Wild Abandon

Lisa knew she was home when the long year of quiet hunting she’d been existing in shattered into pandemonium.

The irony of calling the Fourth Ward of Charlotte, North Carolina pandemonium was not lost on Lisa, who originally hailed from a suburb wedged somewhere between Minneapolis and St. Paul, but there was a special sort of chaos that seemed to radiate from the historical districts of Charlotte that always managed to exceed Lisa’s expectations. Especially during the summer, when the sun was high and the tourists bred like rabbits and the streets were crowded by as many horse-drawn carriage tours as they were buses full of yet more tourists.

Besides, Lisa didn’t know what else she’d use to describe a bunch of transient werewolves living together in an English pub-styled bar and restaurant at the heart of a tourist town.

The place was empty of humans. Not surprising given that it was nine in the morning and there was no breakfast service. But there were seven or eight wolves sitting around one of the back tables where a spread of food was being dished out and generally fought over.

They all seemed to spot her at once, and for the breadth of a heartbeat, the familiar faces of Lisa’s family looked at her with deep suspicion.

“Uh, hello?” Disbelief coloured her voice as she waved. “Yeah, nice to see you losers, too.”

The wolves at the table relaxed visibly, and hands and voices lifted in greeting.

“Lisa Greyson, as I live and breathe! I heard a rumour you were on a hunt in Canada, girl! How’s it you found your way down to Charlotte?”

The speaker, tall, dark, and more beautiful than a sky full of stars, pushed herself up from the table and swayed her way over to Lisa with open arms.

“Rouge! At least someone around here is actually happy to see me.” Rouge was a lot taller than Lisa, and she ran on the thin and muscular side of things. Lisa, with her olive complexion, shorter stature, and softer curves, was pretty much the opposite of the woman.

But of the two of them, Rouge was more likely to whip an egg than she was to whip butt in a fight, and Lisa prided herself on being a lot more scrappy than she looked.

“Hunt got cut short,” she said. “Got a call from Wes asking me if I could make my way down.”

Rouge held Lisa at arm’s length. “Any luck?” and then she waved her hand. “Nevermind. Forget I asked. Let’s get you somethin’ to eat, huh?”

“Actually, if I could just get some coffee, I’d be set.”

“You betcha, honey. Lemme tell Wes you’re here.”

That was all the warning that Lisa had to brace before Rouge lifted her voice to heaven. “WESLEY! WEESSS! Get yourself down here! Lisa’s home!”

At the table behind her, a younger wolf around twelve or thirteen tipped his blond head back and a cream-coloured juvenile wolf howled, “Weeeesssleeeey!”

One of the adults nearby jabbed the boy in the ribs. “Will you quit that? We don’t need a dawn chorus.”

The child snickered and shoveled eggs into his mouth.

This was life at a Neutral Grounds. Call it noise, call it pandemonium, or call it home, but Lisa felt her insides warm and relax into its embrace.

“Here honey, here’s your coffee. Why don’t you sit. I’m sure after all of that, Wes’ll be down soon.” Rouge extended an arm toward the table in invitation.

“I’ve been in a car for fourteen hours. Honestly, I’m glad to stand.” Lisa swayed on the spot as if proving her point, and Rouge shrugged and leaned against the wall nearby.

“So anyone new?” Lisa asked, jutting her chin in the direction of the table. “Late sleepers, I mean?”

“No, no late sleepers. Just the usual. Suwannee’s finally starting to settle in, though I swear if that boy keeps howlin’ at the table like he did earlier, there’ll be an empty seat before long.” Rouge tossed a few heavily beaded braids over her shoulder. “To be honest with you, honey, since Oisin called us about those sleeper wolves they discovered in New Mexico, I don’t think anyone wants to go anywhere.”

“The huh?” Lisa paused, so close to her first sip of coffee that she could smell the caffeine, and yet so far away. “Sleeper who?”

Rouge was busy sipping her own. “The sleepers? The real reason some of the wolves out west have been acting like their insides have been scooped out. You know, girl, the ones being possessed by a vampire or whatever?”

Lisa shook her head. “Rouge, I’ve been mostly out of contact with the rest of the Grounds for nearly a year, and in a totally different country for the last three months. The only thing that almost makes sense out of what you’re saying is the words wolf and vampire. And I know you’re not telling me that somehow a vampire is literally possessing werewolves.”

