Chapter
Twenty-seven
Something was sparkling as Jillian opened her
eyes. Blinking, she realized the morning sun had caught the little
crystals in the dream catcher. Or was it afternoon sun? She had no
idea what time it was and didn’t feel well enough to care. Jillian
lay in bed and watched the light bounce around the wall in bright
colors. Amber, green, purple, red, blue. Blue. Blue sparkles, blue sparks.
There had been blue sparks last night when the white wolf turned
into James Macleod.
That had been one wild and crazy
hallucination. She knew it couldn’t have been a dream, at least not
completely—she had only to look over at the furniture stacked in
front of her door. The dresser, the table, even the magazine rack.
And how dumb was that? The last weighed, what? Two pounds, maybe
three? But she’d been desperate for anything she could get her
hands on, anything that might keep out whatever she thought she had
seen in the loft. And when the adrenaline had finally subsided,
she’d paid heavily for the overexertion. She’d spent half the night
in the bathroom throwing up and the other half trying to rally the
strength to get to her bed.
She was still paying for the night’s
activity. She felt drained, ill. A headache maintained a steady
throb just behind her eyes. And it didn’t help to know that she’d
brought it on herself. “I have a moderate to serious concussion.
Birkie told me not to overdo it, Connor told me not to overdo it,
Lowen and Bev both told me not to overdo it, even the clinician who
ran the CAT scan told me not to overdo it,” she lectured herself.
“So what do I do? Go running around the clinic in the dark. Of
course I saw weird things.”
One niggling question remained,
however. Was everything she saw a hallucination? The DNA tests on
the white hair from her couch had proven not only that a white wolf
existed but that it had been inside her apartment. Had the wolf
found its way back into the clinic last night? Had she followed a
real wolf or a dream wolf? But if it was a real wolf she followed,
why did the event suddenly turn into complete fantasy? And at what
point?
That leap, for instance. Jillian worked
it out in her head. The livestock area was huge, and the span
between the stacked bales and the loft door had to be at least
thirty-five feet, maybe more. No wolf could jump that. A tiger
might, she supposed, but even a big cat would have to work at it. A
wolf? No chance. Therefore what she saw in the livestock wing could
be no more real than what she saw in the loft.
“Duh! What did I expect after racing
down the hallway? And I can’t believe I climbed up that stupid
ladder. I’m lucky I didn’t pass out and fall.” And as for the wolf
turning into James, that was no stretch of the imagination. She had
just talked to him, was just thinking about him, and then she had
read all those stupid stories. “Therefore, none of it was real. I
didn’t see the wolf in the hallway, I just thought I did.” She
didn’t much like the idea of seeing things, though. She got up
carefully and headed to the bathroom, stared at herself in the
mirror. Her reflection looked more tired than usual, disheveled,
but not particularly crazy. At least she didn’t seem to be foaming
at the mouth or rolling her eyes back in her head. “Lycanthropy.
Werewolves.” She tried out the words, watched for changes in the
mirror. Saw none. “Guess I’m still sane, even if I’m seeing things.
Well, mostly sane.” Her head pounded while she brushed her teeth,
and she decided to forego a shower. For a moment she thought about
breakfast, but her stomach refused to discuss the subject unless it
involved something creamy and frozen.
By the time she climbed back into bed,
she was resigned to staying there for the rest of the day. Jillian
hoped Birkie would stop by in the afternoon. It would be good to
have a friend to talk to, although she might not mention that part
about the ladder. Please God, let her bring ice
cream. She moaned aloud as she remembered all the stuff
piled in front of her door. “Dear God, skip the ice cream. Please
let her bring a forklift.”
Roderick Harrison was just as Douglas
remembered him. Just as devoted to the Pine Point Ranch as ever.
Just as hardworking and active as always. Just as bullheaded and
bossy too. But gradually it became apparent that Roderick was also
as fixated as ever on something Douglas would rather
forget.
It began as a stray comment over
dinner. “Wolf tracks in the northwest pasture, Dougie. We’ve got to
keep an eye on the stock.”
