Read Online Black Wolf by Steph Shangraw - Free Book Online Page A

greens and
reds. A fairly expensive compact stereo sat on the floor beside the
bed.
     
    He gave up
totally on the piles of paper. The books defied any classification,
there seemed to be everything under the sun, though the non-fiction
leaned towards psychology and related fields, which made sense.
Kevin had told him he was starting a four-year program in
counselling; well, nobody was perfect. Jesse had to admire some of
his taste in music, at least, but it wandered, too, from something
called the Pachelbel Canon to a group called Enigma who certainly
had some songs with interesting names, through more ordinary rock
like Aerosmith and Blondie.
     
    In the bottom
of the closet, he found a polished chest of rich dark wood.
Carefully, Jesse dragged it out. About a foot tall, and a foot by
two across the top.
     
    Locked, but
this one he managed to get open without much trouble or much
visible trace. He raised the lid, wondering what he'd find.
     
    At first all
he saw was a considerable amount of bright-hued silky fabric much
like the blankets in the living room. He reached in, found
something solid, and pulled it out. The silk hiding it reminded him
of water, shimmery blue and green and grey. Carefully, he unwrapped
it, found a cup, shaped like a wide-mouthed wine-glass but made of
some silvery metal, engraved around the outside with fish and
wave-patterns and swans. It was so clean it caught the sunlight and
gave the brief illusion that it actually held the golden light like
water. He didn't touch it, kept the silk between it and his hands,
but even that made his skin tingle intensely.
     
    Feeling
something akin to awe, somehow sure that he'd found something very
old and special, he returned the cup to its place, and reached for
something else.
     
    Concealed by
silver-grey and ice-blue and pale gold was a knife like nothing
he'd ever seen, the blade something like eight inches long, the
hilt wrapped in gold wire and set with a clear red stone on each
side. Utterly unable to resist, he lifted it from the silk—the
tingling grew stronger—and slid it free of the ornate metal sheath.
The blade was shining-bright, he could see himself in it, and
looked deadly sharp.
     
    That prickling
was getting worse, fast. It escalated sharply, felt like someone
lashed him squarely across his shoulder blades; he dropped the
knife with a half-strangled cry, and the sensation eased. Without
touching it directly again, he re-sheathed it, wrapped it and
returned it to the chest, then put the chest back in its place. He
hadn't been down to Deanna's room, but that was definitely enough
prowling. The skin of his hands felt hot and tight, the muscles of
his arms and upper back throbbed a little, and there was a pressure
behind his eyes that felt like the beginnings of a headache.
     
    Snooping
around here was dangerous. Things bit back.
     
    Still, he
definitely had a lot to think about.
     
    * * *
     
    Kevin stepped
in the door of his bedroom, and paused. Something had disturbed the
wards he'd automatically built into it. Disturbed them violently,
in fact. He tracked the source, and pulled the chest holding his
great-grandmother's tools out of the closet. Faint traces, on the
Spanish steel cup; then he reached his knife.
     
    He wasn't sure
quite what he felt, about that. A certain amount of sympathy, for
how much it had to have hurt Jesse in his present state; an
uncharitable righteousness, that he'd asked for it; amusement and
apprehension about what else Jesse had been into and what
conclusions he was making; annoyance because only his own peculiar
layered shielding had protected the spells on the knife, and they
were going to need work to fix regardless.
     
    He kept the
knife out to start on later. It was going to take a while, since he
was still recovering, but he rarely used them anyway, and really
didn't need them at all; normally he only brought them out when
helping Deanna or Cynthia with the ritual magic they were so much
better at. His