The Worst Werewolf Page 9

  Worse, Garvey did not plot. Garvey just did things. He was the quintessential id-driven monster of lore, running about chasing people in a mad frenzy. Very unwolf. Very False Moon.

  “Yes, our brothers and sisters will be displeased, no doubt,” Lavario replied. “I imagine they will believe I am weak because I lost something to my bastard’s nonsense.”

  “They will challenge you, Father.”

  He raised an eyebrow at that. “And they will lose.”

  “Mazgan—”

  “Would lose.”

  “Challenge him,” she pressed him.

  “I will never be the leader of the Varcolac, my daughter.”

  “But if you win by force—”

  “Then I will spend the rest of my life ruling through force.” Lavario looked to his Kijo, who was so sure her packmates would accept him if he won power in their version of a legitimate fight. “I would rather have sex with some pretty men and women and enjoy my gardens.”

  Her black eyes compressed so hard Lavario thought they might turn to diamonds. “Your Boo Hag frills are costly. We have both paid for them.”

  Yes, that was true.

  Rebellion was a rite of passage and expected. Unwillingness to do so could be misconstrued as weakness, often resulting in more challenges for power from submissives, which meant more chances to be marked or killed. Kijo had suffered a lot in her 200th year when she failed to bare her teeth to Lavario, her Boo Hag father.

  She defeated them all, even killing one who had dared to call her by her human name. Jun. Kijo ripped the wolf’s head off and drank his blood as she would a human’s. Subsequent challenges stopped. She was strong, his Kijo. Smart, fierce, ambitious, perceptive—a true guardian, one of birth. She was not the type you ever had to sternly tell, This is not a joke. She almost never laughed. Her face was a canvas of haughty scorn, quick calculation. Pure Varcolac.

  And a fierce opponent.

  “Will you fight me?” He had asked the question before and almost always the answer was a playful nip at his chin and her saying, There, you have been challenged, Father. This time he dreaded the answer.

  She ignored the question. “We can act as though this was planned. You did not lose Tovin. You took Eresna’s bloodservant.”

  Lavario looked at Not-Tovin, now the emblem of his humiliation. Soigne, talented, educated—a beautiful human, as fine as any Lavario had ever fed from, a companion who was no doubt fit for a guardian as powerful as Eresna or Lavario himself. What a petty thing to lose his power over. Stupid, stupid thing. “Mazgan will not allow that.”

  “They need to know you’re no Boo Hag, Father. I need to know it.”

  “I am no longer Isangelous. They have made that clear.”

  She gave him a deep, dissatisfied growl. “Then do not sit there and let it end this way between us. Do something.”

  Lavario was her personality flaw. Powerful wolves fell to such things by either failing to acknowledge or address the issue. It was one of the first lessons he ever taught her when she was his little Jun—before Kijo, before politics, before the Varcolac.

  Lavario fought back the urge to remind her of the girl she once was, his little moon, some bedraggled waif left to die because her human father wanted a boy. She had not done very well for herself in the forest that night. Her crying was incessant, and she asked the advice of the stuffed bear she had been dumped with, as if it could tell her where to find food, warmth, comfort, and love. Not as practical back then.

  Newly exiled, he intended to kill her, to clamp his jaws over her throat and drink her blood in the type of callous fashion his new Varcolac peers would find acceptable. When he approached her, she looked up at him with such fearless black eyes and her gaunt arms reached out to him. Gǒu, she called him, despite the fact he stood over eight feet tall and had his face fixed in a snarl.

  Instead of killing her, he licked her face—taking all her snot, her tears, her pain into himself. When she came back to the camp with him, her fist curled around his tail, his brothers and sisters made several challenges. He beat them all. She continued to sleep curled against his chest, the stuffed bear cupped under her chin, for seven more years until she was old enough to insist on her own fine bedding and other vanities.

  Kijo was born soon after.

