Scent of Darkness (17 page)

"My blood helped you heal."

Because he was one of them.

She could pretend he was a friendly wolf. She could applaud his loyalty to his parents and his siblings.

But she couldn't ignore the truth.

When Jasha wished, he turned into a wolf. He was a predator. He was the son and grandson and great-grandson of murderers, rapists, and assassins.

She brought the bad people. She always brought the bad people.

No matter how much she wished otherwise, he
was
one of them.

Chapter 16

When Jasha and Ann stepped out the back door, twilight hovered in the air like an essence only they could smell.

"Are they here?" She looked around at the trees that crowded the house and imagined eyes, shining with hunger, watching every step.

"They're gone. I'd bet my cousin's off giving the hunter his reward."

"Paying him off, you mean." The unprincipled rat.

"Giving him what he deserves."

She jerked her head around and stared at Jasha. "Is he going to kill him?"

"I don't know. Possibly. Do you care?" Jasha locked the door, then rested his hand on it, almost as if he were saying good-bye.

"Shouldn't I?"

"The hunter got drunk and shot at wild wolves—

at
my
pack, at
my
leader—and ran to the police when he was frightened. Then he joined with a stranger so he could see me shot with an arrow, and he used a rifle to shoot out the tire on my Beemer."

Troubled by Jasha's rancor, she said, "I wasn't too easy on your car, either."

"I'm not sure he was aiming at the tire. He might have hit you." Jasha looked right at her, his mouth a flat, thin line. "I break out in a sweat every time I think of what he might have done by accident—or on purpose."

"I didn't think of that." She clutched the pocket where she kept the icon.

Was death stalking her . . . again?

"So do I care if my cousin makes him suffer? If he kills him?" Jasha answered his own questions. "No. No, I don't."

But Ann did. Didn't she? She hated cruelty . . . but whose cruelty should she hate now? That of the hunter, the man who preyed on beautiful, sleek beasts who ran wild in the forest? Or the predator who preyed on the hunter? Neither of them was a good man, and perhaps . . . perhaps what happened was nothing more than justice. Certainly there was nothing she could do about it.

"That'll keep the Varinski busy, and no one else will see us go. Do you have the icon? Do you have your cell phone?" When she nodded yes to both questions, Jasha strode off down the driveway into the woods. "Come on, then. We're going to have an adventure."

Before she took the final step into the cover of trees, she stopped and looked back at the castle.

Had it been only yesterday that she'd driven up to the front door and stepped into this legend? Since that moment, there hadn't been one instant when she could have turned back. She knew, because she'd desperately looked for the sign
u-turn allowed here.

Or, more fittingly, I'D
turn back if i were you.
Because she was the Cowardly Lion.

She glanced at Jasha, waiting for her in the shadows.

Yes, the Cowardly Lion seemed a very sensible character to be. But Jasha said that wasn't one of her choices.

Bait or dead meat.

She trudged after him.

At once twilight became night. At night, the forest smelled richer; the earth exhaled the scent of last autumn's leaves; the trees groaned and spoke, spicing the air with pine. She couldn't see anything, and she stumbled and cursed.

Of course, what did she expect? She wore Jasha's hiking boots padded with three pairs of socks, and her feet were big, but not that big. She wore a wide-brimmed camouflage hat. She wore his wide-sleeved silk T-shirt, which on him would be tight and on her flapped loosely, and over that, his camouflage shirt. His camouflage pants were held up by a belt cinched tightly around her waist, and bungee cords cinched the bottoms of the legs against the boots.

She'd wanted in his pants, but not like this.

He'd wrapped a bandage around her hurt hand, then put his gloves on her to protect the bandage. He'd turned up the cuffs on his shirt, and he'd buckled a hunting vest, filled with things like compasses and flashlights, tightly around her. Because no matter how tall she was, he was taller. His shoulders were broader. She looked like a little girl wearing her big brother's clothes, and when she thought of her plans for long evenings lounging by the fireplace, wineglass in hand, an adoring Jasha at her feet, she wanted to throw something. The canteen that hung on her shoulder strap, perhaps, or the knife he insisted she carry strapped to her leg.

The most humiliating part was—she wore his underwear. All she'd brought from Napa were lacy thongs, and he had said, "You are not traipsing through the woods in butt floss. Here." He'd tossed her a pair of serviceable cotton briefs.

She'd let them fall at her feet while she stared reproachfully at him.

"It's either that or you're going commando," he'd said.

So she wore the briefs—and cursed the fate that had sent her here.

Of course, she knew fate was innocent. Ann had acted on her own dreams and desires; she was the one responsible for the men's underwear, the trek through a midnight forest, and the realization that merging with a man involved more than flowers and romance. With Jasha, the merging meant that she had adopted his family. She'd longed to be adopted, not adopt! And she'd had to save his life; the Chinese said that when a person saved a life, she was responsible for it. So if they were right, then she faced responsibilities she had never imagined.

She stumbled again.

"Your eyes will adjust to the darkness pretty soon.” He put his arm around her.

"The middle of my back feels . . . itchy." Uneasily, she shrugged her shoulders. "No one's watching us, are they?"

"Unless all of my senses have deceived me, there's only one cousin in the vicinity. He thinks he buried a tracking device in me—-and hey, I do have it right here in this plastic bag—and that he's got the upper hand. He thinks my father is weak and my mother is a harlot. He thinks my brothers and my sister and I are all happy, bloated fools." Ann heard Jasha's teeth snap together. "We will show them fhe truth."

