Pawn Among Wolves

PAWN AMONG WOLVES CH. 09-Pt2

That was why there were so many wolves in this town, Jasmine had once explained. The university sponsored a hydrogen-powered fleet of buses for the local routes, meaning that the wolves could use public transport and blend in more easily with their human counterparts while they furthered their education - both academic knowledge, and the practical understanding of humans which was a necessity for all higher-ranking wolves.

Gemma's eyes softened, a little happy, a little sad, as the beaming daisy whooshed past in the opposite direction. She owed the little flower a lot. Mac would never have moved here, moved in with her, become part of her life, if it weren't for these buses.

What a romantic matchmaker - a bus.

But she flinched away from focussing further on Mac. Since his all-too brief visit, the reports from the Mackeld Range had grown rapidly worse, his defences and counterattacks increasingly dangerous. His close-knit, dwindling force was ferociously fighting their beleaguered corner against the tidal wave of invaders, but until this afternoon, they had been slowly losing their lands, their homes and their hunting grounds. Yes, the Mackelds, the Aster, had regained what they had lost in one magnificent, reckless defiance, but the Tzo still outnumbered them two to one. And the Chinese wolves were now openly using the scent-masking drug. Mac, the Aster couldn't hold much longer, not without a way to counteract the stealth attacks.

And she hadn't found one. She was failing him.

It was then that her burning eyes noticed the new "Mac loves Gemma" scrawled in shaky letters and enclosed in a wonky love heart among the graffiti on the plastic-covered backing of the seat in front of her. She closed her suddenly damp eyes as a lump formed in her throat, heart surging in longing. Was she really such a creature of habit that he knew where she'd sit?

Wolf vandal.

Her lip wobbled. Dammit, it so wasn't his turn.

And dammit, she loved him too. She missed him.

The four of them were in the mall again at lunch time two days later, riding the escalator down to the lower floor, when she spotted the wolf waif for the second time.

The slender girl was seated, uncannily motionless, on one of the benches beside the fountain in the foyer. Her long, jean-clad legs were folded in front of her, heels tucked up on the seat, touching her buttocks, and her arms, lost in a loose, over-large orange jumper, were wrapped around her knees in a defensive pose. Her head rested on her kneecaps, tilted slightly to one side in weariness.

The young face was blank, eyes seeming slightly unfocussed, disengaged, as they drifted over the throng of laughing, passing faces.

Then blue, blue eyes met Gemma's where she stood in her own bubble of self-absorbed isolation, packed in the mass of stationary shoppers on the moving staircase. A spark of incredulous life shot into the lifeless blue, and the girl tilted her head to vertical, chin resting on her knees as her wondering eyes drank in Gemma's features. Those eyes - so like Anne's. The colour, the shape, but mostly the underlying drained, slightly dead look.

Abruptly, the now intent gaze moved on and flickered into panic when it lighted on the three wolves horsing around juggling purchases just in front of Gemma. In seconds, the waif was on her feet and had disappeared into the teeming crowd.

Gemma hesitated, then deliberately steered her friends past the bench where the girl had been sitting moments earlier, but the waif had vanished. And her wolf companions didn't so much as twitch. Definitely scent-masked.

Gemma's eyes lifted, pulled by that feeling of being watched, and she absorbed the intent, hungry look in the young face staring down at her as the Grey wolf girl rode the glass elevator up at the far side of the foyer.