Marked In Flesh

Jackson laughed quietly.

Simon thought of the way Sam looked when he was with Meg, how much the pup had grown since that first night he’d caught her scent and curiosity had quieted fear. And he thought of how he felt about having Meg as a friend.

Meg crumpled that day’s issue of the Lakeside News and threw it into a corner of the sorting room. Then she retrieved it and smoothed it out before placing it in the wire bin she used for the recycled newspapers.

How had Merri Lee put it? Same news, different day: Governor Patrick Hannigan still urging city governments to show common sense instead of giving in to the sensationalism being thrown about by the Humans First and Last movement, and Agent Greg O’Sullivan saying the Investigative Task Force was still investigating the cause of the dead fish that continued to wash up around Toland.

Those articles made her hands tingle while she read them, but the article that quoted Nicholas Scratch . . .

Humans were powerful. Humans were right. Humans deserved all the riches the world could offer. People shouldn’t have to be grateful for handouts that were doled out according to the whims of animals.

Her skin burned so much as she read the article she couldn’t touch the newspaper anymore.

Too soon to cut, she thought as she went into the bathroom to wash her hands. And no point cutting now that the burning has gone away.

Returning to the sorting room, Meg set the decks of prophecy cards on the table and opened each box. She hesitated a moment, then retrieved the discarded cards from the cityscape box—the cards that identified Thaisia’s larger human cities. She even included the two sets of the more fantastical images. Last, she spread out the sheets of paper that held Hope’s sketches of the cards that should be included in this new Trailblazer deck everyone expected her to create somehow.

Hope’s sketches showed a mix of cards. Some were scenes that might be taken as a whole or be relevant because of one image, and some were images of things. Was that mix already in the decks? She hadn’t really given the cards a proper look the last time she’d touched them.

Meg wasn’t sure how long she’d been staring at the decks, feeling overwhelmed even before she began looking at images, when she realized she wasn’t alone. She looked up at the big man standing on the other side of the table.

“Henry?”

“You sighed. I wondered what was wrong.”

“You heard me sigh?” She looked toward the open window. She and her friends hadn’t considered that anyone might overhear them when they talked in this room, especially since they usually spoke quietly to avoid Nathan eavesdropping from the front room.

“I was working outside and heard you. Jake heard you from his perch on the wall. And Nathan heard you. It was a loud sigh.”

She hadn’t thought her sigh had been that loud, but all the Others had excellent hearing, so it could have sounded loud to them.

“Reading the newspaper bothers me,” she admitted.

“This is recent?”

She nodded. “Every time I read about the HFL movement or something Nicholas Scratch said, my skin prickles or burns. I’m trying not to cut. I really am.”

“That Nicholas Scratch and the HFL humans are trouble. You don’t need to cut to tell us what we already know.” Henry gestured to the decks of cards. “And those?”

“I don’t know what I’m doing with these cards. I don’t know how to combine images from these decks to make one that will be useful to cassandra sangue. What if I leave out something that another girl needs but isn’t significant to me?”

Henry pursed his lips. The scar on the right side of his face still looked raw and painful, a daily reminder of the HFL’s agenda where the Others were concerned.

“Why do you need to know right away?” he finally asked.

“So that other girls can use the cards instead of cutting.” Other girls. Was she that addicted to cutting that she didn’t want an alternative? No. Cutting would kill her in the end. She could—would—learn how to use the cards for her own sake as well as that of other blood prophets.

“First you learn the nature of a thing,” Henry said. “We have a teaching story among the Beargard. A young bear is hungry. He goes to the river looking for fish. He waits by the river for days and days until he is weak with hunger, but there are no fish. Why?” Henry looked at her expectantly.

“I don’t know this story. I don’t know why there are no fish.”

“He arrived too soon. If he had learned the nature of the fish that spawned in that river, he would have looked for other things to eat and come to the river at the proper time.” Henry gave her a careful smile. “Look. Learn. Then you will find what you need.”

Meg sighed.

“Arroo?” Nathan queried from the front room.

“She is fine, Wolf,” Henry said. Then he gave her a long look. “Are you fine, Meg?”

She touched one of the decks. “The cards might reveal an answer to a question, but using them doesn’t produce the euphoria. Using them doesn’t feel as good as cutting.”

“Until you learn their nature, how do you really know that is true?”

She didn’t have an answer, but she did have a question. “Henry? Are the bison going to roam around the Courtyard?”

“The two males have been taken to the Chambers. The fences should keep them from roaming beyond the Sanguinati’s part of the Courtyard. The females are grazing where they will. Why?”