Rouge shook her head and gestured. “Girl, that is exactly what I’m telling you! It’s been all over the Twilight’s Bark. Direct from Oisin. Wolves disappear, come back empty or hollowed out or whatever, and inside of them is some evil vampire just waiting to screw us all over so he can take out the world.”

Lisa snorted. “Rouge, have you been tasting the new shipments of wine again?”

“Lisa, you know I don’t be drinkin’ no wine. Get outta here.” She tossed her hand. “I’m not playing with you. I was in Wes’ office when Oisin called. He and Tessa. On the same line.” Rouge pointed at Lisa like the statement meant something.

To be fair, it did.

The Neutral Grounds was a network designed to offer safety and community to wolves. There were something like forty of them in the United States, but while some of those were restaurants like the one in Charlotte, or small dingy bars, many of them were simply small, hostel-like set ups designed for a wolf to pass through over a single night.

Oisin, an Irish wolf as erratic as he was grumpy, ran one of the largest Grounds, down in New Orleans. In fact, the old man had started the network as a way to cope with some personal tragedy that the other Grounds keepers and older wolves were always too cagey to talk about. Despite his age, his probable insanity, and the general sour outlook he had on the world, Oisin was the wolf that other wolves listened to.

Tessa was a lot younger than Oisin, but her Grounds in New Mexico was one of the only Grounds in North America that housed over two-dozen regulars instead of focusing on the transient population. Wes, the wolf who ran Charlotte, took his surname from Tessa, just as Lisa had taken her surname from Wes.

If the Oisin and Tessa were making noise about something, there was a good chance that it was something that needed making noise about.

But an evil vampire possessing werewolves?

Even in a world brimming with magic, that was a damn tall tale.

On the other hand, that moment of fear and suspicion when the others saw her would make a lot more sense if the wolves at the table couldn’t be sure that she was her.

“Much as I enjoy how my two favourite girls are immediately getting down to business, the front of house isn’t really the best place to be doing this.” A pair of stocky legs descended a dark stained staircase on the far side of the empty bar, followed by an equally solid torso before finally revealing itself to be Wes.

Wolves didn’t really have alphas. They joked about it, and sometimes among their own, they used the term ‘pack’ with a sense of bitter irony because there wasn’t a word that better described some of their living arrangements. But the truth was that the Grounds weren’t packs, and the hosts of the Neutral Grounds establishments were mostly glorified hotel managers.

The Grounds as a system worked because they were hubs of safety between other points of travel, and the wolves who ran those safe spaces might certainly hold more social sway than your average Joe, but as far as dominating, teeth gnashing, fur flying, unquestioned authority, you’d be more accurate applying the terms “packs” and “alphas” to the way that vampires behaved rather than wolves.

Wes, though? He gave off some pretty strong alpha male vibes that had absolutely nothing to do with his being a wolf.

He moved with the awareness of surroundings you’d expect from a trained soldier. His easy lope conveyed all of the confidence of a king, and his smile could charm the pants off of someone from three blocks down.

Not that Lisa liked thinking about that. The man had taken her under his wing when she’d been prepubescent, and the idea of him having carnal relations with anyone was about as off putting as imagining her biological parents doing the dirty.

Happy as Lisa was to see him, she was way more interested in the little bug that Rogue had planted in her brain than she was in warm and fuzzy hellos.

“Since this sounds like the reason why you called me back, you want to tell me where we can talk about it?”

Wes rolled his shoulders. “The office is probably best. You’re earlier than I was expecting.”

He didn’t wait for her, and Lisa and Rouge shared one last glance at each other over their coffees.

“He’s been tense,” Rouge said softly. “A lot’s happened since you’ve left, Lisa. A lot of it is hard to take in. Just promise me you’ll hear him out before you react.”

God, that wasn’t ominous at all.

What the hell have I missed?

She nodded to Rouge, nonetheless, and coffee in hand, she followed Wes up to his office.

The space was small, but cozy and well organized. It smelled of wood polish and electronics and of the dark wolf who eased into the chair behind the desk.

Eyes the colour of caramel drifted over Lisa as Wes steepled his fingers and pressed them to his lips.

“I’m glad to see you’re back,”

“Well, you called.” Lisa shrugged and smiled, wanting to lighten the mood that seemed to permeate what was usually a pleasant, relaxing space.

Wes’ expression didn’t change.