  The stray in tattered rags morphed into a petite young woman who wanted nothing but the finest silk dresses. One night, his little lady in silk brought her human father into the pack’s camp. There was a welt on the side of his head where she struck him with a broom.

  Feed from him, she told Lavario.

  That night, he did something he rarely did and refused her, fearing that she would ask it of him only to regret it later. Child, this is your father.

  Jun took out a knife, cut the man’s throat open, and drank his blood herself. When she was done vomiting it back up, she turned to him and said You will now call me Kijo. I am your daughter.

  He obeyed her that time. She became his second legitimate offspring to survive the test and be confirmed wolf.

  A waif in rags, a lady in silk, a werewolf guardian who conformed her dress to the standards of her pack. Now everything she wore was a rebuke to beauty. She kept her glossy black hair tightly bound and wore shapeless clothes that made her some frumpy khaki-clad warrior. Lavario loved all incarnations equally but for different reasons. She had been his moon for so long that he did not want her to become just another object in space drifting away from him.

  More, he did not want her to challenge him. Kijo did little halfway. To truly separate herself from him—from him and his rule breaking, from him and his Boo Haggishness, from him and his humiliation—she would have to kill him. Simply marking him wouldn’t be enough to assure her brothers and sisters she was no longer his ally.

  For him to win meant killing her. She would not lie down, even when beaten, Lavario knew. He disliked both outcomes. He did not want to die, certainly. And no father wants to feel life drain from his child. Yet a challenge seemed forthcoming. Lavario could feel it building within her, gathering its momentum as her own excuses for continuing to allow him to be her burden ran their course.

  Excuses ended. Then so would they.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: LAST OF THE GOOD TIMES

  Kijo granted Lavario a generous amount of time to consider where he went wrong. Silence between them was usually as familiar as it was binding. Now it was wearisome. Lavario ran himself in exhaustive circles trying to piece together what each minuscule variation in her expression meant. He’d have better luck using the entrails of a chicken to divine the weather than he would interpreting his daughter’s mood.

  The only thing keeping him company was his empath’s burden.

  Even sleeping threads of the bloodservant’s thoughts found their way to Lavario. Images of family, friends—happy times of barbeques on the lawn and fireworks. It felt as though he were there, that it was him telling puckish kids to stop chasing their younger siblings with spitting, hissing sparkler flames.

  Minor details of the bloodservant’s life bedeviled Lavario, too. An endless collection of unpaid bills, dental worries, and traffic jams. Sorting through the clutter to find his way back to the current situation proved much more difficult while also under the onslaught of Kijo’s quiet, overhanging rage.

  Lavario fought the urge to kill the bloodservant, ending at least some of his torment.

  But losing control would not help his situation. Lavario taught Kijo that only weak wolves frenzied; strong wolves were deliberate, spoke softly but meant every word said. Allowing himself a fit of temper would only make him appear powerless in her eyes. Plus, Lavario thought, I’d be out several meals.

  “I would have killed Jun.” Kijo broke the silence with the odd confession.

  Lavario didn’t quite know where she was going, but he was at least relieved to be talking about something other than his bloodservant disaster. “Yes, most certainly.”

  “Why did you save her?”

  �
�I love her.”

  She made a face. “Jun was not worthy of love.”

  “Worthiness was never a consideration. Kijo and Jun are the same to me. You make a distinction. I surrender to your right to do so.”

  For a moment, it seemed she would strike him. Her top lip subducted beneath her lower, a pressure formed there as the jutting soft flesh of her beloved mouth trembled. “I live as I do today because you are a sap. A fool.” Orey-eyed, she turned to face him, looking over the lines of his features scanning for a sign of denial.

  She needed him to argue, to reassure her that she was not a stupid thing, a product of statistical probabilities that had worked in her favor. Truthfully, Lavario created many children after Garvey. The Varcolac turned most human bloodservants as a matter of courtesy at the end, allowing them at least some chance at immorality. Most died during the test, usually in the first few minutes, unworthy as they were. Unlike the rest of the Varcolac, Lavario looked back on his failed children with fondness, even love and regret.