“They’re going to get bigger.”

“Much bigger.”

“Do they chase things?”

At first she thought he was amused. Then he said, “Ah. The BOW.”

“Sometimes a deer is in the road when I’m making deliveries, but it moves out of the way. I don’t think a grown-up bison needs to move out of the way of much.” Merri Lee had promised to check Howling Good Reads and Ruth said she would check the Market Square Library for information about bison. Mostly they were concerned that the new residents would devour the kitchen gardens. Meg wondered how bison felt about a Box on Wheels that chugged along on the Courtyard’s roads.

“I will give you an answer when I have one,” Henry said.

When he left, Meg moved over to the window but kept out of sight. She heard the wooden gate open and close, heard footsteps on the path. But they stopped before Henry reached his studio because Jake cawed, announcing that a truck had pulled into the delivery area.

On impulse, Meg opened a random deck of cards. Unsure how to shuffle cards, she fanned them out in one hand with the images facedown. Picking a card, she turned it over.

Basket of ripe apples, looking so . . .

Rotten. Wormy.

Meg blinked. No. The card showed a basket of ripe, unblemished apples—a delicious harvest.

The office door opened. She heard Nathan scramble off the Wolf bed to meet the deliveryman at the counter.

Meg dropped the cards and hurried into the front room.

“Hi, Harry.”

“Miz Meg.”

Harry’s voice. Worn. Drawn. “Is something wrong?”

“Got a package here for Miz MacDonald. Says to keep it cool.”

“Harry?”

Nathan stood on his hind legs, resting one front paw on the counter.

“Might not be making deliveries much longer.” Harry lowered his voice and leaned toward Meg. “There’s been talk about Everywhere Delivery becoming Everywhere Human Delivery.”

“Arroo?” Nathan asked at the same time Meg said, “What are you going to do?”

“Hand in my notice; that’s what I’ll do,” Harry replied hotly. Then he looked over his shoulder, as if afraid of being overheard. “Course, I don’t know what the wife and I will do without my paycheck, but I’ve also heard talk that if you’re fired for being a Wolf lover, you forfeit your pension, what there is of it. So I would rather resign and get what money I can. But that means you might have some trouble getting deliveries. And something like this”—Harry tapped the box—“might not arrive before it spoils.”

Meg thought about the prophecy card and shivered.

“Arroo?”

“I’ll tell Mr. Wolfgard what you said.” Meg stepped back from the counter. “Thanks, Harry.”

“You take care.” Harry looked at Nathan. “Both of you.”

Meg pressed both hands against the Private door’s frame and waited until Harry drove away. Then she focused on Nathan, clenching her teeth to keep from biting her tongue to relieve the buzz and burn. “Get Henry.”

Nathan cocked his head.

“Something is wrong with that box.” She didn’t dare unclench her teeth to speak clearly. “Get Henry. Get Tess.”

Nathan howled.

Running through the sorting room and back room, Meg clawed at the back door until she finally got it open and bolted outside.

“Meg?” Pete Denby ran down the stairs from his office and caught her as her legs gave out. He half carried her to the stairs, sat her down, and gently pushed her head between her knees.

“Meg?” Tess’s voice, as sharp as a razor.

“Package. Something bad,” Meg mumbled. “Tongue burning.”

“What does that mean?” Pete asked.

“That means you don’t let her out of your sight.” Tess went into the Liaison’s Office.

“Are you cut?” Pete patted Meg’s shoulder. “Did you see something?”

“Heard a truck. Picked one of those prophecy cards from a deck. Saw rotten apples, but the picture was of a basket of ripe apples.”

“Gods. Okay. How’s your tongue now?”

Meg raised her head. “Better.”

“Because you spoke the warning. Isn’t that how it works?”

“I don’t think someone sent a basket of apples to Theral. The box isn’t big enough.”

Pete pulled his mobile phone from his pocket.

“I’ll be all right.” Who would he be calling anyway?

“Doug? You or Lieutenant Montgomery need to come to the Courtyard ASAP. Suspicious package.” Pete paused, looking at Meg as he listened. “Don’t have the impression we’re dealing with anything explosive.”

Meg shook her head.

“Human law doesn’t apply in the Courtyard,” she said once Pete finished the call.

“Theral is human. The threat is coming from another human. That’s police business.” Pete stood and held out a hand. “You feel well enough to go back inside?”

“I’d rather sit out here for a bit longer, but I would like a glass of water.”

He made a face. “I’m not going to try to explain to Tess that I left you on your own.”

