Hinterland Book 3: The Wolf's Hunt (Hinterland Series) Read online

  His head wove back and forth. “What do you want?”

  “I’m back for some more of those blue mussels I bought from you last time.”

  He peered down into her face. “Are you from that factory near Henleyville? I told you I can’t get a shipment that big before next month.”

  Raleigh frowned. “Don’t you remember me from before? I only want to buy ten buckets.” Then she stopped. Henleyville? Where had she heard that name recently? “What factory in Henleyville?”

  Chivvy nodded and wobbled into his tent. “If it’s ten buckets you want, I’ve got those. I just don’t have a trainload like you wanted.”

  Raleigh stopped arguing with him. “When did you say you can deliver?”

  “Next month, maybe around the twentieth, but I can’t be sure. I’ll have to let you know a week beforehand when the train is due.”

  “And where does it stop?”

  “Tunstead, of course,” he replied.

  An icy chill ran down Raleigh’s back. She already knew Henleyville was the closest town to Perdue, but hearing the name of her old village in the same conversation with blue mussels gave her pause.

  The Kmiub reemerged from his tent carrying a crate like the one Dax kept on his work bench back at Bishop’s house. He held it out, and Dax took it from him.

  Raleigh didn’t want to leave. She wanted to interrogate Chivvy about who in Henleyville wanted to buy blue mussels. “Are you sure it was me you dealt with last time about this shipment?”

  He bent over and squinted into her face. “No, I guess it wasn’t you.”

  “Can you remember who it was? What did the person look like?”

  “Oh, he looked like an ordinary guy, maybe kinda shabby in his dress, but in general an ordinary human, I would say. He had muddy boots and wore homespun clothes. He looked like a farmer—at least, he dressed like a farmer. He didn’t act like one, though.”

  “What did he act like?”

  “He acted like he owned the place. I sat right there and watched him walk away after we negotiated the transaction, and he stopped to talk to half a dozen people on his way out. He had a most singular way of looking at you when he talked, too. He looked like he could cut glass with those eyes of his.”

  Raleigh cocked her head. “Are you sure?”

  “Very sure. I couldn’t forget that guy. He had smooth hands, too, no calluses. That guy never did any farm work in his life. I can tell you that.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Did he tell you his name?”

  The Kmiub hooted and flapped his arms. “His name! That’s a good one. No one uses names in this market. You know that.”

  Raleigh had to smile. “Yeah. I know. Thanks for the mussels. What do we owe you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  Raleigh counted out a bunch of coins from her pocket into Chivvy’s hand. Then she and Dax walked back the way they came to the tunnel leading to the outside world.

  They strolled through the forest falling back into dusk, but Raleigh’s mind drifted a thousand miles away. She should have known better than to ask Chivvy his contact’s name. That was a stupid mistake. Whoever contracted a trainload of blue mussels wouldn’t give his name.

  Who could order that many blue mussels, and why were they headed for a factory in Henleyville, of all places? Raleigh knew the whole area around Tunstead, and she never heard of any factory in Henleyville.

  Someone must be setting up a captive twen farming operation there. That was the only explanation, but Chivvy’s description of his buyer sparked Raleigh’s curiosity. She recalled another description of a seemingly ordinary human man who wasn’t what he appeared. Now, where did she hear that?

  Then she remembered. Angela Cross told Bishop about a man who entered the Guild of Martial Arts disguised as a workman. He went behind the black curtains into the Guild’s training auditorium. When he looked up at Angela standing on a balcony above him, she recognized the bright, alert look on his face. He was a Guildsman, but she didn’t recognize him. He must have belonged to some other Guild, so what was he doing, pretending to work on the auditorium?

  The man who contracted that trainload of blue mussels must have been a member of one of the Guilds, too. Either the Guilds themselves sent him to organize the shipment, or he was a rogue working for the cabal. Either way, he might be the one who hired Bishop.

