Cherishing Destiny (A Dangerous Destiny) (19 page)

“I wish you didn’t have to go,” Sara frowned at the ground
in front of her.  

Ryan took Sara’s hands in his and leaned down to look in
her eyes. “I will be back before you even miss me, baby.” He flashed her his best
pretty boy smile, and she couldn’t help but smile back.
What a charmer. 

He helped them prepare for a few days on their own and then
left with two of the horses, intending to bring back more supplies.  He saw no
one in the woods on the way to the pack settlement and he arrived the following
afternoon by travelling with only brief stops.  Sara’s anxiety was affecting
him more than he wanted to admit, and he didn’t want to leave her for longer
than necessary. 

One of the sentries slipped up behind him, unseen as he
approached the settlement.  “Ryan, how’s your sister? Did you find her?”

Ryan didn’t jump.  He hadn’t heard the sentry approach, but
he was expecting one any moment. “Nice moves, Tyler.  I didn’t hear or smell a thing
and Yes, I found my sister. Thanks for asking.”

The young
Were
grinned proudly at the compliment to
his skills at stealth. “The L.T. will want to talk to you as soon as you get
in.  I don’t know what you’ve seen or heard, but some crazy reports have been
coming in from all over.  Also, the Alpha is going to want to see you before
you leave again.  No rush, but he asked to talk to everyone that comes in, especially
the scouts.”

“Thanks, Tyler. I will make sure to check in as soon as I
can.” Ryan puzzled at what the Alpha wanted to talk to him and the other scouts
about.  The L.T. usually took care of all the intelligence they brought in. 

The current Alpha of Ryan’s pack was a big
Were
by
the name of Elvis Arnott.  He was the same Alpha that Mr. Gardner took Ryan to
when he was fifteen and changing.  Ryan was grateful to Elvis and had
tremendous respect for him.  Elvis still treated Ryan like family.

As Ryan entered the settlement, a couple of teenagers came
and relieved him of the horses.  He knew where they were taking them, and he
let them do the job that they were clearly excited to be assigned to.  He
strode up to a wooden house with a planked covered porch.  He always thought
the modest building looked like an old west sheriff’s office, at least until
you went inside.  He knocked and heard, “Enter,” shouted from behind the door. 

The front room was a large living area with an enormous
stone fireplace and wood floors.  Lots of rugs and leather furniture gave the
room a warm, but unmistakably masculine, feel.  There was a huge dining table
on one side of the wide room, the kind that a dozen people could sit around at
Thanksgiving dinner.   But in order to serve any kind of dinner at this table a
person would have to remove the stacks of reports, maps and printouts that
covered the entire expanse.  As usual, the L.T. stood leaning over the pile,
pointing out something on a map that he had pulled to the top of the heap.  He
was talking to two other scouts that, like Ryan, usually travelled around and
came in every so often to learn and relay information.  He looked up from the
map. “Ryan, glad you made it back.  Join us.”

He motioned them all to move to the comfortable furniture
that was arranged near the fireplace.  He brought the map with him and spread
it on a coffee table with a top that was a six inch thick cross section of the
trunk of a massive tree.  Ryan knew the L.T. had probably bought the table from
one of those stores that specialized in unique outdoorsy furniture, but looking
at his thick fingers and broad tattooed forearms as he spread out the map, one
might believe that he built the table and everything else around the house with
his own two hands. 

“Let me fill you in with what we were just discussing,” he
said, spinning the map so that it was facing Ryan.  He started moving his
finger down along the Eastern seaboard and explained, “A Tsunami has altered
the entire coastline. The Atlantic ocean is anywhere from sixty to one hundred
miles further inland than it was before and it is now only moving with the new
tides.  It is not receding as far as we can tell.  Boston and New York among
hundreds of other places are literally gone, covered over by the sea.”  Ryan
was speechless. He had heard rumors from another scout around the time he left
to find Sara, of tidal waves, but nothing like this.  The L.T. took his silence
to mean he hadn’t heard about this, so he went on. “We don’t know anything yet
about the west coast. There are no phones, radio, or any other communications,
only what we have heard from scouts and the folks they’ve talked to.  We even
have a guy looking into finding someone to train carrier pigeons, but that’s
nothing we can do for the moment.”

