Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(78)
So I was asked to write a Christmas story about werewolves. David Christiansen, who appeared in Moon Called, had such a tragic history, I couldn’t help but write a Christmas story for him. A fellow army ranger, he and Adam were the only survivors of a mission gone bad in the Vietnam War. They returned stateside, only to discover that they had been turned into the beast they had defeated. David is, more than any other of my wolves, suffering from the traditional curse of the werewolf. A good man who, while his wolf was in control, killed the very last person he wanted to hurt. But Christmas is about grace and forgiveness and family. Surely there is room in the middle of all of that for David to find some happiness.
The events in this story happen the Christmas after most of the events in Moon Called.
“I checked them out myself,” Myra snapped. “Have you ever just considered that your boy isn’t the angel you thought he was?”
Stella took off her glasses and set them on her desk. “I think that we both need some perspective. Why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon off.” Before I slap your stupid face. People like Devonte didn’t change that fast, not without good reason.
Myra opened her mouth, but after she got a look at Stella’s eyes, she shut it again. Mutely she stalked to her desk and retrieved her coat and purse. She slammed the door behind her.
As soon as she was gone, Stella opened the folder and looked at the pictures of the crime scene again. They were duplicates, and doubtless Clive, her brother the detective, had broken a few rules when he sent them to her—not that breaking rules had ever bothered him, not when he was five and not as a grown man nearing fifty and old enough to know better.
She touched the photos lightly, then closed the folder again. There was a yellow sticky with a phone number on it and nothing else: Clive didn’t have to put a name on it. Her little brother knew she’d see what he had seen.
She picked up the phone and punched in the numbers fast, not giving herself a chance for second thoughts.
• • •
The barracks were empty, leaving David’s office silent and bleak. The boys were on furlough with their various families for December.
His mercenaries specialized in live retrieval, which tended to be in-and-out stuff, a couple of weeks per job at the most. He didn’t want to get involved in the gray area of unsanctioned combat or out-and-out war—where you killed people because someone told you to. In retrieval there were good guys and bad guys still—and if there weren’t, he didn’t take the job. Their reputation was such that they had no trouble finding jobs.
And unless all hell really broke loose, they always took December off to be with their families. David never let them know how hard that made it for him.
Werewolves need their packs.
If his pack was human, well, they knew about him and they filled that odd wolf-quirk that demanded he have people to protect, brothers in heart and mind. He couldn’t stomach a real pack, he hated what he was too much.
He couldn’t bear to live with his own kind, but this worked as a substitute and kept him centered. When his boys were here, when they had a job to do, he had direction and purpose.
His grandsons had invited him for the family dinner, but he’d refused as he always did. He still saw his sons on a regular basis. Both of them had served in his small band of mercenaries for a while, until the life lost its appeal or the risks grew too great for men with growing families. But he stayed away at Christmas.
Restlessness had him pacing: there were no plans to make, no wrongs to right. Finally he unlocked the safe and pulled out a couple of the newer rifles. He needed to put some time in with them anyway.
An hour of shooting staved off the restlessness, but only until he locked the guns up again. He’d have to go for a run. When he emptied his pockets in preparation, he noticed he had missed a call while he’d been shooting. He glanced at the number, frowning when he didn’t recognize it. Most of his jobs came through an agent who knew better than to give out his cell number. Before he could decide if he wanted to return the call, his phone rang again, a call from the same number.
“Christiansen,” he answered briskly.
There was a long silence. “Papa?”
He closed his eyes and sank back in his chair feeling his heart expand with almost painful intentness as his wolf fought with the man who knew his daughter hated him: didn’t want to see him, ever. She had been there when her mother died.
“Stella?” He couldn’t imagine what it took to make her break almost forty years of silence. “Are you all right? Is there something wrong?” Someone he could kill for her? A building to blow up? Anything at all.
She swallowed. He could hear it over the line. He waited for her to hang up.
Instead, when she spoke again, her voice was brisk and the wavery pain that colored that first “Papa” was gone as if it had never been. “I was wondering if you would consider doing a favor for me.”
“What do you need?” He was proud that came out evenly. Always better to know what you’re getting into, he told himself. He wanted to tell her that she could ask him for anything—but he didn’t want to scare her.
“I run an agency that places foster kids,” she told him, as if he didn’t know. As if her brothers hadn’t told her how he quizzed them to find out how she was doing and what she was up to. He hoped she never found out about her ex-boyfriend who’d turned stalker. He hadn’t killed that one, though his willingness to do so had made it easier to persuade the man that he wanted to take up permanent residence in a different state.