Ulrik Read online

  Thomas paused. He’d taken a saltshaker and now rolled it between his hands, his eyes fixed on the silver cap as he thought back. He looked older now, Shara thought. Now that he wasn’t smiling, she could see that the lines that were pronounced when he smiled were still there when his face was relaxed.

  “A doctor murdered Katherine and her baby. Our baby. The school teacher who helped him told me so when I cornered him one night,” Thomas said. He raised his eyes to Shara’s. “On her gravestone they wrote that Katherine was ‘Murdered by human wolves.’ They meant me, but it wasn’t me. It was the doctor.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Shara asked quietly. “Why are you here?”

  “That was the end of my carefree days, lass,” Thomas answered. “I carry the guilt of Katherine’s death right here, always.” He touched his chest over his heart.

  “What does that have to do with me?” Shara asked.

  “You are the Mother now,” Thomas answered. “You carried your son to term and gave birth to this fine, strapping lad.” He turned his attention to Joey, who was coloring a cloud with a red crayon, his tongue pressed between his lips as he concentrated to stay in the lines. “I had to see you and your child.”

  “But we gave that up, the Gift, as Ulrik called it,” Shara said.

  “You gave that up,” Thomas corrected. He started to say more, but at that moment the waitress returned with a tray of food. She put the plates before them, bubbling happy conversation about nothing, then left. Thomas picked up his knife and fork, but looked back at Shara. “He did not give it up. And there are those not ready to let either of you go on as you have.” He cut off a chunk of bloody steak and put it in his mouth.

  “What do you mean?” Shara asked.

  “I mean, Shara, that I am not the only one of our kind watching you,” he said. “And I have put myself in danger by finally approaching you.”

  “You want to breed with me,” Shara said. “That’s it, huh? That’s what the battle was about before. Some wanted to breed me, others wanted to … to dispatch me to maintain the status quo.”

  “And that hasn’t changed. But I’m not in either of those camps. I only care about you,” Thomas said. “And him. If I can help you, it will be almost like I’m helping Katherine. I was young then and did not know what to do to help her.”

  “Who is watching me?” Shara asked.

  “Many, off and on. One in particular, though, is a Sioux woman named Kiona Brokentooth. Another of Ulrik’s progeny, she is. He thought she would be the Mother once. She is a strange one. Legend says she ran with wolves as a girl, before receiving the Gift. She has a habit of stealing children and trying to give them the Gift. They die. Or Ulrik finds her and takes the children away.

  “But now, she works with his blessing,” Thomas said.

  “Ulrik’s?”

  “Aye. Not long after you began your treatment, Ulrik returned to Mexico. He took a girl child with him, with the purpose of making her one of us to be a companion to …” His voice trailed off and his eyes slid from Shara’s face to Joey, who was dipping chicken strips in barbecue sauce.

  “That isn’t true,” Shara said. “He wouldn’t.”

  “He did. The girl, Dora, died in Mexico. The authorities ruled it an accident. They say a piece of sheet metal slid off a truck and decapitated her. Some say the metal was pushed off the back of the truck after someone in the passenger seat lopped off her head with a sword as the truck passed. It ended the same, no matter the how of it. The girl is dead. Ulrik has been idle since. He says he is waiting for the right time. Some say he has gone soft and will never act.

  “I know different. He has never given up his quest to unite the Pack around your son. You have been left alone because he has given the order you are not to be bothered. You are protected from harassment by the other side by those who answer to Ulrik. Ulrik’s friends have killed many who have come to take your life. And his.” Again his eyes flicked to Joey. “I have helped as needed, but mostly I leave them to their fights.

  “But the day will come when he will make his move. Or when Kiona Brokentooth will tire of waiting for him. Or when one of the others comes. One like Tony Weismann. You must be ready.”

  “Ulrik wouldn’t hurt us.”

  “Hurt you? No. But … He is going to kindergarten now, isn’t he? In a public school?” Thomas looked at Joey again as he chewed another bite of steak.

  “Yes.”

  “Every moment you’re away from him is a chance for someone to move against you. Be aware of that,” Thomas said. “Be wary.”

  “What about you?” Shara asked.

  “I will not take him. I’ll protect him if I can. But neither side wants me here, so I come and go. I hear news, though. I have friends on both sides. I will contact you if I hear that a strike is coming.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What of your husband?” Thomas asked. “He is away from home a lot.”

  “Yes.” Shara nodded. “He’s never fully accepted living incognito. He has his art career. He … he hates working under a fake name.”

  “He holds it against you?”

  “Sometimes. Yeah, I think so.”

  “Aye. I’m sure it must difficult to live with one who has the Gift if you do not have it yourself.”

  “But I don’t have it,” Shara insisted. “I gave it up.”

  “You’ll be handicapped, you know,” Thomas said, resting his knife and fork on his plate as he focused all his attention on her. “Because of the serum.”

  “It’s not a handicap,” Shara answered. “It gives me control.”

  “I’ll not argue with you,” he said, returning to his meat.

  “What about … What about Chris? Is he safe?”

