The Mountain's Shadow tlf-1 Read online

  “What is my job, Lonna? I. Have. No. Job. I have no boyfriend. I have no ability to find either right now, not until I figure out what happened to my grandfather!”

  “Ladies, would you like dessert?” Gabriel came in with three dishes of chocolate mousse on a silver tray. His eyes begged for us to be finished.

  “I’m done.” Lonna slowly folded her napkin and placed it on the table. “I’ll be upstairs reviewing my notes on the missing-children case if anyone needs me.”

  I put my head in my hands as I listened to the angry click of her heels on the hardwood floor. “I think I need something a little stronger, Gabriel.”

  “Yes, Madam. An Irish coffee, perhaps?”

  “Decaf. I’ll be on the balcony.”

  The motion-sensor light clicked on as I opened one of the French doors and slipped outside. The house was built on the mountainside, so the basement level was actually a ballroom in the back with a patio under the balcony that could be used even in the rain. The night was quiet as though the hills slumbered, and far away I could hear the river. An owl hooted somewhere in the woods, and then I heard a howl. The bone-piercing cry chilled me to my marrow, and I didn’t see the wolves in my mind’s eye, but rather another presence, this one infinitely menacing and ready to snatch up victims without notice. I wondered at this and at the fight Lonna and I had just had. It wasn’t like either of us to confront each other. Something about this place was unsettling. Too many had gone missing. What could be out there?

  “Your coffee, Doctor Fisher.”

  “Thank you.” Before he could step away, I asked, “Gabriel?”

  “Yes, Madam?”

  “What’s out there? The wolves, I know, but I heard something else.”

  “These hills are full of tales, Madam. Perhaps you heard the evil spirit of which Ms. Lonna spoke.”

  I shivered as the realization of what we’d planned to do that night hit me. “Lonna had wanted to go and see if she could catch whatever’s taking the children in action. After hearing that cry, I’m glad we fought. I think she’s forgotten.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend going out clothed only in human flesh, not on the night of a full moon.” Gabriel took a sip of his coffee, and I wondered what he could see out there in the gloom, what he could smell with his ultra-sensitive nose. “There is old energy in these hills. And old creatures.”

  “And the boys are out there hunting?”

  “They are with their pack and are therefore protected.”

  “I hope so. Why don’t you go?”

  “I don’t feel the need. Not tonight. Being near them helps me to stifle my own desires.”

  “Why?”

  “I have no pack.”

  “That makes two of us.” I noticed he held a glass mug of Irish coffee as well. I didn’t care. “Cheers. To us lone wolves.”

  “Cheers, Doctor Fisher.”

  I smiled up at him over the rim of my glass mug. “Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing.”

  His elegant lips curled into a smile. “Perhaps not.”

  I leaned against the doorframe. In spite of my quivering rage, it didn’t rattle, so I had to satisfy myself with glaring into the gloom instead.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “Well, what?” came from the lump on the bed.

  “Did you find out anything else that was useful?”

  “Bug off.”

  “You’re supposed to be a P.I.,” I reminded her.

  “Remember the Oliver case?”

  “The one where you found out it was the teacher abusing the child, not the father?”

  “Yes. Peter knows it. One of his law firm partners defended the guy.”

  “You’re not convincing me he’s a worthy person if he was with a firm that defends perverts.”

  “He said my work was brilliant, that he couldn’t have built a case against it.” The lump rolled over, and I felt her looking at me. Her eyes glowed in the darkness, and I stepped back. “I just wanted the appreciation not to end. Do you know what it’s like when your purpose, your career, is affirmed like that?”

  “Can’t say that I do.”

  “Oh, Joanie, I’m so sorry!” She burst into tears.

  “Sleep it off, Lonna.” I sighed and closed the door behind me.

  And woke up.

  Dream analysts say every character in one’s dreams symbolizes some aspect of the self. The Lonna in the dream was the part of me that had sold out, that had turned tail and run before I could discover the truth. I’d felt too ashamed to protest my termination because they’d all suspect I had been having an affair with my boss.

