Читать книгу Inside Out - Amy Lee Burgess - Страница 7

Chapter 3

I was restless. Paddy’s profile was clear from my vantage point in the backseat of the Prelude as he slouched in the front passenger bucket. At some point, he must have given Murphy the Mac Tire pack ring, because it gleamed on the middle finger of Murphy’s right hand which I could plainly see as he gripped the steering wheel.

We were all dressed in funereal black, and Paddy had managed to calm his wildly curly hair somehow.

Each passing mile on the highway brought us inexorably closer to Vermont—to Maplefair’s territory in Easton.

Part of my restlessness could be traced to that fact, but a lot of it was simply being confined in the cage of the car.

Murphy, exquisitely attuned to my rising level of agitation as he always was when we drove together, cast me a sympathetic look in the rear-view mirror.

“There’s a rest stop two miles ahead,” he told me. “Just over the border.”

I gulped. The Vermont border. After we crossed, it was only another hour or so until our destination.

Paddy checked his watch, a subtle reminder that we were due in Easton by noon, and it was already edging past eleven.

Aside from a slight tightening of his mouth, Murphy ignored him and switched lanes to position us for the exit. Paddy sighed and slouched further into his seat.

He’d spent the past three hours in rapt observation of the New England scenery. Not that he’d gotten much from the highway. It must have been sufficiently different from Ireland to interest him because he’d seemed mesmerized. He’d slurped Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and cursed when powdered sugar from his jelly doughnut had sprinkled across his black dress pants but, aside from that, had kept mostly quiet.

Murphy had concentrated on driving—probably in an effort to keep my agitation at a minimum. I’d sat in the backseat and munched glazed doughnut holes and sipped French vanilla-flavored coffee. My head hurt—a stress headache combined with the knock on the head I’d received nearly a week ago. Today was Tuesday. Tomorrow would make one week since I’d woken in Grandmother Emma’s root cellar chained to a metal morgue gurney, with Bethany Dillon chained to her own gurney a feet away.

Bethany. Her name swept a rush of guilt and hopelessness through me and I sighed.

“Almost there, honey,” Murphy said from the front seat. He was right. The car was on the off-ramp and, a moment later, we pulled up in front of a low brick building which housed public restrooms and a small vestibule filled with racks of brochures printed by the Vermont State Department of Tourism. The door to the vestibule was chained and bolted shut, but the restrooms were open.

The moment the car stopped, I was out the back door and onto the asphalt pavement. A caressing May breeze lifted the strands of hair around my face and blew away some of the restless tension that twisted my muscles painfully. I couldn’t bear the thought of spending even one second of the precious few minutes we’d linger here in the cramped confines of the ladies’ restroom and instead began to pace so I could feel the wind against my skin.

I was still alive. Alive and free.

Paddy leaned against the car and consulted his cellphone for messages. I’m pretty sure he didn’t expect to find any, but the rest stop’s scenery did not seem to enthrall him as much as the highway’s.

Murphy watched me pace for a moment then, with a resolute shift of his shoulders, he joined me.

He made sure not to touch me—of course he wouldn’t—but he was near enough that I was comforted. I wanted to touch him but I didn’t. My emotions were shredded.

Fear, bottomless and dreadful, whipped through my body and snagged in my brain where it turned my thoughts into a whirling mass of fleeting impressions—the cold of the gurney against my bare skin—the stink of Bethany’s fear and unwashed, infected body. Nate’s laughter in the wood shed as I swung the wrench ineffectually at his head.

Then the tribunal. The relentless damnation of my poor, damaged wolf.

“God, I wish I were anywhere else but here,” I whispered. Murphy gave me a sympathetic smile.

“Not too late to turn the car around and go back to Boston.” He was so close I smelled his cologne, but so far away he might have been on the moon.

I wrapped my arms around myself and walked toward a chain link fence that separated the rest stop from a small stretch of pine trees. The crisp scent of evergreen was pungent in my nose and I drew deep breaths in an attempt to cleanse myself. My head hurt again and, when I touched the sort spot at the base of my skull, I winced.

Murphy waited patiently but, after a moment, Paddy stalked over and assessed the situation.

“She wouldn’t suffer half so much if she had the pack bond to fall back on.” Paddy glared at Murphy as if to accuse him of something. Murphy’s jaw tightened but he didn’t say anything.

