Written in Red

one of the Walking Names takes the razor and slices across old visions, old prophecies, and makes something terrible and new. All those images jumbled together with no reference point, no anchor. And because she is gagged, the girl can’t speak. The words need to be heard, Mr. Wolfgard. When a prophecy isn’t spoken, isn’t shared, there is no euphoria. There is only pain.”

He took a step closer to her, his eyes still on her arm. He raised a hand, but the fingers still ended in Wolf claws that hovered over her fragile skin.

“Why did they punish you?”

More than once. He could count the number of times she had tried to defy the Controller and Walking Names. One section of her arm was a crosshatch of scars. What she had seen and endured could have driven her insane. Instead, the images had come together in a pattern that had shown her how to escape.

“I lied,” she said. “There was a man. A very bad man. He was a favorite client of the Controller who ran the compound where I was kept. This man did bad things to little girls. He traveled a lot for his business and he had found two girls he liked in different cities. One prophecy told him he could take one of the girls without anyone knowing. But if he took the other girl, he would be found and caught and he would die. He paid for another prophecy that would tell him which girl he could take and avoid being caught.”

“You gave him the wrong images, the wrong place, led him to the wrong choice.”

She nodded. “Before he could hurt the girl, the police found him and caught him—and killed him.” She tried to cover the scars with her hand, but there were too many of them. “The Controller received a lot of money from this client, so he was very angry when the man died. I was strapped to the chair and punished several times because the client died.” She swallowed a feeling of sickness. “The pain is terrible. I have no images that could convey to you how terrible it is. So I wouldn’t have cut myself and kept silent, Mr. Wolfgard. Not without a good reason.”

He looked less angry, but she didn’t think he was convinced yet.

“If you didn’t cut, how did you know the deliveryman was bad?”

Now she allowed herself a little of her own anger. “I pay attention, and he didn’t behave like the other deliverymen who come here!” Because the feeling worried her enough that she wanted someone else to know about it, she added, “And that awful prickling started under my skin as soon as he walked into the office.”

Simon cocked his head again. “Prickling?”

“I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s maddening! It used to be I felt this prickling only just before I was going to be cut. Now I feel it every day, and I want to cut and cut and cut to make it stop!”

He studied her. “Maybe this is natural for your kind when you’re not caged. Maybe this prickling is your body’s way of warning you that something is wrong. If I hear a rattling near a game trail, I don’t have to get bitten to confirm there’s a snake there. Maybe now that you’re living outside the compound, your instincts are waking up. To a Wolf, that’s a good thing.”

She hadn’t considered that.

“So what did your instincts tell you about that man?” Simon asked.

His face had shifted all the way back to human. Except the ears. They were smaller than they’d been a minute ago, but they were still furry Wolf ears, and it was hard to concentrate on words when the ears swiveled to catch sounds outside the room and then pricked toward her when she spoke. And something about the way he looked at her told her he wanted to test the soundness of her instincts.

“All the delivery trucks or vans have the company name on the side or on the back, and they park in a way that I can see the name before the driver comes into the office,” she explained. “The men have their names sewn on their shirts or have a badge with their picture, and their jackets usually have a company name or logo. They want me to know who they are and where they work. That man didn’t have a badge or even a logo on his uniform. There was no name on the van. The back license plate was packed with snow and couldn’t be read. And the package!” Now that she was warming up to all the things that weren’t right, her voice began to rise. “He couldn’t tell me the company that had shipped it, couldn’t tell me who it was for. The label didn’t have a company name, and the writing was so bad, I couldn’t tell who was supposed to receive it. No company who did business with the Courtyard would have sent a package like that!”

She thought about what she’d just said. “Simon,” she whispered. “No company who does business with the Courtyard would have sent that package.”

Simon didn’t need to see her pale to know what she was thinking.

Bomb.

He leaped into the front room and vaulted over the counter. Grabbing the box, he ran to the door, shoving it open with a shoulder. Then he took a few steps away from the office to give himself some room and threw the box.

It flew over most of the delivery area and landed close to the street entrance. Skidding on the remaining layer of snow, the box finally came to a stop at the edge of the sidewalk, almost tipping into the street.

Pedestrians stumbled back. Drivers honked their car horns and swerved when they saw the box sliding into their path.

Then people caught sight of him and started screaming. Some simply turned and ran. Others bolted into traffic and narrowly avoided being hit.

The consulate door was flung open. Elliot, looking pale, shouted, “Simon! You’re between forms!”

He didn’t respond. Instead he lifted his head and howled a Song of Battle.

The Crows exploded off the stone wall, cawing their warnings.

He howled again. Answering howls came from the Market Square, from the Utility Complex, and, a few seconds later, from the Wolfgard Complex. Crows and Hawks and even some Owls were in flight, spreading the warning, sounding a call to battle.

And the Wolves continued to howl.

<Simon.> Elliot’s voice sounded more controlled but still shocked.

<Call the police. Call Montgomery. Tell him to come here now.>

Elliot went inside the consulate.

Had to get control. Had to get out of sight and shift to one form or another.

He wanted to be Wolf. The Courtyard—and Meg—needed him to wear the human skin for a while. And he needed to find out what happened to that van and the intruder.

As he turned to go back inside, he noticed the Bear tracks.

<Henry?> he called.

<I have the intruder. I will deal with this. You take care of Meg.>

Only a foolish leader challenged an angry Grizzly without good reason.

He headed for the front door, then caught sight of Vlad in the access way that led to the Market Square and the rest of the Courtyard. Changing direction, he reached the Sanguinati and continued on to the back of the building.

“What happened?” Vlad asked. “I locked HGR’s door and put Ferus on guard in front of it. No one is leaving until we have answers. Tess has locked everyone in too.”

“A monkey touched Meg,” Simon growled. “Tried to take Meg.”

“Is she hurt?”

He didn’t think she was hurt, but he knew something that needed to be done before anyone else saw her. “Wait. Tell Tess to meet us out here. The police are coming.”

“Human law doesn’t apply here,” Vlad said coolly.

“No, it doesn’t. But we’re going to let the police deal with whatever is in the box the intruder brought into the office.”

He went into the office through the back door, then stopped. Meg was still in the sorting room. In a few more minutes, there would be Crows and cops all over this part of the Courtyard. And there would be Sanguinati and Wolves. He hoped the girls at the lake would be content with a report from Jester.

It took effort to shift to fully human. Human wasn’t as useful as Wolf.

He got back most of the way. He had a mantle of fur across his shoulders that ran down part of his back and chest, and he couldn’t get his canines down to human size.

It would have to do. He pulled on his jeans and the lightweight sweater he’d been wearing when he first came in. Going to the back room’s bins, he pulled out the gray sweatshirt he kept there and went into the sorting