It probably didn’t mean anything more
than that, Douglas told himself sternly, but still, his stomach
clenched and he found himself unable to finish the meal. When he
retreated to his room, it took a tall glass of Jack Daniels to help
him calm down. More to ensure he didn’t dream that
night.
It was mid-morning before Douglas
finally made his way downstairs again. He was on his way to the
kitchen, intent on putting something gentle in his stomach, maybe
poached eggs and toast. Maybe just toast. Something to soak up the
acid so he could have a drink to start the day.
“Dad?” He was startled to find his
father still in the house. Shouldn’t he be out riding the goddamn
range or something? Roderick didn’t appear to notice him though. He
was standing in the living room, staring at the collection of
family photos on the stone mantel. There was still a photo of
Douglas’s mother there, a tall, pretty woman, her hair dark red and
wavy just like her son’s. Douglas had always liked the picture but
now wished he’d followed his instincts months ago and put it away.
He took a careful step backward, then another, hoping to exit the
room, but it was too late.
“Corena was a good woman.” Roderick
continued to stare at her photo. He was still as stone with his
hands at his sides, but they were clenched hard enough to make the
veins stand out. “It wasn’t her fault, not really. Damn werewolves,
they laid claim to her. I fought to keep her with me, but they
claimed her and in the end, they got her. I should never have
listened to her. I should’ve shot every damn one of them when I had
the chance. She’d still be alive if I’d done that.”
“Dad, I—”
“They’re back, you know. We didn’t
finish the job and now they’re back.”
“Goddammit, Dad, give it up already,”
Douglas burst out. The fleeting thought crossed his mind that if
he’d had that drink, he would have been mellow enough to keep his
mouth shut, but maybe he’d been silent too long, much too long.
“I’m sick of hearing about your fucking werewolves. You already
shot two people that I know of, and God only knows how many
others.” He was shouting now.
Roderick roared back. “I was protecting
this family. I tried to protect your mother, even after she had
you, and then I tried to protect you, too.”
“Protect me? You took a
fourteen-year-old kid along to commit a fucking murder. What kind of protection was that?” Douglas
paused and sucked in air. It was enough time for something his
father had said to sink in. “What do you mean, even
after she had me?”
“I raised you as my own. I didn’t ask
any questions. We couldn’t have kids and God help me, I wanted a
son, someone I could leave the ranch to.”
He stared at his father for several
seconds. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the man must be having a relapse.
He walked over and took his father’s arm, and when he spoke, it was
with a lowered voice. “Dad, it’s me, Douglas. Your son. And I have
a sister, remember? Rosa.”
“We adopted Rosa. Corena had a young
niece out east that got herself in trouble, so we took on the baby,
pretended she was ours. It was easy enough, she had red hair like
your mother. No one was ever supposed to know. Even Rosa doesn’t
know. Then a few years later your mother came up pregnant with
you.” Roderick shook his head from side to side, still staring at
the photo. “It was a damn hard pill to swallow. God, I didn’t talk
to her, couldn’t even look at her. But after you were born, I
thought maybe we could work things out.”
Douglas let go of his father’s arm
then. This wasn’t sounding like a recurrence of the Alzheimer’s,
not at all. In fact, it didn’t sound like any episode his father
had ever had. “What are you saying here? That I’m not your son? Are
you trying to make me believe my mother was a cheat?”
“It wasn’t her fault, not really. It
was the damn werewolves. She couldn’t help herself, couldn’t resist
them.” The old man turned and faced his son, his eyes sad but
steady. “We had an argument one night, and she went out. I found
out later that she’d met some of them wolf people in a bar, started
hanging around with them behind my back every chance she got. I
didn’t know then just how evil they were but I knew it would end
badly.”
“What? What?”
Douglas sank into a chair then, his legs rubbery and his heart
beating against his ribs like an animal trying to escape a cage. It
was possible that his father had slipped into some bizarre
hallucination, some new neurosis. Not just possible, but plausible.
Maybe an aneurysm, a stroke? Yet Rod appeared calm, his color good
and his breathing steady. His words were clear, distinguishable.
