chapter 8
Aldara’s gaze flicked over Samantha and then returned to her brother as if dismissing her as unimportant.
“The Beta Pack is on their way back and I located the Gammas. They’re close. I see you found the Deltas.”
“Yes, but they won’t go and they attacked Samantha,” said Alon.
This news did not seem to surprise or concern Aldara in the least. She shrugged. “Small wonder.”
“We can’t go without the Gammas.”
“Together we can make them understand. The Betas and Gammas can help us. I saw another ghost. We need to go.”
The look on Alon’s face had Samantha hugging herself. Nagi’s scouts, she realized. Alon had told her so.
“I have to take Samantha to the house. Then we’ll go after the Gammas again.”
Now Samantha had Aldara’s attention. She turned her flashing eyes on Samantha and curled back her lip to show strong white teeth. “Didn’t you tell it to remain there? I thought animals could follow simple directions like ‘sit’ and ‘stay.’”
“Aldara.” Alon’s voice held a warning.
“She’s one of them.”
“None of her family has ever attacked our kind.”
Aldara folded her arms and glanced away.
“She is our guest,” said Alon.
“An uninvited guest,” Aldara objected.
“My guest,” insisted Alon, his voice holding unmistakable menace.
Aldara threw up her hands as if conceding the point. “Well, it’s taking too much of your time. We need to move them now. The Beta say they spotted two just east of us. They could be here anytime.”
Alon grabbed Samantha by the elbow. “I’ll catch up.”
He turned and marched Samantha away. Behind them, Aldara growled.
* * *
Alon guided Samantha along the worn animal trail that he knew as well as his own face, faces, oh, hell. She’d seen them, the young ones in their natural form, the shape in which all born of Nagi began their lives. Changing to smoke came next, almost as soon as they were born. Why couldn’t they change to smoke to be born and keep their birth mothers from dying in labor? It was one of many questions to which he could find no answer.
At puberty they turned handsome, losing the gray cast to their skin, learning to transform quills to the fine pale hair. This was the same time the Ianoka, born of Tob Tob, assumed their animal form, according to his mother, Bess.
Did Samantha find them horrible? Of course she did. They were horrible, hideous, the stuff of nightmares. Walking, talking monsters.
She would now find him repellent. It hurt him to think of her rejection, even though he had not yet experienced it. But he would. Surely he would.
He glanced back, making certain that Aldara didn’t come at Samantha from behind. He and Aldara had argued last night. She favored bringing the young ones to safety as soon as they gathered them all and letting Samantha fend for herself. He didn’t think Samantha would survive the hunting ghosts or Nagi’s marauding Ghostlings without their protection. Aldara did not think Samantha was their problem regardless of her father’s connection to their mother. But Alon could not leave Samantha.
Aldara needed him. Samantha needed him. He felt torn in two.
He brought her within sight of the house and left her there.
“Is it safe here?” she asked.
He knew nowhere was safe any longer.
“Our packs will not intrude here.” But any outsider would look there first.
“Nagi’s ghosts?”
He hesitated, not wishing to lie to her. He needed to follow Aldara and gather the packs.
“They are still to the east.” He left her, feeling her gaze upon him. Wishing he could stay with her and knowing he could not.
* * *
Samantha watched him go, her senses prickling on alert. Nagi’s army was about, as were his ghosts. She shivered as she recalled their attack on her dad.
Should she sit alone in that big log target and wait for Alon, or should she follow him? She knew that he was her best defense. And the Delta Pack understood she was under his protection. At least they seemed to understand.
Samantha hesitated, weighing her options. She didn’t want to die. Perhaps if she kept him in sight she might stay alive long enough to find his mother.
Her dad’s words came to her again. Learn what you can.
Samantha shifted to her bear form and followed Alon’s scent trail.
* * *
Alon found his sister with little difficulty. Aldara met him in her fighting form. Not a good sign.
“Maybe the ghosts are after her.”
It was a possibility he already considered. Samantha’s arrival might threaten them all.
“We need to get rid of her.”
“If you mean kill her, I won’t.”
“They kill us.”
Aldara changed back to her human shape. In this form she was slim and curvy, with pale skin and long, cascading silver-blond hair that covered her naked breasts.
Alon looked away. Aldara was constantly losing her garments and had little modesty. Alon tugged off his sweater and handed it over.
Aldara drew on the soft cashmere, which reached her midthigh. The sleeves fell well past her fingertips, but she scrunched them up to her elbows as if preparing to give him a thrashing. If anyone came close to succeeding in that, it would be his twin. She was much tougher than she looked in her petite human form.
Aldara snorted. “I can still smell her.”
He changed the subject. “Any luck with the Gammas?”
“They agreed to come after they finish their kill.”
She had done well.
“We’ll bring the packs with us. Get Samantha to Mom. Then we can resume the search for strays.”
“They’re not strays. They’re infants. Just like we were, alone and afraid. I hate the thought of leaving them behind.”
He preferred it to trying to reason with the feral little monsters. He made a face. “I don’t know how you can even bear to look at them.”
Her scowl held this time, and she pressed her lips into a thin grim line. “How can you not?”
Aldara knew how ugly they were, but somehow she did not find them repugnant. She forgave them their appearance in a way that both shamed and humbled him.
But he didn’t agree with her or his parents. The Ghost Children didn’t belong here. That much he knew. The Naginoka upset the Balance. It was why he had vowed never to bring another of his kind into the world.
“Even if we convince them all to go, that Skinwalker can’t fly. She’ll hold us back.”
