MaryJanice Davidson, page 1
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A LONE WOLF
FROM "MYSTERIA" ANTHOLOGY
By
MaryJanice Davidson
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Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
The Witches of Mysteria and the Dead Who Love Them - GENA SHOWALTER
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
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A LONE WOLF
MaryJanice Davidson
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to "the girls": Susan, Gena, and P. C. for their support; they made this such a fun project, I was bummed when it was time to turn it in.
Thanks also to our editors at Berkley for their enthusiasm for Mysteria and its, ah, interesting inhabitants. Without their thumbs-up, this book wouldn't be here.
Thanks also to all those who wrote me asking about the goings on in Mysteria; the girls and I got kind of curious about that, too. So here you go.
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Author's Note
The events of this novella take place three months after the events in Bewitched, Bothered, and Bevampyred, available at www.triskelion.com, and a year after the events in Derik's Bane (Berkley Sensation).
Also, triplets aren't necessarily evil. And most horses don't behave like the night mare. But there are, of course, exceptions.
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Prologue
The house sat in the center of two gently rising hills, looking like a jewel on a beautiful woman's bosom. It was, in fact, the color of crushed rubies; the shutters were black. It was a two-bedroom in the Cape Cod style, two stories, one and a half bath, with an assumable mortgage at a fixed rate; the heater and central air were both up to code.
Inside, the walls were the bland color of good cream; the floors were oak. There was a dishwasher, but no garbage disposal. The house was built in 1870, and so was sorely lacking in closet space. Still, at sixteen hundred square feet, it was of a respectable size; the perfect starter home.
Of course, it was haunted. In 1914, one of the roofers (hired to fix the holes brought by the Big-Ass Hailstorm of the Spring of '14) fell off and, after dying, had the bad manners to linger. But she was helpful, really; a squeaky door would magically fix itself, the heater, though thirty years old, ran without a hiccup. If her views on the doings of the Mysteria City Council were noisily and frequently expressed, it was a small price to pay for never having to call a handyman.
The backyard went straight back, like an arrow, and the garden sat at the top of the yard like an arrowhead. It had grown over, of course, but could be brought back again; it was the right size for a salsa garden, or perhaps some cutting flowers.
The front yard ran straight up to the road and was small, almost an afterthought. There was no sidewalk; just a paved driveway that led to the small detached garage.
In the front yard was a sign: white, with stark black lettering. It looked like a For Sale sign, but the largest letters read FOR CRYING and the rest of the sign read:
… OUT LOUD, THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE DOING! THIS IS A WEIRD WEIRD WEIRD TOWN. THERE'S A REASON THIS HOUSE HAS BEEN ON THE MARKET GOING ON TEN YEARS. THINK CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU SO MUCH AS SET FOOT ON THE LAWN.
(It was a large sign.)
Then, in smaller letters, accompanied by a red smiley face: don't forget to take a brochure! The house sat like a jewel, and waited.
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Chapter One
His first memory was of the moon, a shining, broad black face with the whitest teeth and the darkest eyes beaming down at him. When he checked his medical records years later and did the math, he figured out it would have been his third trip to the hospital; his second broken arm.
Mama Zee, the most sought-after foster mother in the county, had taken him home after signing all the paperwork (her righteous name, according to the most-helpful chart, was Ms. Zahara J. Jones) and put him in the battered wooden crib in her tiny third bedroom. (Willie and Konnie were in the other bedroom, and Jenna slept on the foldout couch in the living room.)
He did not remember the foster father breaking his arm, or the other foster father breaking his other arm, and he did not remember doctors or the hours of pain, but to the end of his days he would remember her smiling face. That, and waiting. It seemed he was always waiting: for a ride, for a class to start, for a job, for a hug, for a friend.
He was just a dumb baby then, and didn't know what the moon really was, but for a long time that was how he thought of her: Mama Zee, the moon.
In the end, he always came back to her. He loved the moon, but could not stay: for one thing, the noise drove him fucking nuts. Mama Zee always had kids around. There were always toys underfoot; the cupboard was always stuffed with little applesauce containers. Even as a small boy, at four, at six, at nine, he would have to get out, wander about on his own for a while.
After a while, the cops never ever caught him; he was too quick, and too quiet. But he always came back, and after the first two times, when Mama Zee saw that no matter how many times she smacked him with the dish towel or yelled, no matter what she did or how she worried, he would leave, he was compelled to go. But he always came back. And so she didn't worry. Or, if she did, she never spoke to him about it.
She even gave him a book once (well, she gave him lots of books, many times, but this one he remembered especially) about a kid named Jack who could travel between dimensions; his family called him Traveling Jack. "That's like you," she told him, "you just can't stay in one spot, boyo. And that's fine."