  Darkness fell by the time they got back to the house. Dax went to the shed to feed the twen, and Raleigh went into the house to face Mrs. Mitchell’s wrath. To her surprise, she found two bowls of steaming roast lamb sitting on the table. The fire blazed on the hearth to make the kitchen cheery and inviting, but Mrs. Mitchell was nowhere in sight.

  Raleigh hung up her weapons and scraped the mud off her boots before she sat down at her usual place. Dax came in and looked around. Then he sat down on his bench without a word. They ate and washed their dishes the same way they always did.

  After supper, Raleigh went back upstairs to have another look through Bishop’s papers. She discarded several more ancient bills, invoices, wedding invitations…. Wedding invitations! She rifled through the basket and retrieved the cream-colored envelope. She ripped it open and tore out the invitation.

  Knox Bishop and Angela Cross invite you to celebrate the joy of their matrimony at a small ceremony to be held at Grosvenor Anglican Church, Sunday, July 18, 1760, at eleven o’clock in the morning. A small reception will be held at Mr. Bishop’s home afterwards. RSVP.

  Raleigh’s hands shook. She couldn’t take her eyes off that invitation. Bishop really planned to marry Angela. They weren’t just romantically involved. Raleigh couldn’t imagine how many women he was involved with over the years, but he really planned to go all the way with her.

  Dozens of recollections crowded into Raleigh’s brain so fast she couldn’t sort through them all. The very first time she ever saw Bishop and Angela together, Angela made some excuse about breaking off with him. She said she never stopped caring about him, even after she dumped him. The letter Raleigh found in Bishop’s papers seemed to bear that out.

  Now Raleigh found out Angela insisted they were serious to the point of marriage, to the point of sending out wedding invitations, or at least getting them printed. Angela must have cared about Bishop a lot, only to end it. She left him pining for her for years after—right up until he met Raleigh.

  Raleigh hurled the invitation on the keeping stack and raced out of the room. She pounded down the stairs in a whirlwind of confused ideas. Angela used to work for Soto before she retired. She was a Guildsman of the Martial Arts, just like Bishop. If anybody in the world knew for certain if Bishop was alive or dead, it would be Angela.

  Chapter 8

  Raleigh jumped down the last two stairs to land in the carpeted foyer. She took a quick step toward the servants’ quarters, but something made her stop and listen. A faint crackle of fire sounded from the kitchen, but no other noise disturbed the house.

  Something was going on. Raleigh didn’t know what. Mrs. Mitchell should be in the kitchen, but she always made a lot more racket at her work. Sometimes she even sang at night. She must have gone out to see her married daughter in town. That’s the only reason she would leave supper on the table and a fire in the kitchen for Raleigh and Dax’s return.

  Raleigh stole along the foyer and peeked into the kitchen. All lay quiet and peaceful, and she caught sight of Dax sitting on his old wooden stool by the hearth, but some strange aura around him made Raleigh shiver.

  She stepped into the kitchen. “Dax? Aren’t you going to bed?”

  His shoulders shook. He hunched in on himself and hugged both hands between his knees. His hair hung over his eyes, and he didn’t look up. Raleigh crept around to the table and bent over to get a glimpse of his face.

  When he saw her out of the corner of his eye, he turned his head farther away to hide himself from her. Racking shudders shook his whole body. His muscles clenched all over to hold them do
wn.

  Raleigh dropped on her knees by his stool. She laid her hand on his back. “Dax! What’s wrong?”

  He fought to breathe through gritted teeth, and his voice broke. “It….It happened again.”

  “What did?”

  He gasped out loud, but he couldn’t get the words out. He moaned in agony.

  Raleigh stared at him. She didn’t have to ask what happened again. He must have used his power without meaning to.

  She sank back on her heels and sighed. “Tell me what happened.”

  He choked on the words. “I was tending the horses. I was doing my usual chores and…and it just happened…all by itself.”

  “What did you do? What happened by itself?”

  “Nothing!” he blurted out. “I was standing there with the brush in my hand, and the next thing I knew, the chores were all done. The horses were brushed, the hay was pitched down into their mangers, the cows were milked, and all the stock had their water. Even the brush wound up back in the box where it belonged.”

