Ulrik Read online

  Ulrik

  The Werewolf Saga

  Book 3

  Steven E. Wedel

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental or used fictitiously.

  No part of this work may be reproduced in whole or part without the express written permission of the author.

  Copyright © 2013 Steven E. Wedel

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-10: 0615803180

  ISBN-13: 978-0615803180

  Cover art and design © 2013 Alex Wedel

  DEDICATION

  To my mom, who always made sure I had books to read, no matter how hard it was to order them in a town without a bookstore.

  also by steven e. wedel

  Darkscapes

  Little Graveyard on the Prairie

  Seven Days in Benevolence

  After Obsession (with Carrie Jones)

  Unholy Womb and Other Halloween Tales

  Amara’s Prayer

  THE WEREWOLF SAGA

  Call to the Hunt

  Murdered by Human Wolves

  Shara

  Nadia’s Children

  AS EDITOR

  Tails of the Pack

  Ulrik

  February 1997

  “Der Pack sammelt. Der Pack sammelt.” Josef Ulrik opened his eyes slowly and added in English, “There can be no culls among us.”

  His telephone was ringing. He stared at the beige machine for a moment. The phone sat on a heavy pine desk on the other side of the small living room of the tiny house where Ulrik lived alone. The house where he’d lived since … He pushed himself off the sofa where he’d fallen asleep and snatched the phone’s receiver from the cradle. “Yes?”

  “Good afternoon, teacher,” a woman’s voice answered.

  “Kiona.” Ulrik raised a heavy hand to his face and rubbed his eyes. “What are you doing? You are in Montana still?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m still watching your friend. She’s very careless, you know. I could claim our prize easily.”

  “No,” Ulrik said, his voice giving away enough emotion that his protégé couldn’t miss that he was near panic. “It is too soon. He is too young.”

  “Would you say that if not for the accident?” Kiona Brokentooth, a Sioux Indian, let her voice accuse her mentor of hypocrisy.

  “Dora’s death was not an accident,” Ulrik said.

  “I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “No,” Ulrik agreed. “You did not.” He let his eyes travel down the phone cord to a small, framed picture that stood on his desk. It was a photograph of a young girl with blonde hair and a bright smile. He knew what the woman was hinting at. “You are still angry with me for making you return the Mexican child you stole from his family.”

  “I’m angry with you for not letting me grab the one we need now, while it’s easy,” Kiona answered. “I’m not the only one watching, you know.”

  “Who else?”

  “It depends. Sometimes it’s only me. Sometimes there are others who share our plans and sometimes there are those who are against us. She doesn’t even realize it. I have walked five paces behind her and she never knew I was there.”

  “Is anyone else there now? Tell me,” Ulrik demanded.

  “He’s here,” Kiona answered. “I actually had coffee with him yesterday.”

  “Fenris?” Ulrik asked. “You spoke to him?”

  “I’m not afraid of him. It isn’t me he wants. And, we still have him outnumbered.”

  “I would not be so sure of that,” Ulrik said. “Since the Mother has been revealed, Fenris has been even more cavalier about bestowing the Gift upon society’s dregs. He is gaining in numbers, but they are weak-minded curs as likely to turn on one another as they are to be a real danger to us.”

  “If they attack in force, we won’t be able to hold them off,” Kiona said. “We won’t even be able to defend the Alpha.”

  “Fenris is not ready to attack,” Ulrik said. “He will – ”

  “We should take the boy now,” Kiona interrupted. “Before Fenris makes his move to kill him.”

  “He will not do that. He knows I would hunt him down and kill him.”

  “You think so? He told me he is responsible for your girl-child.”

  Ulrik could not speak for a long moment. His eyes returned to the framed picture of the little girl. “Dora,” he said. For just a moment his thoughts flashed back several decades and he saw a huge silver-haired wolf charging at him again. Kiona interrupted the thought.

  “He said he knew it would crush you, that you had become too attached to her. He says you are getting sentimental in your old age. He says you lack the will to stop him.”

