The one thing of Liisi's he did use was the bone kantele. He removed it from the wall now, his fingers idly caressing the instrument while Wolf took down his shaman drum and seated himself, Indian fashion, in the center of the room where the silk rug once lay.

"I will give you a word," Waino told him, "and the word is hiisi."

Hair rose on Wolf's nape. Evil spirit. Demon.

"If the need arises," Waino continued, "you will return the word to me."

Endeavoring to calm himself, Wolf turned inward, seeking the peace of nothingness that lies within every individual--though few ever find it. Only when both spirit and body were serene did he begin to tap the drum and chant, hearing the strings of the kantele weave a minor-keyed melody around and through his words and the drumbeats.

After a time he heard neither kantele nor drum. Whether he still chanted, he did not know because the shadow-hole between the worlds had opened to his spirit. Down he plunged into darkness, the only light the silver gleam of the cord attaching him to life.

"I have been waiting," a voice whispered from the dark. "Long and long have I waited."

Before Wolf had time to think, something thick and scaly coiled twice about his waist, halting his passage.

"You are mine," the voice said. "You have always been mine."

The reddish glow from the coils showed him the head of a giant serpent hovering in front of his face. Wolf fought his terror. Had he encountered the Monster Between The Worlds?

The snake hissed with laughter. "You know me, Volek spawn, and that is not my name." Another coil slipped around Wolf's legs, then one about his chest. He couldn't move. Horror gripped him tighter than the coils. The witch! "It was meant for us to become one." The snake's mouth opened wide, forked tongue darting between the fangs. With fascinated dread, Wolf watched the jaws unhinge until the passage was wide enough to encompass him.

He writhed, struggling to back away from the slow advance of the snake's head but her coils held him fast. A drop of red venom struck his chest, burning its way toward his heart.

"Hiisi!" he gasped.

The snake's head plunged down over him and he fell into a burning hell.

The strains of a song called to him, faint and far away from the terrible world of pain that stabbed at his heart and crushed his bones.

"Come, come," the song urged. "Come this way, come to me."

Through his tears of agony he saw a dancing blue light beckoning him, showing him the way of the song. With the last of his strength, Wolf flung himself at the light. Soothing blue wrapped around him, cooling, mending as he drifted...

He opened his eye. Around him rose the stones of Volek House. Waino's white face hovered above him. "You've made your last shaman journey," Waino said. Wolf sat up, his head swimming with weakness. "The eternal enemy of all Voleks was waiting for me." "Never have I fought such a powerful foe. Death, hideous and evil, awaits if you ever attempt the passage between the worlds again." Wolf sighed, aware Waino was right. "Is there to be no solution for Quincy?"

Waino waved a hand. "This room of power must be his home."

Wolf, startled, looked around at the stone walls of the tower. Secure. Isolated from the rest of the house. High, inaccessible slits for windows. With the addition of a stronger, steel reinforced door and massive bolts, a veritable prison.

"Quincy can't be loose," Waino said. "Since he must be kept caged, this room will at least have a more soothing effect on him than the cellar where he now languishes." Depressed and saddened, Wolf nodded slowly. "I'll see to having a new door put on and some amenities added."

"Mind you, I haven't altered my belief he'd be better off dead."

"I can't disagree. But he's a Volek and we Voleks don't kill our own."

Grandfather did, Wolf thought as his words echoed in his mind. Grandfather killed the shifter who was his own son. But he shot the silver bullet before he knew the truth.

No one was more surprised than Melanie when Granville Darcy of Darcy-Goldfarb Studios called to offer her a screen contract. Her surprise didn't prevent her from accepting. In July she left for Los Angeles with a firm resolve never, no matter what, to return to Volek House.

By July of '23 she'd been renamed Melda Vance, her dark and sultry beauty had caught the public's fancy and she was well on her way to stardom.

By July of '23, Marti Waisenen was two and a half years old. Though her physical development seemed normal, mentally she remained an enigma.

Marti lay in her bed, a thin sliver of moonlight falling across the safety rail, and watched the shadow pictures parade inside her head. On this floor, everyone was asleep except her. No one was in the room high in the tower or on the first floor. Way down underneath the ground the unhappy wild one paced and fretted.

