Sanctuary Read online

  We turn north off the highway at Deer Lake and head toward Gros Morne National Park. I put the book away and sit up straighter, though there’s not much to see. A few buildings, a campground lit by electric lights, and the full moon overhead.

  Another turn, this time onto a smaller road. Still paved, still two lanes, but the trees crowd in closer on both sides. Every turn takes us farther from civilization, closer to the poorly defined fate that awaits me at the end of this trip. I feel like I did when I was alive and had to go to the doctor: apprehensive, uncertain. My stomach feels like I swallowed a bowling ball along with all of that blood back in town.

  I just have to survive this. It should be quiet. There haven’t been any major incidents reported here for years. I’m a vampire, and a well-trained one at that. I can handle anything the wolves throw at me. Besides, this is temporary. A little stopover on my way to better assignments in the future.

  I will prove myself is becoming my mantra. I get one shot at this near-immortal unlife, and I’m going to make the most of it.

  I sneak a glance at Daniel. I need to become like him. Hard. Callous, even, when it suits the good of Maelstrom and myself, able to stand alone when I need to. Though my compassion for the living was what led to us catching Katya and her unusual band of rogues, it was wrong. Vampires care about ourselves, our secrets, our clan. Daniel is good at that.

  He catches me again, bites back a smile.

  “Aviva, are you—”

  A massive shadow darts out from the woods ahead and to our right, not much more than a long-legged blur. I brace myself as Daniel swerves to the right to avoid the moose’s rear end, only to see three smaller, pale forms appear directly in our headlights.

  Wolves.

  Daniel curses and hits the brakes hard. The car slides to a stop as the wolves race on after the young moose. Daniel grits his teeth and snarls.

  “Are we in the sanctuary now?” I ask.

  “No. They’re well outside of where they should be.”

  My skin prickles.

  Daniel rests his forearms on the steering wheel. “You okay?”

  “Of course.”

  I’m wide awake and on high alert now, though my heart isn’t racing. It’s not even beating.

  Daniel and I would likely have walked away from an accident, even if his reflexes and skills had allowed such a thing to happen. We’re strong, and we heal quickly. There’s not much our already-dead bodies wouldn’t come back from. But I don’t imagine running over a wolf or three would have been a good start to our time at the sanctuary.

  Another wolf appears in the bright beam of our headlights, loping behind the others. He stops in the road, directly in front of our car, and bares his fangs. He can’t possibly see us clearly with the lights shining on him, but his bright, reflective eyes seem to stare straight through me. He’s big, with a finely shaped skull and thick, light grey coat. A stripe of darker fur runs down his spine, where the hair stands on end as he lowers his head. The fur over his left eye is patchy, like the skin beneath might be scarred.

  He’s growling. I can’t hear it over the purr of the engine, but it’s obvious.

  Daniel honks the horn.

  The wolf paces closer, lifts a leg, and pisses in the road in the direction of the car. Not on it. He’s not stupid enough to get that close.

  But the message is clear enough.

  “Son of a bitch,” Daniel mutters, and leans on the horn again.

  The wolf’s ears lie flat at the noise, but he takes his time leaving the road and disappearing into the thick cover of the forest.

  As soon as he’s gone, Daniel sends a quick message from his old flip phone, then throws the car into gear and drives on.

  “What would they be doing out here?” I ask a few minutes later, when it seems safe to break the silence.

  “That’s what I’d like to know.”

  And with that, my hopes of a relaxing, quiet assignment vanish as completely as the ghostly shapes of the wolves.

  Chapter Two

  We make another turn, this time onto a dirt road that’s not much better than two ruts cutting through the forest floor. Daniel shuts off the headlights and takes his glasses off. We won’t meet oncoming traffic this far out, and it’s not like he actually needs the light to see by.

  It’s only with the lights down that I realize the sky above us is starting to grow lighter. Guess it was a good thing we didn’t stop earlier.

