Chapter 8: Show Us Your Wolf

We came down the mountain at five on Friday afternoon with the new #03 on an open Ossler trailer behind Torrey's truck.

I could have hidden the car in my barn.

Instead I had him drive it straight through the speedway gate and park it in the middle of the pit lot, where my hauler used to be.

The burn mark was still on the clay, a black square oily at the edges.

He parked the trailer right on top of it.

Tow drivers and two of the gate boys came out of the concession stand to look.

They stared at the blue car with my father's number on the door, and then at the man who'd towed it.

"Is it the meeting?" I asked one of the gate boys.

He swallowed.

"Seven, Alpha. In the clubhouse."

"Good. I'll be there."

At seven the clubhouse was full.

They'd pushed the breakfast tables against the walls and set out folding chairs.

There were a hundred wolves, maybe more.

Some of them had driven down from Lake Isabella.

Lon stood at the front by the bar in his good pearl-snap shirt.

Cleve sat in the front row with his arms crossed, still sunburned, still huge.

The Charter keeper sat beside them in her wheelchair with the leather ledger on her knees.

She's ninety-one, and she knew my great-grandmother.

Lon was in the middle of a sentence when I came through the door.

"...a full week up that mountain, folks. A full week. While her own track sat here with a burned hauler on it. While her own people..."

He saw me and stopped.

Then he saw who came in behind me, and the whole room stood up.

Chairs scraped. A growl started at the back and spread.

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