  “Nothing like the honesty of the mind at three a.m.,” I told myself as I strained to hear the sounds of the night. Nothing. No voices, no wolves. Not even the bone-shuddering cry I’d heard.

  I rolled over to go back to sleep, but my eyes wouldn’t close. Something was horribly wrong. Then I heard it, from the bottom of the driveway, grunts and the swish of something being dragged. Fear paralyzed my stomach while my heart thudded against my ribs. It was the same feeling I’d had the night of the fire, the one that urged me to hurry, to find something meaningful in the data as something closed in on me. The same feeling I’d had the night Andrew died.

  Footsteps, a muffled exclamation, then the front door opened and closed. I rose, splashed some water on my face, and put on a robe.

  “Doctor Fisher?” Gabriel stood at the door. At first it looked like his shirt was stained black, but the smell told me it was blood, and he was soaked with it.

  “Gabriel, are you hurt?”

  “No, Doctor, but she is, and she’s asking for you.”

  “Lonna?”

  “No.” He took a deep breath. “Louise.”

  I shoved past him, heedless of the smear it would leave on my robe and ran downstairs.

  Louise lay on the sofa. I couldn’t see her wounds, but I could smell the burns, the blood. Her immaculate coffee-shop uniform had been torn and stained with grass, with the rust of old blood and the crimson of new, and with smoke. Her face, pinched and white, strained with every rasping breath.

  “Louise!” I wanted to hold her hand but I was afraid to hurt her. She grabbed mine and struggled to articulate something. It started a throbbing pain in my wrist, but I didn’t care.

  “Lay still,” I told her. “Gabriel, have you called 911?”

  “Yes, Madam. The paramedics are on the way.”

  Louise squeezed my hand. “The black wolf,” she said.

  My heart skipped a beat as adrenaline poured through me. “What black wolf?”

  “It. It.”

  “Hush now, you’ve got to save your strength.”

  She shook her head. “It knows.”

  Gabriel took her other hand. “She shouldn’t be speaking. Her pulse is faint.”

  She still struggled to speak. “Beware. It knows.”

  A knock at the door. Gabriel ran to answer it.

  Louise convulsed one, two, three times, then shuddered and lay still.

  “No, Louise, no!” I didn’t want to believe it. The tears came then, racking sobs. Strong hands separated mine from hers and guided me to the armchair. I couldn’t stop as the guilt welled up. I should have searched for her. Should have done something.

  “She’s expired,” Gabriel told the paramedics. They started CPR anyway and brought out the paddles. I couldn’t see what they did—I only heard the noises as they tried to revive her. And then the muffled curses and uncomfortable silence as they failed.

  Gabriel held my shoulders, his strong grasp two points that anchored me to reality as sobs subsided into hiccoughs, but the tears still flowed. I couldn’t see the paramedics, merely blurs of blue uniforms. They parted for a figure in khaki.

  “Well, Doctor Fisher,” drawled Sheriff Bud Knowles. “It looks like Miz Louise’s disappearance yesterday mornin’ has become your business after all.”

  “Doctor Fisher is in no condition to be questioned, Sheriff,” Gabriel
said. Damn, I just couldn’t manage to speak for myself this week.

  “Well, then, I’ll start with you, seeing as you’re the one covered in blood. Don’t move her,” he barked at the paramedics, who prepared to lift Louise’s body on to a stretcher. “This here is now a crime scene.”

  “What is the crime, Sheriff?” Gabriel asked. “We merely brought in a friend who was hurt and appeared at our door this morning.”

  “You must be the new butler.” Knowles deliberately reached into his back pocket, brought out a pad, licked his thumb, and flipped the little notebook open to an empty page. “Could I have your name, sir?” he said with a sneer.

  “Excuse me. I’m going to get some water.” I pushed by Gabriel and staggered into the kitchen.