  “He was always a fool,” Ulrik said.

  “McGrath is back, too.”

  “McGrath? Luther? I killed him.”

  “His cousin. Thomas.”

  “Ah. Thomas.”

  “What does he want? Which side is he on in this?”

  “Thomas McGrath is a wild card,” Ulrik said. “You know his history?”

  “No. Only that his clan was raping women to find the Mother a long time ago.”

  “No. That is not how it was,” Ulrik said. He raised his thick hand and rubbed the bridge of his nose, then smoothed his single heavy gray eyebrow. “It troubles me that he is near Shara. It troubles me greatly.”

  “We should act now,” Kiona said.

  “No. The boy is too young. I cannot care for him. He must remain with Shara for now.”

  “It won’t be just you,” Kiona nearly yelled. “You know the Pack will gather around you if you have the boy. You will have more help than you could ever want. I will be there. I will finally be what I was meant to be.”

  “You are not the Mother,” Ulrik said. “It would be better if Shara would come. She is the Mother.”

  “She rejected us.”

  “Yes,” Ulrik said, not bothering to mask the regret in his voice. “Watch her. Watch her son. Do not act yet. If Fenris or his followers move, kill them all.”

  Ulrik replaced the telephone receiver, ignoring Kiona’s protests. He pulled a chair from the desk and slumped into it, his eyes moving from the picture of the blonde girl to another framed photograph of a young family.

  His favorite protégé stared back at him from the picture, her dark eyes pulling at him, her black hair ruffled slightly in an autumn breeze. The photograph was a couple of years old now; he had others, more recent photos, but Ulrik liked this one best. Shara held her three-year-old son close to her with one arm over a shoulder, her hand pressed against his chest. The boy also was facing the unseen camera. The child had his mother’s eyes and chin, but his father’s fair hair. The father also was in the picture, in profile, pointing toward some off-camera object in the public park where they’d been caught on film. Ulrik’s eyes returned to the child Shara had named for him.

  “Your destiny is with me,” he whispered.

  Shara

  Linda Stewart pushed her shopping cart slowly up an aisle of pasta and sauces, studying the various cans and jars of red sauce, trying to choose one that would be spicy but not too overwhelming for her five-year-old son. There were a few other people in the aisle. One young couple debated the merits of angel hair spaghetti over the thicker strands. Shara disliked coming to the Bozeman, Montana, supermarket, but it was the closest major store to the ranch she shared with her husband and son.

  When she came to town she had to be Linda Stewart. At home, though, she was able to be herself. Shara Woodman. Even I forget it sometimes. Sometimes I even forget why I have the false identity.

  As she reached for a jar of Ragu, she realized her son was no longer hanging on the front of the cart as he had been. She’d assumed he’d gotten off
the cart to look at the bags of dried beans on the other side of the aisle, but when she turned to look for him, he wasn’t there.

  “Joey?” she asked softly. Then louder, “Joey?”

  She put the jar of spaghetti sauce in her cart, not looking at it, distracted by the disappearance of her son. She left the cart and poked her head into the cross aisle, thinking maybe the boy had gone back to stand before the towering display of Nabisco cookies on the end cap, but he wasn’t there, either. The question left her voice. “Joey!” she called, her cart forgotten as she hurried up the cross aisle, looking down each lane of grocery items for her missing child.

  Other shoppers moved out of her way, but many more clogged the lanes, blocking her view. Shara called her son’s name many times when she couldn’t see down an aisle. Frantic, she turned back and started for the front of the supermarket to ask for help.

  Can they lock the doors? If they page him, will he come to the front of the store? What if someone already grabbed him and got out of the store?

  Shara broke into a run.

  “Shara?”

  “Mom!”

  She froze. The second voice was her son’s, but she didn’t recognize the first. Shara turned around and found a man standing beside her abandoned shopping cart in the aisle where she’d left it. He held Joey against his chest. Shara approached them slowly, pushing her small gold-rimmed glasses up on her nose as she walked.