Well, no, he thought. I can't stay here, is what it is. But he didn't say it out loud. He'd bite off his own fingers before he'd say something so mean to her.
In fact, the entire neighborhood treated Mama Zee as a bomb that might blow up in their faces, because they knew he was quick, and quiet. And strong.
Mama Zee had all the help she needed getting groceries delivered (and because she usually had between three and seven foster kids at any one time, the milk bill alone was staggering), all the extensions needed to pay local vendors, and nobody ever broke in.
Occasionally, on his travels, Someone Bad would take it in their head that he might have something they wanted. It always went badly for Someone Bad and the older he got, the easier it got.
At first he put up with it, because he knew the bloody nose, the black eye, the whatever, would be all better in a day or two, sometimes less, depending on the moon. It was the price you paid for choosing not to sleep under a roof; that, and cold feet.
And then, one day it was like he had a lightning flash, only inside his brain. And the flash was made up of words: Not today, pal. He was nine when he realized he could make a grown man cry. It was shockingly easy.
He wasn't a bully (Mama Zee would have smacked him half to death with that dish towel), but he'd crunched up quite a few of them.
He wasn't very good in school—something about sitting still in a classroom reminded him of Mama Zee's noisy, toy-strewn living room. But he was good at other things.
When he got big—and thanks to Mama Zee's cooking, he got really big—he found out people would pay to get and keep a bully out of their lives. Pay a lot, sometimes. And sometimes it wasn't a bully; it was an ex-husband or a mean boss or a bad cop (but really, under their outside skin, they were all bullies). And the older he got, the more they paid him. Almost like if he didn't do the job, they were afraid he'd do them, so they practically threw money at him.
Of course he wouldn't; he was still a little nervous about Mama Zee's dish towel, though he had twelve inches of height and sixty pounds of muscle on her, and she was old; she was fifty-four. But the people didn't know that, and so they gave him money.
He didn't know what to do with it; he tried giving it to Mama Zee, but she only took enough to pay off her little house in Revere. He knew better than to talk her into retiring; the moon did not get tired of changing the tides, and Mama Zee loved kids. And she wouldn't move to a nicer neighborhood. She wouldn't take a car, either; not that a person needed one in that area.
He paid for Jenna's college; she was grown now, and still sleeping on the couch. She took it with thanks, and moved out, and Mama Zee didn't say anything, but he heard her crying later. Only it was the good kind of crying, so he wasn't sure what to do about that. In the end he did nothing.
Finally, Mama Zee said to him, "You're grown, boyo. Don't you want a place of your own?"
He just shrugged; his skin was itchy and he kept looking at the door. The new kid, Bryan, had colic. It was noisier than usual in the small house on Winthrop Avenue.
"Stop that twitching and pay attention to me; you can go soon enough. Don't you ever think about getting a girl and settlin g down?"
"No," he told her, and it was the truth, naturally. He couldn't imagine lying to her. Like he couldn't imagine taking a woman for his own, and cursing her as he was cursed. He would never.
That made her look sad, for some reason, and she slammed a cup of applesauce in front of him. She felt better when he ate.
He hated applesauce.
He got a spoon and started eating.
"You should take some of that money and buy a house of your own," she finally said. She watched him eat every bite of the pulped fruit. "Your own house, where it can be as quiet as you want it. And then, maybe… the rest will come."
"Okay," he said.
"Because—I've been thinking about this a lot, boyo, and you can't be the only one. The only one in the whole entire world. Right? You can't."
He shrugged.
"Just because you never ran across another werewolf," she added sharply, as if he had contradicted her, "doesn't mean there aren't any others out there. If only your birth parents—"
She stopped talking, and he was glad. He had never known them, but he didn't like them. They had been killed in a car accident, and left him.
"You need to go," she added, nicer. "Go and find someone like you, maybe a whole bunch of people like you. Not that there's anyone exactly like you, boy." She looked at him closely. "No, you're one of a kind."
He grunted.
Mama Zee got up, opened the fridge, unwrapped a raw hamburger, put it on a clean plate, and handed it to him. "Thank you for eating the sauce. I don't think you—"
"Get enough fruit and vegetables in my diet," he finished for her. He used the same spoon to wolf down the raw meat.
"Don't be smart, boyo. You gonna do what I said?"
"Sure," he replied.
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Chapter Two
Cole Jones stared at the small red house, then looked back down at the map of Colorado folded in his hand, then back up at the house.
Mysteria.
Specifically, 232 Roselawn Lane, Mysteria, mail code 678. No city, county, or state.
He had literally followed his nose here; for that matter, he wasn't entirely sure where here was. Certainly, the small town hadn't been on any map. Small, charming, and quiet, he had found it mesmerizing and interesting. And the smells! The fields smelled like newly mown hay (a good trick in autumn), the main street smelled like fresh pie, shit, even the town dump hadn't been bad. Just interesting.