  Raleigh sat all the way down on the floor. She gazed at the back of his head. What could she say to ease his anxiety? This dreadful transformation would scare the pants off anybody. She could tell him till kingdom come that it would be all right, that it was all natural. He had no reason to believe it. She dared not believe it herself.

  What was he? What would he turn into? Maybe one of these days, the power would thump out of him and Dax McDermott would cease to exist. Maybe he would turn into lightning or something supernatural like that.

  She slipped her arm around his back and rested her forehead against his shoulder. She could only love him as long as it lasted. She couldn’t think of any other way to help him. She couldn’t even train him to use his power. He had to walk this road all alone.

  He turned his haggard face to look at her. The firelight gleamed through his hair. His face twitched with the shudders passing through him. “What’s happening to me? What am I?”

  She laid her hand on his cheek. “I can only tell you what I know. I don’t know the whole story. I only wish Bishop was here to tell you the rest.”

  “Tell me,” he rasped. “Tell me anything that will make sense of this.”

  She laced his hair behind his ear and kissed his forehead before she looked deep into his eyes. “In Hinterland, there are Ten Guilds who run things. I only know about a few, but the ten together are forming a cabal to create the Elixir of Life. You know that part. They are the ones who want the twen. Its brain contains one of the ingredients for the Elixir.”

  He nodded.

  “Well, one of these Guilds is the Guild of Husbandry. They work on things like breeding the best strain of cattle for farming, the best work animals, that sort of thing, but they also do research. They conduct experiments. They hybridize different animals, and they even hybridize animals with people. Bishop thought the Guild created that mob of wolf hybrids out in the forest.”

  Dax frowned. “So?”

  “So….the Guild does terrible things to the people and animals and hybrids it experiments on. It torments them in its labs, and when it creates a new race of something not human, it sells them into slavery somewhere. They live their lives in misery and they die terrible deaths. When we were in Hinterland, we went to the Guild’s headquarters in the mountains to find out what the twen ate. We wanted to track down its food source so we could determine where the cabal was keeping it. The Guild chased us out of the city, and we had to take refuge in the mountains. We were running for our lives when a band of escaped hybrids of all kinds took us in. They sheltered us. They all escaped the Guild, and they all had horrific tales to tell.”

  “Are you saying…”

  She touched his cheek. “You’re a hybrid, Dax. I don’t know what you’re a hybrid of. We might never find out. I hate to think what you might be capable of. Only you can find that out. The band of hybrids who took us in—there was a woman living with them. She was a shapeshifter of the highest order, but she was traumatized. Her name was Cassandra, and she lost her baby. Bishop helped her escape from the Guild. I don’t know how, but it scarred her for life. After he brought her to safety in the mountains, he did something to convince her to let him take her baby away. He took it out of Hinterland, and he brought it….” She stopped.

  Dax stared into her eyes. The haunted horror in his face blocked the words on her lips. How could she tell him? How could she shatter his world any more than it already had?

  “For God’s sake, Raleigh,” he groaned. “Please tell me. I have to know.”

  She sighed. “He brought the baby here. He gave it to Mrs. McDermott to raise as her own. Cassandra never recovered from the loss of her baby, and while we were there, Bishop spoke to her in private. He convinced her to help us when she hadn’t shifted in decades. He did something for her. He rescued her, and then he must have had some compelling reason to take her baby away. The only reason I can think of that he would remove that child from Hinterland was to hide it from the Guild. The Guild wanted that child. I can only imagine they bred that child to be something exceptional, and they’ve been looking for it ever since.”

  Dax hung his head, but he didn’t turn away and he didn’t shake and shudder anymore. “I see.”

  “You don’t belong here, Dax. You’ve belonged in Hinterland all this time. I can only imagine that’s what drove you to train in the first place. This power, whatever it is, has been lying dormant inside you all these years. You’re a shapeshifter like your mother. That’s how you were able to copy the people around you and create such a convincing appearance of being human. You’re a lot more than a shapeshifter. I don’t know who or what your father was….”