Feeling her touch, he reared up and started to howl but she shushed him. How could she help him if he made noise? She would have helped him before but she'd been too small. Even when she finally learned how to climb stairs she wasn't strong enough to work locks. But she'd gotten bigger and she'd learned.

He wanted to run free. Why didn't they let him? He hated his cage so violently that his misery made Marti's head hurt.

They were afraid of him. All except Leo. She knew everyone by name. In her head. The others spoke words but she didn't know how and so some of them thought she was defective. Curtis called her "Dummy" if none of the big people were around.

Nobody liked her except her mother. Her mother loved her but she wasn't sure if her daddy did. Even though she tried not to, she made her daddy uneasy.

The beast had a name for his other self--Quincy. He wasn't the only person in the house who had a beast self. Arno did. And Cecelia. Leo's beast wasn't as strong as the others. Beth didn't have a beast but something inside her was shadowed and beyond Marti's reach. Wolf was different from the rest. He didn't have a beast but, like her daddy and Beth, there were parts of him she couldn't crawl into. She'd tried to make Leo set the Quincy beast free. He wanted to but he wouldn't. Nothing she tried worked on him. Out of everyone in the house, only the beast heard her and paid attention. He was her friend and she was going to help him. Tonight, while the moon shone. He liked moonlight. Marti sat up and very carefully climbed over the guard rail and slid to the floor. She didn't want to fall and hurt herself, that would wake her mother and ruin everything. She was big enough to reach the doorknob now and she quietly opened the door, let herself out and closed the door behind her.

Going down the stairs took time but at last she was at the bottom and she padded into the kitchen in her bare feet. There, she picked up the little wooden chair that was hers and carried it with her into the study. Climbing on it, she pressed the third wolf's head on the carving that decorated the panel beside the fireplace.

A section of the paneling slid sideways, leaving an opening. Marti lugged the chair to the opening, climbed on it and pushed the light button inside. Now she could see the stairs going down under the ground. None of the servants who worked in the house during the day knew about this part of the basement. Beth didn't know and neither did Curtis. They didn't even know about the Quincy beast. But she did because she found out things by crawling inside people's heads.

She didn't climb down the stairs right away. Instead, she toted the chair to the front door and climbed on it to unbolt the door. Then she opened it, leaving the way clear for the beast.

The stairs down to the beast were steeper and harder to go down than the staircase to the second floor. It took her a long time to descend because she had to drag her chair along with her.

The Quincy beast got so excited by her coming that she had to warn him that if he howled she wouldn't let him out. Lugging the chair to the heavy bolted door, she sent pictures to him showing the way out of the house.

It took all her strength to shove back the massive bolts. She climbed down from the chair, pushed it aside and told the Quincy beast the door was unlocked.

Even before she completed the mind picture, he slammed against the door. Once, twice, three times. The door gave, slamming open and she blinked up at him. He snarled, showing his fangs but she knew he wouldn't hurt her so she wasn't really scared.

He bounded up the stairs and disappeared. Marti climbed back to the study and then realized she'd left the chair behind so she couldn't reach the wolf's head on the carving. Yawning, she stared up at it. All those stairs had been harder than she'd expected and she was too tired to go down and retrieve the chair. Now that the Quincy beast wasn't making her head hurt, she found herself too tired to even climb the stairs to her room.

She pulled herself onto the leather couch and curled up. As she dropped into sleep, she heard the beast, free at last, howl. She smiled.

Free! The beast loped into the night. Near the trees he stopped, howled his elation to the full moon and waited for an answer. None came. Where was his brother? The beast howled again, demanding, coaxing.

His need to have his brother join him warred with his longing to leap the wall and hunt in the hills for prey--and for a mate.

Then, among the other human scents from the house and the caretaker's quarters, he sensed one closer. Hunting him? His hackles rose. He'd never be caged again! He'd started to circle toward the wall when he saw the human. A woman. She had no gun; he wasn't in danger from her.

Instead of loping past her and on to the wall, he paused, her disturbing female scent strong in his nostrils. Suddenly the need to mate grew imperative, overriding his urge to hunt. She wasn't a proper mate but she was female. She hadn't seen him yet but she was afraid, he could almost savor the taste of her terror on his tongue as she hurried through the trees. Her fear combined with her female smell excited him past caution. He sprang from cover.

