Page 70 of Relics of the Wolf

Uh, Drakon?

“It’s Duncan now. I’m not a monster.”

“A dragon isn’t a monster. When they visited this world, they were majestic and powerful. Such a namesake should never have been spurned.”

“Maybe I was spurning the one who gave it to me.”

I scratched my jaw, considering Duncan out of the corner of my eye. “Is this… the scientist you told me about?” I whispered.

“Yes. Lord Abrams.”

“He looks good for a guy who was charred to a crisp.”

The old man—Abrams—looked curiously between us. Surprised Duncan had told me about his past?

“Why do you want her?” Duncan asked coolly. He seemed to be addressing Abrams rather than Radomir, the person I would have guessed was in charge.

“Research,” Abrams said. “Answering the questions of the universe so that we may create solutions for the world.”

Well, that wasn’t vague.

As Duncan glared at Abrams, I scanned the room, hoping to spot the wolf case or my mom’s medallion. I could sense more magical items present—perhaps in the desk?—and there was no doubt these guys had something up their sleeves and believed they could beat us if we turned wolf and started a fight. I couldn’t help but feel that if the stolen artifacts were here, we might be able to come out on top and get them. Duncan hadn’t pulled out his grenades yet.

The boy was crouching in the corner, mostly hidden behind a filing cabinet, but he leaned out enough to reveal curious brown eyes. The mother in me gawked in horror, thinking of my sons when they’d been that age. In the lair of villains was the last place I would have wanted them, especially when a battle might break out. The men had to expect Duncan and me to fight, didn’t they?

“Nobody here has been able to activate the amulet.” Radomir glanced at the boy, then opened a drawer in his desk. “From what my men told me… men who are now dead…” Annoyance flickered in his blue eyes, as ifhewasn’t the one who’d started all this. “This amulet glowed, hinting of the power that can be commanded, when the old woman touched it.”

“My mother?” I scowled at him for describing her as an old woman.

“I thought she might be,” Radomir said softly, watching me, as if I’d already given something away. “Come forward, girl.”

He laid Mom’s medallion on his desk, still in its black velvet-covered box, and opened the lid. Unfortunately, it didn’t zap him halfway across the room for his presumptuousness. He pushed the box across the desk toward me, an invitation.

“What else have you got in there?” I nodded to the desk, hoping he had the wolf case too.

Radomir leaned back in his chair and started to fold his arms over his chest, but he paused and touched his chin thoughtfully. “Will you touch anything I draw out?”

“Not if you’ve got venomous snakes in there.”

He smiled, the gesture not reaching his eyes. “I keep those elsewhere.”

Thinking of the weird vats and equipment in the laboratory, I muttered, “I’ll bet.”

“You think she might rouse the embedded sentiences in the other artifacts?” Abrams asked.

“She might. If her blood is as special as you think.”

My blood? Other than having had powerful werewolves for parents, there wasn’t anything unique about my blood.

“She is from an old line, perhaps one of the originals, the first werewolves created long ago by the very visiting dragons that we spoke of,” Abrams said. “Despite the dilution of many, many generations, the magic flows strong through her veins. She is not some inferior spawn of a bite.”

“I didn’t come here to learn about my lineage,” I said, though, another time, I would have found the information interesting. “But to take back what you stole from my mother. And my intern.”

Radomir grunted but delved into the drawer again. He withdrew the wolf-lidded case. “This did not belong to that boyoryou. Or the mortal human who acquired it in recent years. It was stolen from the castle of a vampire who held it for centuries. Of course, he was not the rightful owner either, but having had it for hundreds of years, most would consider it his.”

“The druids and werewolves who made it didn’t believe that, right?” I asked, curious about the true provenance of the case. The medallion I wanted to return to Mom, but, if I could get the case, I would feel obligated to find its proper owner. As I’d assumed, it didn’t sound like Chad had any right to it. But avampire? I’d heard stories that a few existed in the world, but I’d never encountered one.

“No,” Radomir said. “Their descendants would consider it theirs, most likely.”

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