  His head shot up, and the orange flames blazed against his eyes.

  Raleigh sank down on the floor. “I don’t know who or what your father was, but I know someone who does. We have to take you to Cassandra. She can tell you everything.”

  “How will you find her again?”

  “Oh, I know where to find her, but there’s something we have to do first. Come on. You need to go to sleep now.”

  She tried to raise him from his stool, but he resisted. “I…I can’t.”

  “You have to. You might be changing, but some part of you is still human. You need your sleep, and I can’t have you hanging around when you haven’t had proper food and rest. Come on.”

  He lifted his head, and a pathetic quiver disfigured his face. “What if it happens again? What if it happens in my sleep?”

  She stood above him and gazed down into his frightened eyes. “Sweetie, you can’t control this thing—not yet, anyway. If it happens again, and even if it happens in your sleep, it’s not your fault. No one can blame you for what’s happening to you.”

  His chin fell on his chest. Raleigh took his hand and stood him on his feet. He shuffled down the hall to his room, and she pushed him down on the bed fully clothed. She set his booted feet on the bedspread and shifted his guns so he wouldn’t lie on top of them.

  He lay on his side and crooked his elbow under his head. He closed his eyes and turned his face down into his arm. She stroked his hair off his forehead and kissed him on the cheek. “Go to sleep. We’ll find the answers for you if it’s the last thing we ever do.”

  She turned to leave, but he caught her hand. “Don’t leave. Please.”

  She kissed him again and hugged him close. “You’ll be all right until morning.”

  The great convulsive shudders quaked through his body once more, and this time, he buried his face in his arms and let loose the sobs he held back so long. He screamed into his sleeve where no one but she could hear him.

  Raleigh could only stand and watch. She rubbed his arm and back and petted his tear-stained cheeks. Those tears didn’t come close to expressing what he lost. He lost a lot more than she did when Bishop died. He lost his whole identity, his humanity, all the people he thought were his family, his past—everything. He couldn’t
even understand who or what he was.

  All of a sudden, he leaned back and screamed out loud. “I don’t want this! I don’t want to be this! I hate this.”

  “I know,” she whispered. “I know.”

  His head snapped up, and he gazed up at her in wild desperation. “What if I can’t love you? What if I turn into something that can’t love you anymore? What will I do then?”

  Raleigh threw her arms around him. She crunched her eyes shut to hold back tears. “I’ll always love you. I’ll love you no matter what you become. Don’t ever forget that.”

  He hid his eyes in his elbow and sobbed. After a while, his sobs died, but he didn’t lift his head. He sank into a quiet stupor, but Raleigh didn’t leave the room. She lay down on the bed behind him and wrapped her arms around him. She kissed his wet cheeks before she rested her head on the bed next to him and fell asleep.

  Chapter 9

  Raleigh sat at the kitchen table and Mrs. Mitchell kneaded dough for the day’s baking when Dax appeared the next morning. Raleigh smiled up at him. “Good morning. You slept well.”

  He rubbed his neck. “You should have woken me up. I’ve got chores to do.”

  Just then, the clatter of coach wheels echoed down the driveway through the open kitchen door. The black coach rolled up to the door and braked to a stop. A strip of a lad jumped off the seat and stepped into the kitchen. He whipped his hat off his straw-blonde hair. “Your coach is ready, Miss.”

  Dax stared at the boy. “What’s this?”

  Raleigh wiped her mouth and stood up. “This is Hiram Mitchell. He’s Mrs. Mitchell’s grandson. He’s going to drive us from now on. We can’t go on walking everywhere, and you can’t drive.”

  “Who says I can’t drive?”

  Raleigh laughed at him. “You’re a slayer now, Dax. You’re not Bishop’s errand boy. Now come on. Where we’re going, we have to arrive in a coach.”

  She jumped into the coach and Hiram climbed into the seat. He gathered the reins and kicked his foot against the lever to unlock the brake. Dax glanced around one more time. Mrs. Mitchell didn’t even look at him.