom sits on the
picnic table to haul her boots off and tuck her socks inside.

Remy nods. “Obviously we’ll want to train
taking down a group of targets, but for this first time out I think
we should focus on working together to take down one large
target.”

“It’s going to be hard if you don’t have a
pack bond,” I say, still trying to avoid looking at my mom’s
goosepimply skin.

“That will come with time,” Mom says.
“Exercises like this will reestablish the blood bond he shares with
us already.” Apparently the blood bond allows us to communicate as
wolves. The telepathy thing. Different from the telepathy Daniel
and I have when we’re human. Different than the telepathy I share
with the female pack members as human.

And her shirt comes off. Her black bra makes
her skin look startlingly pale.

“I’m coming,” Aunt Jenny says, her voice
closer now that she’s hurrying out of the door. She starts peeling
off her clothes too, and finally Remy is getting down to business,
casting little peeks at me. I still haven’t moved.

“Kayla, come on. Don’t start being shy now.”
Mom’s admonishment comes seconds before she stands up, now fully
nude, bats her eyes at Remy, and melts into her wolf shape.

She’s a beautiful wolf, with nearly the same
color fur as mine–a deep caramel color with some lighter ridges of
fur on her chest and forehead, and darker patches at the tips of
her ears and paws. Aunt Jenny has blonder fur with no black at all,
only a white underbelly.

Remy is magnificent. He has a deep grey pelt
with a black stripe along his back and black points–paws, nose, and
ears. Around his eyes the fur is lighter grey. He’s much larger
than I expected. I suppose I haven’t had many male werewolves to
compare him to except Daniel, who was skinny as a human and wiry as
a wolf.

I kick off my shoes and unzip my outer layers
slowly, then realize what a poor strategy this is now that they are
all wolf and waiting.

With my back turned to them all, I rip my
shirt off, shimmy out of my jeans and underwear, and whip into wolf
shape as I turn around, pleased to have been naked for as short a
time as possible.

It’s hard to tell, but I think my mom just
rolled her wolfy eyes at me.

No one moves.

I realize that we never discussed who would
be the leader. Without an alpha, I’ve always just followed my
mother’s orders, and figured she would take point. My mother must
be assuming Remy will lead, being the male. Remy isn’t a member of
the pack, though, so he hasn’t moved either.

Fine with me.

I bound toward the trees and feel my mom’s
surprise–followed by annoyance–through the bond. Aunt Jenny feels
pleased. I can’t feel what Remy is feeling at all, but I hear him
behind me, close at my heels.

With wolf ears I can immediately get a sense
of the land. A stream bubbles about two miles east, and I head in
that direction, where there will likely be animals coming to drink
and scent trails to follow. I don’t get a sense of any large prey
nearby. It’s interesting to feel the presence of the forest’s
smaller creatures without the aid of scent or hearing, like little
bubbles of life essence floating in the trees.

In the past year I spent more time as a wolf
than as a human, and something about being wolf feels so right.
This is where I should be, in this moment, in the forest, running
and hunting and surrounded by my pack. It was difficult in those
months I searched for Daniel alone, and a couple of times I
actually sought out a pack of real wolves and ran with them just to
keep the loneliness at bay. When I found Daniel, I felt whole
again. Together we spent a lot of time as wolves, too. We had to
survive, and in the winter it was easier to survive as a wolf than
as a human. We had to hunt in order not to starve.

I’m not sure my mom or my aunt has ever felt
that way. During the short two and a half years after I turned and
before heading out to find Daniel, the three of us only went
hunting once a month, on the full moon. It was some kind of archaic
ritual that the pack had always done, a moon-worship kind of thing.
Aunt Jenny sometimes talked about Artemis or Diana like they were
real women she knew who would give her advice or help her with her
grief. My mom didn’t go in for that sort of thing and I never
really understood the point of hunting, especially after I set out
on my own. We were humans with houses and grocery stores. We didn’t
need to hunt.

Now we still don’t really need to hunt, but I
see the need for this. A way for the pack to bond. It wouldn’t hurt
to have some extra food without having to go the store and risk
Geo’s spies finding us, but we aren’t exactly going to be able to
carry a full-grown elk back to camp, not in wolf form anyway. The
hunt is to bring us together, to make us of one mind.

We’re at the stream before I know it and at
that point we all slow down, spread out, and start sniffing for a
trail. I smell lots of small game but nothing larger. Our noses
take us in different directions. I can feel my mom and Aunt Jenny’s
pull on me, but I have to keep craning my neck around to get a lock
on Remy until I stop sniffing and really focus to get that bubble
of his presence tethered in. Maybe that’s why he’s able to sneak up
on us, because we’re so used to the pack bonds that it’s strange
not to feel his there, and his scent is pack-familiar because of
his bloodlines, so we don’t smell him as easily.

Remy stops and watches me like he can tell
what I’m doing.

It’s an odd sensation when Remy’s presence
latches onto mine.

It’s like that feeling I got after that first
training session in the woods, only stronger, like our minds are
magnets drawn together. Before it was just an awareness, but now
it’s an expansion, a link, a rush of bond joining us, like nothing
I’ve ever experienced with a bond, not even with Daniel. Because
with Daniel, that link had always been there, dormant, quiet, just
waiting to be reawakened. Right now Remy’s life is rushing at me,
and I’m sure part of my life is rushing at him, and I’m overwhelmed
with his memories.

His childhood growing up alone in the forest,
with only his father. He’d never known a mother. She had been
human, and died in childbirth. His father, having grown up a
fugitive, was quiet and introverted and prone to inexplicable
rages. Remy was truly a child of the forest. That’s the sense I get
of his memories:

sky and trees and earth and weather

A solitary life.

I realize that he had only ever shared a bond
with his father. I can’t even begin to know what he’s getting from
me, and his wolf face doesn’t reveal how he might be feeling about
it. I open the bonds to my mother and Aunt Jenny, cautious, hoping
that what is happening is okay.