Page 52 of Triumph of the Wolf
“Okay, Mom.” I fought back a yawn at the thought of traipsing off into the woods. It was getting late, and my activities with Duncan had worn me out, but I wouldn’t admit that to her. Besides, if there was a chance the cave would help…
“We’ll go now.” Duncan nodded.
“Good.” Mom pointed toward the back door. “I look forward to hearing what you learn.”
A knock sounded at the front door, and Lorenzo leaned in. “Some of us are heading to Shoreline to see if we can pick up tracks at the apartment complex and find where the kidnappers took Jasmine.”
I wanted to ask them not to go, since a pack of werewolves roaming the premises might alarm the tenants, but maybe they would find something Bolin hadn’t been able to. It wasn’t as if he had a wolf’s nose, after all. “Just don’t let anyone eat my tenants, please.”
“Unless they taste like salami, that shouldn’t be a problem.” Lorenzo stepped aside to let someone else walk in. Rosaria, the wise wolf.
“I’ll take care of you while Lorenzo is gone, Umbra,” she said.
“I don’t need a caretaker. I can still walk and toilet myself.”
“I meant to say I’ll keep you company during this trying time,” Rosaria said.
Mom’s lips thinned again.
“She’s still a dreadful patient,” Rosaria told me, turning to close the door.
Before it shut, I could hear Emilio ask, “Did I hear someone promise there would be salami on the adventure?”
“That boy has a singular focus,” Mom murmured, then pointed Duncan and me toward the back door again.
“I guess that means she’s not going to offer us any cured meats to sustain us on the long journey to the cave,” I told him.
“Take the mushroom bar.” Mom’s lip curled.
“What about the caramel truffled one?”
“Absolutely not.” She removed it from the table and laid it in her lap.
As Duncan and I walked out the back door, the sounds of engines starting up wafted to us from the front. As many of the pack drove off, heading to my home in Shoreline, I felt I should be with them, not only to keep them from creating any chaos at Sylvan Serenity but because, if it turned out Abrams was behind everything, it was a problem that Duncan and I should handle.
Maybe he was thinking the same, because he gazed pensively back toward the driveway as we headed in the other direction.
“I hope they don’t find Lykos and object to him… existing,” Duncan said.
Ah, I hadn’t thought of that. Of course that would be a concern for Duncan. The kid had practically moved into the woods out back. My family would sense that Lykos was powerful, with old-world blood, but they might not realize that he was Duncan’s clone brother. What non-sci-fi-reading werewolf would guess that? And if Lykos started talking about laying traps and assassinations… the pack might deem him a threat, someone who should be dealt with.
I stopped walking. “Do you want to go back and warn him to beat it?”
“I—” The medallion around Duncan’s neck flared with golden light, bathing his face with it.
Mine responded by brightening as well, the magic it could emanate growing strong, warming my flesh through my clothes.
“I think your mother isn’t the only one who wants us to visit that cave,” Duncan said.
“Apparently.”
“Lykos is good at hiding. I think he’ll be all right for a few hours.” Duncan nodded with determination, clasped my hand, and we walked side-by-side into the night.
17
The first timewe’d visited the cave in the gully at the back of Mom’s property, she’d given us a map, and we’d stumbled our way to it, navigating past rough terrain, magical mushrooms in nooks, and raccoons and other critters with glowing red eyes. This time, the medallion around my neck drew me straight toward our destination, the magic almost insistent that we maintain a quick pace without pauses or detours.
The artifacts were manipulating us, but what choice did we have? It was what Mom wanted too. Besides, it was just a cave with a magical pool and paintings inside. What was the worst that could happen?
