Laws of Nature -2 by Christopher Golden (i can read books txt) 📕

far corner, its back to the windows. His face was partially in shadow, his gray hair turned halo-golden by the sunshine streaming in around him.

" Henri Lemoine, you are a monster," she said, pronouncing his name with the accent of his native French.

"Christina," he replied softly, gazing up at her with an expression of sadness that she almost believed.

Tina shuddered and shook her head. "No, Daddy. You killed him! You killed Alan, or had one of the others do it for you."

Her father stood at last and crossed the room toward her. "Christina," he said again, reaching out for her. "He gave me no choice. Alan was always a curious young man. Things had progressed too far. It would have been impossible to erase what he had seen from his mind."

Though fury rippled through her, made her want to change, to give herself over to the wild, Tina refused to allow it if only to deny him that one small thing. He would have wanted her to give reign to the beast within her, but she would not. Just as Henry Lemoine now wore his human face in an attempt to mollify his daughter's sorrow.

"Don't try to tell me that Alan was responsible for his own murder!" she yelled. "You killed him, you old bastard. You animal!"

"Yes, I am an animal. And yes, I had him killed. But he left me no choice."

Fuming, her chest heaving with her rage, she slapped her father across the face, long nails scratching him and drawing blood. Henry touched the wounds and then licked his own blood from his fingers.

"You could have prevented it, you know," her father said.

A chill went through her. Unable to believe she had really heard those words, she shook her head. "What are you talking about?"

"I tried to talk to you about what was happening, but you did not want to hear it. Ever since you came of age, daughter, you have vexed me whenever possible.

You embraced the human world, spurned your heritage here, this sanctuary for your kind. You left us - "

"I went to college!" she shouted.

Henry nodded sadly. "And you only came home because your mother was ill and I promised to buy you that old hotel. But I did that to keep you close to the Pack, hoping that one day you would see that you were mistaken. That one day you would become part of the Pack again, that you would at last understand the importance of sanctuary and the dream behind it. Even when you became involved with a human, I indulged you."

"I loved him," Tina whispered, on the verge of fresh tears.

Her father scowled. "He was kind, Tina. But he was human."

She turned away. All she wanted now was to run, to leave her father, his precious sanctuary, and all the Pack behind forever.

"None of this would have happened if you had not broken your own rules and started killing the people in town. We lived among them so long and they never knew, not for sure, that we were real. Then you throw that all away in a matter of weeks."

Henry let out a long sigh that sounded more like a rumbling growl.

"You would understand if you had been willing to let me speak to you of this before. I tried, Tina. Do not forget that. And you turned me away, shushed me. Will you listen now?"

She did not respond, only kept her back to him. But she listened. He spoke to her then the way he had at bedtime when she was a child, as though they sat around the fire and he shared with her the great wisdom of his ancestors. Which was, she supposed, true enough in his mind.

"Once, the Great Packs roamed all the continents of the world, sometimes at war with one another, sometimes at peace," Henry Lemoine told his daughter.

"But as humanity evolved, they spread like a forest fire. Soon there were so many that the Packs found themselves hunted. The early humans had been prey, but over time, they became the enemy.

"The Packs splintered, internecine war erupted over the hunting grounds that were free of the taint of humans. But the humans kept coming, spreading their influence. Over the course of thousands of years, we evolved the ability to appear human, we adapted. But by then it was too late. There were thousands of tiny Packs spread across the world, mostly in the dark, forgotten corners where few humans congregated.

"During the twentieth century, many broke off from the Packs and hid themselves away within human society, became part of it. When there was no loyalty between the surviving packs, nor even any real communication, there was no society. Without that, there was no responsibility, from one of us to the other.

"Sanctuary was created as a response to that, a place where we could come to rest, to be safe, to consider our place in a society that barely existed any longer. Rogues or renegades, no matter what their Pack affiliation, or if they had no affiliation at all, they are welcomed here. They can join the Pack, or stay for a short while, living in the mountains, in the wild, as their ancestors did.

"The sanctuary is a sacred thing, a memorial to the greatness we achieved in the past and a testament to our belief that we can reach those heights again.

Society is the answer. Together we can return to the glory of an almost forgotten age.

"But only if we do so quietly."

He paused then. Tina swallowed hard and turned to face her father. She still did not understand what any of that had to do with the Pack's breach of its first law. They had killed people in Buckton, where they lived, drawn attention to themselves.

"Christina," Henry said gently, "when word came to us about what had happened to Owen Tanzer and his pack, we mourned. But they were foolish. Tanzer forgot that this is their