  The man was tall, with long straight hair even blacker than Shara’s own. His face was thin, narrowing toward his chin. He had a sharply defined goatee and heavy eyebrows that met at the bridge of his nose. The man wore a black leather jacket, black T-shirt, faded blue jeans and black boots. He didn’t move, but his black eyes studied Shara curiously as she approached.

  “Put my son down,” she said.

  “I’m not sure the lad wants down,” the man answered. His voice had an Irish lilt to it. “He had quite a fright when he couldn’t find you. Fortunately, I saw him go down the cookie aisle there. Then I saw you running about searching for him. He’s a fine lad. A fine lad.”

  “Who are you?” Shara asked. Joey had one arm around the man’s neck and didn’t seem at all worried that he was at the mercy of a complete stranger.

  “McGrath,” the man answered. “Thomas McGrath.”

  “I don’t know you,” Shara said.

  “No. And you wouldn’t,” the man said. He smiled, showing his straight white teeth, the front ones a little shorter than the canines, which seemed sharper than normal. “But your friend Josef would know me, I think.”

  “Josef?”

  “Aye, lass. Josef Ulrik.”

  “You know Ulrik?”

  “We all know Ulrik.”

  “All?”

  “Every member of the Pack.”

  “Oh God.”

  An elderly man passing Shara paused, looked at her, looked at Thomas McGrath and Joey, then smiled and nodded before moving on to pick up a small bag of pinto beans. Shara turned her attention back to the werewolf holding her son. “Give him to me,” she said. “Joey, come here.” She held out her arms for the boy.

  Joey looked from Shara to Thomas. “I like him,” Joey said, not making any motion toward Shara.

  “I’ve told you about going to strangers,” Shara said, stepping closer. Joey ducked his head and pressed his face against Thomas’s black leather shoulder. “Come here,” Shara ordered.

  Thomas patted the boy on his back, then carefully pushed Joey forward and into Shara’s waiting hands. Shara hugged him tight, her eyes still fixed on the man who was looking at Joey with a sad expression on his face. “Who are you?” she asked again.

  “Aye. I know of your trouble,” Thomas answered. “May I help you finish your shopping, then buy lunch for you and the lad so we can talk?”

  “I don’t know,” Shara said. “My husband is expecting me …”

  “Chris is in Chicago,” Thomas said, smiling. “He is the featured artist at a comic book convention.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I must confess I have been watching you for some time, Shara,” Thomas said. “But don’t hold that against me. I only wanted to see you for myself.”

  “And now you’ve seen the Mother of the Pack,” she said. “So? If you know Ulrik, you know I … I gave that up.”

  “Aye. Come, let’s finish your shopping, then go and talk where we won’t attract attention.” Thomas took a position behind the cart and made to push it. “What’s next? I see you have no meat in here.”

  “Fine,” Shara said. “But you better believe I’m always prepared to deal with your kind.”

  “My kind? You mean our kind, lass,” Thomas said as he began to push the cart. “And I know all about the little .38 special with silver bullets you keep in your purse. But, I mean you no harm, and I think you will be glad to have met me soon enough. You are not as prepared as you believe.”

  Shara held Joey close to her and led Thomas and her shopping cart to the last of the items she had to buy. When they reached the checkout, her arm was screaming from carrying her forty-two-pound boy for so long, but she refused to put him down. She scolded him when he began writhing in her grasp, trying to pull candy from the racks at the checkout. Thomas chuckled at her and added a roll of LifeSavers to her purchases.

  The supermarket parking lot was mostly full of cars parked diagonally in slots where snow had been cleared. Mountains of snow made sporadic towers at various points in front of the store. Shara led Thomas to her Jeep Cherokee and strapped Joey into his booster seat as the man put her groceries in the back of the sport utility vehicle. He closed the hatch and pushed the cart into a stall where a store clerk would pick it up later. He crossed his arms over his chest and blew steam at Shara as she closed Joey’s door.