She screamed once before he overtook her and bore her to the ground, clawing away the clothes that covered her body and gouging bloody furrows through her flesh. He yanked her into position, ignoring her shrieks of pain when he forced himself inside her. His fangs sank into her neck to hold her in place while they mated. He lapped at her blood in his lust-induced frenzy.

Suddenly something sharp stabbed at his back, piercing through fur and flesh. Human scent surrounded him.

Before the beast could withdraw from the woman to confront his attacker, something metal-hard slammed across his head. Stunned, the beast pulled free of the woman and, snarling, flung himself on the man.

A gun roared. Before the man could pull the trigger again, the beast's fangs met in the human's throat, relishing the taste of an enemy's blood. He savaged the man until the body lay in tatters. The woman, covered in blood, twitched and moaned. He growled at her but decided she offered no threat.

Sensing two more humans approaching, the beast turned toward the wall. Before he could flee, a noose settled over his head, tightening around his neck, burning, hurting, choking him until he could see nothing, not even the bright gleam of the moon...

Wolf and Waino dragged the beast's limp body to the back door. Once they were in the kitchen, Wolf ordered Arno and Ivan to attend to Chung and Gei. Hawk and Leo helped carry the beast up the many stairs to the tower room where he was shoved inside. Waino loosened the silver noose, pulled it off the beast and left the room, closing the door behind him. He bolted it and then locked the double locks, keeping one key and handing the other to Wolf.

"You can't just leave him," Leo protested. "He's hurt."

"A pitchfork can't do much harm to a beast," Wolf said. "And Chung's shot missed him."

"Worse luck," Waino added. "Chung had two silver bullets for that rifle. If he hadn't been afraid of hitting his wife, he could have killed the beast then and there." He shook his head. "God knows she'd be better off dead. As would Quincy."

Wolf glanced at the steel-reinforced door. "He's in forever this time."

As they started down the stairs, Hawk said, "I still don't understand how a little kid like Marti could have set him loose from the cellar. She wasn't even supposed to know he was down there."

"My daughter surprised even me," Waino said. "Why the beast didn't kill her is another mystery."

In the kitchen, Chung's dead and mangled body lay on the floor, covered by a blanket. Druse looked up from where she knelt beside Gei.

"She's bleeding from everywhere," Druse said. "We can't save her. The baby doesn't seem to be harmed but--" Druse paused, biting her lip.

Wolf winced and glanced away from Gei's maimed, blood-stained body. If she died, the baby was doomed.

"Poor Gei." Samara's voice was hoarse with tears. "She told me walking in the moonlight calmed the baby when it grew restless and kicked too much. If only she hadn't--" Samara began to weep.

Waino reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the long, slim ivory handle that concealed his wickedly sharp Finnish blade. He knelt beside Gei and felt for the pulse in her throat, shook his head, and chanted a few words under his breath.

He slid the knife from concealment, clicked the blade into place and put the tip of the blade under Gei's navel. Wolf bit back a startled oath as Waino slit her abdomen open. He fully expected to see blood pour out but the bleeding was slight and sluggish, indicating Gei was all but exanguinated. Using the knife rapidly but delicately, Waino sliced through what Wolf took to be the muscle of the womb, enlarged the opening and set the knife down. Reaching inside the womb with both hands, he lifted out the infant, still encased in its birthsack, and handed the child to Druse. A boy, Wolf noted.

Fluid gushed when she used the knife to pierce the caul and pull the membranes from the baby's head. She wiped its face with a towel, tipped its head down and began to breathe into its mouth and nose.

Waino tied the infant's umbilical cord with a piece of string hastily handed to him by Samara and then severed the cord. "Gei's dead," he said.

At that moment the baby choked, gasped and began to wail. Tears filled Wolf's eyes, drying in startlement when a voice whispered in his head. "His name is Bren," Wolf muttered when he could speak, the name Chung's spirit had whispered to him. "Bren Volek," he added, "because he is one of us. A Volek orphaned him, Voleks must now be his mother, father, brothers and sisters." ###

Chapter 23.