“Pack bond?” With reluctance, I turned away from the pine trees. My fingers were hooked in the spaces between the chain links so hard the wire left indentations. My brain was less fuzzy and the awful memories had retreated. For the moment, anyway.

“That’s right, you’ve been in small packs all your life,” Murphy murmured. The May sunshine illuminated his brown hair and brought out the gold highlights.

“Sure and you’ve heard of it, though.” Paddy was astonished and almost angry. His different-colored eyes bored into my face as if he could find the knowledge buried in my brain somewhere if he only probed hard enough.

“You need at least forty people in a pack to do it, otherwise the Alphas have too much control.” Murphy spoke again as Paddy stared at me.

“I know what it is,” I told them both. Did they think I was an idiot—ignorant of the Pack’s history? “I just didn’t think any pack did that anymore.”

The pack bond was mind control pure and simple. Blood from both Alphas was mixed with an herbal concoction then consumed by each pack member. Through the Alphas, the pack as a whole was connected. The Alphas could exert subtle control over individual pack members. I hesitated to call it magic, it was more instinct—an innate ability unique to the Pack akin to the fusion that occurred during group sex before a hunt.

Generally it was used to bring harmony into a large, diverse and potentially dangerous group. It also sped up the healing process in injured pack members. Pack healed more rapidly than Others, but with a pack bond the healing was supposedly even more accelerated.

“We have the Councils to oversee us now,” I argued, although neither man with me said a word. “We don’t need some barbaric method of mind control from the Dark Ages.”

Paddy began to quietly fume.

“Nobody uses it to control and dominate anymore,” Murphy said hastily. “It’s meant to help, Stanzie. When someone in the pack is hurt—physically or mentally—the Alphas can use the pack bond to speed up healing. That’s all. No Alpha in Mac Tire has abused that sacred trust in centuries. In big packs like Mac Tire, we have to have it to keep the peace.”

“Then you do use it to dominate and control,” I said. “I’m not going to do it.”

“Friggin’ Americans. One by one you bloody idiots have discarded the old ways until the Pack is a fucking shadow of what it used to be.” For some reason Paddy was really angry. The scent of his fury coated my tongue and clogged my sinuses. Alphas were intimidating as hell when they really got pissed.

His words sent a paralyzing shot of ice through my veins. Paddy. Defending the old ways? Could his anger have made an idiot of his tongue? Or did he think Murphy and I weren’t aware of the conspiracy within the Pack?

“In Europe packs less than forty are almost never allowed to form and if accident reduces the numbers somehow, two packs are blended together. How can you have a proper pack with only seven or eight frigging people? It doesn’t work. You bounce the Alpha status between yourselves like a bloody rubber ball and nobody respects anybody. You have to work to be Alpha of Mac Tire and other packs in Europe. You have to fight and prove yourself. You don’t just get handed the baton because there’s only the seven of you.”

“Alpha pairs are mainly for procreation,” I responded before I saw Murphy’s warning shake of the head. I ignored him. I wouldn’t have shut up anyway.

Paddy’s withering glare made me stiffen.

“Now there speaks a truly ignorant American.” He raked a hand through his curly hair and grimaced when his fingers got stuck. “Oh for fuck’s sake. Can we please get on our way? We’re going to hold up the entire friggin’ funeral debating pack culture. And you’d lose, Constance Newcastle, because you haven’t got a friggin’ leg to stand on.”

Without waiting for us, he stomped back to the car.

“Do you think—” I began in a scared voice.

“No,” Murphy said sharply.

“Just because he’s your friend doesn’t mean he can’t be a part of it, Murphy.”

“He’s not just a friend. He’s bonded to my twin sister. And he’s my Alpha.” Murphy’s expression made it clear he was finished with the conversation. “Let’s go.” He stalked toward the parking lot and I was forced to follow, although I was far from done with the subject.

Paddy waited in the car which smelled like coffee, doughnuts and his anger. I buckled my seatbelt and avoided his eyes. Murphy slid behind the wheel and started the engine.

“I’m sorry I lost my temper,” said Paddy after we’d merged onto the highway. “Now’s not the time to discuss it, but the pack bond is a fact of life for members of Mac Tire.

“Later,” he insisted when Murphy opened his mouth to say something.

