Dyre Read online

Ruby sniffled and closed her eyes. But instead of darkness on the backs of her eyelids, she saw George’s face coming toward her, only it was too long, too narrow and dog-like, too toothy. And it’d been changing as it got closer, hadn’t it? Blue eyes turning green, then yellow, skin sprouting hair in patches, brows and cheeks growing thicker, cruder, heavier…

  Then she’d been in pain unlike any she’d felt before, tearing through her shoulder and the vulnerable junction where neck met shoulder. And she’d screamed, and still the pain went on, until the world went so red, it was black, and then everything had gotten hazy and confusing.

  She had disturbing dreams she couldn’t quite remember. Then a period of waking and a period of sleeping that felt less like a coma and more like actual sleep. Then, finally, early this morning, a true waking up.

  She’d awoken in a strange bed, next to a stranger who looked little better than death warmed over, and to other strangers who were kind to her, but evasive about how she’d gotten to the mansion she’d found herself in, and why she’d been so sick.

  But these other strangers were absolutely mum on how she’d gotten the faint, but ugly, jagged scar on her collar, just below her neck. Yet Ruby had known, hadn’t she? That scar was in the same place she’d been bitten in that awful nightmare she’d had where someone broke into George’s apartment and shot him. And would have shot Ruby, if not for—

  For Des, she thought, finally connecting her face to the one who had appeared in that awful nightmare. The sharp, almost feral face that’d calmly told her that she was Queen of the Werewolves, or some ridiculous bullshit. Only it wasn’t bullshit, was it? At least not the part about the Werewolves. Oh, God. This can’t be true. It just can’t.

  Can it?

  *

  “But it is, isn’t it?” Ruby asked quietly, scratching behind Des’s Loup’s ears. The Loup, for its part, butted its head against her hand, eager for more. Des may have been enjoying it as well. “It’s all true.”

  “What, hon?” Phil knelt down and reached out a hand to the Loup who, attention whore that it was, whuffed and poked its muzzle out for scratching.

  “I’m a werewolf, now, aren’t I?” Ruby’s round eyes darted from the Loup, to Phil, then closed on more tears. “George b-bit me before he died, and made me like Des. Like you?”

  Phil sighed. “Yes, honey, it’s true.”

  “I thought that was all a dream. A nightmare.” Ruby started weeping again, and the Loup forsook Phil’s scratches to lick away the tears once more. Ruby laughed a little but didn’t stop crying.

  “I fucking hate dogs,” she said, then started sobbing, hugging the Loup close and burying her face in its soft black fur.

  *

  “So.”

  Ruby sniffed and shifted in Des’s arms, but didn’t otherwise respond.

  “This pantry’s not exactly the Ritz-Carlton, huh?”

  Warm and now dry on her neck, Ruby scrinched up her face and wound her arms even tighter around Des’s waist. Des looked up at their audience.

  It’d been almost half an hour since the Loup had tracked Ruby to the pantry and nearly twenty minutes since Des had reverted back to her Hume-form. Now, her brother, father, and stepmother stood watching them expectantly. Feeling more than a flash of annoyance at their intrusion, Des spoke directly into Ruby’s ear. “Wanna get outta here?”

  “No.”

  Well, it was an answer.

  “Not even for chocolate pudding?”

  Ruby snorted a little. “I hate chocolate pudding.”

  “And dogs?”

  “And dogs.”

  “Hmm.” Des smiled into Ruby’s hair. “How about a nice, big steak?”

  “I—” Ruby sat up, blinking at Des and looking her over. “You’re naked.”

  Des shrugged.

  Then Ruby looked up at their audience and flushed.

  “Disappear, guys,” Des ordered, and for a wonder, they did. Even Nathan.

  Ruby looked at Des, surprised. “Are you, like, the um, Werewolf Chief?”

  Des laughed. “Ah, no. That’d be, well, you.”

  “What?”

  But Des was maneuvering them carefully out from under the shelves. Ruby clenched her arms tight around Des’s neck, and Des stood up.

  “Jesus, you’re strong,” Ruby said breathlessly, her eyes saucer-wide.

  “You don’t know the half of it. Now, how ’bout that steak, chica?”

  Des strode out of the pantry without waiting for an answer.