She sighed. She really wanted some water.

Jake flew over the back wall of Henry’s yard, landed near the stairs, and shifted to human. “I will get water for our Meg.”

Pete made a choked sound, and Meg averted her eyes. She was becoming accustomed to these quick shifts from fur or feathers to naked human and back again—as long as it wasn’t Simon. It was different when it was Simon.

“Don’t eat my lunch while you’re looking for the water,” Meg shouted.

Jake didn’t reply, which made her think that half of his reason for helping was being able to poke around the back room for anything a Crow would find interesting. But he returned quickly and handed her the glass of water before shifting back to his Crow form and flying to his favorite spot on the wall.

She heard sirens at the same time she heard a vehicle drive up the access way and suddenly stop. Before she could twist around to see who had arrived, Simon was crouching beside her.

“Meg?”

“I’m fine.” That’s as far as she got before Jackson crouched beside Simon, being less subtle about sniffing the air for the scent of blood.

Then Merri Lee ran out of Howling Good Reads’ back door. “Michael says the police were called. There’s trouble? Meg, are you all right?”

“Suspicious package,” Pete said. “Something the police should investigate. Meg had a bit of a reaction to the package and needed some air. No need for alarm.”

“You, Ruth, and I need to talk later,” Meg told Merri Lee.

“A lot of us have something to talk about,” Simon growled.

Meg drank some water. Learn the nature of a thing. Until she knew what was in the package, she wouldn’t be able to understand the connection between it and a basket of apples—or why she’d seen something that wasn’t there.

Monty walked into Captain Burke’s office, followed by Kowalski and Louis Gresh, who closed the door.

Burke eyed the door, then folded his hands on the desk blotter and gave the men his fierce-friendly smile. “I’m usually the one who decides if it’s a closed meeting.”

“This needs to be a closed meeting,” Monty replied.

“There was a ruckus in the Courtyard?” Louis asked.

“Of sorts. Theral MacDonald is all right. She didn’t know anything had happened, or that it concerned her, until I went to the medical office to talk to her. Meg wasn’t available, but Nathan Wolfgard was forthright about what had occurred.”

“So was Pete Denby,” Burke said. “He called me again while you were taking a formal statement from Nathan. The package was inspected?”

Monty nodded. “A box of expensive chocolates, with a card that read, ‘Sweets for a sweet girl.’ No signature on the card, and the only thing the clerk at Everywhere Delivery could tell us was the package was brought to their receiving window just before closing yesterday and the man paid the extra fee for perishable merchandise that needed to be delivered the next morning. The clerk didn’t remember much about the man; just that he looked like he’d been working outdoors—had grass stains on his clothes and dirt on his work boots. There is nothing to indicate the package was sent by Jack Fillmore, Theral’s abusive ex.”

“But?” Burke prompted.

“There are signs that the chocolates had been tampered with. There were no foreign objects inside the chocolates that were examined, so the lab will have to run tests to figure out what was inserted.” Monty swallowed anger. If Meg Corbyn hadn’t reacted badly to the package, Theral could have given the chocolates to the children as a treat. What might have happened to Lizzy, or Sarah and Robert Denby, if anything in the chocolates was intended to incapacitate an adult?

“On our own time, Officer Debany and I have called hotels and rooming houses, particularly those that offer suites that are rented by the week, and haven’t found anyone registered under the name Jack Fillmore,” Kowalski said.

“Which means he’s coming into town for each of these emotional hit-and-run attacks, or he’s staying here under an alias,” Burke said.

“Most likely using an alias, even if he is living and working in another town,” Louis said.

“That might explain the gap in time between when he sent the flowers to Theral to confirm she was working in the Courtyard and this delivery of tampered sweets,” Monty said. “There are a limited number of human-controlled towns and cities within a reasonable drive of Lakeside, and even staying overnight to check on the MacDonald house or watch Theral to try to establish a routine would mean using the scheduled days off work. If Fillmore took any other time off from a job, that would be recorded and form a pattern.”

“We have no proof that Fillmore sent the flowers or these chocolates,” Burke pointed out. “We’ve made assumptions based on Theral’s history with this man, and we were more inclined to take her word because Lawrence MacDonald was her cousin and one of us.”

“So far he—or someone—has tried twice and hasn’t gotten past the front counter in the Liaison’s Office. Actually, it’s the Liaison’s Office that I wanted to talk about.” Monty relayed the information Nathan had given him about Everywhere Delivery becoming Everywhere Human Delivery.

