Behind the buildings, silhouetted against the sky, were some of the tallest mountains I’d ever seen. They towered above the valley in which was settled the small town, and they cast their long shadows over the buildings. Their peaks were capped with white snow and the sides were heavily forested, with only a hint here and there of civilization in the form of selective logging. The trees crept up behind the buildings that stood on the extreme edges of the town and stood there as though waiting for everything to come to ruin and they would take over the land.
The sun and my watch told me it was late afternoon, and I glanced over to find Luke staring at me. “Sleep well?” he teased.
I stretched my back and winced when it went off like a string of fireworks. “Sort of,” I admitted. I frowned when I felt a strange unsettling sensation shift inside of me.
“An aching feeling?” he asked me.
I shrugged. “A train wreck does that to you. Well, if you’re still human,” I replied.
“We have overnight reservations at the inn in the next town, but I’m afraid you won’t get much sleep tonight,” Luke told me.
“Yeah, I don’t sleep well after taking a nap,” I agreed.
He shook his head. “Not that. There’s a full moon tonight, and your change will take place.”
I frowned. “Maybe it’ll just have to wait until the next full moon. Surviving a track wreck takes a lot out of a girl.”
“I’m afraid it can’t wait, but you’ll learn soon enough about that,” he secretively replied.
I opened my mouth to give him a good yelling, but our train slipped into the new city’s train station. The station was in built in the same style as the previous one, but much larger. There were two platforms on either side of a pair of tracks that led off behind us and in front of us. A large crowd met us at our platform, and we passengers were helped off the train and into a bus just off the platform.
I was prepared to go out into the welcoming crowd, but Luke pulled one of his arms over me and stopped me from standing. “Not yet.” He stood and leaned over me, and his eyes searched the crowd.
Alistair did the same, and after a moment he pointed at a man who stood off from the crowd of welcomers. “There, sir.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked him. Everyone else was already off the train, and I wanted to stretch my legs.
“Just a precaution,” he assured me. I wasn’t comforted.
“Precaution for what? Is this train going to derail in the station?” I quipped. The look he cast me froze my blood. His expression told me that, at least to him, the scenario wasn’t entirely impossible. I nodded out the windows to the bus beside the platform. The other passengers were being loaded into it. “Why can’t we just go with them?”
“I would rather we take a separate car,” he insisted.
I frowned. “You’re not telling me something. What is it?”
“I’ll tell you when we reach the inn. For now you have to trust me,” Luke replied.
I scoffed. “Trust you? You’re my kidnapper, remember? The guy who held me prisoner in a white room and-”
“-and I know what I’m doing. Everyone else trusts me as a good man. You should, too,” he insisted. I wanted to argue with him on both the ‘good’ and ‘man’ parts, but he yanked on my arm and pulled me to my feet. “Alistair, you first.”
“Yes, sir.” The servant strode out of the car with us close behind him. Alistair led us to the stranger at the edge of the platform.
Luke stopped us a yard from him. “Are you from Mr. Burnbaum’s inn?” he asked the stranger.
“Yes, sir. Mr. Burnbaum thought you might want a private means of getting to the inn,” the man replied. The man reached into his coat, and I felt Luke stiffen by my side. The stranger only pulled out a slip of paper and held it out. “My credentials, sir.”
Alistair took it and read over the contents. “He speaks the truth,” Alistair confirmed.
“Very well, let’s get going,” Luke replied.
The stranger led us off the side of the platform by means of a short flight of wooden steps and over to a black car. He opened the door for us, and Luke herded me to into the backseat. Alistair took the front passenger seat while the stranger donned a driver’s black cap and got into the driver’s seat. We shot out of the station in record time, but I managed a glance back. A man in a dark coat and wide-brimmed hat stood at the end of the platform and watched us leave. “Don’t stare too long,” Luke advised me.
I turned to him with a raised eyebrow. “You knew he was there?” I asked him.
Luke nodded. “He was one of the reasons we couldn’t leave on the bus.”
“One of the reasons?”
