Scratch the Surface. Amy Lee Burgess

      Wind in my face. I happy! Friend with me! We look at strange water. No move now. Stuck. Put paw on it. Cold! Want to walk on strange water. I scared! Strange water make noise—Crrrack! Paw wet and cold. Friend has tongue out, Friend laugh. Friend look at strange water. I not understand. Water moves. But strange water does not move . Why? Why? Want word for strange water. Want know why it not move. Think! Think hard. Strange water there when it very cold. Me seen it with Him and Her before they go away and not come back. Us run on it. Run, run, run. Me not want run now, me want word. I. I want word. I want word for strange water. Think. Think. Friend watch over me. Think. Think. I so mad. I want word! I want word! No. No get mad. Can’t think for mad in head. Go away, mad. Stop. Think. Strange water not move. Cold. White. Water. Not water. Think. Think. Want word. Word for strange, cold water that not move. Word is...word is...ice! Yes! Ice, ice, ice, ice! I see ice! I see ice! Friend, I see ice! Friend, I happy! I see ice! I lick Friend’s face. Friend lick me. I happy. I see ice!

      * * * *

      The shrill ring of the phone dragged me out of sleep. Murphy and I had shifted the night before and we’d exhausted ourselves in wolf form. By the time we’d shifted back, shivered into our clothes and driven home to Boston, it had nearly been dawn. The sky above my condo had been a pale shimmering pink as I’d fallen onto the bed, my hair still wet from the shower. I didn’t even remember Murphy coming to bed but he was there with me. The ringing phone had roused him too. He was snuggled up against my back, his arm across my waist and he rolled over into a defensive ball, swearing colorfully in Irish under his breath while he tried to shield his ears with one of the fluffy down pillows.

      “Goddamn it,” I muttered. I could tell it was frigid outside. Well, naturally, it was January. Barely. “Happy fucking New Year, Murphy.”

      His only response was more Irish swearing. The phone stopped ringing and I let my eyes drift shut again but that’s when the damn answering machine kicked on with an earsplitting beep.

      “Fuck.” Murphy’s curse was muffled by the pillow.

      “Constance,” said someone familiar. We both scrambled up on our elbows, wildly shifted the covers and tried to get the phone before it disconnected.

      Since the phone was closer to my side of the bed, I won the mad race and scooped it up, panting and out of breath.

      “Hello, Councilor Allerton,” I gasped into the phone while Murphy performed some sort of strange-looking war dance on the cold hardwood floors. I didn’t feel much sympathy. I had told him to wear socks to bed and he had refused.

      “Is there no frigging heat in his place?” He hopped from one foot to the other.

      “Good morning, Constance, did I wake you?” Jason Allerton was a Councilor on the Great Pack’s Council. The Council oversaw all of the packs spread out across the world. Murphy and I were his newest Advisors. He sent us on assignments to other packs to investigate accidents, murders and disputes that could not be worked out by the Regional Councils and other projects as he desired. So far, we’d only been on one assignment for him and that one had been unofficial, before we’d affiliated with Mac Tire—one of the largest, continuous packs in the world. They were based in Dublin, Ireland, but we had yet to go there. I’d only met two people from my new pack—Murphy and the Alpha male, Padraic O’Reilly. The rest were amorphous strangers I supposed I would eventually meet.

      At the moment Murphy and I were in Boston, Massachusetts. I owned a condo and we were in the process of cleaning it, packing up the stuff I wanted to keep and getting it ready to act as rental property. When all this was accomplished, we would go to Belfast to clear out Murphy’s cottage there before we went to Dublin to meet the rest of our pack.

      After Councilor Allerton had asked us to be his Advisors, Murphy and I had been asked to join Mac Tire. In Murphy’s case it was rejoin since he had been born into the pack and had left after the death of his bond mate, Sorcha, but it was a new pack for me.

      Murphy had bought a car in Houston and we’d spent the past two months leisurely driving to the East Coast, stopping at all the major cities that interested us so we could sightsee. I’d seen more of my native country in the past two months than I had the previous thirty-two years of my life.

      We’d arrived in Boston the day before New Year’s Eve, so we’d barely even begun to tackle the condo. Murphy didn’t want to be on a time table. He wanted us to go slowly and explore. I think he meant each other as well as the cities we visited. We’d been thrown together and bonded under extreme circumstances and now that the dust had settled and we were still standing, we had a lot of getting to know each other to do.

      In the three months I’d known him, he’d rapidly become my best friend and confidante. My teacher and my guide.

      After my first bond mates, Grey and Elena, had died in a car crash two and a half years ago, I’d been kicked out of my small pack in Connecticut. Although the Councils had cleared me, my pack had never stopped believing I had been drunk the night I drove that car over the embankment and my bond mates died.

      It had been later proved that it was Grandfather Tobias, another member of my old pack, who had tampered with the brakes of my new Mustang. He was part of an underground movement made up of some of the oldest members of the Great Pack who resented the new ways we were adopting that brought us closer into interaction with the Others—those who were not Pack—and brought money and prestige into our packs by way of this involvement.

      The new direction was integration, although not going as far as to reveal we were Pack and could shift into wolves. The old way was behind the scenes, on the fringes. Jobs in retail were common, but some of us were con artists or magicians as well. The trick was to avoid attention and interaction with the mainstream world as much as possible.

      This movement saw to it that certain young Pack members, who flouted tradition, met with fatal accidents. It was meant to scare us, stop the flow of revenue and destroy the ones with the closest ties to the Others.

      Murphy and I, with Councilor Allerton’s assistance, had discovered and unmasked this movement. We had not stopped it because it could not be halted simply by announcing to the Pack it existed. That would have caused chaos and panic. They had to be stopped one and two at a time—quiet arrests and detainment.

      We’d barely scratched the surface and I knew a lot of work was yet to be done, but after what we’d gone through in Paris and Houston, I wasn’t sure I had the stomach for it.

      This was the other reason for the long road trip—it was a chance to regroup and get myself together.

      Allerton had checked in on us a few times along the way, but I wondered if this phone call heralded the end of the vacation and was a wake-up