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“Is it done?” she asked.
“It is.” Athelinda handed her the bloodied stake. “Put this on the pyre with her body. We’ll light it at sunset. Let it be known.”
“And what shall I tell the Colony?”
Athelinda wiped some of the blood from her face. “Tell them she died quietly in her sleep. Like the others.”
She walked briskly back through the hospital and pushed open the door, eager for the fresh bite of the winter air. Outside, she paused. A figure stood in the street, wrapped in furs, blond hair blowing in the wind. Michael.
Athelinda stared at her son. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I followed you.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to see…Merilyn is dead, isn’t she?”
She hesitated and then nodded. “Yes. We’ll light the pyre at sunset.”
“She never saw justice for her kin.”
Athelinda’s eyes flashed. “Don’t fucking lecture me, Michael. Not when you fraternize with the very humans you’d have me kill. Or is your plan to fuck them all to death?”
He glared at her. “Why did we come back here, if not for revenge?”
“Because this is our home. We belong here.”
He shook his head. “This will be our grave if we don’t do something.” He paused. “Some of the Colony want to take matters into their own hands. They won’t wait much longer.”
Athelinda clenched her fists. “Fucking idiots. They think I’m waiting because I’m afraid?”
“Why else?”
She walked up to him. She was barely half his height, but she still saw him flinch. “A storm is coming. It will cut off the town. No help. No reinforcements. They’ll be on their own. Scared, angry, vulnerable.”
“That’s when you plan to attack them.”
“No…that’s when I want them to attack us.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
She began to walk around him, circling. “Colonies are protected, Michael. By their own human laws. If we attack the town, we sign our own death warrant. But if they come for us, here…well, we have no choice but to defend ourselves. It’s our right. Morally and legally.”
She stopped and watched her son’s face as the realization sank in. But then he frowned. “What if they don’t attack? What if they’re too weak?”
Athelinda smiled. “Sometimes, the best way to make a wolf hungry…is to feed it.”
31
Tucker stood on the wooden decking of Dalton’s house. The still lake offered a dark, inverted image of trees and sky. In the distance, the mountains rose jaggedly, white tips disappearing into clouds. The snow had eased momentarily, but the wind still cut like a million icy knives.
“Guess blood money can buy you a mighty nice view.”
Barbara nodded. “Although it helps if you’re alive to enjoy it.”
She turned, unlocked the patio doors and slid one open. The living room looked the same as when she had left it, as far as she could tell. They stepped inside. Tucker started to move forward, and Barbara put out a hand to stop him.