  “Lunch?” Thomas said.

  “Where?”

  “The steakhouse back up the road,” Thomas said, nodding in the general direction. “I’ll follow you.”

  Shara got into her red SUV and drove toward an exit. As she waited to get onto the street, a blue Dodge pickup from the early 1980s pulled up behind her. Thomas waved at Shara’s reflection in her rearview mirror. She eased onto the street and started for the restaurant.

  “Who is that man?” Joey asked.

  “Someone you shouldn’t have been with,” Shara said.

  “Is he your friend?”

  “No. I’ve never met him.”

  “We going to eat with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re going to eat with a stranger?”

  “He knows a friend of mine,” Shara said, turning into the parking lot of the steakhouse. She found an empty space and parked her Cherokee. The Dodge pickup eased in beside her. Shara got out and opened Joey’s door to unstrap him from his seat. Thomas came to stand near them. When Shara straightened with her son in her arms, the man smiled and turned to lead them into the restaurant. They were seated and Thomas ordered a huge porterhouse steak, cooked rare. Shara ordered a chicken strip basket for Joey and a salad for herself.

  “A salad?” Thomas asked when the waitress had left.

  “I don’t eat meat,” she said.

  “Ah, now, you see, Ulrik was wrong about that. My sources tell me he said you’d eat meat again because the serum is working. He said you quit eating meat because you felt guilty about what you did as a wolf.”

  “My mom’s not a wolf. She’s a mom,” Joey said, looking up from the paper placemat he’d been coloring on. Thomas laughed at him.

  “So you know about the serum,” Shara said.

  “Aye. We all know about that. The entire Pack saw you in our minds when you took that. A sad day it was for many of us.”

  “Why?” Shara asked.

  “Some of us have been waiting generations for the Mother. Many didn’t even know she’d been found until we saw that vision of you removing your skin.”

  “It was a prom dress made of wolf hair,” Shara corrected. “It was symbolic. I th
ought Ulrik was the only one who had that vision because … well, because he made me.”

  “No, lass. It was seen by all,” Thomas said.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter. It’s over. The serum is working. I’m not …” she looked around, then lowered her voice. “I’m not a werewolf any more.”

  Joey’s head snapped up and his eyes widened as he looked at his mother. Shara saw his mind working behind the brown eyes.

  “Not now, Joey,” she said. “You just color me a pretty picture, okay?”

  “But Mom, you said—”

  “Never mind what I said. Please color. We’ll talk about this when you’re older.” Reluctantly, Joey resumed filling in the outline of a cow with a blue crayon. She turned her attention back to Thomas. “Now, who are you and what do you want?”

  “Didn’t we cover that already?”

  “Your name is Thomas McGrath and you wanted to see me,” Shara said. “Why? Where do you come from?”

  “I come from a lot of places. One of them being your home state. Oklahoma. Though I haven’t lived there in many a year. Early 1918 it was when I left,” he said. “You’ve never heard my name before?”

  “Why should I?”

  Thomas’s eyes flicked to Joey and back to Shara. “Our friend Ulrik. He has been, shall we say, an acquaintance of my family for decades. He recently dispatched my cousin, so to speak.”

  “Dispa…” Shara sat up straighter and moved a bit closer to Joey. “What do you want?” she asked again.

  “Easy,” Thomas said, smiling again. “You and your son are in no danger. From me. My cousin, Luther, earned what he received. He and I had not spoken since the unfortunate events in Oklahoma.”

  “What happened?” she asked. “Back then.”

  “You are not the first Mother,” Thomas said. “Aye. Katherine Cross was the first. A young lass, one I’d had my eye on for a long time. I enticed her to try to save her friend from the romantic overtures of my cousin. I was … how should I say it? I was a monster. We drugged Katherine and I had my way with her. She became pregnant, as many girls did who came to dance round our fire. But Katherine was different. Aye, I had real feelings for her. And she nearly carried the child to term, where most women died early, taking the babies to the grave with them.”