  *

  It was really throwing Ruby for a loop, that Des didn’t care about the whole naked-thing. She easily carried Ruby into the kitchen, talking about meat and how hungry they both were the whole way, all while utterly bare-assed.

  And indeed, Ruby was hungry, her stomach informed her loudly. Still, Des’s nudity was distracting.

  They saw no one in the kitchen, though Ruby was soaking in the surroundings carefully. The house seemed to be truly a manor, huge and vaulting, with buttresses and wainscoting and things for which Ruby didn’t have a name. Even the kitchen was ridiculously huge, with a brick oven, a fireplace, and a giant gas stove with more burners than Ruby had fingers.

  The only deviation from all the chrome and reflecting surfaces was a huge marble counter and the wooden stools that surrounded it.

  “. . . none of that Worcester sauce bullshit, either,” Des was saying as she gently sat Ruby down on one of the stools directly across from the enormous oven. “Just good, old-fashioned steak, with a little salt and pepper for seasoning.” Des grinned, showing small, even white teeth with very pointy canines. “How do you like your steak, by the way?”

  “Um…very well-done.”

  Des chuckled. “If you say so. Me, I like it tartare or rare.”

  “Yuck. My father used to eat his steak that way.” Ruby made a face. “He used to say: ‘Ru, min blomst, run it through a warm room then bring it to me.’ He’s lucky he didn’t wind up with intestinal parasites or something.”

  “My kinda man. And I don’t say that often.” Des winked then strode past Ruby to one of three huge Sub-Zero refrigerator-freezers. She opened the middle one and began rooting through the shelves, muttering to herself. “Let’s see, we’ve also got pork chops, ribs, filet mignon—God, Nathan’s such a pretentious ass—veal cutlets, ah, I think these are Swedish meatballs, chicken breasts, turkey breasts—ooh, halibut! Tuna steaks, swordfish steaks, pork loin, lamb shanks—”

  “Steak’ll do,” Ruby said absently, wondering how someone could be so comfortable while being so naked. Not that Des had anything to be ashamed of. She was small, sporty, and lean, all whipcord muscle and prominent bone structure. Not as hairy as one might expect of a woman who was actually a…well, Ruby didn’t want to think about what Des actually was and left it at: Well, it’s obvious she doesn’t shave…anything.

  “I could eat all of this and then some. I’m fucking starving,” Des announced, taking out what seemed to be a small pile of steaks. She kicked the fridge door shut with her heel, grinning. Ruby quickly raised her eyes and grinned back.

  “All right, that was steak, well-done, for the lady,” she said in a horrible English accent. Ruby smiled just a little as Des strode over to the stove and dumped the meat on the center of it. Then she was rifling cabinets and drawers for a skillet, oil, plates, and utensils.

  Gold-plated utensils.

  “Are all werewolves this rich?” Slipped out before she could catch herself. Des snorted.

  “Nope. Nathan’s Pack, the Coulters, is one of the oldest Packs still in existence in North America. He’s their Alpha—leader, that is—and this is his house we’re in, and his steak we’ll be eating,” Des said wryly, though there was an off note there Ruby couldn’t decipher. “Anyway, when you hear the term ‘old money,’ that pretty much describes the Coulter Pack. Callum, the founding Coulter, was part of the Clan Coulter, in Scotland, seven hundred or so years ago. Rumor had it his mother was a sort of faerie maiden or some horsesh
it like that.” Des snorted again, rolling her eyes at Ruby as if, in a world that contained werewolves, faeries were just over the top.

  “No one ever really knew or even talked about it in Callum’s company, since he was a bastard and had been abandoned on his father, Bran Coulter’s, doorstep. We also know that Callum was driven out of the Coulter lands at the age of seventeen for being a demon.” Des clicked the stove on and added oil to the skillet. “Seventeen being the median age for the Garoul-born—um, kids born to, uh, werewolf parents—to go through the, ah, physical changes that lead to them, uh. You know. Becoming true shapeshifters.”

  Ruby frowned. “So you’re saying that werewolves gain their powers at seventeen?”

  “Sometimes earlier, sometimes later, but yeah.” Des carefully put a steak in the skillet. It immediately began to sizzle, filling the kitchen with a scent that made Ruby’s stomach growl again. “Like, I came into my, uh, powers, at fifteen. My brother, Jake—you met him, the tall, hippie-looking guy in the Acapulco shirt—didn’t come into his powers until he was nineteen. Neither did Nathan. It’s been kind of a Coulter tradition since old Bran’s granddaughter, Rebecca. At least until I came along.” Des shrugged.

