Otherworld Nights by Kelley Armstrong

Author:Kelley Armstrong [Armstrong, Kelley]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Contemporary, Short Stories & Anthologies, Anthologies, Short Stories, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fantasy, Contemporary Fiction, Single Authors, Anthologies & Short Stories
Amazon: B00I089VY0
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2014-10-06T23:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

Our mutt’s name was Douglas Eaton. He’d offered it to Clay the night before, which was good, because Clay couldn’t ask without seeming to take a friendly interest. Pack werewolves can’t take a friendly interest in mutts. Another of those harsh wolf realities that seemed draconian to me, until I spent some time around mutts and realized civility was interpreted as weakness. A friendly werewolf is a naive werewolf. A naive werewolf is an easy mark.

We didn’t have an address for Eaton, but it was easy enough to get. I just took Noah with me into the post office and asked, saying we needed to drop off a present.

The middle-aged clerk dismissed Noah with a glance. She took slightly longer with me. Trying to tell if I looked like I was from “around here” or the city. It makes a difference in small towns. I’m forty-one, though I look more like early thirties. Five foot ten. Slender, Jeremy would say. Skinny, I’d say, though having the twins had helped me develop some semblance of curves. An athletic build, I suppose. I was dressed in worn jeans, a ski jacket, and hiking boots. No makeup. White-blond hair tied in a ponytail.

It didn’t take long for me to pass her “not a city girl” test. Just a woman and a teenage boy, maybe a nephew or stepson. Neither remotely intimidating. She gave us the address and directions. Even sketched a map on an envelope and wished us a Merry Christmas.

It took a while to get to Eaton’s place. As the postal clerk said, his house was “out with the cottages.” In other words, in the woods.

The region up here can be divided into cottage country and non-cottage country. There are plenty of cottages in non-cottage country, of course, but they’re the kind of places owned by average folks, passed down through the generations. Places you lend to your buddies and their families, and get a bottle of rye whiskey in return. In other words, not the million-dollar summer homes surrounding every lake. There were no lakes in this area, not good ones anyway. Just cottages in the woods. And these cottages weren’t winterized, meaning the roads to them had big signs warning Not Maintained in Winter.

Luckily, we’d brought the 4×4. Jeremy’s truck. It’s an SUV, but Clay and I call it “the truck.” We’re not really minivan/SUV people. Jeremy isn’t, either, but we live in a northern climate and since two-thirds of our household is too damned stubborn to drive anything but a car, the job of being a responsible adult falls to Jeremy.

Contrary to what some 4×4 owners think—as evidenced by the sheer number of them in the ditch after every snowstorm—they aren’t invincible winter tanks. It was slow going to Eaton’s place. We had to follow twin rutted tracks through three feet of snow. More than once it looked like we’d need to get out and push.

“Are Nick and Antonio getting you out for much winter driving practice?” Clay asked as he maneuvered through another drift.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.