The Dam That Drowned Us

was Megan, and she had be

the rain running off my nose and watched them lower the box, and afterward I had gone back to the cottage and drunk a bottle of gin a

as white and cut short, and she was wearing an old wool coat with a red collar and a row of black butto

e dead,

wned garden, and her boots made no sound in the mud. "Ther

your funeral. Th

e. I heard the whole thing from the tunnel under the chapel. It is a good tunnel. Your father showed it to me in 1946." She turned her eyes back to m

ve walked out

se opens on the drawdown and only for blood. I am not blood of the Alpha line. You are. Y

cles inside me, nose to the wind, and the wind was full of her and of the pack hous

teps and you talk to the door. Tonight the water went down in the afternoon and the moon was near full and a woman with a brass compass walked the drowned street, and t

mpass," I said. "Y

n are walking the crest with their collars up. The house is awake, Rhys. That means the Council will be awake soon too." She picked up a lantern from the step and lit it with a match f

e west

the woman and the compass and what your father

as if I were twelve and late for supper. Then I went inside the house I had never entered, and the door swung shut behind me, and the pack house smelled of candle smoke and dust and the old Alpha's tobacco, and it was not a ruin. It was a house. The furn

the cup and said, "The woman

ooked at the fire. "Gwen Pryce was the Luna of this pack. S

m of it. "Gwen had a daughter. The daughter was taken by the Council in 1931 and raised in the town under a false name, and she had a child, and the child is the woman on your basin floor with the copper hair. The compass was mad

d. The gray wol

t. That is what your father signed, Rhys. He signed away the pack's territory and he signed away the Luna to save the children, and the children were

had begun to shake. "You have been here ten yea

to tell you any of it." Megan leaned forward. "The house opened for her blood, Rhys. It opened for Gwen's blood and

rd, and I felt the answer in my body bef

wned pack. The Council will come. Prosser will bring them." She stood up and took the kettle off the trivet. "You have until the water goes back up on Thursday. After that the ho

ords in my head, and I climbed the west shoulder in the dark and shut the hidden sluice at the bottom of

with wet hair and a red ledger un

had pinned a survey map over the county map, a big pale sheet with the valley drawn in contour lines, and s

k i

is Pr

ore, in a tidy printed box, there was a small black logo of a steel beam and a P, and beside it the name Prosser Iron and Stee

the town. He has been after the county for

n Cardiff three weeks before I was posted here. He says the dam is dangerous and he is willing to fund the insp

ater scent was all over the room, and my wolf rose in my chest and stood up and shook

t know,"

letter down. "You went wh

alley. Everyone

street in my head last night while I was having my bath. I counted the doors. There are forty-one houses on that street and a church with a crypt and a house at the end with three chimneys. My survey says two farms. So one o

ce stove began to whi

ut the villa

nothing

e knowing of it made my jaw ache and my eyes prickle and my wolf press against the inside of my skin. "You have

ot have

eld it out flat on her palm, and the needle swung and settled pointing at me. "And

y mouth to

down at the map and I looked down at the map, and the needle was pointing at the red line that ran up from the steelworks to the

sharp like a struck match and old money. The corner of the letter curled and blackened and flared, and I slapped it off the table with the flat of

t just happe

bell in the gateh