  Ruby took a moment to put two and two together then asked hesitantly: “Is Nathan . . . your father?”

  “Shocking, ain’t it?” That wry grin popped up again. “That a guy like that could ever produce a mutt like me?”

  Ruby smiled. She’d only seen the man she presumed was Nathan Coulter for a few moments, but he’d seemed as different from Des as up was from down, physical resemblance aside. “I wouldn’t know, I mean all of this is pretty strange to me.”

  “Yeah. I keep forgetting how new you are. Here I am, telling you the Coulter family history when you probably have more relevant questions.” Des stole a glance at Ruby then focused on the steak again, prodding it with a meat fork. “You can ask me anything, you know? Anything at all, and I’ll do my best to answer it.”

  Ruby blinked. Then her mind conveniently went blank.“Um,” she said, blushing and frustrated. “I’m still trying to believe all of this is real. I don’t even know what to ask!”

  Des turned the steak over and sighed. “That’s understandable. When I first found out, I was such a wreck, I didn’t even question it, I just shut down, for a while.”

  Ruby’s eyebrows shot up. “You mean you haven’t always known you were a werewolf?”

  “Nope.” Des smiled at Ruby. “And that’s not exactly the PC term, werewolf. We call ourselves the Garoul, or Loup-Garoul.”

  “Politically correct werewolves?” Ruby snorted.

  “Hey, don’t look at me!” Des held up her hands and laughed. “I’m fine with the term werewolf, but then, like I said, I wasn’t exactly to the manor born. Nathan didn’t even know I existed till after my mom died nearly nine years ago. She was a Hume. Um, Human.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Ruby said softly, and Des’s smile slipped.

  “It was a long time ago,” she replied lightly, waving a dismissive hand. “I’m over it.”

  Secretly doubtful, Ruby was willing to let it go but felt she had to say something. “I know what it’s like to lose a parent. I mean, I was just sixteen when my dad—”

  “What was it? Heart attack?” Des interrupted to ask. “Stroke?”

  “I wish it had been that quick. For his sake.” Ruby sighed bitterly, remembering how brave her father had been, even as he wasted away. How he always found a smile for her, even when it’d become obvious he wasn’t going to go into remission before the cancer killed him. “It was stomach cancer, and he lingered for a long time. Too strong to succumb, but too weak to win the fight, by the end.”

  Des whistled, looking back at the steak. She prodded it with the meat fork. “Jesus, that’s fucking horrible.”

  “Yes, it was,” Ruby agreed with a limp smile. “I was a kid, and I thought it was the end of my world. But it wasn’t. Just the end of my childhood.”

  “Was there any other family for you to stay with?”

  Ruby shrugged and traced a random pattern in the marble countertop. “My mother had walked out on us when I was nine, no clue where she was. Her side of the family was all elderly spinsters and widowers, and didn’t want to be burdened with a grieving teenager. My dad’s side of the family all live in Denmark. And except for my cousin, Peter, I’ve never even met them in person.” Shaking her head, Ruby tapped the terminus of the pattern with one fingernail. “I sued for emancipation and won. Got my GED instead of finishing high school, worked for a while to save up money, then I applied to college. Got in, and eventually got my degree in Human Services, and wound up working for a few places before I got an offer from Lenape Landing Technical College. I accepted it and moved out here. The rest is history.”

  Des snuck a glance at her. “How’d you meet George?”

  Ruby’s eyebrows shot up again. “He was the president of L.L.T.C. He hired me personally.”

  Gaping, Des faced Ruby, who was once more struck by how comfortable and matter-of-fact Des was about her nudity. “You’re shitting me! George was the president of a college?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  Des shook her head. “All I knew about him was what the Council—um, a legislative group made up of all the Pack-Alphas—told me. He was the Wolf of Wolfs, the Alpha of the Alphas.”

  “The Untamed Heart.” Ruby nodded absently as the phrase popped into her head from nowhere. Then she shrugged when Des looked at her blankly. “Sorry, go on.”

