Dawn Reclaimed

The wolf picked up the strong stink of chemicals in the lobby and followed the smell. Glass confused the wolf worst of all. He could see outside. But, couldn't get out. Pacing nervously, his fur bristling in frustration, he stalked the lobby.

Patrick and Marcus studied the alarm system. Should be easy enough to disarm. The control panel was to the side of the doors. After a few snips with a pair wire cutters, Marcus had the alarm system disarmed. He jimmied the lock and stuck his head, scanning the streets for signs of life. The city was quiet at this hour. Rain fell in cold torrents from the sky into puddles on the ground.

The wolf followed the trail, whining when it came to the entrance of the alley. The female's blood and the scent of death perfumed the air. The scent was weak. Almost washed away by the rain. The concrete stung his paws as he scrabbled to find the trail again. Tracking the scent, he bolted for the street. He didn't know about traffic. Didn't know the danger of cars and trucks. His human shouted in the back of his mind. Something struck him hard, throwing him to the side.

Patrick snatched the wolf and pulled it out of the way just in time. The wolf had narrowly escaped getting hit by a truck. He and the wolf landed on the sidewalk with a hard thud. "Buddy, you have to be careful. You aren't in the woods." He released the wolf and looked for signs of injury as the wolf scrabbled onto his feet. The wolf shook it off, buried his nose to the ground and maybe, a bit more cautiously this time, followed the trail.

Patrick had a deep suspicion where the wolf was going to lead him. But, he followed and hoped he was wrong. The wolf stopped and the trail ended at the train platform. There was no doubt in his mind, now. The man he'd spent the day following and lost in the crowd was the killer. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Patrick had let him get away! At least, he had a face. And soon enough, once Toby hacked into the right databases. They'd have a name and possibly, an address, a background bio. Something that would lead them straight to him and they could pick him up nice and quietly.

Marcus, Sam, and the wolf stood out of the downpour, beneath the platform's protective awning. Watching him pace and curse himself for his failure. He had enough deaths on his hands. They didn't know the half of his past. The brothers were very good at keeping secrets. And the secrets in his past were the worst kind. He'd violated the law. He'd killed. Innocence or guilt didn't matter. The pardon he'd received for his crime was for shit. Nikki's blood was on his hands. She died because of him...to save him. He never forgot. He couldn't. He owed her his life. And because of her sacrifice, her life for his, he tried to be worthy. He stood in the rain, letting the deluge soak him to the bone. He shivered. His failure mocked her memory and flew the bird at the parts of himself he believed to be good and true. He was nothing, just a fuck up in a world full of them. And every time he closed his eyes, he saw the face of his greatest failure. That he'd accepted her sacrifice. That he got to live because she was willing to die in his place.

The wolf knew nothing about emotions. The wolf didn't operate that way. He knew scents. And through the rain, he picked up the change in the air. Regret...his human supplied the word, identifying the scent behind the emotion. His human knew regret. Understood it. The wolf hopped off the train platform and padded across the muddy ground to sit at Patrick's side. People showed parts of themselves to animals they'd never show to other people. And when Patrick stretched out his fingers and wrapped them around the wolf's neck, digging them deep into his scruff and working them into the thickness of his fur. He did not snap at him. He did not shrink away at the contact. He sat and he allowed the rain and the touch to wash away the acrid scent of the emotion.

Patrick withdrew his hand from the wolf's neck. This wasn't the wolf allowing the touch. It was Grant inside of the wolf that allowed it. He smiled as the wolf/Grant head butted his hand with that big, dinner plate sized head of his. Grant would know a thing or two about regret. In that, the two of them were kindred spirits. Damaged. Not quite whole but doing their best to pretend that they were.

Dawn was close to rising. It'd be a little hard to explain the wolf to the early morning commuters. And they were miles away from where Grant had shed his clothes. A naked man walking in the middle of the street in broad daylight might be harder to explain and more shocking than the sight of a wolf in downtown. He reached for his cell phone and dialed Dane for a pickup. "Let's go home."

The wolf followed Patrick to the platform. Shaking the rainwater from his fur, he stretched out on his belly and rested his nose between his front paws. Home was a place for him the vampires could not begin to fathom. And he was ready to get back to it. He surrendered his hold over his shared body and let the magic take him there.