I didn’t bother to argue but there was no way in hell I was taking a pack bond. We did not live in the Dark Ages anymore, no matter what some people wanted to believe.

* * * *

My body understood where we were before my brain did. The moment we crossed the border into the small town of Easton, Vermont—Maplefair territory—I broke into a cold sweat.

Murphy’s GPS device directed him to turn right and when he did, I realized we were on the pack’s road and in less than two miles we’d pass a small blue mailbox and a dirt driveway that led straight to hell. And it was on my side of the damn car.

“Fuck.” I spoke the word aloud before I could call it back.

“What’s wrong?” Paddy had never been here before so he didn’t have a clue, but I could tell by the sudden tenseness of Murphy’s shoulders that he got the picture.

“I’ll turn around,” he told me.

“No. No, just drive fast. I’ll close my eyes.”

I’m not a coward, I told myself, even though I was pretty sure I was.

With my eyes shut, I felt the car accelerate then, a moment later Murphy said, “It’s okay. We’re nearly there, Stanzie.”

“Where is there?” I asked. My black blouse clung to my ribcage like a sodden second skin. The car’s interior was flooded with the unattractive sour scent of my fear.

Paddy was half turned in the passenger bucket so he could keep me in sight. Pack don’t like to turn their backs on people who smell of terror. They were too unpredictable. Even in human form.

“The forest,” Murphy answered. Up ahead I saw the maple trees thin out to reveal a small dirt lot crammed with cars. Most of Maplefair could have made it here on foot from their houses. The cars belonged to people from other packs. Bethany’s funeral would be a big one.

Murphy parked between a light blue Toyota Camry and a forest green Jaguar that looked all too familiar—Kathy Manning’s car.

Terror had left my legs weak and rubbery. I had no idea if I would be able to walk.

“Jesus Christ, I’m more scared now than I was when I woke up chained to that fucking gurney. What in the hell is wrong with me?” I pressed my clammy forehead to the window and wished I could bash through the glass with my stupid skull.

“You’ve had time to think about it,” Murphy told me. “But Nate Carver is dead, Stanzie. Your wolf killed him. He can’t harm you or anyone else anymore.”

Simple statement. Obvious. Nothing I didn’t already know. But it helped.

I closed my fingers around the door handle and pulled.

The parking lot smelled of dirt, oil, metal and trees. I stood in the dappled sunlight flanked by Murphy and Paddy. Several other people gathered nearby. I recognized members of Maplefair, Snowmoon, Nightclaw, Darkhunt, Wolfsong, Liberty and Riverglow—all New England packs.

Snowmoon was a Vermont-based pack like Maplefair. Darkhunt was Rhode Island—Kathy Manning’s pack. Wolfsong was the premiere pack from Maine, Liberty was the New Hampshire pack, Nightclaw and Riverglow, of course, were from Connecticut. There was no sign of anyone from the Massachusetts pack, Mayflower. My birth pack. I would have been shocked if there had been. Mayflower was the oldest pack in New England, but notoriously private. They rarely attended Regional Gatherings and never outside funerals.

When people recognized me, they offered me strange smiles. They had no clue what to say to me. Congratulations on killing the bastard? So glad the tribunal didn’t put you to death? Guess your defective wolf came in handy after all? It was better to say nothing.

Councilor Kathy Manning was the only one who came over to me and shocked the hell out of me with a fierce embrace. She smelled of floral perfume and the gold highlights in her pixie-short brown hair gleamed in the sunlight.

“No one knows what to say to you,” she said in a voice loud enough that it carried.

Beside me, Murphy made a strangled noise that sounded more like laughter than a cough. He and Kathy had never quite figured out whether they liked one another.

“Maybe people are overwhelmed by all the Councilors,” Rosemary Young, of the Great Council, remarked as she sauntered over. “People do tend to become tongue tied the more there are of us in one place.”

Where ten seconds ago there had been empty space, now five Councilors stood ranged around me. In addition to Kathy and Rosemary, now there were also Councilors Hill, Perkins and Allerton. Save for Allerton and Young, they were all from the New England Regional Council. Allerton and Young, of course, represented the Great Pack itself.