  “He means nothing to the Pack. Unless he gets in the way.” He stopped eating again and looked at Shara. “There are some, I should add, who think your son is not the Alpha because he was not fathered by one of us. They are few, but dangerous.”

  “You mean –”

  “Aye.”

  “What should I do? I can’t take him out of school. I won’t. I was sheltered enough as a child. I don’t want him to grow up with no contact in the real world.”

  “I cannot tell you what to do, lass,” Thomas said.

  “I won’t cut him off from real life,” Shara insisted. “I’ll just have to watch him close.”

  Thomas nodded, shoved the last bite of steak in his mouth and sipped water from his glass. “I’ll be leaving the area now. Kiona and her friends have been harassing me. I don’t care to fight them, so I will leave for a while. But I’ll come back. The others, they come and go, too. Only Kiona stays all the time, marshalling the troops as Ulrik sends in replacements.”

  “I can’t believe all this has been going on and I didn’t even know it,” Shara said.

  “The serum. Stop taking it and you’ll sense when we’re nearby.”

  “No.”

  “Suit yourself.” Thomas pulled his wallet from his back pocket and took out two twenties. He laid them on the table. “I’ll leave you to pay the tab when you’re done, lass. It has been a pleasure meeting you. And you, little man,” he said, reaching over to tousle Joey’s hair. The boy looked up and grinned at him.

  “Thank you,” Shara said. “I do appreciate that you told me … everything.”

  “Be careful,” Thomas said. “The Pack is gathering.”

  Shara watched him walk away from the table and disappear toward the front of the restaurant. “There can be no culls among us,” she said.

  Ulrik

  “McGrath made contact today.”

  Ulrik pressed the telephone handset closer to his ear and fumbled on an end table for the television remote to turn down the volume of the documentary he’d been watching. “What?” he asked. “McGrath did what?”

  “He made contact in a grocery store,” Kiona said. “They came out together and went to a steakhouse where they had lunch. We have to make our move now.”


  “Where is he now?”

  “He left. Drove out of town right after lunch, heading east. James followed him to the Wyoming border, then let him go.”

  “And Shara?”

  “Nothing. She came out of the steakhouse and looked around like she was nervous, looking for something. She knows now. Damn him!”

  “Shara is not leaving? She is not moving?”

  “No. It doesn’t look like it, anyway. Her husband’s out of town.”

  “Maybe she has become complacent,” Ulrik mused. “Perhaps Thomas’s warning will be forgotten if we do nothing.”

  “Do nothing?” Kiona nearly screamed. “And you call her complacent?”

  “We will do nothing unless she tries to leave,” Ulrik said. “We cannot afford the time to lose her and search for her again.”

  “He’ll be grown before you give the order, and then it’ll be too late. He’ll have been conditioned against us.”

  “No. We will not wait so long,” Ulrik said. He hung up the phone and returned to his documentary on World War Two. There were inaccuracies in the account of Adolf Hitler’s private lair. Ulrik recognized them; he’d spent months prowling the massive house, howling, killing the henchmen the Nazi leader sent after him.

  So many wars. How many have I killed? How many years? How old am I?

  There was no way of knowing the answer to most of his questions. As to the last one, he was pretty sure he was born in 1632, conceived in Europe, born in colonial Pennsylvania and stolen from his cradle by another European living as a wolf-god among a cannibalistic Indian tribe. He knew these things only because Gar, his kidnapper, had told him.

  I had a different name then. I have had many names.

  * * *

  The boys wrestled as boys of any culture at any period of history would, the three of them rolling together, arms and legs gripping, flailing, voices grunting, laughing or expressing surprise at a particular move. The adults in the vicinity – mostly women – paid the three boys little notice, tending to their tasks of cooking or cleaning animal skins that would be made into clothing. The boys were all young, the oldest age five, the youngest three; the middle one, age four, had skin and hair that seemed very pale compared to his companions.

  The white boy, known to his friends as Magwa, suddenly was flung away from the others. He rolled in the dirt, but sprang to his feet and turned to rush back into the match. But he did so on four legs rather than two, forgetting the control his father had taught him, letting his shape change as he charged his friends.

  Women screamed. Magwa stopped short, looking around him as his friends’ mothers snatched them up and fled toward their huts, the other women also vanishing into their homes. Magwa sat, his head swiveling to look at each wooden house. Then he realized he had let himself become a wolf. He closed his eyes and recalled his other shape, and sat alone as a boy. He stood up and turned to go home. His father stood behind him, watching, a sad look on his face.

  “Magwa. Come,” he said, turning and walking away. The boy hurried to follow, passing houses until they came to the very edge of the village, a house in the shadow of the forest. Magwa entered as his father held aside the skin covering the door, then the man followed and let the covering fall into place. “Sit,” the man commanded.

  Magwa sat on the dirt floor, cross-legged, and the man, whom he called Gar, sat across from him. They looked at each other without speaking for a moment, then Magwa dropped his gaze.

  “I am sorry, Father,” he said in German.