Grant was never sure what to make of the spirit world. Juggling between one version of reality and the next was a delicate thing. He was always filled with wonder and with an overwhelming sense of peace at the beauty and perfection of this place. The in between land where it was never too cold, never too hot, and the sun always shone. Spirits drifted on their way from one world to the next. Some had lingered, lost in the spirit land between their old life and the next. They were not ghosts, not in the way humans thought of ghosts, anyway. They were just...stuck between here and there. And it was the Pack's job to make sure they didn't slip through the barrier separating the human plane from this one.

He crouched on the rocks lining the shore of the Great River. Cupping his hands, he drank the cool water. It was simple, really. Souls crossed the River and went to the place beyond, returning to the source of life, where they'd come from. To. From. Easy. Not, really, he supposed, for some. He understood the ones Kokumthena, the goddess, had to gently coax into believing they were dead to get them to cross. Death wasn't an easy thing to accept. Not when life kept on for the living and left you behind as if you'd never been part of it at all.

The ones he didn't get were the ones who knew damn good and well they were dead and simply refused to cross. Time had no meaning in this place of ethereal perfection and peace. He could wander here for a minute, an hour, a month, a year, hell, even a century and it would always be exactly the same. As for what was across that river, waiting on the other side, he couldn't say for sure. Family, he supposed. Souls long since crossed over. It wasn't scary to him though. And he was certain that when his time came to stand on these shores one last time. He was going across to whatever waited for him on the other side.

He wiped the water dribbling down his chin with the back of his hand. The soul had been there for a while now. Not, that he knew it though. He waded in the middle of the shallow river, stuck between lives. Not going, not coming. Just frozen in a state of suspended animation. The soul, surprisingly enough, was a Son. Maybe, mortality was harder to accept for an immortal? Grant didn't know. The Brother was waiting for something or someone. Watching from the other side as life marched bravely forward without him.

Grant's wolf had chased him back from the barrier too many times to count. The soul was one of those stubborn ones that kept testing the boundaries between worlds. The soul knew he was dead. Knew how he'd died. And although it was an awful death, at least, it'd been a quick one. Grant didn't talk to the dead. They asked too many questions. Demanded too many answers he didn't have. Mainly stuff about the people they'd left behind. The spirits didn't get it. Sooner or later, everyone living died and came to this place and when they did they could answer the lingering questions of the dead for themselves. He just wished the guy would quit hanging on and cross the river. Move to whatever peace awaited him on the other side and let go.

He saw what his wolf saw through the wolf's eyes. He did what he could to help his spirit wolf in the physical world. A world so strange and foreign to the wolf, the wolf sometimes could not navigate it. Grant added names to things the wolf saw. Things like stairs and doors, the words for the scents the wolf smelled. He coached the wolf through dangers. He had more control at times than at other times. Just as sometimes, when he was in human form, the wolf guided and coached, sometimes controlling him to a degree. They were two separate entities sharing the same space. Yet, neither one of them could function completely independently of the other. Symbiosis, he guessed, was the best description for the unique relationship.

Moving from the spirit world into the physical world was not necessarily a pleasant or smooth transition. Grant felt the pull of the mortal plane dragging him down through the invisible cord that attached him to his body. He fell back into his flesh and bone body with a snap.

Grant shivered and blinked in confusion, cold and naked, sprawled out on a hard, concrete surface. He forced his aching body into a sitting position and pulled his knees to his chest for a bit of warmth and modesty. He had no idea where he was. Just that it was cold and he was wet. And the vampires, a safe distance away, were staring at him.

"Aw shit," Patrick said. Grant was drenched from head to toe. Shivering so violently his teeth chattered. Yeah, going from a pelt of warm fur to bare-assed naked would be a bit chilly. He shimmied out of his leather jacket and draped it over Grant's shoulders. "Damn, Dane will be here in a minute. I didn't expect you to ...pop out so early."

"I'm ok," Grant rasped. He pulled the jacket tightly around his shoulders. Patrick was smaller built than he. The jacket didn't fully cover him or block out the chill. "Thanks." He muttered to Marcus, who had likewise surrendered his jacket for the cause. Sometimes, he missed the heat of the Nevada desert. It was May. Wasn't it supposed to be at least a little bit warm here? The cold seemed relentless, reluctant to release its hold on the Midwest and let summer take its place. With the rain, the damp chill in the air settled deep into his bones. "Damn, doesn't it ever get warm here?"