Lisa tried again, “You know, I figured that it would have to be something wild to get you to drag me back when I was so close to finding out what happened to Lacy. But I don’t think ‘evil vampire’ was something that even crossed my mind.”

She flopped herself into the chair that sat in front of Wes’ desk and slurped down her coffee. She half expected Wes to shake his head and complain about Rouge and her pension for hyperbole before telling her what was actually happening.

Instead, she was faced with a dark-faced wolf who stared at her with an odd level of forlorn regret.

“I wish that I could tell you anything else,” Wes said as he rocked back into his chair, opening his laptop and turning it to face her. “Can’t say that I’d use exactly the words Rouge used, but I can’t say she told you wrong.”

If that wasn’t a slap with a cold fish, Lisa didn’t know what was.

That is, until she looked at the pictures that were on Wes’ laptop.

The pictures weren’t a slap with a cold fish. They were the equivalent of trying to swallow a cold fish whole while it was still alive.

“Oh my god. Is this Tessa’s?”

Unlike Wes’s and Oisin’s Grounds, Tessa ran a campground and trailer park. Or at least she had. The pictures that Lisa clicked through showed nothing but scorched earth and husks of camper trailers.

“Yeah. Not long after you left to go on your hunt, Tessa’s place was attacked and a good portion of it went up in flames. She lost a number of trailers, and acres of the forest before the local authorities could control the blaze.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“The wolves there got off lightly.”

The statement did not answer her question, but as Lisa clicked through the images, she found she couldn’t bring herself to press for answers.

Anger and dread burned Lisa’s throat as she stared at the husk of a trailer she was certain she had once stayed in. “So you’re saying a vampire did this? And we haven’t declared war against the family responsible for that bastard why?”

Wes lifted a hand. “Lisa, I need you to hang up your boxing gloves for a minute and listen to what I’m tellin’ you, because if you go off half cocked, you’ll either start a war or get yourself killed.”

She bared her teeth as she sneered, “Better be one hell of a story if you don’t want me to tear the head off of every vampire I see from now on.”

“The only thing that you need to know right now is that this might be connected to Lacy.”

Hot anger turned into freezing fear and Lisa couldn’t bring herself to say anything except, “Go on.”

Wes took the computer, shuffled through several images to the body of a much less burned, but still very dead individual.

For one horrifying moment, she thought the remains he showed her were those of the wolf she had spent the last three months looking for. But the long hair was dark, not white blond.

The knot in Lisa’s stomach eased. “Who was it?”

“This was Hudson,” Wes said quietly, and as he said it, Lisa realized with relief that the dead wolf on the table was male. “He was like Lacy. One day, he just disappeared. Except unlike your sister, Hudson found his way back to a Grounds with the help of a few Grounds runners who recognized him. When he came back, he was wrong. Hollowed out.”

The knot was back before it even finished unraveling. Cold and tight, the sensation in Lisa’s belly settled into numbness.

Lacy’s face across the street. Empty, so empty. Eyes that recognized nothing. Her sister’s scent. But not her sister’s scent. So close and then gone again, like she had never been there.

“Leese?” Wes canted his head, behind his face was the shadow a wolf, one image overlaying the other for a moment that spanned a breath. A canid ear flicked in concern before Wes settled back into the shape of a man. “Still with me?”

Lisa rubbed her temple. “Yeah. So Hudson comes back hollow and what? Goes rambo on the place?”

Wes shook his head. “No. He lived quiet and hollow at Tess’ for years, being taken care of by a former partner, and then one day he meets a visiting witch and suddenly Hudson isn’t Hudson anymore. Suddenly, a bunch of vampires under the employment of the Midwest branch manager, Caleb Deseronto, fall on Tessa’s Grounds, light the place up like it’s the fourth of July, and try to kidnap the witch. And when it went wrong, Hudson’s body tossed itself into the blaze and all anyone left could do was wonder if it was too soon to mention hot dogs and barkbecue.”

Lisa winced. “C’mon, Wes, that’s not funny.”

“Baby girl, that’s my point.” Wesley rubbed his eyebrow and leaned an elbow against his desk. One half-glance at the picture on his computer, and he shook his head before shutting the whole thing down. “You know that I love you. You know that I love your sister. The pair of you lit up my world when you walked into it. You could have been twins for as inseparable as the two of you were: you as wild as a brush fire and Lace as sweet as a spring rain.”

