Wolf Omega: Lykanos Chronicles 2

Days of rest went by quietly inside the little house. Maximo and I slept together in the upstairs bedroom. Jaques and Hélène never questioned the details of how we’d arrived, our missing luggage, or our departure date. They were so grateful to have us there that I couldn’t decide who might benefit more from our stay.

Maximo spent his days discussing life with Jacques: business and ventures; politics and the state of the nation; simple joys and lingering sorrows. With Hélène, I mostly listened, playing the role of confessor, which she’d needed. She was beyond happy to have me there, and the stories she told me were those any mother might share with her grown child.

“But you must tell me again how the boys are doing in their classes,” she eventually shifted. “And the girls—what is your husband’s plan for them?”

Hélène had learned the children’s names and personalities solely from a decade of written correspondence. I added minor details here or there to elaborate on her grandchildren’s progress, but nothing likely untrue. All of it visibly added to her joy, as did my assurances that we would come to Val d’Isère as a family in summer if we could. It made little sense, but it comforted her.

“I have not seen your father smile in months,” she said with undisguised relief.

We stared together at the men while they plowed fresh snow from the garden path.

“He never got to know Max before you both moved away,” she added. “To look at him now, I’d swear he has a son again.”

I hugged her tightly, offering the love she too desperately needed.

“Tell me you won’t leave for home too quickly.”

“We would like to stay awhile if it’s possible,” I answered. “The heavy snow made our journey long and difficult. Perhaps a couple of weeks? Leaving in April should make the return considerably easier.”

Hélène received the request with sheer ecstasy. Of course, we could stay. Having us there was a dream come true.

“Will you walk with me to church? I’ve not been in weeks. I haven’t wanted to leave your father alone for too long. Afterward, we can go to the store for groceries. We can cook his favorite coq au vin if there are onions in stock. He won’t know what to do with himself.”

She was too excited by the prospect, and as much as I wished to stay out of sight, I couldn’t think of a reason to decline fast enough.

By three o’clock, we had strolled arm in arm through the village, occasionally stopping for Hélène to say hello to someone and point out that I was home to visit. Most didn’t remember enough of Veronique’s face to question my identity. I extended my powers to adjust the memory of the one woman who did know me until she smiled with gleeful satisfaction to see me again after so many years.

Eglise Saint Bernard de Menthon, the Catholic church that stood at the center of the village, was a robust building, with the octagonal spire of its bell tower rising above all. The simple masoned structure, built with rough gray mountain stone, was designed to survive the elements of the French alps rather than attempt the beauty of the fine temples with which I was more familiar.

The building was empty but blessedly warm within. Hélène led me down to the first pew, where we kneeled together to pray in silence.

Just left of the front altar was a dark alcove where the Madonna’s statue stood atop a small table. At her feet were the traditional candles, lit by parishioners hoping to receive the Mother’s loving help.

I rose from our pew and quietly moved to her.

When I’d lit a candle in the Como cathedral on my last and tumultuous night in town, the ritual had allowed me to gather my thoughts. The warmth of the light had calmed me well enough to see the treachery hiding behind the paralyzing shock of Apollonia’s murder. I felt the Virgin had saved me that night, just as much as Maximo had. But I knew the notion was folly.

To myself, I said a brief prayer—first for our horrible plight from danger, and then for my beloved Sempronio. I swam in Maximo’s last memories of the master and how they had traumatized him into utter despair. My stomach clenched over the agony that still sought release, but I couldn’t afford such a display now with Hélène mere steps away.

I exhaled one last deep breath and started back to the pew when something caught my eye.

At the side of the stand, a small wooden box glinted near the fresh candles. It bore a brass cover with a thin horizontal slat meant for the deposit of coins. Inscribed beneath was the local word for ‘Donations.’ I knew there couldn’t be much money inside, but I also recognized the difference it might make during our stay. My vanity remarked that I could help Hélène with the groceries she meant to buy at our next stop.

I had thought of the many ways I might steal money: from individuals, or merchants, or even from the Pummeroys. But I couldn’t stomach the thought of taking from the people of such a modest village. To say nothing of the Pummeroys, who had already done so much to aid us.

But from the Madonna? From the Church itself—whose very existence was meant to serve the less-fortunate? I answered my questions without hesitation and promised the Virgin I’d see Her donations returned triple fold to Saint Bernard’s church.

I quietly reached to find the box lid unlocked--the simple top had no lock of any kind to engage. Within were far more coins than I had expected; at least a week’s wages for most laborers. I took as much as my hand could grab and placed them silently into my skirt pocket.

I remained at the vestibule a few moments longer to offer one last prayer before turning to leave.

A man sat two pews behind Hélène, having arrived unnoticed. He was dressed impeccably in a charcoal doublet with fine silver buttons and expensive leather boots. The stranger stared directly at me with questioning eyes from under sharp black brows.

My heart stopped.

