Page 12 of Kin of the Wolf

“It’s not going to… I mean, he can’t make you attack me from afar, can he?”

“I don’t think so. It feels more like he—or whoever is holding the device—is trying to call me back to the north. Back to their home base.”

I frowned. “Wouldn’t it be Abrams holding the device? He’s the one who tuned it to you or whatever, right?”

“It’s more than that. He used it in my youth. It’s linked to this.” Duncan touched his scar again.

I’d once thought it looked like it might have come from a burning cigarette pressed to his skin, but it probably hadn’t been something so mundane…

“I’m not sure how that device works exactly, but it’s hard for me to resist its power. Its control over me.” His voice lowered. “In my youth, Abrams used it to compel me to change into the bipedfuris and spread the bite… wanting me to make an army of werewolves for him to command. Luckily for the world, werewolves aren’t easily controlled. The ones who changed didn’t want to come to him and obey, and I… sometimes I could fight his commands.”

Even though he’d alluded to this when he’d told me his story, the admission that he’d actually turned people into werewolves, presumably against their will, disturbed me. My mother lamented the weakening of our kind and the loss of that magic, but I suspected most of the rest of the world would prefer it ifwerewolves permanently lost the ability to infect humans with lycanthropy, if we ceased to exist altogether.

“It may or may not be Abrams using the device,” Duncan continued, looking toward the surface of the pond instead of at me. Lost in memory? “He has a replacement, so he doesn’t need me. I heard them talking about that when they thought me unconscious. Since I betrayed Abrams before—that washisword for it—he doesn’t trust that I wouldn’t do so again.Hethought they should kill me to ensure I wasn’t a threat to their plans. Unfortunately, they didn’t discuss exactly what those plans were while I could hear.”

I picked at slivers of wood on the railing. “What replacement? I can see not trusting someone who burned your library down?—”

He gave me such an aggrieved look that I believed that had distressed him more than anything else about the situation.

“—but you’re pretty valuable,” I finished. “Even irreplaceable. Unlike eggs and bacon. Which, I’ll mention, you haven’t wandered up to purchase yet.” Normally, I would buy my own breakfast foods, but hehaddevoured most of that pound of bacon and eight or ten of the eggs. What a metabolism.

“I fully intend to make you whole.” He bowed to me, then tossed the magnet into the pond again. “I was hoping we might find something that could pay for those goods, but I do have cash, should that prove necessary.”

“Even if you find a throne made from gold, I’m pretty sure you’d still need dollars to buy eggs.”

“Such a strange country.”

Noticing he hadn’t answered my question, I asked, “What replacement does your Lord Abrams have?”

Duncan was good at avoiding answering questions. Though, this time, I’d been the one to divert him. Not that a bacon-and-eggs discussion would have distracted him if he’d truly been dying to answer.

“The boy.”

I blinked, remembering the eight-year-old with floppy brown hair, a young werewolf who’d slipped away during the battle. What he’d been doing there in the first place, I’d never known. He’dalmostgotten away with my mother’s medallion, but I’d traded chocolate to him to get it back. My stashes occasionally did more than satisfy my own addiction.

“You think he kidnapped the boy from a pack and is raising him to do his bidding? Or to… Well, if he’s from a modern pack, he wouldn’t be able to turn people into werewolves with his bite, right?”

Duncan was walking slowly, pulling his magnet along the other side of the dock, and he gazed at me, his eyes heavy with significance.

“DidAbrams kidnap him?” I thought of Duncan’s background. “Or do you mean… Abrams isn’t carrying around frozen bits of the dead werewolf from the glacier, is he?” It occurred to me that thedead werewolf from the glacierhad essentially been Duncan. Not a father or a brother or a relative buthim. They would have been raised differently—muchdifferently—so their personalities and experiences would have made them different people, but… what an odd thing to imagine. Like an identical twin, I supposed.

“He didn’t discuss it with me—I didn’t get much more from that evening than you did—but the boy looks much like I did at that age. I suspect Abramshas,for all these years, kept the genetic material from the preserved werewolf. Likely by magical means rather than freezing, but… it would amount to the same.”

“So, you’re saying that boy was… is…”

Duncan paused in pulling the magnet to rest a hand on his chest. “Exactly the same as me.”

5

“The term would be clone.”Duncan resumed pulling his magnet along. “He’s my clone. And we’re both clones of the original werewolf who lived centuries ago before dying in the mountains and being covered by that glacier.”

“This sounds very science-fictional. If you have to do battle with the kid, it becomes aStar Warsmovie, doesn’t it?”

“Only if we use light sabers.” Duncan smiled faintly, though there was a troubled crease to his brow.

“Because you’re related—uhm, clones—does that make you… responsible for the boy? Or is it all Abrams since he…” I almost saidcreated, but that truly did seem sci-fi-ish, prompting me to think of laboratories and test tubes. “Since he was responsible for bringing you—and the kid—into the world.”

“I haven’t researched the laws on the subject—I had no idea about the boy until we arrived there—but I suppose I could. Since this can now be done with science, no magic required, there probably are some official documents to follow. I would assume, however, that Abrams would belegallyresponsible.” A distasteful expression crossed Duncan’s face.

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