Werewolf Nights (The Pack Trilogy Book 2) (3 page)

“Why on earth do you want me to bite your mother?” Suddenly the question went from strange to ludicrous and she found herself choking back laughter.

“You know why. So she’ll turn into what you are.”

Petra froze. Riana sighed.

“Yeah, I followed y’all last night. I saw. It’s cool, I won’t ever tell a soul. But please bite my mom!”

It was out before Petra could stop it. “You want to be tucked in by ears and a tail from now on, is that it? Or you want her to sit up and beg?”

“I want her to live so one day she can teach me how to drive,” the small voice said. “And to help me pick out a dress for the prom. You know, Mom stuff.”

Petra closed her eyes. Oh, no. No. But the child continued.

“She’s got the BIG C. That’s what she calls it. Breast cancer. She’s good now, but there’s a whole other year before she’s clear of it. Five years, you know, and she’s on four.”

“Shit!” Petra said.

“You got to put a quarter in the jar.”

“I’ll put in ten fucking bucks. I’m going to need it in the next five minutes, at the rate I’m going!” To her surprise, Riana erupted in laughter. Unwillingly, Petra saw the humor, and began to grin. The child laughed harder, breath coming in little squeaks and then Petra was lost, peals of laughter poured out of her tiny body.

When Melina opened the bathroom door seconds later, the two of them were rolling on the floor, clutching their stomachs and howling with helpless laughter.

“Have y’all done lost your minds?”

***

Finally, a weary Raya reached the bottom of the cliff and was filled with relief. Now the tree, the stairs, the corridor. He was so close.

He stopped walking and clapped a palm to his forehead.

The tree.

It was gone.

No one was there and it looked like no one ever had been. Just a bleak area below the cliffs with rocks scattered everywhere. He could no more find his way back to the village than he could fly! Christos, it was hopeless. All this way for nothing.

His head dropped with misery, and then he had one last desperate idea. It would never work but like his mom had said all those centuries earlier, “
Can’t
never accomplished a thing.”

“Schmuel!” He yelled at full voice; once, twice, a third time. “SCHMUEL! It is RAYA and I need you!” He ended with a protracted howl and fell silent.

He was just about to mount the cliff side when he heard a loud click, and two young men’s heads popped up out of the ground.

“Raya. What took you so long?” the shorter one asked, then tried to hide a large grin.

“Don’t listen to my brother, Aman. I’m Nesto, by the way. We’ve been waiting forever, generations of us. Our great-great-grandfather told this story of his own great-great-grandfather, and so on going back for generations. Where’s the token?”

Raya pulled the bear from his pocket.

“This?”

The guys grinned.

“Oh, yes.”

Raya followed them down the stairs to the corridor, then to the door at the end. The meadow on the other side didn’t seem to have changed in centuries, at first sight. The small village was still there, and if Raya wasn’t wrong, each house was exactly the same as it had been: small, square, simple wattle-and-daub abodes, some two-story, but most with just one. No telephone poles, satellite dishes, no evidence of technology whatsoever.

But as they drew closer, small details began to jump out at him. First, Raya realized that just before descending the cliff, he’d seen something glint high in the sky. A plane, he thought. But now he saw it again, in just about the same location.

“That wouldn’t be some kind of stationary satellite, would it?” he asked.

The younger guy winked.

“What on earth is a satellite?”

They were just passing a house, and Raya heard an unmistakable noise.

“A big round thing in the sky that sends Frogger to your kids.”

The brothers laughed.

“Busted over Frogger!”

It was then that they had to show him all the improvements they’d made, and Raya was beyond impressed. This was the most high-tech community he’d ever seen. The houses were all smart, in fact, the entire village was smart. Smarter than the most modern ‘green house’ concept design he had ever encountered.

Aman told him most of the improvements were due to Nesto, who’d gone to MIT and graduated summa cum laude. Raya was speechless. How was that possible?

“Nesto’s mom, Ludmilla, wanted to be sure her kids had everything the outside world did, so she got us connected with satellite services. They were bad, though, as you can imagine. But it got us educated, and that’s what counted. Turned out, Nesto is sort of a genius. Anything to do with electronics, that’s his thing. He invented a few things over the years. Patented them. Sold them into production to a few large corporations and suddenly we had more money than we could ever use. He created that too,” Aman said, pointing up.

Raya shook his head.

“That is truly fabulous.”

“You haven’t seen the best yet,” Nesto said in his soft voice. He hadn’t spoken until now, Raya realized. “Come this way.”

“Can’t wait for him to see this! It’s pretty rare that we get to show off,” Aman admitted.

“Yeah. As in never,” Nesto said.

They reached a small house, one of twelve that constituted the village. Inside, there was hardly enough space for one person to live. The brothers told him that families of six had lived there in past times. Now the village was about three times bigger than it had been, too.

“So how many people live here now?” Raya had to ask.

“Couple hundred, give or take,” Nesto responded as they passed by a table in the center of the room and opened a door leading to a small bedroom. So small that only a child could have fit in the tiny bed, but Nesto walked right to it and sat, pulling his legs up under him, facing the wall behind the headrest. “Raya, sit behind me just like me.”

Feeling more than a bit ridiculous, Raya pulled his large body onto the bed and attempted to imitate Nesto’s cross-legged position. His large, heavily-muscled thighs weren’t having it, so he wound up wrapping his arms around his knees. Aman barely fit on the rest of the small surface.

With all three men in position, Nesto said, “We’re dying to play a prank on you, but we sense all is not well. In such a case, we offer you a choice. Would you like to have a bit of fun and move rather rapidly, or are you the type that prefers slow and deliberate?”