Douglas looked for some clue in his father’s eyes, some subtle
tip-off that Rod had regressed or fallen prey to some new ailment.
He found none. “What the fuck are you saying?”
“She left us for one of them, Dougie.
She left us to become one of them. She
wanted to take you with her, make you one of them too, but I
couldn’t let her do that.” He turned back to the photo and spoke
more to himself than Douglas. “I couldn’t let her.”
“Don’t hang up.” He’d given up on any
kind of traditional greeting. A couple dozen calls in a week had
netted him nothing more than the click of the receiver on Jillian’s
end. “We need to talk.”
“Please stop calling me.”
The connection went dead. Again. James
swore and nearly threw the cell phone out the window of the tractor
cab, but at the last moment jammed it into his shirt pocket
instead. He’d gotten the phone from Culley the day after the
accident, resolving to be more prepared to protect Jillian in the
future. After all, what if Birkie hadn’t tuned in to his mental
calls for help? What would he have done? Yet the cell phone sure
wasn’t helping him much now. Culley had regaled James with a
mind-numbing array of available models and features. But what he
really needed was a phone that could say the right words for him,
words that would persuade Jillian to listen.
Were there any? Her fine features made
her look faery-like, but Jillian Descharme was tough and strong and
smart. He couldn’t blame her for shutting him out. He’d been a
complete moron and he’d hurt her. It was unforgivable, and yet he
had to find a way to persuade her to give him a chance.
Somehow.
He’d tried going in person. So far,
knocking on her door hadn’t yielded any better results than calling
her. After the first time, the door no longer opened. She was
ignoring him, and while that normally would have pissed him off, he
was having a hard time holding onto his anger for more than a
moment. In fact, what he felt was lonely. Sad. He missed her, so
much so that he’d gone out running as the wolf a few nights ago.
Initially he’d intended to distract himself, but instead, he ended
up at the clinic. He’d lain outside her door for a very long time,
with his head on his paws. Knowing she’d embrace the wolf if she
saw it, but wanting her to welcome the man.
He hadn’t Changed since.
James made a point of talking with
Connor and Birkie frequently. He always started out with farm
topics—Any clinic suppliers offer organic products?
Anyone got Angus heifers for sale right now?—and then
eventually worked in questions about Jillian. How’s
her progress, how’s she coping? He could see in their eyes
that neither Birkie nor his brother was fooled by his casual act,
but thankfully they played along and didn’t ask questions or, worse
yet, offer sympathy.
He was pleased to learn that Jillian
was up and around, and active again, although it concerned him that
her version of being active meant walking the perimeter of the
clinic’s ten-acre property. Birkie had assured him that Jillian
stopped to rest frequently, but James knew full well the small
blond woman would push herself to go the distance, every day, no
matter how crappy she felt. She was already campaigning to return
to work, but Connor hadn’t relented yet. James could well imagine
that frustrated her—after all, she lived and slept and breathed her
work—but privately he sided with his brother. Birkie had let slip,
however, that she and Caroline were passing Jillian small projects,
not so much because they needed the help but to keep Jillian from
going stir-crazy and to help her feel connected to the work she
loved.
He could relate to that. Wasn’t he
doing almost the same thing? Making up excuses to go to the clinic,
seeking small tidbits of information just so he could keep from
going crazy, so he could feel some kind of connection to the woman
he loved?
The shadows were long when he finally
finished in the fields. He shut down the equipment and climbed down
from the tractor, deciding to leave it where it stood. He was a
long way from the main farmyard but he wanted to stretch his legs.
And think. The scent of alfalfa and earth rose to meet him as he
walked across the fields. The sun was low in the sky and golden—and
James thought immediately of how it had glinted in Jillian’s hair.
Automatically he looked over toward the forested coulees and
remembered his night with her. There had been passion, but the
experience had also touched him deep inside; some essence of
Jillian had moved him. And the next day he had ruined
everything.
Ah, hell. He had
to try again. And this time he’d damn well camp out on her
doorstep. If he could just persuade her to listen. He didn’t dare
think past that.