  “Yes,” he said at last, “you are here because I am weak. A Varcolac would have killed Jun as you say. What have you told yourself all these years? That Jun was different from Garvey? From Tovin? Nonsense, Kijo. You are no pup, and I never lied.”

  What story had she told herself? Lavario did not know. It’s not something he ever bothered to ask since it always worked in his favor. Denial has its own type of inertia. Immortals were no different in that. New wolves believed that everything would change for them once they were turned. They would be better versions of themselves somehow. In practice, it was the old self with added hair, fangs, claws. Very rarely was it transformative beyond that. His daughter was no exception. She lived both lives in a state of repression.

  Trying to lighten the mood, Lavario jested, “Perhaps I can get myself exiled again. Live as a Moondog.”

  She shook her head, considering as if he’d been serious. “Mazgan will not allow it. This was planned. He said I would understand the depth of your weakness after tonight, that I would understand how foolish you look and how foolish I am through association. He wants you dead. He wants all guardians who were born to their post dead.”

  “All?” He looked at his daughter pointedly.

  She snorted. “Not me. He loves me.”

  Mazgan’s affections for Kijo were unrequited and hilarious. Even Kijo, who laughed as often as the moon was blue, chuckled.

  She sobered up quickly. “He is right. I cannot keep power for much longer, Father.”

  Lavario reminded her that this mistake was not remarkably different from any of his others. He had found, screwed, and even loved humans for centuries now. It was one thing that never got old.

  As if sensing his thoughts, she explained, “It is not only this situation. Each time you blunder, your mistakes are added to the others. The pack cannot think of one without thinking on them all until it’s a totality of errors. What Alpha Guardian Mazgan said holds true. I look weak through you. I’m a child born of your folly who lives in your folly.” She stopped, trying to take control of her face, which was swelling with emotion. “I love you despite it.”

  “What will you do?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Scenery blurred by, slowing down when he focused for a few moments. Her hands drifted, rising and falling like little white petals caught in a breeze. She couldn’t pace as she thought through her options, but she couldn’t hold still, either. He was sure she was fighting with herself. She certainly talked to herself the way she always did when confronted with a problem.

  She gave him the briefest of smiles. “Maybe we can both be Moondogs.”

  Lavario laughed at the notion.

  “Yes,” she said, “that was the conclusion I came to.”

  Once again, he saw his jaws around her throat, hers around his. It made him shudder.

  She must have seen the same thing. Normally stoic, his Kijo was on the verge of tears, something he hadn’t seen since her human days. She tried to hide it under anger, resentment, but Lavario knew what he saw.

  He placed his hand over hers. “Kijo…”

  She let herself be comforted by his touch before jerking away. “Do something,” she told him again, a slight, almost undetectable break in her voice.

  “By something you mean kill Mazgan, yes?”

  Kijo confirmed. Comfortable, once again logically detached, she reasoned, “Between the two of us, you are the one in the position to do so right now. My challenge would be considered fence jumping until I beat you.”

  “Lest we forget the rules,” Lavario rolled his eyes at the absurdity of the process. The Varcolac existed because of Mazgan’s brashness, his willingness to attack political opponents for power. His ascension was nothing but a long series of jumped fences. Pointing out the hypocrisy could wait. “I didn’t survive ten thousand years to terrorize submissives while wearing uncomfortable pants. The pack does not accept me, daughter. They love you. Lead them.”

  “And if I could bring them to your side?”

  “You would require one hell of a rolled-up newspaper.”

  Humor was inappropriate. Always. But especially now. If possible, her eyes became harder, less forgiving.

  He flipped his hand up in the air, yielding to her strange optimism. “Very well, prove me wrong.”

  “Hand me your bloodservant’s wallet,” she commanded him.