“There was more than just him.”
“Uh, mind telling me why my life just went from a horror movie to a James Bond flick?” I wondered.
“Would it be enough for me to say I’ve made some enemies over my long years?” he asked me.
“I’d like an answer with a few more specifics.”
Luke sighed and pursed his lips together. “I suppose you have a right to know what I’m dragging you into.”
“It would help me know whether I need to panic or not.”
“My enemies are rival werewolf clans-”
“Naturally,” I quipped.
“-and they’d like to reverse our roles with humans.”
“I’m guessing this isn’t like job swapping?”
“Werewolves hide in the shadows or live in small communities of trusted humans, as you saw at Townsend and here at Wolverton,” Luke explained to me. “Some of the leaders would rather we exist in the open and have the humans live in fear and subordination to us.”
“So they want to do to humans what you’ve done to me?” I shot back. Luke gave me such a glare that I cringed. “Sorry.”
His voice was low and held a tremor of anger. “If you want to meet a true monster than look in the faces of my enemies. They have no mercy for humans, and not much more for werewolves who disagree with them.”
“We’re here, sir,” Alistair spoke up.
Luke turned away from me, but I still felt the oppressive weight of his words on me. He’d been angry with me before, but not like that. My comparing him to his enemies had hit a personal nerve, and I wondered if maybe I hadn’t gone too far in accusing him of being a monster. He had helped all those people at the wreck site.
The car stopped, and I turned my attention to my surroundings. We were parked in a circular drive in front of a two-story building made from hewn logs. The cracked and weathered wood exuded a great age. On the left side of the building was an old coach house that had been transformed into an enclosed garage. A pair of thick wood doors at the front of the main building were open and led to a large lobby with a decor that hearkened back a few centuries to when women wore billowing dresses and men sported hats and long, pulled-back hair. Tapestries hung down and covered the wooden walls and old lamps hung between them. Their glass casings once held candles, but now were filled with fluorescent bulbs.
A short, hefty man with a wild black beard stood beneath a wooden frame that covered the entrance. He wore a pair of black dress pants with a white blouse, none of which matched the wild appearance of his hair that stuck out in odd angles from beneath a beaver hat. We got out of the car, and he smiled and hurried forward to us. His stomach bounced up and down like a bowl of jello. “Good evening, my good friends,” he greeted us in a thick Russian accent. He clasped Luke’s hands in his own while Alistair gathered our luggage.
“Good evening, Burnbaum. How goes the business?” Luke replied with his own grin.
“Very good, very good, but I hear of trouble for you. Everything is all right now?” he wondered. His voice told me he didn’t think the trouble was over.
“I’m afraid not, but I’d rather talk about this inside,” Luke insisted.
“Of course. I have your rooms prepared for you.” He led the three of us inside while the driver drove the car to the garage.
To our right stood a large room with a few dozen square wooden tables scattered about the floor. Guests sat at the table dining on a wide assortment of dead things, and I wasn’t meaning vegetables. I recognized the usual fowl and hoofed animals, and noticed several pieces of meat that weren’t familiar. To our left was the large front desk and a hallway that led back to the employee-only section of the inn, including to the garage. In front of us was a wide wooden flight of stairs that led upstairs to the rooms. That was the largest set of stairs I’d ever seen. The banisters alone were hewn from five-inch wide trees, and the steps themselves were carved out of a dozen four-foot thick logs. To the right and behind the stairs were a pair of doors that were shut tight, but I heard music drift out from between their cracks. Overall the place was beautiful, and a nightmare for an environmentalist.
Burnbaum led us to the front desk, slid a large ledger toward Luke, and picked up an old-fashioned quill pen. “If you would sign in we can talk.”
Luke raised an eyebrow. “Why not before?” he asked him.
“It is by orders of the Council. They want to know everyone who comes to stay,” Burnbaum replied. His eyes showed a bit of mischief in them and he wagged his bushy eyebrows. “Sign here with name that pleases you. I mean, if it pleases you to sign name,” he corrected himself.