Burke blew out an angry sigh. “Damn fools. If people keep pulling this crap, humans will be evicted from Lakeside. I’m going to ask Pete to check on the land leases, see how much of the city could be lost and how soon. Only the gods know what we’ll do if trains coming and going from Lakeside completely lose the right-of-way through the wild country and the city is no longer a viable destination.”

“The roads between cities are also a leased right-of-way,” Louis said. “And ships moving cargo on the Great Lakes are already in a precarious position. We could be isolated.”

“Every human-controlled city on the continent can be cut off. People have been forgetting that lately.” Burke looked at the three men. “Anything else? No? Then let’s do what we can to keep things smooth.”

Monty, Kowalski, and Louis left Burke’s office.

Thinking about the loss of the right-of-way between cities, Monty went to his desk and called his mother to urge her, again, to pack up and come to Lakeside as soon as she could.

Simon, Jackson, Blair, Henry, and Vlad stood in a circle around one of the BOWs.

“Your Meg drives around the Courtyard in that?” Jackson asked.

“Can’t drive it around on the city streets, but she does just fine here,” Simon replied, feeling defensive. Meg’s driving had improved over the past few months, so “just fine” was an accurate assessment of her skill. But as he looked over the top of the BOW at Jackson, he understood the real question. “When the bison grow up, they’re going to be bigger than the BOW.”

“Bigger and heavier.” Jackson set both hands on the BOW’s frame and pushed. The little vehicle rocked. “This will buckle if a bison hits it.”

A shiver of fear went through Simon. The BOWs could chug on the roads in the Courtyard; they could keep someone dry during rainy or snowy weather. They could, with the right driver, chug along on wet or snowy roads without mishap. Could a BOW—and its driver—survive a collision with something as big as a bison? “They would have no reason to chase the BOW or charge at a BOW.” That didn’t mean one of the bison wouldn’t confuse the BOW with something that should be chased or challenged.

“Are they going to be a problem for the deer?” Blair asked. “The Courtyard’s land can feed the herd that lives within its boundaries, and that herd is large enough to feed the pack and provide meat for the rest of the Courtyard’s residents. How much of the deer’s food will the bison consume?”

Vlad frowned. “Tell me again why we have bison in the Courtyard?”

He had room to move, but Simon still felt cornered. “Because Meg saw bison at the River Road Community, and the Hope pup did a vision drawing of Jackson bringing eleven bison to us.” Then it occurred to him that, perhaps, they had misinterpreted the cassandra sangue’s visions. After all, what was seen didn’t always happen.

Maybe having bison right in the Courtyard wasn’t a good idea after all.

“Well,” Henry said, “if the bison are a problem, we’ll just eat them sooner.”

Unhappy about making a bad decision, Simon scrubbed a hand through his hair and wanted to forget about the bison for a little while. It wasn’t too hot today. Maybe he could convince Meg to play a game of chase before they ate dinner. Or he could chase her to and from the Green Complex’s garden if she was going to pull weeds. “If we ate everything that was a problem—”

“—we’d all be fat,” Blair finished.

Henry snorted a laugh. “Until we decide what to do with them, we’ll make sure someone keeps watch on the bison when Meg is out in the BOW.”

That much decided, they pushed the BOW into one of the garages behind the Green Complex and attached the power cord to charge the vehicle.

“You’re taking the early train tomorrow morning?” Simon asked Jackson as they all walked through the archway that provided access between the garages and the apartments.

“I want to get home. With so many humans acting aggressive and strange, I don’t feel easy being so far away from Grace and Hope.” Jackson looked around. “Can we take one more run?”

Vlad stopped suddenly, a peculiar look on his face.

“What?” Simon asked.

“Tess says one of us needs to talk to Meg about her prophecy skills,” Vlad replied. “You and Jackson have your run. I’ll deal with this.”

“Do you know what ‘this’ is?”

“No.” Vlad shifted to smoke and headed for the Market Square and the Liaison’s Office at a speed that could outpace any prey on foot.

“Go,” Henry said. “Run. You’ll feel better for it.”

He couldn’t argue with that, so Simon, Jackson, and Blair walked over to Simon’s apartment to shed clothes and human form—and remember who they really were.

Vlad stopped in the shadows of the access way and shifted to human before walking to the front of the Liaison’s Office and entering through that door.

Meg is suddenly doubting her ability to see visions accurately, Tess had said. She says she isn’t performing well. She’s upsetting me, so you or Simon needs to talk to her.

Not a problem. He had plenty to say to Meg Corbyn.

he told Nathan.