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Chapter 1
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Alaska
The graves were haphazard; the headstones facing various directions. A summer’s worth of grass had grown tall around them, masking the faded markings, which identified the occupants of the long forgotten, departed souls. A heavy, full moon hung low in the sky. Henrietta Tremonte, or Hettie, as she was known, dropped a piece of raw meat on a stone grave marker next to the fire.
Ian Vanguard, sitting beside the fire in the shadows of autumn at dusk, looked up at the slap of wet flesh. He glared at the glistening pink mound before him. “What in Odin’s name is that?” he demanded.
“A cow’s tongue,” Hettie answered.
He grimaced. “Your magic is barbaric, old woman. And beneath you, I might add.”
She lifted a brow in mocking amusement. “I like to think of it as ‘earthy’. Something you should appreciate, given how close you are to it. Symbols work for some things.” She nodded toward the intricate tattoo he inscribed on his own muscular thigh, “but some magic must be down and dirty to get the work done.”
“Ain’t going to stop what’s comin’,” called the dark shadow just beyond the edge of the fire’s light.
Hettie sighed, having no patience for the other figment of a woman. “Full moon brings out all sorts, I suppose.” Then she spoke to Ian, his bowed head intent once again on his task. “It’s only a spell, not the means to the end. It’s one link in a long chain.”
“Chain won’t stop him. Fence won’t stop him. Wall won’t stop him,” the other woman said somewhere in the background.
Ian looked behind him. “Willie, you’re dead. Please, try to remember it.”
“Ha! No more than you. We’re all just spirits, here or there. Comin’ and goin’.”
He rolled his eyes, recognizing his mistake of having engaged her, and looked back at his friend. “What do you intend to do with it?” he asked, indicating the tongue.
“Cut into it,” she said, as she cut precise slivers into the flesh with a sharp blade, “put in the names of a few… ‘problems,’ sew it back up, and bury it.”
“Lovely. And you think that will have what effect?”
“I’m eliminating barriers.”
“To what?”
She sighed and waved away his skepticism. “I’m trying to concentrate, if you don’t mind. Not all of us have your mental talents. And the moon will wane soon. My timing is important here, as you well know.”
Ian frowned and shook his head, knowing one thing: a cow’s tongue, no matter how craftily consecrated, cut up and wielded, would never be enough to bring an end to an ancient curse.
Hettie whispered unintelligibly over the tongue, then, pulling out needle and thread from her velvet bag, paused to look at Ian with a scowl. The ragged peaks and harsh plains the firelight created across his face aged him a thousand years, years she knew he felt. “He could turn against you, yet again. You can’t control him,” she said. “Surely you know that.”
“I’ve always known that. And never have I known peace because of it.” His brow creased in absorption with his task, wanting to block out the uncomfortable thoughts threatening to break his single-minded purpose. A slight surge of power filled the air the moment the old woman’s spell gathered energy, but he couldn’t hold much hope for the effectiveness of it, and continued his own work.
“And if he does this time? What then?” she asked.
“Same as always. Game over,” Ian mumbled as he leaned back to examine his markings.
“We can’t afford for that to happen,” she said. “We’re up against an ever-narrowing window. The signs point to this being your last chance.”
The autumn wind was sharp, and he felt the cold on his exposed leg, especially so in the raw skin left vulnerable by the fresh tattoo. “You forget. I’ve seen this all play out before. False prophesies offer little hope that anything is different. It always ends tragically.”
“False prophesies? It’s true, I tell you! I’ve seen it.”
“And what if the woman of this ‘prophesy,’ and I use that term loosely, does appear? What then?”
“Then the rest of your story can play out.”
“To what end?” he asked, focusing on the last details in the unreliable, flickering light of the fire.
She thought for a minute, then shrugged. “Well, that is a mystery, I suppose.” She nudged his shoulder and said, “But isn’t that a nice change for once?”
He grunted, etching the last line of his spell into his skin.
Hettie stopped sewing the slits in the tongue, put the project on the slab, and held out her slight, wrinkled hand. “Let me see the arm.”
Ian put down his inking tool, pulled up his sleeve and held out his forearm, strong and well formed, but with skin ripped from it in long shreds.
“Must you provoke him?” she asked, examining the condition of the deep gashes and torn skin.
“I provoked him? Because I tried to stop him from killing an innocent girl?”
“Why not let him have the girl?” she asked, dropping his arm. “She’s nothing to you, to anyone, really. She cares little for her own life, as the needle marks in her arm clearly illustrate.” Her face pinched, and she shook her head.
“I can’t. He’s walking that edge, and he will lose his soul, again. He’s getting the taste for it, the sex, the blood, and soon there will be no lines he won’t cross.”
“He says it wasn’t him?”
“What else could he say?”
“What about Samuel? Did you ever determine…?
“His body was mutilated, to be sure. But the markings weren’t Were. That, at least, was not him.”
She pulled his sleeve down, releasing his arm, and put her hand on his shoulder in comfort. “She will come.”
He searched her face, wondering if the faith he’d always had in the old woman was warranted. He loved her like he imagined he would a mother, but he doubted her. There was guilt laced in that doubt. He looked over his shoulder. “What say you, Willie?” he called to the lurking, dark spector behind him, knowing she would want her say.
“She comin’! Oh, she comin’! Don’t know what good it will do you, celibate as you be lately.” Her husky chuckle mocked him. Ian sighed, as Hettie, at his side, wrapped the cow’s tongue in red, silk ribbon.
“I know patience isn’t your strong suit.” The old woman challenged him. “Nor trust. But if we’re to see this through...”
He bristled, but yielded with a heavy sigh. Running his hand through his hair, he swore. “Why do I feel that I’m going to need multitudes of both?”