  The undercarriage of the car scrapes over the potholes and ridges in the road, and branches screech along its sides. The muscles of Daniel’s jaw stand out as he clenches his teeth. He wouldn’t have been caught dead driving something more practical across the island, but I think now he might be reconsidering my suggestion that we rent an SUV.

  I won’t say I told you so. Petty shit like that is best left for the living.

  Another fifteen minutes of torturously slow travel gets us to a break in the woods and a high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. A big rolling gate is closed, and I suspect locked. The set-up reminds me of a prison, and cold dread pools in my stomach.

  A thin vampire in a red plaid shirt and a John Deere cap is crouched on the other side of the fence, speaking to a wolf that sits on our side. It's smaller than the ones we met earlier, and its fur looks lighter—though it’s hard to tell in this light. The vampire stands, and the wolf shoots us a quick glare and a flash of its teeth before taking off into the forest.

  “Another one outside?” I ask.

  “She’s fine. We’re on sanctuary land now.” Daniel nods to the gate ahead. “This just contains our territory within theirs. The wolves aren’t fenced in. They’re fenced out. But they know the boundaries well enough, and the pack leader usually keeps them in line.”

  My mouth goes dry. This is our prison.

  The vampire approaches behind the gate, unlocks it, and pushes it back to allow us to pass through. Daniel lowers the window, and the vampire leans down to look at us. Daniel first, then me.

  “Well,” he says without a smile. “Daniel, is it? And Evita?”

  “Aviva.” I don’t bother with the apologetic smile my living self would have flashed for inconveniencing a stranger by having the wrong name. My tone isn’t friendly, either, but he was rude first. Vampires have excellent memories. Either he couldn’t be bothered to learn my name, or he’s being deliberately careless.

  He nods. “Gordon. Listen, I gotta check the fence here real quick. Compound’s straight ahead there, just along the road. I’ll catch up.”

  I’m eager to keep moving. We might have an hour before the sunlight becomes really irritating to our eyes and skin and longer before it burns, but I’d rather be well inside before then.

  The compound isn’t visible from the gate, but we’ve barely started moving again before we’ve cleared the last of the trees and the building comes into view. The low, L-shaped concrete block building looks more like a bunker to me than a place where anyone would want to live. Not a single window breaks up the hard lines of the wall facing us. Daniel parks next to a solid and imposing garage door, and we step out into the dirt-encrusted yard. There’s not much growing on this side of the fence. Just weeds, a few clumps of grass, and clusters of scraggly alders that look like someone should cut them down and put them out of their misery.

  It’s not barren, exactly. Just really fucking morose.

  Gordon joins us moments later and enters a combination on a keypad, and the garage door lifts with a series of thunks and groans.

  “This is the only door we use,” he says as he leads us into the garage, which reeks of gasoline and oil. A big ATV sits on a trailer in front of a long, cluttered workbench. Otherwise, the space is empty. “The weres press the buzzer out at the gate to alert us if they need to come in for registration or supplies or anything else. Not that there’s much else they’ll come in here for.” He unlocks a door in the left-hand wall, revealing a stark white hallway. “They’ll show up at the gate within twenty-fo
ur hours of their arrival at the sanctuary every month. Take ’em through here, straight to the office. Sign the papers, get them in and out as quick as possible. Lock the doors behind them, coming or going, even if you only expect to be occupied for a moment.”

  Daniel catches my eye and raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t say anything.

  “Can’t trust ’em any farther than you could throw ’em,” Gordon mutters. He looks Daniel over, apparently assessing his strength. “Maybe not even that far. Grab your bags now, take them to the common room through the door at the end of the hall, and I’ll keep an eye on things out here. Then you can have the tour before you settles in.”

  Settles in. Either Gordon’s from the island, or he’s been around long enough to pick up the speech patterns.

  “Sounds like a fun spot,” Daniel says under his breath as we return to the car.

  “At least you don’t have to call it home.”