Allerton put a proprietary hand on my shoulder. As usual, he wore a tailored designer suit. Today it was black pinstripe. His aristocratically handsome face was somber. Although Kathy was his mistress, in public they maintained a formal distance, but I’d seen the quick flash of affection in Allerton’s blue eyes when he’d looked at her as he’d made his way over to us.

Power thrummed around us all.

A robin called from the branches of one of the maple trees and another answered from a few trees away.

Tires crunched on the dirt parking lot and, if it had been silent before, it suddenly became hushed. The car was an older SUV driven by my friend and former pack mate, Vaughn Pelletier. Jossie Wilbanks, Nate Carver’s ex-bond mate and current Alpha of Maplefair, sat beside him in the passenger bucket. The SUV stopped just short of where we were all gathered and the back door slid open.

Gina Dillon and Ron Bradley, Bethany’s parents, stumbled out, followed by Cody Brown, his parents and his twin brother, Kyle. Cody had been Bethany’s boyfriend. He was devastated. The sleeves of his suit jacket were too short—he’d obviously grown a couple of inches since it had been purchased—but the waist band of the matching trousers was loose.

The grief that poured out of him combined with that of Bethany’s parents and nearly drove me to my knees. If not for the steady pressure of Allerton’s hand on my shoulder, I would have crashed through the underbrush and run away.

Gina Dillon held a small white urn in her shaky hands. She’d cried so much over the past day and a half that her eyes were puffy and so bloodshot I couldn’t tell the color of her irises. She wore a plain black dress and sensible flats. We had to hike through the forest, after all. None of the women wore pumps, although most wore skirts or dresses. Boots were the most popular footwear choice for men and women alike.

Ron Bradley kept an arm around his bond mate’s shoulders. His eyes were red-rimmed and puffy from crying.

Jossie had her hair piled on top of her head and it made her look almost regal. Her face was dreadfully pale and she wore no makeup. Dressed in an old black sheath dress that was five years out of style, she carried if off as if it were the latest fashion.

Vaughn stood beside her as she looked at all of us.

“I think we can start now,” she said. She and Vaughn would become bond mates today after the funeral. Together, they would continue as Alphas of Maplefair. The entire pack was behind this mating and Jossie’s continued Alpha status. No one blamed her for Nate’s criminal actions.

As Alpha, she led the way, followed closely by Vaughn then Gina, Ron, Cody, Kyle and their parents. After that, the Councilors were given the opportunity to follow. Paddy, as an Alpha, had the right to fall in behind them.

Since this was a larger gathering made up of members of several different packs, it was more formal than if it had just been Maplefair.

Murphy and I went behind Paddy, and the others sorted out their ranks and made a single line behind us.

No one spoke as we walked the forest trail. Sticks and leaves crunched underfoot, and a curious robin kept pace with us for nearly a mile. He flitted from tree to tree and cocked his head so he could fix us with his bright black eyes. Most birds were afraid of us, but this one’s curiosity got the better of him.

So I wouldn’t have to think, I watched him and silently begged him not to abandon us and fly off. As long as he kept pace with us, I could focus on him and not the grief that surrounded us like a shimmering miasma or the muted sobs of Bethany’s mother as she carried her daughter’s ashes through the woods.

The thirty-five minutes it took to scatter Bethany’s ashes were among the worst in my life. Too many of us stood in the traditional circle to each take a turn to say something and toss a handful of ashes, so only her parents, Jossie and Cody stepped inside the ring to the center where the urn was placed.

I kept my gaze fixed to the tips of my black boots so there was no chance I would be offered a chance to speak. My throat was so tight I could barely suck down enough air to keep upright, so there was no way I could have said anything.

Besides, I was not handling things very well. I’d thought I’d felt guilty for tearing Nate’s throat out against Pack rules, but it was nothing to the total annihilation I experienced when confronted by the sight of Bethany’s urn and the knowledge that I hadn’t saved her after all.

If I’d been a day earlier in figuring things out would that have made the difference?

Women of the Pack could bring only one pregnancy to full term. The process of the birth rendered us barren. We could have multiple miscarriages, but once we carried to term, that was it.

Children were cherished, precious resources. Beloved by the entire pack when they were little and guided to adulthood with affection by all the adults.

Twins were more common, but Bethany, like me, had been a single child.

Gina and Ron had no remaining child to comfort them. They were alone now and their most valued contribution to the Pack was gone in so many scattered ashes.

