Chapter Thirty-eight

Serena had never felt more out of her depth. She missed Gabe like she would miss her heart, and even though she didn’t have the tight bonds with the Windy Gap shamans’ circle that she’d had back home in Maine, she missed having their support too. She was on her own without her personal pack, facing Cila Walkerson and Anna Truewater alone. The Windy Gap council reps had left the fire and driven over to Ram’s Haven. And they were here to find out why she had failed.

“I don’t understand why this isn’t finished. Why you haven’t figured out who attacked that poor woman.” Cila’s anger shrank the small room until Serena could feel it pushing on the ragged edges of her patience.

“I—”

“You obviously don’t understand the importance of finding this out,” Cila continued, before Serena could even get another word out. “Packs across the country are up in arms that we’ve had a problem here of this magnitude. We’re losing our anonymity. The public is scared there is a fatal disease out there. And we know it’s being spread by a madman. You’re responsible.”

Serena counted to ten under her breath. Inhaled. And started again. “I have visited Glenna in her dreamscape.”

“But you didn’t find out who her attacker is.”

“No, I didn’t, but...” Serena shrank under Cila’s aggression, looking for help to the more reasonable Anna, but the other councilwoman just stood there.

“Serena, do I need to remind you that you answer to the council?”

There was a knock on the door. It opened and Adam stepped into the room. “Hi, I’m Adam Adalwulf, head of the Ram’s Haven shamans’ circle.” His bearded face was calm and polite. Just seeing him helped Serena feel more centered. “I don’t mean to be rude, but since Serena is without the support of her own circle, I would like to represent them instead.”

Serena’s heart swelled with gratitude. Gabe wasn’t here, but she wasn’t alone. Adam would help her face the council. He would help them understand what it would mean to rip down Glenna’s walls in the middle of the change.

“Serena is not part of Ram’s Haven—she’s a member of Windy Gap. You don’t have authority.” Cila bristled.

“Nevertheless, I am head of the Ram’s Haven circle and Serena is a guest here. We have discussed this case. I will stand by her as her advocate.”

“This isn’t a tribunal. She doesn’t need an advocate.” Anna soothed.

“She’s allowed to have support from a fellow shaman any time she is called to face the council.”

“We’re not a full council. There are just two of us.” Cila glared, her lip curled up over her slightly crooked teeth. Serena quivered inside but Adam stood firm.

No one spoke while the dominance game played out.

“Very well.” Anna stepped forward, taking control of the situation with one look. “This is neither a formal council meeting nor a tribunal. Serena doesn’t need an advocate, but we will let you stay anyway.”

“I would not only stay, but I would speak.” Adam looked at Serena and she moved to the side, giving him the center of the small room. “I’m disappointed in your council. You’re asking Serena to violate her oaths as a dreamwalker and as a shaman, and to do so without any consultation with the more experienced members of her circle.”

“We wouldn’t do this if it weren’t of the utmost importance.”

“I understand you think you have the right. But you don’t.” Serena began to think she’d underestimated Adam. He’d been good with the children and the rest of the evacuees, but his calm easy demeanor had hidden this passionate side. His eyes gleamed and he leaned forward, just enough, engaging both Anna and Cila’s attention in a way that she’d found impossible. “Glenna isn’t a real person to you, but she is to Serena. Serena has been in her dreams, in her subconscious. She knows Glenna now and she believes that Glenna may not even know who her attackers are.”

“Is this true?”

Serena lifted her chin and spoke with confidence. “Yes.” Adam believed in her. She just needed to convince the others. “When I first explored Glenna’s dreams the attackers were there, I could see them, but they were represented as monstrous distortions of wolves. And she had more than one.”

“We should have been informed of this in the first place. How dare you hold back on us?” Cila half-rose out of her chair. “I don’t think you are fit to do this job. “Silence!” Anna pounded her fist on the table until Cila settled back into her chair, her face creased with disapproval. Anna cocked her head at Serena. “How many?”