The truth. She shivered. What truth could she show anyone? She didn't have extra-special senses or a clever strategy or unique abilities. All she had was a birthmark, a birthmark she managed to forget about . . . most of the time.

Except now. Right now, for the first time ever, she could feel a faint sizzle under her skin.

Why? What had changed? What had Jasha done to her while she slept?

What had she done to herself?

"You're looking forward to a fight.” she said.

"I'd rather fight than wait, but I can do both."

"I'm more of a
Let's negotiate
kind of person." She cursed the hopeful tone of her voice.

"No one negotiates with a Varinski," he said flatly.

"What's a Varinski? Some kind of gun?"

"The family name is Varinski. When my parents fled Russia, they changed their name to Wilder. They wanted a new start in a New World." He sounded frustrated. Angry. "And they got it, but the Old World has followed us here."

"At least you're not a happy bloated fool." She was really working to find the silver lining.

He chuckled and hugged her. "I
am
happy. Can you see better now?"

She could. Still not well, but well enough not to fall on her face. "Not yet." She liked walking with his arm around her. "Why aren't you a happy, bloated fool?"

"The children of immigrants don't dare become bloated. Our parents have plans for us, and heaven forbid we not fulfill them. Talk of the Old Country is enough to motivate any of us."

"So you're successful because your parents demanded it"

"No, because they expect no less. What about you, Ann? Why are you successful?"

His light tone didn't fool her. He wanted to know who she was, where she'd come from, who her people were.

And she had no intention of telling him. "I'm successful? I don't think so. I'm just an assistant.”

''You're not
just
anything. With the right staff, you could expand Wilder Wines into a worldwide corporation. That's the kind of brain you have. So why
didn't
you go to business school? Why
are
you working for me?"

Now she was sorry she walked with his arm around her. It was dark; probably he couldn't see her expression. But it was equally possible he could smell her discomfort, and she feared he could feel her reserve in the stiff set of her shoulders. "I'm looking for a rich husband, and I thought you were promising. Now I'm not so sure-—I'm allergic to pet dander and I don't like camping trips." That came out more curtly than she'd intended. But she wasn't sorry.

She'd told strangers about her past before. Their reactions were always extreme—pity and curiosity. Usually they thought her background gave them the license to interrogate her, and then they edged away, as if bad fortune was contagious, or as if she'd done something to deserve her past.

Perhaps it was true. Perhaps, just perhaps, she had been marked by God as a warning to others to stay away.

Perhaps Jasha wouldn't care. But perhaps he would, and it seemed smarter, or at least safer, to keep her secrets. "I can see now.” she said, then told herself she was relieved when he let her go and walked beside her.

The Douglas firs were massive chunks of darkness blotting out the dim light, and the cedars scented the air. When she looked up, she could see the pine tops waving at the chilly stars. Funny, how often she marveled at people who imagined the stars were friendly, concerned with human destiny. As a child, far too often, she'd wished on them and had her wishes ignored. The stars were far away and indifferent, and anyone who believed otherwise was a fool.

She only wished she were still that kind of fool.

"As far back as I can recall, I have memories of walking in the woods." Jasha kept his tone conversational, and he seemed unfazed by her detachment. "Before I could toddle, my father took me in his arms and walked the perimeter of our lands to show me the places where bad people could hide. The next year, I walked our lands all by myself, holding his hand while he carried my brother Rurik. The year after that, he carried Adrik. And finally, ten years later, we took turns carrying Firebird."

She couldn't help but respond to the affection in his voice. "Your dad sounds like a great guy."

"He is. He's from the Old Country, and he's a stern disciplinarian who held us to high standards, but he loves us and never for a minute did he let us doubt that."

When jasha had told her they had to go out and be bait so he could save his family, she'd realized she should have been grateful to be an orphan.

But when he talked like this, giving her bits of family life that sounded so
Brady Bunch,
an undefined hunger clawed at her insides, and she had to bite back her envy.

Jasha continued. "Before we turned—"

"Before you turned? What do you mean, before you turned?"

"Ah. Well." He sounded as if he was gearing up for a lecture. "When a Varinski's a child, he's just a child. It's puberty that brings out the, urn-"

"Beast in you?" she suggested wryly.

"Exactly what my mother calls it." He spoke with humor. "like adolescence isn't hard enough. Pimples, inappropriate hard-ons, and excess body hair.
Lots
of excess body hair. And a tattoo that appears out of nowhere—and let me tell you, when Miss Joyce got a glimpse of that, she was one cranky teacher."

They were walking inland and uphill at a steady rate, and she thought if they kept going in this direction, they'd have to cross the highway soon.

"From the time we could toddle, my father taught us woodsmanship. He taught us to be suspicious of strangers. He taught us to track and to know if we're being tracked. He taught us everything handed down from generations of Varinskis, and man, was he tough! He was our Boy Scout leader—the guys in our troop could survive on nothing. And prepared! We were always prepared. He used to set traps for us. One time my brother and I were coming home from school, and I stepped into a snare. It grabbed my feet and swung me in the air upside down. I hit the stub of a branch on the way up. That's what gave me this scar." Jasha stopped, took her hand, and guided it to his cheek.

Ann was well familiar with that pale scar—she had made up Don Juan-type fantasies about that scar— but she couldn't resist inching her fingers along its length, and knowing at least the last day's ordeals had earned her the right to touch his face, feel the texture of his skin and the smooth burr of his just-shaved chin. "It could have taken your eye out!"

"My mother said that, too. She was mad at my father. I never saw her so mad. She laid into him— he let her, too, and then he said,
'Ruyshka,
better me scar his face than the demons of hell cast his soul into the pit/ "