  “Nothing else to say, really. He had ruled the Packs and the Council for longer than even Nathan had been alive. He was approaching his final years, and his eyesight was failing him. He needed a guardian. Someone who’d take on all comers and keep them busy for long enough for George to Change and recover from the strain of Changing so he could fight.” Des paused and plated the steak, then added more oil to the pan and dropped another steak in. “Changing shapes takes a lot out of you. Especially the older you are. And George was old.”

  Ruby did the math and didn’t quite like what she came up with. “So, you were basically his Human, uh, his Garoul shield?”

  “Hole in one!” Des brought the plate with the steak over to the counter and put it in front of Ruby. “Voila! Steak a lá Des.”

  Hungry though she was, Ruby wouldn’t be side-tracked. “And you were all right with that?”

  “Well, I didn’t exactly have much of a choice, did I?” Des said harshly, her dark, dark eyes flashing challenge and defiance. “It was either that, or—”

  When Des closed her mouth on the rest of what she was going to say, Ruby leaned forward. “That, or what?”

  “Nothing. Never mind,” Des mumbled, that fire in her eyes guttering. She pushed the plate closer to Ruby. “Eat up, Ruby Knudsen. Trust me, you’re gonna need your strength.”

  Knowing when the battle was at a stalemate, at least for the moment, Ruby nodded and took the fork Des offered. “That sounds ominous,” she quipped, hoping it’d make Des smile. Her hope was entirely in vain. What she got was a warm, calloused hand covering her own and squeezing. Des’s hand was scarred and square. A fighter’s hands.

  “It’ll be tough for awhile. But you’ll get through this,” Des said reassuringly, which had the exact opposite effect on Ruby. When someone like the sort of person Des seemed to be was offering such gentle comfort, things must’ve been dire, indeed. “Don’t worry too much.”

  Easy for you to say, Ruby thought unhappily, cutting a piece of steak and popping it in her mouth. It was sizzling hot and just the way she liked it. She chewed then sucked in mouthfuls of air to cool her scalded tongue. “Ow, shit, that’s hot!”

  At this Des did smile. It was a rakish smile with more than a hint of something wild and untamed in it.

  Ruby returned it with a hesitant one of her own.

  The rest of lunch passed in almost comfortable silence broken only by the sizzle and pop of the steaks in the skillet.
r />   *

  In the end, it took a bit of coaxing to get Ruby to leave the kitchen. She’d come to view it as some sort of haven from the world that now awaited her. But Des wasn’t having any of it. She finally strode around the counter and took Ruby’s hand and tugged her.

  Ruby resisted, frowning, but Des quirked an eyebrow, shrugged, and tugged once more, hard. Ruby toppled off her stool with a yelp into Des’s arms.

  “Hiding in here won’t make what you are go away,” Des said, looking Ruby in the eye till she turned away, flushing. “You’re going to have to get used to the fact that you will be meeting some damned strange people over the next few months. There’s no getting around that. My father, stepmother, and brother are the least of your problems, and they’re the most normal Loups you’re likely to meet.”

  Ruby bit her lip. “I don’t understand why I have to meet anyone,” she mumbled truculently. “Can’t I just go back to my job and my apartment and try to be as ordinary as possible?”

  Des hung her head for a moment, frustrated and trying to keep a lid on it. “You could. At least until the next Full-Moon Waxing. What’re you gonna do when the Change is upon you, huh? Pretend it’s not happening?”

  “The thought had crossed my mind,” Ruby said flippantly, but she tilted her face up in a mulish sort of way that rankled Des just as bad as Nathan ever had.

  Des glared, tipping and turning Ruby’s chin toward her. “This isn’t a joke, sweetheart.”

  Ruby laughed, but she had tears in her eyes. “Yeah? Well, you coulda fooled me. In my opinion, this is the biggest joke the universe ever played!”

  Praying to whatever gods watched over temperamental Loups, Des sighed. “Look. When the time comes for your first Change, you’ll likely be gone. You’ll be the wolf. You will hunt. You will kill. And you will feast. Like I said, there’s no getting around it.” She tried to pin Ruby with her gaze, to convey the utter seriousness of what she faced. “You probably won’t be able to control when you Change for months—maybe years. Whenever the Full Moon is out, you’ll just be gone. That’s just the way it is for most new Loups. Wouldn’t you rather be somewhere safe when that happens?”