“A whole pack, at least seven or eight. I don’t think she knows who attacked her. The police report said the witness scared off a man, not seven or eight. I think she’s created a scene from her fears and memories of the attack. Even if I force her to dismantle her wall now, she may not be able to see the truth. It’s too soon.”

“Tell them the rest,” Adam said.

“Tell us what?” Anna’s voice was soft.

Serena took courage form Adam’s calm gaze and tried to catch the eyes of the elders of her adopted council. Cila looked belligerent. But Anna...Anna had an expression of such compassion and pity that Serena knew this had been a tough decision for her. She could see by Anna’s face that she knew they’d betrayed her as a dreamwalker, just as they were asking her to betray Glenna.

“She’s very close to the change. There’s a real risk she won’t be able to make it through and keep her sanity if we push her now. She wasn’t raised with a pack. She doesn’t really understand what’s going on. More than any of our adolescents, she could be lost to the change, to the wild, or to insanity.” Serena took a deep breath. “The last time I went in, she had no focus. If I have to make her face her worst fears at the same time she’s welcoming a wolf into her body, or into the dreamscape, and the change is pushing her to mate... I don’t know what will happen. She might run off into her subconscious and never come back.”

Anna and Cila exchanged worried looks.

Adam stepped forward. “Do you remember what it was like? The change?” he asked. “The confusion and drive, the fear of the unknown. Not knowing if you would become skinwalker or dreamwalker, or even a spelltalker? Knowing that something was going to happen that would change your life forever?”

The council’s faces were rapt. They remembered.

“Now imagine you’re this woman—traumatized, unable to return to your family, to your pack. Thrown into a new world, where you don’t know anyone or any of the customs. You don’t understand what is going on. You’ve never been prepared for any of these marvelous things. In fact, you’ve been told that to go through the fever is to become insane and die.”

“But the change is a gift, our gift from heaven.” Cila’s eyebrows rose and her chin lifted high stretching out the loose skin on her neck.

“You see it that way,” Serena said. “But the mundanes have made us the boogey man. Werewolves are mythical horrible creatures that have misshapen bodies and tortured spirits. And now they have spread the idea that lycanthroism is a malignant disease where you hallucinate you’re a wolf before you die.”

“I feel for this woman, I do.” Anna stepped forward. “But the fact remains. She was brutally attacked, and she’s not the first.”

“What?” Adam stared in shock at the council. Serena hadn’t told him about the other suspected attacks. She’d kept the details at a minimum, sure the council wouldn’t want this known.

“We’ve kept it from the general population, but there were three other women attacked before her. None survived.”

“What are you implying?”

“She is our only link to this man,” Anna said. “Because of these attacks we are being exposed. Not only that, our exposure will be as diseased, violent criminals attacking young women. If that happens, we will be persecuted out of existence. We’ve faced it before and our species barely survived. Our entire modern existence may depend on stopping whomever is doing this.” Anna looked at Cila, and the other councilwoman gave an emphatic nod. “I’m sorry, Serena. But we just found out, Glenna’s been taken. She’s no longer under our protection. She’s likely undergoing testing right now, in some government facility, giving them all the information they want. Or they might be driving her insane, past the point where we may be able to retrieve any information about these attacks.”

“She’s gone?” She couldn’t believe it. “She’s still fragile, still vulnerable.”

“She’s gone.”  Anna took Serena’s hand and squeezed, but it did nothing to help the fear rising in Serena’s heart. “And we have no idea where. You have to go into the dreamscape and find out what she knows, before it’s too late.”

Panic rose, choking her so that her next words came out rough and raw. “You didn’t see her. You can’t ask me to hurt her like this.” She shook off the councilwoman’s hand and turned to Adam for support, but the other shaman had taken a few steps away from her, the information about the other attacks seeming to be too much.

“We aren’t asking. We’re telling you. You’re our best chance. Even if we move to another dreamwalker now that person won’t have the rapport with her that you have. They will do more damage.” Anna stared into Serena’s eyes, her expression fierce. “Give her a chance, Serena. You be the one to go in and find out if we can stop this monster, or any damage she incurs will be your fault.”