  I turned on the water and waited for it to warm. I felt the need to wash my hands both from the sticky blood and the impossible situation. The icy-cold water gave me an anchor to reality, and I watched blood swirl off my hands and down the drain. Blood. I tasted acid in the back of my throat, swallowed hard. Tried to concentrate on the water, on the cold tile beneath my sock feet. Wouldn’t do to puke in front of the sheriff. Focused on the cold water splashing on my face, thinking of the stinging on my cheeks, the drip as it crawled down my neck to my collarbone, chest, right breast, nipple… I raised my head and looked out the window.

  The motion-sensor light turned on, and I caught sight of something big and black. Yellow eyes flashed at me, and I staggered back, found the sharp edge of the island with my lower back. Yellow eyes, white teeth, fire! I sank to the floor and curled up. No, no, no. Away, go away, go away!

  I must have screamed because footsteps pounded into the kitchen.

  “Miss? Doctor Fisher?” An unfamiliar voice, one of the paramedics. “In here. She’s in here!”

  “Did she faint?”

  “Bring her out here. Lay her down.”

  “Not on the sofa. Put her in the chair.”

  Strong arms. No good. All went black.

  Chapter Eight

  I came to in the armchair with something acrid wafting into my nose: smelling salts.

  “Are you all right, miss?” The young paramedic’s eyes looked into mine, and I could see his concern.

  “I’m fine.” But I felt groggy, like someone had hit me over the head with a medical textbook.

  “Here’s some water.”

  “Thank you.”

  Gabriel stood by the fireplace with the sheriff. His feet were square to Knowles, but he kept glancing over his shoulder at me. I raised my glass to show him I was okay. He inclined his head, but his back remained tense.

  “Well, if that’s all, Sheriff, perhaps you can come take Doctor Fisher’s statement tomorrow,” he said. “I will be here all day as well if you think of anything else you’d like to ask me.”

  Surprisingly, Knowles took the hint. “I’ll be by in the morning.”

  Louise was gone, but the couch showed stains where she’d lain. Also gravel and grass. What had happened to the poor woman?

  Gabriel didn’t sit down until he had locked the door behind the last of Knowles’ crew.

  “I guess there’s no way to salvage the couch, is there?” I asked. Even before he said so, I knew the soft fawn suede had been ruined.

  “The sheriff asked me to keep it here until forensics can come and collect it. I can’t even try to clean it.”

  “What else did he say?”

  “That none of us are to leave tomorrow until he and the forensics team return. The driveway and grounds are also considered a crime scene. Apparently it seems as though Louise was dragged up the driveway.”

  I remembered the sickening sounds. “I heard it, but I had no idea what it was.”

  “Me too. When I went out to investigate, all I saw was Louise lying in the grass. That’s when I brought her in.”

  “Poor woman.” I blinked to keep the tears from falling again and to not relive the whole encounter. The black wolf. How did it get here? How did it find me? I shuddered.

  In an instant Gabriel was by my side searching my face. “Are you all right, Madam?”

  “I am. Did you see it?”

  “See what?”

  “The black wolf.”

  “No, but I could smell it on her.”

  “Was it…” I couldn’t bear to say it.

  “No.” He leaned closer. “Don’t worry, it wasn’t Ron or Leo.”

  “Phew.” Some of the tension drained from my chest, although the other possibility was just as disturbing. “Where’s Lonna? I’m surprised she wasn’t woken up by all the commotion.”

  Gabriel smiled. “She was very upset last night and asked for something to help her sleep.”

  “Ah. Are you going to turn us all into addicts? Because I may need something.”

  “In your case, I’m going to say no. Warm milk, that’s it. You need to be alert when Sheriff Knowles comes to question you in a few hours.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” I rubbed my eyes and couldn’t help but think that dealing with Knowles was the last thing I wanted to do. “Warm milk it is, then.”

  “With a cookie?”

  “If you’re offering.”

  He rose, but I stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Gabriel?”

  “Yes, Doctor?”

  “Thank you. I’m glad you’re here.”

  “I am, too.”

  It was too quick to tell, but I thought I saw an extra sparkle in his eye. In spite of all the drama of the evening, I smiled.