  I haul my backpack up on my shoulders, pick up a suitcase in each hand, and lead the way in. This is my assignment. I’m not going to hide behind Daniel or let him go first.

  The inside of the building is no more welcoming than the outside. They’ve at least got the lighting right for vampires, moderate and incandescent, with no irritating fluorescents in sight. But the white walls of the hallway are completely devoid of decoration, and the doors we pass on our right, each with a frosted glass window, are unmarked. Four of them line the hallway. There’s nothing on our left but the windowless exterior wall.

  As Gordon promised, we find the common room through a closed door at the end of the hall. There’s a big window in here, though it’s barred across with fine strips of metal and looks to be covered in an anti-UV coating that hinders the view. It looks out over a big dirt yard, beyond which the fence holds the forest at bay. Inside, bookshelves line one wall of the room, surrounding a big old TV. I guess it probably gets quiet enough out here in the winter that you need something to break up the time.

  There’s a kitchenette in the corner, though I doubt the stove gets much use. I’ve got my coffeemaker packed in one of the boxes that are still out in the car, and I’m glad I thought to bring it. The machine on the counter has to be thirty years old, and it looks like no one has bothered to clean it in ten.

  The fridge is open, but all that’s visible of the person standing in front of it is his ass until he stands, closes the door, and sets a clear bag filled with red, raw meat on the counter. He’s tall, with mid-tone skin that nonetheless carries more of the pallor of death than I’ve ever seen on one of my own kind, as though he hasn’t had a good feed in a while. But he’s clearly been feeding. He’s even got a hint of a gut under his grey t-shirt that overhangs the waist of his jeans.

  I honestly didn’t know we could get flabby on a diet of human blood. I’m going to have to be careful about keeping up with physical training, even after Daniel leaves. This assignment is temporary. I will not develop bad habits that will follow me back to the city when I go.

  The vampire nods to us and gives me an appraising once-over. “Morning. Anything else to come in?”

  “Just a few boxes.”

  He leaves the meat and heads down the corridor without another word.

  “Friendly bunch,” I mutter, and immediately regret it. There’s no reason I should expect them to be, and they don’t seem so bad, Gordon’s misremembering of my name aside. A bit awkward, maybe, but they’re what I’ll have to work with. They don’t seem like the most impressive vampires to learn from if that’s my goal, but maybe they’ll surprise me.

  I set my suitcases down, and Daniel does the same. He looks around, scuffs the toe of his leather shoe over the worn, hunter green carpet of the living room space. “Cozy.”

  “Hmm.” I make my way to the bookcase and look it over. Paperback westerns, mostly, and a couple of hard-backed thrillers from one of those authors who sells a gajillion copies of the massive books he miraculously cranks out twice a year like clockwork. A lone romance of the racy-rich-people-in-the-eighties variety sits tucked away in a low corner. I wonder whose guilty pleasure that was. The only other items on the shelves are a few flashlights and spare batteries, a couple of battered-looking board games, and a few sets of protective eyewear for watching the TV.

  Gordon and the other vampire reappear a few minutes later, carrying my boxes. They set them on the table in the kitchen area, and we all look at each other for a few awkward seconds.

  Gordon shrugs and heads for a set of bifold doors in the wall opposite the window, opens a dark closet, and pulls out a hockey bag.

  “See you around, folks,” he says. “Paul, you need anything before I go?”

  The big guy shakes his head. “Not a ting, b’y.”

  They laugh. Paul has to be from away, like me. His accent is more than a little off as he imitates the locals.

  I hope I never get bored enough to find that as hilarious as they seem to.

  Gordon claps Paul on his back, waves to us, and heads out the door.

  Paul scratches the back of his neck, then turns to the counter and pulls a big knife out of the block that sits beside the coffee maker. “I’ll give you the grand tour in a minute.”

  I assume he’s talking to us and not the slab of meat he’s focused on hacking into big chunks.

  “Where’s Gordon going?” I ask.

  Paul glances back over his shoulder. “Vacation, I hope, before they assign him somewhere else.”