"The sheriff's satisfied," Hawk told Wolf in the study a week after the night of horror. "Or at least he pretends to be. He won't bother us further about the deaths, anyway. He doesn't think much of Chinese--'Chinks,' he called them." Wolf nodded. Waino had suggested letting Hawk, famous locally as the area's war hero, be the family spokesman. A savage dog, gone mad and since destroyed, had been the cover-up story of Chung and Gei's death.

"I thought I'd seen death in all its gory aspects," Hawk went on, "but what happened to them was worse than anything I saw in France. Damned if I mean to sit around and let such godawful tragedies go on year after year. I've made up my mind to fly to Russia as soon as I can. Sergei Volek told us the answer might be there and I mean to do my best to find out why Voleks are shifters." He stared at his father. "There has to be a reason, a meaning for this suffering."

"I agree," Wolf said slowly, a chill foreboding raising the hair on his arms. "We must know. But about flying--the Pacific's a long way across. I don't believe--"

Hawk grinned. "Do you think I'm still five years old and about to jump off the barn roof? Russia's not so far away as you think. Look at a map--Alaska's only a few miles from Russian territory. I'll fly to Alaska first and go on from there."

Wolf smiled back at Hawk, trying to ignore the presentiment that still prickled through him. No, Hawk wasn't five any longer but there were times he wished his oldest son was still a boy, like Nicholas and Reynolds, a boy he could keep from harm.

On the day Hawk left on his Russian journey, Wolf flew to San Francisco with him to say goodbye there. He returned the following afternoon to find the household in turmoil. "Marti's missing," Druse told him, her eyes swollen from crying. "We can't find her anywhere in the house or on the grounds." She flung herself in Wolf's arms and sobbed. "Oh, papa, where's my baby?"

Waino, anxious and disturbed, told Wolf what had happened. "Samara tried to keep an eye on Marti but Bren's only two months old so he takes a lot of her time. I'll admit I should have been more vigilant but--" he turned his hands palms upward--"I had no idea she'd wander off like this."

"How could she have gotten through the gates?" Wolf asked.

Waino shook his head. "We don't know. Actually, I don't think she did."

"Perhaps not. Just how well have you searched the grounds?"

"Besides us here at Volek House, the McQuades sent fifteen of their field workers to comb the grounds and they did a thorough job. Didn't find anything. Rodney came over with his rabbit hound--she's an excellent tracker. We let her smell a nightgown Marti had worn but--" He shook his head.

"The dog found no trail?"

"At first we thought she had but after a bit she began running in ever narrowing circles and then stopped as if she'd come to the end of the trail even though there was nothing to see. Marti would have to have flown away like a bird. Or been taken away." The fear in his eyes penetrated coldly into Wolf's mind. They both knew concentric circles could be powerful charms.

Witchcraft? Wolf didn't like to even think the word.

"I found no trace of outside influence," Waino added as though Wolf had spoken aloud.

"Where was this circle?"

"I'll show you."

As they walked toward the grove of live oak, Wolf said, "Exactly how long has Marti been gone?"

Waino passed a hand over his face, almost dislodging his dark glasses. "Since the time we were saying goodbye to Hawk."

Wolf tried to recall who'd come to the airstrip to wave them off and who'd remained inside the gates. Hawk had taken off at sunrise--about six-thirty. The day servants hadn't yet arrived. Samara had stayed behind to look after Bren and Marti, Cecelia had remained in bed with a headache. All the others had been at the strip--except, of course, for Quincy, locked in the tower.

"Quincy?" Wolf asked.

"I remembered how Marti set him free once before. Even though I was certain she couldn't do that again, I checked the tower room as soon as we realized she was missing. Quincy was himself, for a wonder. I've had this hunch he communicates telepathically with Marti and so I asked him if he knew anything of her whereabouts. I got no answer--he'll speak only to Leo.

"Later, when Leo asked him the same question, Quincy said, 'Marti went away. She'll be back.' Leo couldn't get any more from him."

A shadow-hole? Wolf asked himself and shook his head. Marti might have some powers they didn't yet understand but he was almost sure her talent wasn't developed enough for her to make a shaman's journey.

Still, where was she?

"The day servants?" he asked Waino.

"They came to work about the time we missed Marti. I don't see how any of them could be involved."

"No strangers about?"

"Not within the gates."