Her Perilous Wolf by Julie Steimle (free e books to read .txt) 📖

Matthew’s and Troy’s help Vicky would have been heavy dead weight. Both enigmatic men waved and walked back toward their own cabin again—straight into the darkness.

However, when the cousins carried Vicky indoors, Doug and the others, upon seeing them, jumped up to assist—hearing both Vincent’s and Audry’s excuses about their rather short time at the party. No vegan food, they said. Neither Vincent nor Audry shared anything relating to what really had happened. They said they were just not in the mood to party, but they had checked in with old friends and Vicky had a wonderful time dancing. She just drank too much and had passed out. Some friends had helped carry her home.

“Was that Troy Meecham at the party?” Doug asked, peeking to Audry.

She and Vincent exchanged looks.

Vincent said, trying to be casual, “Um, yeah. But uh, I don’t think he will be there tomorrow. You missed him.”

“Ah man!” Doug sighed. “That’s too bad. The guy’s quite brilliant. Our correspondence has yielded so much that has moved my research forward. And he’s dealing with severely toxic blood—from bites in particular. I mentioned to him the doctor who had checked out Maris a couple months ago, and he got back to me and said he already knew Dr. McAllister and was working with him as well.”

Audry nodded to that. They would know all know each other.

“All of those people are rather well connected through your friend Rick,” Doug murmured, watching the TV screen. It was soccer.

Audry drifted over toward the couch, recognizing one player on the screen—Peter McCabe, the Witchdoctor. He was another one of Rick’s friends, and also one of the Seven. She started to wonder about every person he had introduced her to. Selena was a Gulinger alumnus. Daisy was a werewolf from a pack he had encountered in the South. Jessica grew up in that witch town in Massachusetts—part of the Seven. And Eve McAllister? Audry felt dizzy. Eve, in every picture she had seen her, looked like a vampire… a surfing vampire, but a vampire nonetheless. How many supernatural beings were there in the world really?

“I’m going to bed,” Audry announced, turning wearily from the couch.

“The kids are in the loft,” her father called after her.

“We’ll just shoo them out,” Vincent said. Gesturing to Vicky whom they had laid on the couch, looking a bit like a hypnosis victim, he added, “Unless you want to stay down here and let us single guys take the loft.”

Audry shook her head, looking at Vicky who would be a heavy load to carry up. “No. I’m going up. I’ll shoo the kids down to take a different room, and you can wake Vicky up.”

Vincent went pale. “Uh… you don’t know how Vicky is when she is woken from a deep sleep. I’m not doing it.”

Audry shrugged and went up anyway.

In the room, Maris and Skyler were both asleep. The cartoon was still going on their iPad, but they had konked out. She didn’t want to wake them either.

Audry sat on the step and heaved a sigh. That entire day flooded over her again. All of it.

Her wolf. The one people had teased her about. The one Silvia had said she was in love with. The one everyone had accused her of being in love with actually, was in fact Rick Deacon.

She closed her eyes.

Truth was, somehow, she had always known. Whenever Rick had been around, she had dreamed of the wolf, even if she had not seen the wolf. And the wolf had always spoken with Rick’s voice. She sometimes she had dreamed of Rick becoming the wolf. Of course she had blown it all off, as they were only dreams. But her mother used to always say that dreams were merely her subconscious telling her conscious self the truth.

So, her subconscious knew.

But what now?

She sighed, hunkering down with her arms tight across her body, leaning her head against the stair railing.

She didn’t know. The foundations of her entire world were gone. How does one walk forward with no sure footing? How?

Departures

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Three

 

Doug woke bright and early to sneak off for a morning jog along the beach. When he came back during breakfast, he kicked sand off his feet with a dejected huff, calling to his wife. “We wasn’t there. I got in a decent talk with Tom Brown. He was out with the dawn with that crooked grin on his face. It was like he knew I was coming.”

He probably did, Audry thought as she scooped up a spoonful of orange juiced muesli into her mouth. Chewing on it, she figured it was also likely Bobo was there with him.

“You should have seen the punk kid who was with him,” Doug continued with a heavy head shake. “Orange hair. Olive skin, weird eyes. It was like community outreach. And I think Tom has a girlfriend in some kind of punk band.”

“That would be Roddy and Piranha,” Audry muttered with a sigh.

Doug looked over to her, amazed if not openly shocked. “You know them too?”

Realizing she had said it out loud, Audry felt her face get hot. Yet she nodded. “Uh. Yeah. Um… Tom had Roddy working on my car a year ago—outside school work training. And Piranha was also doing school work connected to the auto shop. She should be over eighteen by now… so I guess they could be dating. I overheard his friends teasing him about her once.”

Vincent raised his eyebrows, a number of questions behind his eyes. He knew there was a story there, one which she was sure he would ask her to divulge later.

“Her name is Piranha?” Vivian asked, her jaw dropping a little.

Audry shrugged, going back to eating her breakfast. “That’s what I heard.”