  My stomach drops. “He’s gone for good?”

  “Yep. This is a two-man post these days. So here I stay, unless your friend there likes the look of the place and wants to replace me.”

  A hint of a smile plays at Daniel’s mouth as he glances around the room again. “I think I’ll be needed back in town soon.”

  Lucky bastard.

  Paul piles the meat back into the bag, washes his hands, and picks the gory sack up by the neck, swinging it beside him as he walks. We leave our things and follow.

  “Office,” Paul says, nodding to the first of the closed doors. “Not much to see in there, but I’ll show you around later. Landline in case the power’s out and your phone is dead. Files, records, forms for ordering supplies, that kind of thing. Bit of a mess, actually, but that never bothered me or Gordy.”

  Gordy and Paul, the Canadian vampire duo. I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry.

  “Storage is the last door at the end, down by the garage. I don’t recommend going in there if you don’t want to be caught in an avalanche.” He opens the second door. It looks like a doctor’s office, with the addition of a stainless steel table in the middle of the spacious room. It would look quite modern and impressive if not for the flaking paint on the concrete walls and the old cardboard boxes piled in the corner. “And here’s the treatment room. You have medical or veterinary training, Aviva?”

  At least someone remembered my name. I shake my head. “My aunt bred dogs and I played with them when I was a kid. That’s about the extent of it for me.”

  He brightens. “What kind of dogs?”

  “Big, fluffy ones.” I can’t remember what they were called.

  He doesn’t seem impressed. “I’ll have to train you up a bit so you can take care of things if I ever go out to take a delivery or tend to something in the sanctuary. Shouldn’t be a problem. Things are quiet. Usually.”

  He holds up the bag of meat as though this should mean something to us, then motions with his head for us to follow him to the third room in the hall.

  The smell of canine urine hits me like a punch to the nose when he opens the door. This room has a concrete floor, and four kennels line the back wall, big cages with vertical bars that go all the way to the ceiling, like old jail cells. Three of the kennels are empty, but a greyish lump lies on the floor of the last, furry and featureless save for the white bandages covering her shoulder and neck. The wolf shifts around so that she can look at us, but she doesn’t stand or take a defensive posture.

  I think it’s a she, an
yway. Her face is delicate and pretty, in stark contrast with her huge ears. She’s darker than the one we saw outside the gate.

  “This one here got herself into a bit of a scrap a few days back,” Paul says. He plops the meat into a steel bowl and shoves it through an opening under the bars. “Not long after the female pack went through their monthly change. Of course, she can’t tell us what happened, but we assume another pack tore into her.”

  She doesn’t seem to be listening. She’s got her golden eyes fixed on me and Daniel, sizing us up.

  I’m not sure where to begin with my questions. Nothing lines up with my reading. The book didn’t even mention there were female werewolves, and now I’ve already seen two.

  “Do the females all change together, then? We saw Gordon talking to one of them outside. Couldn’t she just change back to tell you what happened?” From what I’ve read, werewolves have to spend a week of every lunar cycle in wolf form, but it’s not tied to the full moon as tightly as most humans believe. That fact has made it easier for them to live regular lives, timing their change with visits to the sanctuary.

  “Not the ladies,” Paul says. He leans one shoulder against the bars of the kennel. “See, they’re different. Odd, too. It wasn’t until about twenty-five years ago that females started popping up and needing to come here. Caused a bit of a stir, as we’d only had males to deal with. Turns out the girls are slaves to the moon. Change like clockwork, stuck for their week, and then they’re done. Not so different from living human bitches, right?”

  He addresses the question to the wolf, but it’s my hackles that go up. Paul doesn’t seem to notice.

  “And they have their own pack?” Daniel asks. “I thought there was only one.”

  Paul gestures back over his shoulder at the wolf. “Three, now, with ten to twenty weres in each, give or take.”

  I hold back a surprised gasp. I had no idea there were that many.