Scratch the Surface. Amy Lee Burgess

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СКАЧАТЬ in a clearing, ringed around by pine trees forty feet tall. The wind had blown through the pine needles creating a rattling, wintry sound. That’s what we’d heard instead of Auld Lang Syne.

      My wolf had bared her throat to his and he’d taken it in his jaws, exquisitely gentle. My wolf had infinite trust in him. She adored him. I think his wolf adored her. At least I hoped so. He was very, very kind to her and patient as she blundered through lessons most Pack’s wolves had learned the first ten times they’d shifted.

      I’d never learned, had never wanted to learn. My wolf was headstrong and stubborn. Free and innocent. She loved to run and play and exist without much coherent thought.

      Well, she used to. Now she hungered for words, for the names of things. Running and playing were things she did after she taught herself words. Most times now she forgot about running and playing until Murphy’s wolf reminded her.

      She always had been an obsessive creature who fixated on one thing. Before it had been pleasure, now it was knowledge.

      “She taught herself the word for ‘ice’ last night,” I told him with pride. “She’s getting so much smarter thanks to your wolf, Murphy. And you, telling me how to do it before we shift.”

      “She still getting mad at herself when she can’t think of the word right away?” He sounded both indulgently pleased and concerned. He didn’t like her to push herself too hard.

      “She was furious and frustrated for a while last night,” I admitted. I selected a piece of toast and spread it with peanut butter. It was the creamy kind. Damn. I’d meant to pick up chunky.

      “I know.” His eyes were sad for a moment. “She was pawing at her head. You’ve got a scratch on your cheek right now.” He frowned as he looked at it.

      I put a hand up to my cheek and my fingers encountered the thin, rough outline. It stung a little and I made a mental note to put peroxide on it.

      “She was trying to scratch the mad out of her head so she could think,” I said with a rueful smile. “She’s so literal. The mad was taking up all the space in her head and there was no room to think about the word for ice.”

      “Constance,” Murphy said, and I knew he was gearing himself up to lecture me again about pushing too hard.

      “It’s not use talking to me about this.” I raised a protesting hand. “She’s the one who gets that way.”

      “Where does she get it from? Who’s telling her she needs to think so hard to find the words?”

      “Me?” I shook my head. “I’m so far buried in her psyche when we’re shifted that I doubt I have much influence over what she does.”

      “Bullshit.” He dumped a teaspoon of sugar into his coffee and stirred. The spoon hitting the sides of the mug was pure frustration expressed in sound. “You persist in thinking there’s such a separation between you and her and there’s not.”

      “I don’t see it. I am not me when I’m her.” This was a well-worn, frequent discussion between us. He could tell me a hundred million times that I was my wolf and she was me, but I thought of us as distinct entities. While I was inside her and she was inside of me, when I was in human form, she did not influence me and I damn sure didn’t have any influence over her when she was wolf.

      Murphy drummed his fingers on the table top and drank his coffee. He kept his gaze fixed to the cupboards to the side of the table and not on me.

      I took a bite of eggs but I wasn’t hungry anymore. I managed to swallow what I had in my mouth but I knew I was done. I hated to disappoint him, but I couldn’t see it his way and I couldn’t lie to him.

      “I’m sorry,” he said. The drumming ceased. I got up and brought the coffee pot to the table and refilled his mug. Mine was still full, but I put a little bit in anyway to warm it up and then crossed the room to put the pot back on the burner.

      “I push you harder than anybody, don’t I?”

      I couldn’t agree with him, but if I did he’d argue and I didn’t want to. My wolf frustrated me, but I didn’t want him to know how much because he’d blame himself since it had been his idea to work with her.

      I sat back down without answering and picked up my mug.

      “When do we leave for Connecticut? You’re coming with me, aren’t you?” The idea that he wouldn’t be with me made the bacon in my stomach roll over queasily. I needed him.

      “Of course I’m coming. You don’t have to face that bastard alone.” Outraged shock spread across his face. “Besides, I’m dying for a chance to punch that asshole, Jonathan Archer, in the nose. You think I’d miss that opportunity?”

      I gave him a suspicious look because I couldn’t tell if he was serious. He probably was. Jonathan was the Alpha male of the Riverglow pack. He’d never liked me and he’d led the crusade against me after Grey’s and Elena’s deaths. I’d told Murphy a few stories about him and, as a result, Murphy hated the man like poison.

      “Don’t punch Jonathan in the nose,” I said. Then I grinned. “Kick him in the ’nads. It’ll hurt more.”

      Murphy burst into laughter as I’d intended and I joined in too. This was one of the shittier mornings of my life, but I least I could still laugh about it.

       Chapter 3

      It had been Murphy’s idea to take the road trip from Houston to Boston. Instead of renting a car, he’d bought a used charcoal-gray Honda Prelude from a Houston CarMax. He’d surprised me with it at the hotel where I’d been packing our things. I had been in one hellish hurry to leave Houston after Murphy’s near-fatal overdose.

      After he’d been released from the hospital, we’d rested in the hotel for three days. Well, he’d rested. I’d paced around until that drove him crazy and he sent me out shopping where I bought seven pairs of shoes only to return five of them the next day. Murphy hadn’t said one word, but his expression had spoken for him. He thought my shoe fetish was bordering on clinically insane. This from the man who would wear the same pair of shoes for an entire week in a row. That was just plain weird, if you ask me.

      On our trip east, at the beginning of each new week, I’d sneak a new pair of shoes for him into our hotel room and substitute them for the pair that was driving me nuts. The man never even noticed the difference until I pointed it out to him in exasperation twenty miles down the road.

      “It was dark in the room when I got dressed,” was his most used excuse, closely followed by, “As long as they fit on my feet, what do I care?” That pronouncement usually threw me into a sputtering fit of incredulity which he laughed at as he continued to serenely drive down the interstate.

      Today we drove down the Mass Pike, each wrapped in a cocoon of our own thoughts and, for myself, fears of the unknown and yet to come.

      It was a gray, overcast day. Dirty, salt-encrusted snow crouched on the sides of the interstate interspersed with bald patches of muddy, winter-brown grass. I had the Prelude’s heat cranked up because I was perpetually cold. I think it had something to do with how often I was shifting. I got so damned chilled when I shifted back naked in near freezing temperatures. It took me hours and a long hot shower to shake the cold and the next day СКАЧАТЬ