“Well, anyway,” Doug walked further in, “I asked about Troy, and Tom said he left last night. So had your friend Rick, and a few others. Randon was still there.”

Audry nodded then noticed the black cat slinking in through the open door past Doug’s legs.

“Kitty!” Maris immediately jumped off her stool to go after it. Oddly, it seemed to sigh then rub up against her hands, resigned to being petted and adored. It caused Audry to pause.

She crouched down to peer at it then whispered, “Are you really Selena’s cat?”

Meow! was all she got, but she could have sworn the cat appeared abashed. It quickly slinked out of Maris’s hands and rushed off as if it were afraid it had been caught.

After breakfast cleanup, Audry, Maris, and Skyler went to the beach to see if they could collect seashells. Audry doubted they would find many, but she didn’t want to spoil their enthusiasm as it gave her niece and nephew something to do. They found a few, but the shells were small. Skyler wanted to make a pendant with the ones he found, but Maris said she wanted to make a magic charm for swimming.

“A magic charm?” Audry inquired, maintaining control in her voice to mask how much those words startled her. The sound of the sea silenced all other noises, making her feel isolated there on the beach, almost eerie.

“Uh huh,” Maris said, nodding. “I saw that woman yesterday go into the ocean, and she did not come up for air for a loooooong time. Cousin Vincent joked she might be a mermaid, but I think it was the seashell necklace she was wearing. It was cool.”

Audry swallowed a breath. What had Rick said about Selena? She was part sea nymph or siren? Did that mean she could breathe under water? Looking to Maris, Audry said, “Perhaps she is just a skin diver and could hold her breath for very long time.”

Maris frowned. “But I want to do that.”

“Then you gotta learn to scuba dive,” Audry said, mentally picturing her niece trusting in a seashell, then drowning in the ocean. Her body shuddered at the thought.

“Do you know if we’ll get to see my wolf again?” Maris asked, picking up another shell, and possibly the direction of her aunt’s thoughts. This one was a sand dollar about the size of her palm. It was a little broken on one side, though mostly whole.

Audry peeked to her, sighing. “I… I don’t know.”

“Who brought him to the beach?” Maris asked, digging out the sand in search of more.

Sighing more, Audry lifted her eyes to the sky. “Rick did. I think the wolf wanted to have some fun.” Technically, it wasn’t a lie.

Maris nodded. “Do you think he’d let me pet it?”

Audry shook her head, side-eying her niece. “Rick left yesterday and took the wolf with him. I don’t think he wanted people to see the wolf.”

“That’s unfair,” Maris whined, dropping into the wet sand. “Why is he keeping the wolf to himself?”

“He’s a wild animal,” Audry hissed, wishing Maris would let it go. “You should not want to play with a wild animal.”

Maris shrugged more. “But he saved me. He’s my hero.”

Resting a hand on Maris’s head, Audry nodded. “Yeah.”

“So it’s not fair,” Maris said again, folding her arms decidedly, knees sinking deeper into the wet sand.

“Rick has to protect the wolf,” Audry said, trying to explain. There was no way she could tell her niece the truth. Maris would believe it, for starters—and knowing her childlike innocence, she would talk about it. It was becoming lucidly clear to her why Rick always kept his distance, especially as Audry gazed at the healing bite marks from the cougar on Maris’s arm. Rick inhabited a dangerous world. Those bite marks could just as easily become bullet wounds if the SRA ever found out she knew the truth about Rick.

After spreading another layer of sunscreen on the skin of all three of them and collecting three more seashells—including an iridescent, turquoise and white, spiral shell Skyler had unearthed from a pile of seaweed—they walked back toward the cabin for lunch. Maris used it as a unicorn horn, romping ahead of them over the dunes. Skyler had also collected a decent-sized ribbed shell, one which he planned to bore a hole into for his necklace. He declared that he now had to find some string, which he hoped would be in the cabin. Maris begged to have the spiral shell for her magic charm. Audry hope it was only for pretend.

As they crested one dune, in full view of the cabin, Audry spotted Randon who was walking down from the cabin in flip flops, shorts, and a tee-shirt. As he got closer to say ‘hi’, she noticed on his knees matching scars which looked like pentagrams. This was the first time she had ever seen them.

“Hey!” Skyler rushed up to him, holding up his seashell. “Mr. Spade! You’re here too? See what I found!”

Randon grinned, reaching out to take the shell to inspect it. He turned it in his fingers to see both sides, smiling as he handed it back to Skyler. “It’s a good one.”

“Wanna see mine?” Maris held hers up.

“Ooh.” Randon plucked up the spiraled shell. “This one is truly nice.”

“All the really good ones are gone,” Maris explained, taking it back. “Aunt Audry says so.”

“The best ones are deeper in the ocean.” Randon nodded, relinquishing the seashell. “So says my friend Selena—who’s an expert.”

Maris’s eyes brightened. “Is she the woman who can hold her