And it was so quiet. The little red house sat alone on the lane, and there wasn't a crying baby for miles—downtown Mysteria was almost five miles away. A true country house. He had assumed, being city born (well, city raised) that he wouldn't like the country, but the quiet seemed to him like the most marvelous thing.
There was, in fact, only one house for sale, and he was looking at it. He had read the puzzling yard sign three times, and almost smiled. It didn't frighten him; it made him want to sprint to the bank and throw all his money at the first teller he could sniff out.
And speaking of sniffing, he could smell the small car seconds before he heard it. And in another minute, there was the groan of poorly maintained brakes, a door slamming, and he turned to see a short, chubby brunette with a nipped-in waist, wonderful deep breasts, and sweetly plump thighs
(ummmm)
hurrying toward him.
"I'm sorry," she called to him in the flat accent of a Mid-westerner, probably upper North Dakota or Minnesota, "have you been waiting long?"
"Yes."
"Oh." She appeared to mull that one over for a moment, then said, blinking, "I'll be glad to take you inside for a tour."
Her eyes were the exact color of oak leaves, greenish brown, and large. Her brows were a shade darker than her hair, almost black. She was very pale, like a marshmallow. A juicy, gorgeous, mouth-watering marshmallow. He was almost knocked over by the—by the intensity of her. It was like she was more there than other people. He had never smelled anything like it.
"That's fine," he said, trying not to be overtly sniffing. Maybe she'd think he had a cold. Or was hooked on coke. That would be great!
"What's fine?"
Juicy and intense, but not the sharpest claw in the pad. "A tour. But you don't have to. I'll take it."
"You what?"
She was staring at him, but that was fine; he was used to it. It used to make him mad when he was younger, to have someone gape right into his eyes, challenging, gawking—it always made him feel like hitting, or biting. But he didn't mind anymore; he figured he'd outgrown his youthful temper. He was old, twenty-seven.
"I have a cashier's check," he added helpfully.
"Er, what? I mean, great. The down payment—"
"For the asking price." He pulled out the piece of paper and tried to hand it to her, but her arms were frozen at her sides and she was opening and closing her
(red-lipped, rosy, like berries, like ripe berries)
mouth like a bass.
She looked down at herself, and he looked, too. A green suit, a white blouse. No stockings. Black pumps. Then she looked around, as if wondering if what was happening was actually happening. Finally, she said, "Er, yes. Ah, look, Mr. Jones, I have to tell you, this—Mysteria, I mean—this isn't—I mean, it's a great town, the greatest town in the world, but—but it's—I mean, it's—" She took another look at him, audibly gulped, then smiled. A real smile, one that made her eyes crinkle at the corners and a dimple pop up in her left cheek. He couldn't help it; he smiled back.
"On second thought," she said, "I think you'll fit right in here."
"No," he said, "but I like the house anyway."
"I'm Charlene Houtenan."
"I know," he said, and shook her hand, and ignored the impulse to nibble on her knuckles and tell her she smelled like wet clover.
* * *
Chapter Three
"… And if you'll sign here… and here… and here…"
He signed patiently: Cole Jones. Cole Jones. CJ. CJ.
"… and we've got the cashier's check, and these are your copies—I must say, this is the fastest closing I've ever done, and I've been a Realtor since—for a long time."
He ate more pie, and tucked the wad of paperwork into the folder she offered him, then dropped it on the seat beside him. They were doing the closing at Pot's on the main drag in Mysteria. He was glad. The pie was amazing.
"And I guess that's it." Charlene was resting her small chin on her hands and staring at him as he wolfed down his third piece. "Congratulations, Mr. Jones."
"Cole," he told her again.
"Right. And I'm Char."
"Right."
"Do you know what her secret is?" she almost whispered.
"No."
"She puts seaweed in the crust."
"Umm."
"And she also sells them to go," Charlene added, "in case you wanted, you know, not to worry about fixing supper tonight."
Pot "My full name is too hard to pronounce" herself came up to their table. She was awesomely tall, the tallest woman he had ever seen, and too thin. He could see her skull beneath her face; see the bones stretching through on her limbs. Her hair was the greenish color blondes got when they spent the summer in the pool. Her eyes were the oddest green he had ever seen on a person, the color of the Boston harbor on a good day. Her eyebrows were so light and fine, they nearly disappeared into her face.
"Fourths?" she asked, drumming abnormally long fingers on their table. Her voice was low and slurring. Her nose was a blade.
"No. But I'd like two more chicken pies to go."
She placed two blue pie boxes, tied neatly with white string, on their table, then put the check on top of the box.
"Thanks, Pot. I've got it," Charlene said quickly, snatching the check before Cole could put down his fork. Pot nodded and made a graceful exit.