She was right again. When he did not answer, Aldara snapped at him.
“Fine! I’ll bring the packs to Mom and Dad while you babysit the little animal.”
“I don’t want you traveling with them alone. What if he finds you?”
“He might just as easily find you and the bear.”
They stared at each other a moment as worry spiked in his belly, as sharp as a tack.
Aldara’s shoulders sagged. “They must have brought her for a reason.”
“I wish I knew what it was.”
Aldara looked miserable. Tears trickled down her face, and she used the cuff of his sweater to sop up them up.
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
“I know.” He glanced back toward the house.
“Can you think of another way?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then we separate. Perhaps we’ll both make it.”
She gazed up at him, her eyes no longer yellow but blue-gray, a shade much darker than his own. Her pretty face was contorted, her brow wrinkled, but in human form the words came easily now.
“I listen to the Niyanoka. I’ve been to their communities, attended their gatherings.” She could, too. They’d never notice her, a little gray shadow, a hazy cloud of vapor clinging to the ceiling like blue smoke from a pipe. “They’d like us all dead.”
Maybe we already are, he thought. Half-dead at least.
“They know that the Skinwalkers are hunting the
babies, and they do nothing.”
“What?” Shock struck him still.
“The Niyanoka chief said so. Sanctioned was the word they used.”
Alon shook his head in denial, knowing in his heart that her words were true. “Does father know?”
“I don’t have the heart to tell him. The Spirit Children say they will ignore the hunts. That way they can keep their hands clean, maintain their smug superiority and have the Skinwalkers remove the troublesome problem.”
He pictured a pack of Skinwalker wolves finding his sister sleeping. The image iced his blood. He thought of their new guest and hardened his heart.
He had to keep Samantha safe and he had to keep Aldara safe.
“We’re out of time,” said Alon. “No more persuasion. We’ll use the Beta and Gammas to force the Deltas to come with us.”
“You kissed her.”
He glared. “So?”
“There are plenty of girls back at the school. But you kissed a Skinwalker.”
He snorted and then realized his mistake as Aldara’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, right.” She swept back her silvery hair and glared. “We’re not good enough for you.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Your actions do. Her kind is killing our people. How could you...you...kiss a beast?” Her words turned into a series of snaps and growls as her mouth began to contort with the change again. She rounded on him. “She won’t want you, you know?”
Her words hit him like a blow, echoing the truth he had already accepted. Samantha was not of his race, and some of her people were trying to exterminate his. How could she ever understand him, and why would she want to?
“For a moment I forgot what she was. A mistake. It won’t happen again.”
* * *
Samantha stood in bear form with her back pressed to the tree hidden just upwind of the place where Alon and Aldara spoke of Skinwalkers as the enemy.
Vigilantes. Could that be true? Did her dad know?
No wonder Aldara hated her on sight. Her people were hunting infants. It was too terrible.
Sebastian’s instructions echoed in her mind. If you see a Toe Tagger kill it, and she knew Aldara’s words were true.
She closed her eyes as his sister had called her a beast and rather than defend her, he’d agreed. That hurt so much she had to hug the tree for support.
Alon admitted that kissing her had been a mistake. Her head drooped, suddenly too heavy for her to hold upright. Her heart pulsed with her shame.
To know exactly what he thought of her was hard. She understood that there were many who thought Skinwalkers less than human. It was what all the Niyanoka believed. But to hear this from Alon’s mouth somehow felt like a slap across her face.
She winced. Letting him kiss her was nearly as stupid as sending that evil ghost for judgment.
Regret and shame rolled into an electric ball of anger that rumbled through her like thunder. A Toe Tagger calling her a beast. It wasn’t as if he had a glowing lineage. His father was trying to take over the entire living world. She knew that and still she had been lured by Alon’s handsome face and raw sexuality.
What did she care if he belittled her? She knew what she was and where she belonged. But her defense fell flat. The truth was that she didn’t know where she belonged or what she should do. Blake and his mother were to rally the Niyanoka. Her dad would gather the Skinwalkers into an army. And her job was to try not to get eaten by yearling Toe Taggers and wait around for Alon to have time to bring her to Bess. Her head sank even lower as Alon’s words echoed through her like an emotional earthquake.
A mistake.
Yes, that it was. He made her ashamed of her weakness for him. Ashamed to let herself want a Halfling who found her attention a disgrace.
To the Toe Taggers she was a beast. Both the Dream Children and the Skinwalkers saw her as a half-breed born of the enemy race.
In her heart she was torn in two. Straddling two races, she felt wholly a part of neither.
Just then a feral scream came from a place beyond the clearing where Alon and Aldara stood.
“The babies,” said Aldara, already turning toward the sound. “Something is attacking the babies!”
Samantha’s heart pounded in fear as she peered around the mighty tree. There was a discharge of green light, and then Alon and Aldara stood eight feet tall in their third form. She shrank back at the sight. These were the creatures that attacked her dad. Long silvery hair, a ridge of spines down their backs, long apelike arms and vicious claws.
They charged toward the sound as more screams reached Samantha. She pressed a paw to her chest, trying to ease the pain of her pounding heart. Should she follow or run?
She turned to move in the opposite direction when something occurred to her. What if it wasn’t Nagi or his Toe Tagger army? What if vigilante Skinwalkers were attacking the infants?
Samantha’s scalp tingled. She couldn’t let her own kind kill those little ones. It was wrong—so wrong.
She charged after Alon, following his scent as she plowed through the undergrowth toward the unknown.