Ryan snapped his mouth closed. “Birds? Don’t you think
we’ll have radio or sat phones back before then?” he asked. 

The L.T. shook his head. “I want all three of you to listen
carefully.  I don’t want all of this to be public knowledge just yet, but
here’s some of what we know. The magnetic storms have knocked out electronics,
including orbiting satellites, more effectively even than an EMP would.  None
of it will work again.  Refineries are gone, exploded or destroyed in the
earthquakes.  We have no fuel sources and things like gun powder, TNT and such
won't burn.  We may be able to generate some limited electricity with wind,
water or solar sources, but that will take time as well, and power grids are
gone so anything we generate will have to be sent over newly laid wire. The
cities around here are mostly destroyed, and the parts that are left are very
dangerous. Some villages have been established, mostly by people and Vampires
for their mutual safety from a bunch of crazies calling themselves the
Hunters.  This is bad for us too as these Hunters want us as well as the
Vamps.  However, we have always had our secret communities and, so we have a
leg up on these villages.  As you’ve probably noticed, the weather is getting
worse, and we don’t know when this will stop or how bad it will get. I’d like
your reports if you have anything to add.”

Ryan felt like he was in shock by all he heard.  He
listened as one of the others told of the
Were
cats, confirming that it
appeared to be limited to mercenary
Were
-tigers and panthers. Lions, who
were nearly as communal as the wolves, were not involving themselves as far as
anyone could tell.  Ryan added his knowledge of the
Were
-tiger encounter
and the murdered wolves.  He told them about traveling with the old Vampires
and the secluded cabin.  The other scout explained that an elder Vampire of the
council was setting himself up as authority in Syracuse but that no one was
objecting as long as he was making smart decisions and helping to keep everyone
safe. 

When the others took their leave, the L.T. asked Ryan to stay
a moment.  He poured them each a drink and stood by the fire turning his glass
in his brawny hands. “Ryan, I know that your sister is involved, but I am
wondering if you can continue to keep an eye on the Vampires.  I think it would
be wise for us to know what they know.”

Ryan nodded, swirling his own drink. “Well I think you
should know that I suspect something is wrong with the Vampires.  First of all,
they are day walking, but they don’t seem as strong or fast as they were and
they don’t seem to be healing as quickly.”

“That makes a little sense, considering what I’ve heard in
the last few days.” The L.T. looked hard at Ryan as if deciding how much to
say.  In the end, he went on. “I’ve had reports of Vampires being killed in
ways that shouldn’t be fatal for them.  If the injuries are serious enough,
they don’t seem to heal quickly enough to survive.  I don’t know how many of
their population they’ve lost, but it has to be significant.  Also, it appears
we are out of the closet, so to speak, with these Hunters and soon, other
humans, so we may be forced to cooperate more with the Vampires for the good of
all”

“Alexander Lake left to try and connect with the council
and gather intelligence. I don’t expect him back for some time, but I will try
to keep you informed as soon as I know anything,” Ryan replied solemnly. 
Without the horses, he figured he could change and run to the settlement in
wolf form in less than a day. 

“Excellent,” the L.T. said. “The Alpha will want to see you
sometime before you go.”

“Tyler told me.  I will go to him right away, and I’ll see
you again as soon as I have something to report.” Ryan walked into the heart of
the settlement.  It was afternoon, so it was raining as usual.  The dirt roads
had become a mire of mud from all the moisture.  Despite the rain, some young wolves
were training in the center green, practicing their hand fighting skills.  Ryan
watched them for a minute, feeling a little nostalgic.  It appeared they were
going to grow up to a world a lot harsher than the one he had known as a boy. 