He had seen me take the coins from the donation box—I was certain of it. Gathering myself, I returned to the pew and sat instead of kneeled beside Hélène.

It was a simple enough error to correct, I assured myself. I needed to concentrate and alter the man’s memory. I closed my eyes and extended my mind to his.

I dipped into the surface gently and saw the fresh memory, pulling it forward to begin the manipulation. Indeed, the stranger had seen me take the money. But something wrapped the images with so much more than simple outrage. It seemed he hardly cared at all for my theft. My actions had inexplicably satisfied the man, filling him with a gratified delight. I had confirmed some presumption of his. The petty theft had made him feel—.

Heretic, his mind uttered loudly before sealing shut.

I gasped and turned to look behind me. The man bore none of the mental characteristics of the lycan I knew, but he unquestionably understood how I had attempted to violate his mind.

His dark eyes glistened with unmistakable malevolence.

I felt my wolf awaken. The faculties of the metamorphosis tingled through my skin. But I held her back, refusing to cross that bridge while at Hélène’s side, at least until I must.

Before I could decide a course of action, the strange lycan rose from his pew and turned to exit down the center aisle and out the front church doors. He stomped with a confident stride, apparently unconcerned with the loud clacking his boots made on the tiled floor.

I didn’t know how to call Maximo. Sempronio might have accomplished it easily, but I had never learned that trick, nor understood if I possessed such ability. No, I needed to get back to the Pummeroy’s house as quickly as possible.

Unwilling to risk harm to Hélène, I rose gently from our pew again and walked to the church’s entrance doors, stepping as quietly and casually as I could. Outside, a light shower of snow had begun to fall, and I scanned through its swirling movement to locate the stranger.

He was nowhere to be seen. I tried to sense his mind’s presence but heard nothing.

Abandoning Hélène, I moved as quickly as I could through the streets. The roads’ natural slope had made traveling down to church easy, but returning up them now toward the Pummeroy house required far more effort. My claves burned, aching for my werewolf limbs, and I wished I wasn’t in broad daylight.

When I arrived at the house, I entered to find it empty. I called out to Maximo with exasperation, but both he and Jaques had left. My anxiety pulled at me in several directions, each toward an action I couldn’t do. Foremost, I wouldn’t go without Maximo, but I couldn’t remain in the house, lest I draw the lycan here.

I returned outside and shut the door behind me. Scanning around, I walked about a thousand steps west. It was unlikely Hélène would notice me at this distance if she returned.

I stood there and waited beside the forested slopes that rose into the soaring mountains above the village. The cold bit cruelly at my skin. With the afternoon sun already retreated behind those peaks, I recognized that I would not last long here.

I closed my eyes and tried to extend my mind. It was a method I deduced Sempronio must have used in Como—reaching telepathically as far as one could. But all I heard were the people down the hill in their homes. I relied on my intuition, having no way to know if this was the proper way to call with my mind. Maybe I couldn’t send my plea far enough from my position to matter. Perhaps Maximo couldn’t respond even if he heard me.

When I opened my eyes, I felt my skin prickle from something other than the cold. Startled, I turned toward the tree line at my back. Something undefinable in the heavy shadows under the pines watched me.

I felt my wolf arriving beneath my skin. She growled angrily in my mind, insisting that I couldn’t temper her a second time today. Concerns for my exposure to the town, and the eyes of mortals who might see my transformation, gave way to the moment I faced.

With numb hands, I pulled in vain at my clothes, but it was pointless. The change was too far gone to prevent their destruction. In seconds, I felt the fiery blood of my protector take charge to fill my limbs with its delicious heat, protecting me from both the cold and whatever unseen danger I faced.

And then I saw them.

At least seven werewolves moved in the growing shadows of the forest deep. But I couldn’t hear them, each mind firmly locked from me.

I crouched slightly, signaling to them that I meant to receive any who dared to charge. We remained at a standstill while I waited for the inevitable.

“Heretic,” one of them whispered under a sneer.

“Declare yourself!” I answered.

Nothing else came from them but deep-throated growls that carried just under the swelling wind.

Just past them, I saw the man from the church. He appeared in his lycan form, expressionless as he stared back at me. I sensed he was their Alpha, even before the others slowly disbursed to give him unnecessary room.

“Declare yourself!” I barked again.

“I am Gartier,” he answered, barely loud enough for his voice to carry.

His simple statement, answered with the tone of deceptively genteel manners, hung in the silence between us.

“Where is my companion?” I asked.

“First, what is your name?”

I shook my head involuntarily, determined not to let him draw me into a discussion. I knew I was in mortal danger from this being.

“You are a child of Sempronius of Mons Palatinus, are you not?”

I’d never heard the master’s Latin name uttered before, even by his own lips, and the implication startled me. This lycan even knew the place in Rome of Sempronio’s birth. He knew of him in a way that only the ancient might.

He raised his hand as if to beckon me forward.

“Your family awaits you in my house.”