Silver Moon (A Women of Wolf's Point Novel) (3 page)

She tried again and got nowhere. She couldn’t dig up much on the Women’s Club Friday night event either. Shelly practically grunted, “Margaritas, cake, talking, one or two other things. Nothing to worry about, we just need to see what happens. We’ve all been there, at least all of us who’ll be there on Friday evening.” And that and an enigmatic and distracted smile were all Becca could get out of her.

It didn’t help Becca’s state of mind that, silent treatment or not, Shelly seemed to be watching her with an odd expression every time she looked up. Almost like she thought she might go postal or something. Her nerves twitched until Becca thought she’d climb out of her own skin.

She even thought about calling Ed. Of course, they hadn’t spoken in months and it wasn’t like they were friends or anything like that. It was hard to get over being dumped for a woman half her age, after all, plus it wasn’t like their communication had been that great before they split. But at least she knew what she was dealing with when it came to him.

He’d tell her she was just imagining things, like he always did. Then he’d rag on her about her weight and how she’d let herself go. Then maybe after that, he’d offer to come by and work on the house. And she’d get pissed off at him and stop talking to him again for a few more months. It was the same pattern they’d had for a couple of years and it was crappy, but at least it was something that felt normal.

But she really didn’t want the same old, same old, not this time. She realized that. It was all different now. Now there were moonlit nights and runs through the trees and winds full of scents she’d never noticed before. And an intriguing neighbor she wanted to get to know better. Calling Ed dropped off the list of possibilities.

She thought briefly about calling someone else, family or friends, but she didn’t have much family left, not that she was close to, anyway. This wasn’t the sort of thing her cousins in Mountainview would get. That much she was sure about. As for friends, most of those would be there on Friday night so she could talk to them then.

Instead, she’d tried to fill the time by stopping by the clinic to see if they could figure out what was wrong with her. She was helpfully informed that “It was just that time of life, dear,” which she supposed was meant to be comforting. Even going online at the library didn’t tell her anything that described what she was feeling.

So when she got tired of thinking about her health, she found herself looking up Wolf’s Point to see what else she didn’t know about the town’s history. There was, it turned out, quite a bit. The first white settlers, fur traders and miners, for the most part, called the valley “Mountainview.” They assumed the land was unpopulated until they met the local Indian population. Or vice versa, depending on whose point of view you were reading.

After that, the details got murky. The local tribe called themselves something that the white settlers understood as “The Sisters of the Wolf.” That part made no sense to Becca. What did the guys call themselves?

Aside from that one mention, there were a couple of sidebars on skirmishes between the two peoples, followed by the sudden and remarkable onset of peace. Wolf’s Point’s early inhabitants settled in and merged so thoroughly with each other that Becca couldn’t find anything more about the original tribe. That seemed kind of weird. Why wouldn’t there be more of a record of what happened to them? Maybe the original Native folks in the area had been wiped out or sent to a reservation somewhere else. Or maybe they were still here.

She made a note to herself to ask around and kept reading. Elsewhere on the site, there were a few links leading to different references about people looking or acting like wolves. These were an odd mix of European and Native American stories and she had some trouble seeing what the connection was. She wondered what all the people who had come to the valley had in common, other than an unhealthy fascination with predators.

She did find out that the first mayor was a woman, which was pretty much unheard of in the late 1800s. In fact, if the site was correct, this happened a good ten years before the history books mentioned a woman getting elected to mayor anywhere in the U.S.

For an encore, shortly after she took office, the town council passed their first resolution: no one could hunt a wolf within the confines of the valley. Then they changed the town name to “Wolf’s Point.”

Becca felt something, not quite a chill, more like a shiver, run down her back, followed by a familiar flash of heat. Why was this so important that it was the first thing they decided? And why was she reacting to it? It wasn’t like she was planning on going wolf hunting any time soon.

There were wolf packs in the mountains still, but most of the local wolves lived on the Wolf Preserve just outside town. She’d gone on the Preserve’s Wolf Call right after she moved to town. She and Ed spent two nights camping out, listening to the wolves howl and tracking them through the woods. They’d been beautiful to watch and listen to and their howls haunted her dreams for weeks afterwards. But that was it. She didn’t own any kitschy wolf-print sweatshirts or have any little paw prints tattooed on her ankles, like some of the women in town.

Then she poked around some more and noticed that the original ordinance was still in place. What was even more interesting, the towns around Wolf’s Point abided by it too. She wondered how anyone enforced that. Sure, the rangers did their best but it was hard to protect the wolves off the Preserve and not everyone in the valley thought they were as beautiful as she did.

It was right after that when she made an even stranger discovery. Her search turned up a link for a site called “The Slayer’s Nest.” When she opened it, there was a call for volunteers, “warriors,” no less, to go to Wolf’s Point. Her Wolf’s Point. It didn’t say why. The site’s overall look: animated flaming torches and blood-red lettering, didn’t make her want to sign up for membership. There was also a logo: a wooden stake crossed with a gray bullet, surrounded by an open wolf’s jaws. The front fangs were broken.

She bit back a snarl, her shoulders rising and skin hot with an oncoming flash, and she looked away from the screen for a few minutes while she forced air into her lungs. This was crazy. Why was she overreacting like this? It was probably just one of those role-playing games she’d heard about. But why come to Wolf’s Point?

She couldn’t figure it out from the public parts of the site and you had to sign up to get on their mailing list. Somehow, that wasn’t very appealing. Still it was all enough to tell her that there was more to her town than met the eye, at least as far as outsiders were concerned.

