United (The Ushers) by Vanessa North Page B

start.”
    “I don’t know. The hairs on the back of my neck are standing on end.”
    Monica could feel Annie’s frustration through the link and reached out to hold the Guide’s hand.
    “It’s going to be okay, Annie. You would know if something bad were going to happen.” Monica smiled reassuringly at the Guide.
    “Let’s be sure to stay in Mid-Atlantic territory, just in case. Ted has willingly given his obeisance and allows us to shift at will in his territory.” Fionn’s face looked thoughtful. “Kirk’s next revival is scheduled just before the full moon in Bluefield. That’s really close to his home. Virginia is Ted’s territory all the way through, so we’ll cut through Virginia on our way to Bluefield.”
    The rest of the group agreed with the wisdom of that choice. By the time they reached their destination, a campground on the northern end of the Monongahela National Forest, Annie’s uneasiness had waned. Monica stepped out of the car and looked around with a scowl.
    “Are you sure you don’t want to stay in a hotel?” She turned to Fionn.
    He threw his head back and laughed as she wrinkled her nose in distaste. “What’s the matter? Does my big bad Alpha bride not like sleeping in the woods?”
    “Oh no, sleeping is fine. It’s the lack of plumbing that I don’t care for.” She turned hopefully, banking on Ellen and Annie to have her back. She was disappointed to see Ellen hiding a laugh behind her hand and Annie enthusiastically grabbing camping gear out of the car, as though she knew what to do with it. Which, considering her free-spirited ways, she probably did. Annie had probably picked up a merit badge in following the Grateful Dead back when that was a thing.
    Taking pity on her, Graham leaned in and whispered in her ear, “They have toilets here. Sinks and showers, too.”
    “Oh, thank the Goddess.” Monica sighed with relief as they all burst out laughing.
    “Monica, when’s the last time you went camping?” Annie asked, curiosity plain on her face.
    “You know, back in the old days, we didn’t ‘go camping’—we ‘made camp,’ and we had to grow or hunt whatever we ate and tried not to be too far from a fresh water source at any given time. We didn’t carry handguns—” she glanced at Fionn’s 9mm Ruger in his underarm holster “—we carried rifles, and even the little girls knew how to shoot.” She still remembered the weight of her blunderbuss in her arms, all these decades later, the smoothness of the flared barrel next to her bed, a comfort when she woke in the middle of the night. She could remember the times she’d fired it, the way she’d braced the gun’s stock with her hip to counteract the fear-induced shaking of her hands. “Our first shift couldn’t come fast enough, because only then would we have teeth and claws to defend ourselves if, Goddess forbid, we were caught by a predator…and I’m not necessarily talking about animals…without a gun.”
    Monica watched as her companions’ faces drew grim as their imaginations took over where her words left off. Werewolf women on the American frontiers had lived dangerous, brutal lives. Back in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when Monica was a young wolf, unmated women would have been treated as property by alpha males, owned by whoever was strong enough to keep them. Ensconced in her library apartment with its big screen TV, computers, and elevator, Monica seemed a thoroughly modern woman, but underneath, she was still the same little girl who’d slept with a gun and prayed to the moon Goddess for her first shift to hurry up and grant her claws and teeth. And then when her mate had died and she became a ghost-wolf, she was just a woman in a human’s weak body, alone with no wolf and no gun, her only protection her faith in Sara’s curious instructions to march ever east and not look back.
    Swallowing hard, Fionn stroked her cheek with a finger. “You should have said something. We