"Must be a bitch waking up naked all the time," Patrick teased. Warm? It was warm. Springtime in the Midwest at its finest. In July and August, Grant wouldn't be complaining about being cold. Summers here were miserable, either humid and hot, like the tropics, or dry and arid as the desert. Depending on what Mother Nature in her fickleness decided on any particular given day. He breathed a sigh of relief as the headlights of Dane's SUV rounded the corner.

"You don't know the half of it," Grant mumbled. Waking up naked was a bitch. Waking up cold, wet, and someplace unfamiliar, sucked. He leaned heavily on Patrick as the SUV slowed to a stop and Dane climbed out to open the back door for them. Grant was grateful for the heated leather seats and the warmth of the heater striking him in the face as he climbed in and wrapped up in the blankets piled in the seat.

Chapter 34

Claire awoke to the sound of raindrops spattering against the windowpane. Summer was losing its battle to springtime. May weather was fickle. Sometimes warm and sometimes cold, and just as the forecast had predicted, the sky was cloudy and bleak. The rain was dismal and dampened her spirits. She showered and dressed for work, going about her daily routine with no enthusiasm what so ever. No matter how she tried to get it together. She couldn't muster her usual pep and zeal. Her shoulders drooped as she headed out for work.

Grant loved her. He said so. Didn't that make it true enough? Real enough to believe? He had family business keeping him out of town. It happened. Maybe, it was just the rain getting her down. Causing her emotions to tilt into the gloomy and depressed. Too bad, she couldn't curl up under the covers and sleep through her pity party. Today, the unknown future seemed too big to tackle. But, what choice did she have. Grant could not become the sole focus of her thoughts. She wouldn't let him. Claire took a deep breath and started the engine. She had a five-minute drive to pull her shit together. The 'woe is me' Eeyoring it through the day because Grant wasn't here holding her hand wasn't going to cut it. She had a job to do.

Thomas woke before the alarm went off. He bounced out of bed, feeling elated and almost jovial about the morning. Attempting to sing in the shower and not doing a very good job of it, he scrubbed down, rinsed, and lathered up again. Nothing was going to wreck his good mood today. Not even the rain. Not even Claire. He dried off and took a few extra minutes to shave and manscape his chest and the hairs a little south of the border. Whistling, he pulled on his scrubs, itching at the scratchiness of his mom's starch job. The woman was always trying to keep him neat and presentable. And for once, he wasn't even annoyed by it.

He parked in his usual spot and flipped open his umbrella. The ER would be busy today. Nothing brought in a crowd of sniffles and coughs like a cold, rainy, day. Looking across the parking lot, he spotted Claire scrambling out of her yellow Mustang. It was hard to miss a car like hers on such a gray, rainy morning. He walked to the curb and dutifully waited for her to catch up with him. Snickering as she dodged fat raindrops and bolted for the shelter of his umbrella. "Morning, sunshine."

"Hi." Claire heaved a sigh as she stepped under the shelter of Thomas's bright red umbrella. She was grateful for a break from the rivulets of cold rain drizzling down the back of her neck. She'd skipped breakfast. Her stomach had been pitching and rolling, totally out of kilter since getting out of bed. She kidded herself. Passed it off as the flu. But, she knew what was wrong with her. She was experiencing her first bout of morning sickness.

Thomas slid into doctor mode and out of friend mode. Claire had dark circles under her eyes and her skin was chalky white. Her pink lips were usually turned up in a little smile. But today, the corners were down in a frown. "You feeling alright?"

Claire avoided the concerned look in his eyes. "Its nothing, just the weather," she answered dismissively. "Once I get moving. I'll be fine."

"Have you made a doctor's appointment yet? I know some fine OB docs," he said. Thomas didn't buy Claire's excuses about the weather. And the doctor in him couldn't help but be intrusive. He knew a sick person when he saw one.

"The doctor won't even see me until I'm twelve weeks along or better. Don't worry. I've got it under control. Really, I'm fine." Claire shrank under Thomas's scrutiny. She wasn't fine. But, if Thomas thought she was truly sick, he'd go straight to her manager and get her sent home for the rest of the day. After he'd poked and prodded on her to his satisfaction, of course. She was not in the mood to be a patient today. She just wanted to clock in and start her shift.