She worried at her thoughts like a dog with a bone as she walked home to a solitary dinner. That night, she dreamt she was a wolf. She was running with a pack of other wolves that was tearing through the forest chasing something she couldn’t see. The air whipped through her fur and her paws blurred beneath her as she sped up for the sheer joy of running, of chasing her prey. A larger wolf ranged alongside her and flashed her a panting doggy grin. Its eyes glinted silver and familiar and she barked a greeting at it. Together they jumped a stream and scrambled up some rocks.

Then she could see what they were chasing. She woke up with a yell, one foot landing on the floor next to her bed as her body jerked its way upward in shock. Trembling, she reached for the lamp on the nightstand and flooded the room with light. She pulled her foot back up and sat curled around her knees for what seemed like hours, her head held carefully in her hands until her breathing slowed and she stopped shaking.

That was when she realized that she couldn’t remember exactly what she’d seen just before she woke up. Becca cursed her subconscious in a very unladylike way. Then she got up to get a glass of water. She wandered into the living room to drink it while she zoned out and stared down the deserted street.

Or at least it seemed deserted until she looked into the shadows. There were big dogs out there, five or six of them, traveling in a group. In the darkness, they all looked pretty wolflike, but she knew that was ridiculous. Wolves wouldn’t be running through town like that, so it had to be dogs. She learned that much from the Wolf Call. Whatever they were, they seemed to be headed for the river and she watched, baffled, as the small pack vanished into the trees at the end of the street.

A part of her howled to go outside and follow them. She jerked away from the insanity of that notion, pushing it back down inside until she couldn’t hear its crazy little voice. Instead, she dragged one reluctant foot after another back to her bedroom and read until she was too sleepy to keep her eyes open or dream about wolves or anything else.

The river gorge was beautiful in the early morning light. The trees, aspen and birch for the most part, rustled in the morning breeze and she started to relax for the first time since her dream. She perched on a large rock and watched the water go by, letting the newly risen sun sink into her bones.

The scrape of shoe against stone made her jump from her reverie, all senses on the alert. The woman who stood on the other bank watching her wasn’t a local, at least as far as Becca knew. She was short and broad-shouldered and had a long, jagged scar on one brown cheek, visible even under the shadows from the trees. Her short-cropped hair was dark and wavy against her scalp and her eyes were hard. She didn’t smile in response to Becca’s nod.

Becca found herself getting more than a little angry. What was with people these days anyway? Who did this stranger think she was? Stupid tourists, traipsing all over the place with their white vans and their attitudes. She could feel her lip curl back over her teeth and it was all she could do not to growl at the other woman.

They stared at each other for a few more seconds until Becca finally cleared her throat and demanded, “Yes? Do you need something?”

The other woman stepped forward into the sunlight, her lips curling in a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Just out for a walk. I was camping downstream and this looked like a nice spot for a swim.” She gestured at the pool with one broad hand.

Somehow, Becca didn’t believe her. But then, what difference did it make? What kind of harm could she possibly do? She met the woman’s eyes again and felt a little shiver run through her. There was some kind of challenge there, along with something that felt just a bit familiar. But that made no sense; she was sure she’d never seen this woman before. She blinked and glanced away for a second to clear her head and the sensation went away.

Then the woman stretched gracefully, her wide shoulders shifting like a wrestler’s. “You ever see any wolves in these woods?” Her tone was casual but something in it caught Becca’s attention, jolting her body awake and taut, like a wire.

But she took a deep breath to steady herself, trying to feel her way to a casual response; somehow she didn’t want this stranger knowing what she was thinking. It felt like a test of some sort. “Yep, they’re mostly down in the Preserve. It’s illegal to hunt them around here, you know.”

The woman smiled again. “I look like a wolf hunter to you? I take photos but I don’t like to be surprised by my subjects. I just wanted to know how safe it was out here.”

Becca found herself choosing her words with care again before she spoke. After all, it wasn’t like nothing ever happened in Wolf’s Point. No point in being too trusting about strangers. Or letting them think that they were all welcome, even the bad ones. There had been that young man killed out in the quarry a few years back. But then they’d caught the guy who did that, something about a fight over a truck.

Then there had been the couple who had tried to set up a meth lab just outside town—blown sky high the two of them were. But the coroner had ruled that an accident. Meth was flammable stuff, or so she’d heard. Good thing no one else was tempted to try it, at least that she’d heard.

Her thoughts wandered around until she wondered why she was thinking about making the town sound more dangerous than it was. It wasn’t like she had any business running the tourists off. Even the annoying ones. She wondered if this was the onset of her crotchety old lady years. That was enough to make her choke out, “It’s pretty safe around here.”

Then something made her add, “Most folks who find it otherwise bring their own trouble with them.” Her words surprised her, like they’d come from someone else.

The other woman raised an eyebrow and held up her hands to show they were empty. “Not looking for any trouble. Just heard this was a nice safe place to camp for a woman on her own.”

Becca flinched. Her imagination was running away from her along with her hormones. Here she was projecting her nightmares and bad mood on some poor stranger. “I’m sorry. I had a bad night and you startled me, that’s all. The wolves have never attacked anyone as far as I know and yes, this is a safe place to camp. If you want to go into town, we’ve got a pretty good deli and the pie at Millie’s is the best for miles around. If you’re up for a hike, Jenner’s Falls is a few miles upstream. It’s really gorgeous this time of year.” She glanced down at her watch. “I need to head back and get to work. Have a nice stay.”