Even in the warm sunlight, Samantha shivered while she parked Katherine's 4-wheel-drive Jeep Cherokee and got out. Alfari bounced across the driver's seat and down to the ground before Samantha closed the door.
Nothing dwelled here now except ghosts and wild things; no one wanted to take a chance on a place where two hundred thirty-three people had all died or vanished, abruptly and with no official explanation. Some fifty-odd households, one morning full of life and the next silent. Buildings were boarded up, yards wildly overgrown... she felt tears sting her eyes as the thought found its way into her head, this isn't Unity, this is the corpse of Unity, what was Unity is dead.
She left the car, and walked along the empty street, Alfari staying at her side without even wandering off to investigate. There was the store that had everything from groceries to hardware, books to pet and farm animal supplies; there the community centre that had held the first incarnation of the library on the second floor. Most of the money and energy had gone into building the houses, knowing and accepting that for some time they would still be dependent on the nearest town.
What mattered was being together: fifty-eight demon-wolves, Cassandra's descendants, from cubs to elders more grey than black, and their friends, with their dream of their own village finally real.
A village with a sense of community so powerful that it made Haven look uncaring and fractured.
She paused in front of one house, set back from the road, the rectangle that had been an herb garden still recognizable. The long grass rustled as she made her way to it, measured steps along the edge, and dropped to one knee to search. She picked up the strong scent, smiled, and broke off a few sprigs of catnip. Too bad she hadn't thought to bring something she could dig the plant up with... But that wasn't why she was here.
“Thanks, Dad,” she whispered to the wind. “Alfari and Malta and Hob will love this, later. I hope Rasputin's with you, wherever you are. Give Mom a hug for me.”
The catnip she stored in her jacket pocket while she returned to the street, and followed it farther. Each house called to her, in the names of those who had lived there. It was altogether too easy to imagine spirits held here by the lack of a resolution to the whole story, needing to be set free.
“Jesse is still alive,” she told them out loud. “He can't be the only one, you know him and Jaisan, if one's alive the other must be, somewhere out there. Jess might still survive, and kill the demons that did this. And I know I don't entirely trust Shaine, how can I? He's one of the children of water, they call themselves merenai. But he's helped Jess so much, he even fought one of his own kind to keep Jess safe, even though he didn't have a chance of winning. Doesn't he sort of make up for the rest of them? There's still a chance that the story will have a reasonably happy ending. Maybe if you wish Jess good luck as hard as you can, that'll do some good.”
She half-expected some ghostly reply, but none came.
Her feet found, without conscious thought, the overgrown driveway of a larger house, on the other side of the road, this one with more land around it. The chicken coop didn't look like it could shelter much of anything anymore, the chickens probably long since food for the wild things. The elm nearby was dry and dead, but two platforms still rested in its branches, the rope ladder to the lower one no longer there.
Sam sat on the top step leading to the porch, and leaned sideways against the post. Alfari climbed onto her lap, pressed against her, and Sam curved an arm around her to steady her there.
Here, the memories were too strong to block.
Dena Kore-Tremayne's mate died when Aindry was thirteen, the twins nine, over two years after his initial diagnosis—two years of deteriorating ability to function, increasing pain that in the end lay beyond the control of magic or modern medicine. The nearest members of the community did what they could, and got word around.
Sam, recently graduated from high school, offered to stay with Dena's family for a while and take over some of the household responsibilities.
She hugged herself, smiling. Even in the grief of knowing her mate was dying, Dena had greeted her warmly—a determined woman who looked much like her offspring, the Kore-Tremayne blood running true, very clearly an alpha bitch graciously accepting Sam into her territory as a subordinate pack member. She apologized for her mate's absence, explaining that he tired easily and was already asleep. With grave courtesy, she acknowledged the introduction to Sam's sleek orange feline companion Uri, which Uri had returned, cautious but receptive.
Then there were the kids...
When Dena called them to the kitchen, they came promptly; Sam's first reaction was to wonder how on earth she'd be able to tell the twins apart.
“This is Samantha,” Dena said calmly. “That is her friend Uri. These are Aindry, Jaisan, and Jesse. You three are to do as Samantha tells you, is that clear?”
Immediate agreement, eyes kept submissive-low, but as soon as Dena looked away all three forgot their gloom in curiosity and bounced over to quiz Sam on everything they could think of about her life and meet Uri, who batted away excessively importunate hands forcefully but with velvet paws. After an hour or so of that, Dena sent them off to bed.
“They can be a handful,” their mother admitted, amused. “At least only Aindry was born actively wolf, I can hardly imagine the mischief the twins would be into if they had both forms to use.”
“How are they doing?” Sam asked tentatively.
Dena smiled, sadly. “As well as one can expect. We've talked about it, they understand what's happening.” She reached across the table, closed one hand around Sam's. “Thank you,” she said softly. “Knowing there's someone else here is a considerable relief. We have nursing help through the day while I'm at work, Phillip talked me into finishing out the school year, but the kids and the house and so much else to be done...”
“I'll stay as long as you need me.”
“Come?”
Sam followed her upstairs.
To Aindry's room, first, the walls plastered with posters of wolves, rock stars, dinosaurs, and sports cars, in bewildering confusion; dark fur showed betrayingly on the garnet-red bedspread.
Dena leaned down and kissed her daughter gently. “Say good-night to Sam.”
“Good-night,” Aindry said dutifully. “Can we go to the beach tomorrow?”
Sam looked questioningly at Dena.
“I think it would be nice for all of us to go to the beach,” Dena said. “Maybe your dad will feel well enough to join us. But get some sleep, so you'll be awake for it.”
“I hope so. Okay.” She snuggled down under the light blankets. “Have nice dreams, Sam.”