Gina broke down in the middle of the circle and had to be led away by Rosemary Young so Ron could take her place. He managed to get through what he wanted to say, but to me it was so much lip movement. The blood pounded in my ears far too loudly for me to hear anything.

Grief infected the mourners in the circle. Tears poured down male and female faces regardless of pack affiliation. The women from Nightclaw sobbed just as hard as the women from Maplefair.

Jossie went last and, when she had solemnly scattered the last of the urn’s contents and placed it upside down on the ground, she unselfconsciously stripped off her modest dress and Wal-Mart cotton underwear so she could drop on all fours and shift.

Five minutes after Jossie had shed her clothes, more than half the mourners were in wolf form. Grey wolves, red wolves, black wolves, all shades between and one, gorgeous pure white wolf—Kathy Manning.

As one they sat back on their haunches, tipped their heads back and filled the forest clearing with eerie, ululating wolf song.

Those in human form threw back their heads and joined in. Most of them could mimic the real wolf song to near perfection. Paddy’s voice rose above them all—strong and wild. Murphy’s howl was not as loud but indistinguishable from the sound that issued from the dark gray wolf which sat beside him.

I could not join in. Even if I’d wanted to try, my throat was clogged with grief and guilt.

I stumbled away from the circle and started back down the trail to the dirt lot. The pure white wolf kept pace with me and when we’d left the tragic wolf song behind, I said, “Kathy, you realize your clothes are back there, right? Are you going to the after gathering nude? Is this your newest fashion statement? I think I have a spare pair of heels in the trunk if you want.”

The wolf sneezed and bumped the back of my knee with her head. I kept walking.

She bounded ahead of me a few paces, whirled, and then went down on her front paws, butt in the air. Her tail wagged furiously. Was she a dog or a wolf?

“You want to play?” I shook my head. “This is a funeral. Wolves are so dumb sometimes. You’re twenty yards away from the circle and you’ve already forgotten why you were there, haven’t you?”

The wolf yipped and tossed her head.

“That would be my wolf anyway. Who knows what you’re thinking.”

The wolf pounced on me so that she managed to wrap her paws around my neck as if she hugged me. She exhaled slobbery wolf breath in my face and swiped her moist tongue across my nose and mouth.

“Disgusting.” I gave her furry chest a push, but she was a solid block of muscle. When she gave my ear a lick with her tongue, I couldn’t help but smile. Damn wolf.

“I am not going to play,” I told her firmly. Another push, but she would not budge, so I started to walk and she was forced to hop backward on her hind legs. Wolves are not made for maneuvers like that, so she retaliated with a mock growl and another slobbery lick.

My push had more force this time because she got down. She blocked the path with her body, but I stepped around her and kept going.

She whined and I hesitated, but then started forward again. Another whine, this time punctuated by a high-pitched yelp.

I stared at her. She wanted to play. A girl’s ashes were scattered on the forest floor a few yards away and this silly wolf wanted to play. I shook my head.

She whined again, tail tucked between her legs, downcast and bereft. I had a fleeting image of my own wolf as she cringed and cowered before the wolves of the tribunal. More images of her as she ran with Grey, Elena and Vaughn’s wolves in the days when she did want to play.

Why did Kathy’s wolf get to play and mine didn’t? Why did she get to forget that three minutes earlier she’d been a mourner at a teen’s funeral while I could never escape? Would my wolf ever have the capacity to understand someone else’s grief or joy? Would she ever be able to walk by the side of someone in human form and try to comfort them? No. No, she wouldn’t.

Kathy’s wolf crept toward me, eyes hopeful.

A stick cracked and Murphy and Paddy appeared out of the shade.

The white wolf whined softly.

“She’s worried about you,” said Murphy. Kathy’s wolf trotted to his side and sat. Almost absently he reached down to put a hand on her head and she leaned into him trustingly.

“’Tis rude to leave the circle when the wolves sing,” Paddy told me, as if I were some clueless idiot. “It’s disrespectful of the dead, Constance.”

“It was hard enough to be there in the first place. But the wolves made it worse. You don’t understand, Paddy, your wolf is normal.”

Murphy flinched.

Paddy looked up into the canopy of the trees overhead as if for inspiration or perhaps some small measure of patience. “You’re so goddamn stubborn, Stanzie.”