He was still rubbing his eyebrow. Lisa was always surprised that particular eyebrow still grew hair. Any other day, she’d have teased him that he was thinning it out again, but today, all she could think was that he was telling her the last thing she ever wanted to hear.

“You don’t want me looking for Lacy anymore.”

“She’s been gone for a year, Leese. And I think it’s time that we consider she might be gone gone.”

“One whacked out wolf doesn’t mean--”

“It does.” Wes cut her off with a razor’s efficiency, the faintest trace of a growl in the words. “It does, Lisa. The last time you called up, you said you saw her, but that she was off. Distant. You said it was like she didn’t know you.” Wes put a hand on the laptop he closed. “Three week after this shit storm came down on Tessa, every hollow wolf who managed to find their way home to a Grounds picked itself up and walked away. And a few wolves that we thought were completely fine went with them. Do you understand what that means?”

Lisa didn’t want to understand, because understanding meant that she would have to accept what Wes was telling her was inevitably true about Lacy.

He didn’t wait for her to respond. “It means that every hollow wolf is being controlled by this Deseronto guy. More importantly, any wolf with an unexplainable gap between one Grounds and the next could very possibly be a wolf under Deseronto’s control and being used as a sleeper agent.

Now it was Lisa’s turn to scrub her face, but she brought both hands up to do so. “How is this happening? And why didn’t you tell me a year ago?”

“You’ve been pretty single minded, Lisa, and hard as hell to get into contact with. If it weren’t for the fact that you’ve been so dogged about Lacy’s disappearance, most of us would suspect you of being one of the sleepers.”

Lisa curled her lip at the idea. Wes raised his hand to stay her. “Getting news to you has been hard, Leese, but you’ve been pretty thorough about leaving a trail of information behind you for the rest of us to find. I…” he shook his head, his neat locs swaying with the motion, “I can’t vouch for Lacy, but I’ve vouched for you, so the other hosts of other Neutral Grounds know they can trust you.”

Lisa wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Whatever relief she thought she should feel was drowning in fear and uncertainty on behalf of the woman who, while not biologically related, was the first family she ever truly had.

There’s nothing to do about that, she thought. Put it aside and focus on what you can get involved in.

“How is Deseronto getting a hold of these wolves?” she asked. “And how is he actually managing to scoop out their souls and possessing them?”

Wes’ expression was bitter and uncomfortable. “We don’t know. Oisin’s got some friends of his working on figuring the finer details out down in New Orleans, but the truth is that I called you back here because we need a few solid enforcers who are going to be able to make some hard decisions on the fly for the safety of the Grounds and the rest of the wolves.”

There it was. The reason he’d called her all the way back to Charlotte instead of just calling her up over the phone.

If Lisa was close to finding Lacy, the last thing that she, or Wes for that matter, would want to do is make the woman who was like Lisa’s sister the first hollow wolf that Lisa had to put down.

And, of course, if Wes had been wrong about Lisa and somehow she had been compromised, Wes wouldn’t want to endanger the other Neutral Grounds by letting her roam free.

Her jaw worked, and she emitted a soft whine. She curled around her coffee cup when what she wanted to do was curl up in the chair and hide until the world had moved on.

A sister worse than dead felt like a cruel end to a long search, but it felt crueler still for that search to springboard an entirely new hunt before she could exhale and mourn.

“What if I run into her?”

“You chased her all the way to Canada, so I’m hoping you won’t. Honestly? I’m hoping that she’ll be someone else’s problem.”

Lisa wondered if it was cowardly to feel relief in that. Then she decided she didn’t care. She told herself that the safety of the rest of the wolves outweighed the poetic justice of being the hunter who put an end to her hollow sister.

“Which direction am I headed?”

Wes’ relief was expressed as a sigh. “We’re trying to send our enforcers to empty spaces between Grounds. Cities between cities that would be natural stopping points for a wolf travelling to a new place. We think these sorts of places are where Deseronto is picking these wolves up, and it’s to them that the hollow wolves will start flocking back.”

Lisa racked her brain. “So you want me to head to the Midwest?”

“A little closer to home. There’s a lot of empty space between Charlotte and Chicago. There should be a Grounds in Cincinnati, an old bar not too dissimilar to Oisin’s, though it drew an older crowd more interested in darts than clubbing.” He didn’t quite smile at her as he offered the description. “But, there hasn’t been anyone running it for a few decades. Unfortunately, the city is still a natural stopping point for wolves trying to get from New England down South, and wolves traveling East from Chicago, so it probably still gets a lot of traffic even though that Grounds is out of commission.”