That one took no thought!

“Let ‘er rip!” Raya said with a grin, and damn near immediately regretted it as the bed dropped right through the floor as if shot out a cannon.

“What the… fuuuuuuuuck!”

***

As she walked through a slick of mud and greenery, Petra thought she was getting to know the bayou pretty well. Daily walks through it kept her calm, made her feel as if she had some small control over her world.

And it was so beautiful! She could only hope that at some point she had been able to see that low country before she had lost her memory. The wildlife alone was so wonderful! No sooner had that thought passed through her mind, than Petra heard a peculiar shriek. A bird of some kind, she figured, but she’d never heard one that made such a noise. It almost sounded human in its desperation.

I must be imagining things
, she thought as she picked her way from one piece of solid earth to the next. But then she heard it again, closer this time. And it wasn’t a bird at all, unless it was an escapee pet parrot in anguish; because she distinctly heard the words, “Help. Please. I know you’re there somewhere, please help. I can’t hang on much longer. Help. Please.”

He fell silent and she suddenly felt as if hundreds of eyes were on her, watching from every direction. She backed up, and then backed up again until she came up against a tree. She stood for several moments in silence, straining to hear.

“Don’t… stop. Nearly here.”

He sounded so weak.

Then why was she so scared? And something smelled weird too. Not bad, just – different. She couldn’t recall ever having smelled anything like it.

“You’re close now. Due north,” the voice said, distinctly weaker.

Petra swiveled. North was no different than any other direction, except there was a tiny island at a good distance. Several trees hunched together on it. And was that something dark at the bottom?

She trotted into the knee-deep water until she reached a small piece of land. From it, she was able to hop to several more and then finally the island. That odd scent grew more powerful the closer she came to the island, until it was overwhelming.

And under the trees was a crumpled form, barely alive from the looks of him. How did he get here, of all places? He wasn’t exactly dressed for a stroll in the bayou as he was wearing a filthy toga. That was truly odd, but she had no time for questions. She needed to get the man out of the swamp and back to Melina’s place, where the doctor could see him.

He appeared to be unconscious as she leaned over and attempted to pick him up, all but certain she couldn’t do it and wondering how she’d get him out of the swamp otherwise. To her surprise, he weighed nearly nothing. She gently hung him over her shoulder and turned back toward the house.

***

The bed landed in darkness.

Before Raya could say a word, the odd mode of transportation took off once again – this time, horizontally through a tunnel. Raya hated to think of how fast they must be moving as they approached a distant circle of light. He didn’t even bother to think about how they were even being propelled through the space. Just as they were about to get to the light, up they shot, like the world’s fastest and oddest elevator. Within moments, the bed eased to a stop.

Of all places, they were in a wine cellar.

“We’re only lacking a large rabbit in a top hat and some mushrooms,” Raya muttered as he followed the two guys up a flight of stairs into a brightly-lit kitchen.

“Those can be arranged,” Aman said from behind him.

Raya wasn’t listening; all of his concentration was focused on an incredible sight. He was looking through the kitchen windows at something miraculous. In the distance, he could see snow falling heavily. It banked up against an invisible surface and dark, gray, menacing clouds overhead spoke of a large storm.

He saw the snow, the clouds, could almost see the frigid air swirling around the distant mountain tops.

But.

He was sweating, as were the others. He stepped through the kitchen door. Outside, it looked like a bright summer day with flowers, fruit trees in full bloom and people wearing shorts.

Looking up, he could see some kind of surface separating reality from whatever this was. He couldn’t see the enormous bright lights he knew had to be up there, or the blowers providing hot air. It was an enigma, and he was speechless.

“I invented that too,” Aman said. “If you happen to be flying over us, all you see is a deserted mountain top. We shot it from every angle. I’m really proud of the sun!” He pointed. “That took some doing. It crosses the sky just like the real thing: it should, it’s right where the real one is.”

“Christos, this is unbelievable. I assume no one knows you people are here?”

“Only the village below,” Nesto said.

“What do you do if climbers actually head up here?”

“There really isn’t a reason for anyone to climb here. We’re not the highest mountain, not even close. Nothing amazing about our mountain at all; it doesn’t even have a name.”

“I’d imagine the length of the journey to get here would be off-putting, too,” Raya said.

Both guys laughed. “Yeah, you mean the commercial flight to Prsriuka, then a small plane through the pass and a quick landing about three miles south?”

Raya’s mouth dropped. “I went through all of that for nothing?”

“I wouldn’t say nothing,” Nesto said with a wink. “We’ll get to that. First, look at this.” He led them to an expansive living room, walked to a desk and picked up a large map. “What do you think mountain climbers would do with this?”

Raya examined it. There were a cluster of mountain tops, with several others nearby. At the edge of the cluster, the mountaintop had just enough space for perhaps six people to stand. The other peaks were exactly that. “Well, it’s not great, but you and a couple of friends could peak at the same time.”

The guys looked at each other and grinned. “They sure could! But they wouldn’t be anywhere near us. This mountain is the one you’re currently standing on,” Nesto said, pointing to a sharp, jagged peak slightly south of the central peak.

Not even a bird could stand there, Raya knew. Not with the incredible winds at this altitude. “Your people whacked the entire top of this mountain off.”

“Yes, we did. And it wasn’t done overnight, either.”

Petra would absolutely flip when she – his heart sunk. She’d never know. That was the entire reason he was here. “It’s truly a feat, but it’s time for me to ask you a question.”