“I'll try,” Sam promised. “You too.”
The room across the hall belonged to the twins.
Sam was a little surprised to find only one bed, a double, with two small bodies nestled together in the middle of it under a blanket with a pattern predominantly amethyst and sapphire.
Dena glanced in her direction, shrugged, and smiled. “We had to put them in the same crib, or they'd scream murder and never settle down. We tried, about a year ago, getting them twin beds, but every morning we found them both in the same bed, so we gave up. I've had the other teachers at the school tell me they think they're too dependent on one another, that it isn't healthy...”
“Obviously they have no idea what a twin-bond can be like for wolves.”
The smile became a grin. “Many people throw fits at the thought of a gay teacher. Imagine if they knew they had a demon-werewolf teaching a class of seven- and eight-year-olds.”
Sam had to chuckle at the thought.
Dena gave each of the twins a kiss.
“G'night, Samantha,” one said sleepily, and the other, “We'll show you our rock collection tomorrow, 'kay?”
“Okay. I'd like to see it.”
Dena closed the door part-way behind them.
That night was the first of many the two of them spent in the kitchen, sharing a pot of tea and talking.
Samantha stayed long past Phillip's death. When Unity was finally declared inhabitable in June, and Dena's family moved in July, she went with them, choosing her offered room with them rather than returning to her parents' household, with her parents' blessings. She helped them build the tree-house, and as often as they could get away with it the twins slept there together.
Everyone in Unity knew, to make this work they had to lean on each other, make this a sort of extended wolf pack with everyone contributing something to the whole and in return being assured the support of the whole.
By March, they were sure it was going to work, that they finally had their dream, a place of their own. Latent wolf blood being relatively common among the Cassandra wolves, the tradition had formed of a Beltaine ceremony of sharing power to a level that woke it; the twins turning thirteen that year, they were to be included for the first time, an event that had both of them wildly excited—and their sister as well, though she teased them mercilessly about it.
Then came April...
The happy memories shattered.
Her recall of that day was like that of a nightmare, twisted in ways that made no sense, only the feelings remaining clear. Uri had woken her, crying urgently and pawing at her; her first reaction was to bolt for Dena's room and tell her they had to get out of the house and away. They'd roused the sleepily-confused kids; Sam left Dena to hurry them into their clothes while she ran to her room to grab her canvas backpack and dump the contents out. Uri howled from the front door, the shriek of an alarm siren, and Sam detoured to open it for him; he took off running, not into the woods where he could hide, but towards the nearest house, and farther off, she could hear more feline voices yowling frantic warning, the sound echoing eerily around the village. Lights were starting to come on here and there, others responding to the unprecedented clamour. Virtually every household had a cat, and she rather thought that none of them were currently considering their personal safety; some fifty cats, all gathering in force and clearly determined to wake everyone in Unity, created a considerable cacophony. She wished Uri and the others luck, and darted back to Dena's room. From under the bed she pulled a carved wooden chest, very old, and opened it; the magesilk-wrapped contents she stuffed hastily into her pack, tied it and slung it over her shoulder.
She found Dena hanging up the phone when she came out in the hall.
“I called your parents,” the wolf explained. “And two others. They can call others, but I think most people have heard the cats by now. You got...?”
“Yes. Let's go.”
The five of them fled, out into the forest, under storm-clouds gathering to hide the stars, with the agitated hue-and-cry of the cats a surreal soundtrack.
They didn't, couldn't, flee far enough to not hear the inhumanly beautiful song echo its way through the trees, twining itself into the rising wind, warping her perception of reality beyond recognition; Dena and Aindry were less affected than her and the twins, but what power must be in it to reach full wolves at all? Dena reported that she could smell demons, and the same sort-of-fishy scent the wolves had picked up traces of around the lake many times. Almost, Sam turned back to the village, in terror for her parents, their friends, the other wolves, the brave cats that she could no longer hear at all, but she stopped; her first responsibility was to see to it that Dena got her children to safety.
Try as she might, she couldn't remember how she and Jess had gotten separated from the others, sometime after the full fury of the storm broke, no more than she could how she'd lost Jess, only the blind panic that she'd failed and Jess was out there alone somewhere... She hid her backpack close to Unity, and searched and searched, the music still ringing in her ears until she thought she'd go mad, all her senses suddenly unreliable...
The next clear memory was of waking up in Bryan's bed, with the wolf who became her dearest friend hovering anxiously near—with nearly two weeks missing in her head.
“Dena,” Sam said softly, hugging Alfari close; Alfari purred and reached up to rub her cheek along Sam's. “I tried, I really did, and I'm sorry I messed up. But demon-luck brought him right to me, and I haven't forgotten, even though he has. It's been so tempting to tell him, but he's been safer without his memory, until now. They've found him, and it's just him all alone against the same thing that killed everyone. I won't give up, I promise. Maybe demon-luck will keep working and you and Aindry and Jais will turn up at the last possible moment. Maybe one of the demon-wolves that we lost touch with when they moved to the States and the UK, or maybe a wolf from another line like the legends say, will show up on the doorstep and help.” She rested her cheek against the top of Alfari's head. “Uri, I'm sorry, we only survived because of you waking me in time, all of you tried so hard, and you died and I wasn't there for you.”
A chipmunk ran out from under the porch a short distance away, gave her a wary look, and scurried off on errands of its own. Alfari's tail flicked, but she didn't move and her purr never faltered.
“Thank you,” Sam told the chipmunk gravely. “I needed to be reminded that I came here for a reason other than the ghosts. I don't have infinite daylight, and finding what I left here is not going to be easy—and no way am I staying here after dark. Not even with 'Fari.” She stood up, and stretched. “I can at least give him back his name, Dena. That's about all I can do, but I'll keep trying. I promise.”