  Lavario did as she instructed.

  Her brow furrowed as she looked through the pictures. Kijo mused, “Good, he has kids. I worried it would not be the case.”

  There were several pictures of the man’s family inside the wallet. His wife was equally beautiful, as were his three children. Two daughters, one looked like she was in her twenties and the other in her late teens, and a boy who was a pup. Full grown, he’d be a handsome fellow.

  He already had his father’s sharp features and hazel eyes. In family pictures, he was little bits of flesh peeping out of massive coats, caps, and sports jerseys. For professional portraits, they had him dressed as a little man in bow ties and sweater vests, his delicate little hands clinging to a violin as he grinned the grin of a child who has not yet mastered artifice well enough to know that the expression made him look half-crazed.

  “Delightful. My bloodservant loves his family at least.”

  “They are mostly of the boy. He must love the boy.”

  Lavario noticed a dearth of pictures when it came to the two girls and their mother. The bloodservant’s son was front and center, it was true. It made sense that his Kijo would see it. Few wolves could hold a grudge the way she did. Most forgot petty slights from the past and kept focused on the now and the future, but his daughter remembered every cut, every snub, and every injury. Her father was the first. Even after all the blood spilled from him, she visited his corpse in the woods where he remained unburied, rotting.

  It didn’t take too much imagination to see her visiting his body in the same way. Swallowing, Lavario focused on now. “What good does his family do us?” he asked her.

  Instead of answering him, Kijo hit the glass pane separating them from the driver, Dip. The gangly beast answered her, “Yes, Guardians?”

  “Park here,” Kijo ordered him.

  She was on the phone the moment she got out. Hours later, almost long enough for Lavario to worry about the bloodservant waking, she was back in the car. Her black eyes were glossy from her excitement. Whatever she’d arranged held promise.

  Lavario allowed himself some hope. “You have a plan, daughter?”

  “We’re going to contrive a story that will be good for us or good for me. Your choice.”

  Plotting and politicking were a team effort, not business either of them soloed. Accustomed as he was to their usual back and forth, it took him a while to realize he’d waited for her to disclose the entire scheme. His eyes fixated on hers with embarrassing neediness, desperate for her to act as though things were normal between them. Tarlike, her black pupils took him in and s
wallowed him whole.

  “Pack first, pack always,” she told him.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: DISTANCING HERSELF

  Lavario lost track of how much time they’d spent driving. All he knew was his long legs felt cramped and the animal inside him wanted out of its cage. His daughter appeared atypically serene. Instead of sitting upright the Varcolac way, she leaned her head against the cool window and watched the scenery. Indulging, Lavario thought, in the simple freedom of being herself away from all the expectations of her family.

  Lavario found himself remembering who his daughter was before Kijo came along and extirpated Jun. Serious, always. But also an introspective, freethinking young woman who was comfortable with ambiguity. Not anymore. Pack first, pack always, she said, so certain it was the right answer.

  Outside, the evergreen trees turned to quaking aspens. As they approached residential areas, there were more flowering crabapple trees and giant lilac bushes. Lavario’s stomach lurched. Whatever waited for him at the end of their journey wasn’t going to make his day any better. Already frustrated, he prepared himself to be furious. And sad.

  They turned down a secluded street. The houses got farther and farther apart.

  The long driveway leading to the traditional Cape Cod home was paved by affixing loose rocks to tar. During the summer months, heat would bring out a pungent odor, almost unbearable to a wolf’s sensitive nose. Mercifully, it was cold outside tonight. And wet. The constant drizzling rain and foggy haze rising from the road matched Lavario’s mood.

  The cheery homestead did not.

  Under normal circumstances, he would have appreciated its quiet, modest charm. There was very little embellishment on the home itself aside from wooden shutters with cutout hearts and a wrought iron rooster, rusted now, stuck between roof dormers. It turned in the wind, making an awful ruckus.