Thomas slowed and lowered his umbrella as they reached the canopy over the hospital's entrance. "You know what to do if you need me. And don't forget, that lunch invite is still open."

"I know." Claire forced a smile. "Thanks." She parted company with Thomas. Heading for the elevator as he turned to walk down the corridor to the ER, she leaned against the wall. Breathing in and out through her mouth, gulping the saliva collecting in the back of her throat as another wave of nausea hit her. The elevator ride up didn't help one bit. By the time the doors opened to her floor, she was sprinting for the break room.

She pushed her way into a bathroom stall and knelt over the toilet. Her empty stomach wretched and heaved. She spit the foulness of green bile into the bowl and moaned softly to herself. Someone had come into the break room. She tried to be quiet about her throwing up. Some people, even the best nurses, couldn't handle the sound of someone puking their guts up. The sound of a water tap being turned on and the splash of water against the porcelain sink had her swallowing harder to keep the nausea at bay. Behind her, she heard the squeak of rubber soled tennis shoes against tile and someone handed her a cold washcloth.

"Girl, there's one of three things wrong with you. Either you're hung over. You've got the flu. Or you're pregnant," Ginger said. Leaning against the beige stall, she pressed a wet cloth to the back of Claire's neck. When she'd told Claire to have a good time on her vacation, she hadn't meant for her to have that good of a time. Claire's skin was sweaty but not feverish. She knew Claire didn't drink. So, she had a pretty good idea of what was wrong with her.

She popped her gum, her mouth forming into a little crimson 'O' of realization as Claire confirmed her suspicions with a baleful almost pleading expression. Ginger shooed out a nurse who had come in to use the neighboring stall with a wave of her hand and then called her back in. "Go get me a seven-up and some crackers," she barked.

Claire sipped timidly on the bubbly soda and nibbled a cracker. The cat was out of the bag. And instead of being judgmental, Ginger handled her with kindness. Holding the can of seven-up and doling out crackers until slowly, Claire's churning stomach began to calm. Sharing the news with her best friend wasn't as bad as she'd imagined. Ginger was curious. The whole of Claire's world would be curious about who the papa was. But, Ginger had the tact not to ask.

Ginger did the math in her head. If Claire was having morning sickness, she must have gotten pregnant around the time she went on vacation. Ginger almost snickered aloud. That was one piece of advice she should have kept to herself. The first and only time Claire had ever listened to her. She'd told the girl to get some while she was on vacation. And she had. And, she'd gotten pregnant. OOPS. Bad Mama Ginger, perhaps she should have added the obvious, and given Claire the same speech that she'd recited to her daughters at least a thousand times. "Is the good Doctor Sterling the father?" Ginger asked gently. If so, she'd run and fetch him to take care of Claire. If he put the bun in the oven, he should be there to tend to it as it baked.

"Thomas? God, no." Claire forced down another bite and took a sip from the straw. She knew her luck wouldn't hold out forever. Ginger was just too inquisitive and too damn curious to keep her mouth shut for long.

"Well?" Ginger said, giving Claire a gesture to spill it.

Claire wasn't ready to tell all. Not yet. Not when she wasn't sure herself what was going on between Grant and her. "I'm feeling better. I've gotta get to work." She pushed off the tacky vinyl upholstered couch rescued from 1974 and stood. She wiped her face with the cool washcloth and tossed it into the linen bin. "Please, don't tell anyone, yet. You and Thomas are the only two people who know, besides the daddy."

"But, Thomas isn't the father."

Claire shook her head. No, Thomas wasn't the father. It wouldn't be any easier for her if he were. He'd offered to take Grant's place. While that was a sweet, self-sacrificing thing for him to do, and maybe, they would grow to love each other in time, it wasn't his job to take care of her. Ginger made a gesture, pantomiming zipping her lips shut. "Thanks, Ginger."

"Anytime. You know that, girlfriend. And I mean, anytime." She followed Claire out of the break room. Gently, grabbing her arm to stop her, Ginger said, "You know, I'm good at keeping secrets. If you ever need to talk, I'm here."