  “Your name means skin-changer to these people,” Gar said. “Your Gift is not shared by your playmates. I have told you this.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Father,” Gar whispered. “You are young, but perhaps it is time to tell you of your short past.” He studied the boy’s face; Magwa’s dark eyes stared back at him, reflecting the afternoon light coming into the house from the smoke hole in the roof. His dark hair was tousled and still had bits of dried leaf in it from the wrestling match. Gar gently brushed away the rust-colored flakes. “I am not your father,” he said.

  Magwa didn’t answer, but his thick eyebrows bunched together over his nose.

  “I stole you from your mother and father when you were just a baby,” Gar said. “I gave you the Gift that allows you to become a wolf when you were just three months old. Still a baby. You understand?”

  The boy nodded.

  “You almost died.” Gar paused and stroked his beard, thinking back. “You were too young.”

  “Who is my mother? And father?”

  “Would you rather be with them?”

  The boy looked away, his face scrunching as he thought about it. “I do not know,” he said. “Would they love me?”

  “I can only tell you the truth, my son,” Gar said. “They would hate you for what I have given you.”

  “The Gift?”

  “The Gift,” Gar said, nodding.

  “They cannot become wolves?”

  “No, Magwa. That is something only you and I and a few others in the world can do.”

  “I like turning into a wolf.”

  “Yes. It is good. But dangerous. You must never, ever bite anyone as you play. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “You will still call me Father?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  Gar smiled at him. “I stole you away because I needed companionship. I needed someone like me to love. Your mother and father, they were unkind to my wife. That’s why I chose you. It was spiteful of me, but I am glad you are with me.”

  The boy made no response, only kept his dark eyes fixed on the man.

  “Promise me you will not bite any of your playmates. That you will not bite any of our friends.”

  “What would happen to them?”

  “They would … they would become like us and they would not like that. They are afraid of us, Magwa. We are gods to them because they fear us.”

  “I thought they brought us food because they love us,” Magwa said.

  “Love and fear are close in their hearts. At least, when it comes to us. They love us because we – I should say me for now – I can help them hunt, track our enemies and warn them of danger. They fear us because they know we could turn on them and kill them. Or make them wolves like us.”

  “I will not bite anyone,” Magwa said. “I do no want my friends to be afraid of me.”

  “That is good,” Gar said. “Now, shall we have more lessons in controlling your shape?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  * * *

  “And now I would teach you the same,” Ulrik said, his eyes traveling across the room to find the picture of Shara’s son on the heavy desk. “I would steal you from your mother and father and teach you as I was taught. But would you love me? Could I protect you?”

  His gaze moved from Joey to the photograph of Dora. He closed his eyes and turned away, back to the television. The World War II documentary was over. A show about Cajun cooking had replaced it. Ulrik hit a button on the remote and the screen went dark.

  Shara

  September 2000

  Shara held her son on her lap and looked into his eyes. It was past time to tell him. She should have told him before he ever started school. Eight years old, and numerous trips to the principal’s office, was too late. And now this … this thing that happened today. Her eyes jumped away from Joey as if facing him caused her pain. It was only the guilt that hurt.

  “Do you know why we don’t have a dog?” Shara asked.

  “You’re allergic to dogs. Just like Cindy Barns is allergic to cats,” Joey answered.

  “Yes. Well, that’s not completely true.” There. He knows I’ve lied to him. My credibility as a mother is surely ruined. “Do you remember how Miss Haig’s dog growled at you and kept backing away?”

  “Dogs don’t like me.” His face fell. It was an old hurt for him. “I want a dog, Mom.”

  “Dogs don’t like you.” Shara sig
hed. “Dogs don’t like you because they can sense something about you that people can’t. Joey, you know how dogs can hear things people can’t?”

  “Jeremy Loomis had a whistle he said only dogs can hear. He said all the dogs in Bozeman would come running if he blew it but nobody else would hear it. He blew it at recess, but no dogs came like he said. He’s a liar. It wasn’t a special whistle. I could hear it.”

  “I want to tell you about your shot,” Shara said. “You know the shot you take every month with Mommy?”

  “The allergy shot?”

  “Do you know what would happen if you didn’t take that shot?”

  “I’d get sick.”

  “It is a sickness, but not like the flu or even the chicken pox. If you didn’t take your shot … you would turn into a wolf.” Shara held him by the wrists and watched his small face as he thought about what she had told him.

  “A wolf?” His eyebrows – thick for such a delicate face – bunched over his nose and his eyes seemed to gain another layer of depth. “I’ve dreamed of being a wolf.”

  “You have?”

  “I get to be the leader. The other wolves follow me and we chase bad people.”

  “What – ? What do you do when you catch the – the bad people?”

  “We eat them. Just like in the story about Red Riding Hood.”

  “That’s not a good dream, Joey. You see, if you don’t take your medicine, your shot, you’ll really turn into the wolf in your dreams. You don’t want that to happen. Do you?”

  “Would you turn into a wolf if you didn’t take your shot?”

  “Yes,” Shara answered. “For a long time I didn’t know how to make the medicine in the shot, and I had to turn into a wolf every month. I hurt people and other animals when I was a wolf.”