  If I slept at all the rest of the night, I didn’t know it. My wrist throbbed from Louise’s twisting of the injury, and I couldn’t get comfortable. Away from the hum of city noise, every small sound was magnified against the backdrop of silence. Not even the insects sang. Every time I was just about to drift off to sleep, some small noise startled me awake. One time it was Lonna crying out in her sleep, and then I heard Gabriel get up and walk outside. I supposed he was as restless as I was. Or maybe he had other reasons to be out.

  Finally I gave up, put a different robe on, and walked to the balcony. Dawn tinged the sky in the east faint blue, then golden, and then a blaze of pink and orange as the sun strained to rise above the trees. I had to look away, and when I did, I saw what looked like a large brown wolfhound on the lawn. Its tongue lolled out at me, then it rolled on its back and stretched in the grass. In spite of myself, I laughed. It became blurry around the edges, rolled on its stomach, and gave a great heave. Instead of a wolf, I found myself looking at the fuzzy backside of a man.

  That was it. No going back now. I’d seen one of them change, and the fire inside me was lit.

  “How did you do that?” I called.

  “I wish I knew.” With a grunt, Gabriel straightened up from his hands and knees, rolled up one vertebrae at a time, and stretched, his back still to me. I heard bones and joints pop back into place under the smooth muscles.

  “Madam, would you mind?” He made a circular motion with his hand, and I obediently turned around. “All right, then.”

  He stood below the balcony in a plaid flannel robe.

  “What was that all about?” I asked. “I thought you weren’t going hunting?”

  “I needed to wash the scent of blood off. A mountain stream seemed preferable to a shower.”

  I shivered. “Suit yourself.”

  “Coffee?” he asked.

  “Would love some. Be right down.”

  I didn’t know much about werewolf etiquette at the time, but I later learned allowing a human to watch the transformation was one of the most intimate things a werewolf could do.

  I ran down the stairs to the kitchen, where I found a full pot of warm, steaming, fragrant coffee. Thank God for coffeemakers with timers. I poured two cups and waited for Gabriel to come in.

  The Gabriel that walked through the door was not the same man I had become accustomed to. Rather than glance at me, then immediately away, his eyes raked me, and I felt them take in every inch of flesh under my robe and
pajamas.

  “Um, coffee?” I asked. He came to stand by me, but he didn’t take a cup.

  “Gabriel, something’s different about you.” I stepped back. I held my coffee in front of me. Its scent mingled with that of crisp mountain air and the dampness of his clothes, and electricity crackled between us. Standing so close to his energy, his raw wildness, I felt my nipples tighten, and my panties became moist.

  “I don’t want any coffee, Madam,” he said. The look in his brown eyes told me exactly what he did want.

  “I don’t think I do either.” I put my cup down and held my breath.

  I could sense Gabriel’s usual self-control at war with the wildness and passion born with a dawn run and transformation. Envy blistered my heart. I wanted to run, to shed the responsibilities of convention, the grief and trauma of life as a human.

  I wasn’t a werewolf, but by God, I could get as close as possible to this one.

  I grabbed his robe and let my nails rake through the soft hair and along his chest as I pulled him to me. I felt his head tilt toward my neck, and for one exhilarating instant thought he would bite me and invite me into that world, but he merely nibbled without breaking the skin and kissed along the side of my neck to my earlobe. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and he pulled me to him.

  “Well, isn’t this interesting?” Lonna’s voice, low and icy, broke us apart. “I get lectured for sleeping with the married lawyer, and here innocent little Joanie is dallying with the butler. How juicy.”

  I scowled. “Nothing happened.”

  Gabriel tied his robe back and looked at her with disdainful, hooded eyes. Guilt blossomed in my chest. Caught with my hand in the werewolf cookie jar.

  “At least he’s not married,” I muttered.

  “This time.”

  Gabriel raised his eyebrows. My cheeks warmed.

  “Didn’t she tell you? She was having an affair with her boss. Her married boss.”

  “I can see how the man would be tempted.” Now he was back to the old Gabriel, guarded and careful. “Pardon me, I think I shall dress unless you need me to fix breakfast for you.”