Lisa snorted. “Any wolf who drives through Cincinnati is out of their mind, and it’s not because this Deseronto guy is aiming to kidnap them.”

Maybe there should have been a Grounds in the city, but when the wolf that ran the place retired, the other wolves moved out and the whole place became a deadzone for wolves and witches alike.

Which is exactly why Stanley Hunter had moved in and put a big red X over the entire city and marked it as his own.

“Stanley doesn’t even let other wolves pass through the city without getting bent out of shape, Wes, there’s no way that a bunch of hollowed out werewolves are going to move in and he’s going to be okay with it.”

“Unless this is a long running game and Stanley was stage one of Deseronto’s plan to get a hold of more wolves for his army.”

“Oh come on, no vampire is going to want to deal with Stanley for more than five minutes. That wolf is frickin’ impossible,”

“Actually, Stanley was supposedly an employee of the Lake family for years before he even entered a Neutral Ground for the first time,” Wes said. “The Lake vampires are a lot older than Deseronto, and more patient, but it wouldn’t be the first time that Stanley cast his lot in with the syndicate. Not to mention that since Deseronto’s a young vampire; he can afford to play the long game. Stanley has been a problem for this patch of America since Cincinnati collapsed. We know he spent a bit of time working at Oisin’s—”

Lisa snorted, and Wes ignored her. “Before Oisin’s, it was vampires. And when he left, he disappeared for a handful of years. Then he reappears, out of nowhere and settles in the old Grounds. If Deseronto planted Stanley—”

Lisa crossed her arms over her chest. “Stop. Contemplate this, Wes, just for a moment: You’ve just told me that I’ve got to be okay with the possibility that the person I love like a sister has been hijacked and is being used as a sleeper agent for some evil vampire—”

“Can we not use the word evil?”

“—and the thing I’m gonna choose to argue about with you is going into that… dog’s territory.”

Wes rolled his eyes.

“Let’s also not give Stanley that amount of credit. It’s not his territory.”

“He took over the shell of a disused Neutral Grounds and decided he wasn’t going to reopen it because he doesn’t like sharing his space.”

“That’s not—”

“Wes, the guy’s a total dick. I had to go through Cincinnati while I was looking for Lacy, and somehow he found me at a gas station to give me a lecture about being on his turf.”

Wes started to say something, but Lisa leaned forward and pressed onward. “It was a three minute conversation, Wes— the worst three minutes of my entire life, by the way— and I was ready to jump into the Ohio River just to get away from him. Can you imagine having to work with the guy?”

“And if he is working for Caleb Deseronto, or he’s a higher functioning version of these hollow wolves, and he sets up shop with a bunch of sleepers, where does that leave us?”

The worst part about this was that Lisa knew Wes was right even before he finished asking the question.

Lisa relented. “With a ticking time bomb that will cut off the New England Grounds from the South.

She hung her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. “You know, I knew it was going to be bad when you called me back, Wes, but I didn’t expect it to be such total shit.”

“Yeah. Now imagine being on the call with Oisin and hearing it first hand from Tessa.”

Lisa’s mind spun, and her thoughts clanged together like those little lottery balls. Except she knew that if she tried to stop the spinning and to grab a ball, the whole dang machine was going to implode and leave little plastic bits all over the inside of her skull.

“What do I do if he’s a sleeper? How am I even going to know if he’s a sleeper?”

Wes took a long inhale through his nose. “It’s going to have to be a judgment call, Lisa. I know you spent some time at Oisin’s at the same time as Stanley. Maybe try to use that as a baseline? It’s unlikely that a man involved with Deseronto would have gone to Oisin’s. Especially,” he canted his head and his voice fell away in consideration.

“Especially?”

A brief shake. “Oisin says he’s almost certain that if Deseronto brought Stanley alongside, it will have been after he left the club. Let’s trust Oisin and say that the Stanley you knew there is what you’re comparing him to now. As soon as you have confirmation, call me or Oisin. We’ll send in backup if you need it. Then neutralize him and we’ll work on setting up a new Grounds where the old one used to be to make sure that road stays safe for wolves.”

She nodded. “And what if the guy is just a dick?”

Wes barked a laugh. The sound was dry, tired, and doubtful. “Baby girl, let’s just say that I hope for your sake that’s all he is.”