Ryan approached the Alpha’s home.  It was another modest
wood structure with a little more of a feminine touch as the Alpha had been
mated to arguably the strongest female in the pack for more years than Ryan had
been alive. 
Weres
often lived to be three hundred or more years old, if
they didn’t die a violent death.  By
Were
standards, Ryan wasn’t much
more than a boy.  The Alpha pair were somewhere in their mid one hundreds, a
mature, but exceptionally strong age for a
Were
. 

Elvis came to the door himself at Ryan’s knock.  He smiled
broadly to see the young
Were
. “Come in, son. Get out of that rain.”  He
pulled Ryan inside and left to grab him a towel while Ryan took off his muddy
boots at the door.  After providing a towel, Elvis put a hand on Ryan’s back
and pushed him inside and to a cozy kitchen with its own fireplace.  He sat
Ryan closest to the fire, and he hung a kettle from a hook over the flames.
“Old fashioned coffee,” he said. “It’s a good thing I still remembered how to
do this.” 

Ryan thought of the technology he’d grown up with and
realized he was not as experienced as he liked to think in his survival skills. 
Guy’s like Elvis had to live this way every day when they were young and never
thought a thing about it.  It’s all in the perspective, he thought.

The men chatted for a while, catching up over coffee, even
though Ryan had seen Elvis within the last couple of weeks.  Unfortunately, a
lot happened in those weeks.  “So, Tyler and the L.T. said you were talking to
everybody… What’s up?”

The Alpha grew serious. “This is a hard thing to talk
about, Son, but I need to say it for the good of the pack.  As you know, we’re
not too secret anymore and becoming less so, by the day.  Our population took a
substantial hit just like humans and Vampires did.  We were lucky that a lot of
us were in the settlements, or we would be even more decimated. I know it’s not
really my place to get involved in marriages, but I am asking you to consider
choosing your mate, even if you don’t marry her.  We need breeding pairs to
strengthen our pack in the days to come.  We have to be strong for the world
that is coming.”

For the second time that day, Ryan’s mouth hung open and
again he snapped it closed. “I don’t…that is…I haven’t met anyone that…Look,
I’m not around enough to have ever spent any real time with any of our
females.  I don’t know who would even take me as a mate.” Ryan was feeling a
little blindsided by this unexpected and unusual request.

“Our women are as willing to do what it takes to make us
strong as the men are.  You won’t have to be here any more often than before,
but it would be helpful if you could try to come during the moon cycles for
mating.  Since you don’t know the women that well, Kate and I have chosen
someone we think would be good for you, unless you have any objections to her.”

Ryan’s head was spinning.  Elvis was talking about picking
out a mate for him as if he were picking out a suit.  He felt trapped, but he
knew he could not refuse his Alpha in this, nor would he want to disappoint the
man who took him in and treated him like a son.  “Who…”

Elvis interrupted quickly, “Kate thought that you and Lily
would get along perfectly, and she isn’t going to demand marriage or even that
you stick around more.  Lily is very independent and has become one of our best
healers.  She is always busy, but she is willing to do what needs to be done.” He
talked so fast that he had to pause to take a deep breath.  When he finished, Elvis
was grinning again. 

“Do you think I might rest and meet her tomorrow?” was all
a resigned Ryan could manage.

“Of course, you can and Kate would have my hide if I didn’t
have you stay here with us.  You know where the extra rooms are where you can
bunk.  You just come on down here if you get hungry later. Kate will want to
see you, but she is out right now.”

Ryan lay on the bed in a guest room trying to figure out
how an orphan could have so much family drama in his life. 
A mate, what
would Sara say?
He decided that was something he could deal with later.  He
slept fitfully and woke up long enough to eat a late supper with Kate and Elvis. 
Kate couldn’t quit gushing about Lily and how much he would like her.  He
finally made a polite exit and slept a little more. 

At dawn, he rose, but Kate was already up and making
breakfast.  “I’ll take you to meet Lily when we’ve eaten,” she said.  Ryan was
rapidly losing his appetite. It was pretty clear that there was going to be no
way out of this match.