Guarded Hearts

"Time to come home?" Amy asked amused.

"No... not for quite a while, Nathanael just called it... it's a hate crime." Electra told her mother.

Amy sighed a little sad. "Who was hurt? Do we have a name to get in contact with his family?"

"It was Ghost ma." Electra said gently.

Amy sighed again, even sadder by the turn of events. "He didn't need that." She said echoing the same words Electra had used earlier.

Electra agreed silently. "Ma... I'm going to need Maria; I'm not going to close this case without her help."

"You know how she is about leaving pack land Electra." Amy said with a little bit of resigned disappointment, Maria was doing much better but was still not able to integrate easily with people who weren't a member of her immediate pack.

"I think however that she'll do it ma... she'll do it for Ghost." She argued.

"I'll see what I can do."

"How is Mayhem?" Electra asked.

"She's out running with Guinevere."

"And Maddie?"

Amy's smile was evident in her voice, "getting ready to sit a level assessment. I am truly amazed at how quickly she's learnt. Rhiannon thinks she's close to middle school level."

"It helps that she has lessons seven days a week and has a Were's brain." Electra said with a smile, "and an Ancient tutor." She tacked onto the end.

"And access to one of the biggest ever private libraries." Amy said with a chuckle. "I think she spends as much time in the main library as Cleopatra and you know how hard it is to pull either away from a book of any sort."

Electra smiled, she had often had to steal the book from Maddie's hands just to get her to go to sleep. "I'll let you go."

"Yes... I have an up hill battle to fight." Amy said resigned to the battle to come as she hung up.

Electra closed her phone and took a deep breath.

Nathanael arched an eyebrow, "You are actually going to bring Maria into this. She'll freak out if someone so much as looks at her."

"I know... but without her I won't be able to close this case, to catch those who did this." Electra answered. "Maybe... if we can give him justice he might just decide to end his exile."

"Wait... is he wanted for something." Eric asked misinterpreting Electra's words.

Electra shook her head, "no, his exile is self imposed; he blames himself for something he had no control over."

Nathanael turned to Eric and Katie, "Ghost is... a tortured soul. To understand him you have to know his story." Nathanael took a deep breath, "what we know of Ghost's story is a mix of conjecture, myth and facts." He explained, everyone was hanging on his every word, Were passed through their town but they never made themselves known nor did they stay so this was a revelation to these people. "His story has been passed down and has been worked into not only our mythology but Other mythology as well. We all know his story... parts of it, it's told to us as children, and the story is drilled in when an immortal is discovered. Or at least it was when I was discovered as being immortal."

He glanced to Electra then back to Eric and Katie, he was focusing on them although he knew that every nurse and doctor in the room was watching him intently. "We don't know the name his mother gave him at birth or when he was born, we don't know how he came to be Were. What we do know is that he never lived in a pack and in the late ninth early tenth century a Viking Chieftain who had seen him shift captured him. Instead of killing him, the Chieftain decided to use him. He was chained, collared and caged, used by the Chieftain for the sick little games he liked to play."

Nathanael moved to get a better seat, "He called his beast Ulfr-gunnar, it literally meant Wolf Warrior. This Chieftain became feared and when he heard of new conquests across the sea, he took his men and his creature to those lands, those lands later became known as the Americas. He wanted to use his creature to instil fear of his kind into the people of the Americas. But his creature wanted nothing of it, he wanted freedom and he took that freedom by killing the Chieftain and running away."

"No one knows how long he wandered alone; no one really knows how or when he was adopted into an Indian tribe." Electra said taking over the story. "What we do know is the name the tribe gave him, Ghost. For his pale skin and hair and for his uncanny ability to move silently even in the thickest of undergrowth. Anyway, after a while the tribe started to notice that he didn't age and when they confronted him, he showed them that he could shift skin. He waited but they quickly assured him that they didn't want him to go, that they just wanted to know why he didn't age."

Nathanael smiled, "They told him that the wolf was their brother, that they would never harm him because of the wolf spirit within him." He said taking over. "They also told him that he had a home for the rest of his life with them if he wanted it."

"So he stayed, he lived with them for generations." Electra said both of them were now weaving the story. "The tribe let him do his own thing; they never forced him to do something... like take a wife."

Nathanael chuckled, "for a while they thought he wasn't interested in women. That was until Snow was born. As she grew, Ghost didn't notice her any more than he noticed any other young woman in the tribe that was until one day when Ghost was hunting. He heard a cry for help and went to help, it was Snow and she was in trouble with a mountain lion. He didn't think he reacted, in moments he was a wolf and after the mountain lion. In moments it was dead, he approached Snow who watched him afraid, she knew who he was, but she had never met him, he was so big in his wolf form. He pressed his nose to her body, smelling to make sure she wasn't hurt."

Electra smiled, "and the first time in his existence he wanted a woman, he wanted her more than anything in the world. He had found his soul mate."

"But she was young; he had to wait until she became a woman before he could claim her. He however was quick to arrange his marriage to her." Nathanael slid in.

"This is where the stories spilt a little," Electra told them. "Some say it was a few days before their marriage, others the day, but the time frame is irrelevant. Just as he thought he was going to live happily ever after the tribe was attacked and just as he got to her, she was killed."

"He couldn't live with himself." Nathanael said sadly, he had seen the passing of two mates, he thought after Kara died it would have been easy to watch someone he loved die. However, Jasmine's death was just as hard on him if not harder, he did not look forward to the day he would loose Clare but he kept hoping that soon he would find that his Kara/Jasmine/Clare would be immortal and that he would never have to live without her again.

"He blamed himself for her death," he continued. "He just kept going over and over everything he could have done to save her, torturing himself a million and one ways. It made him suicidal, he wanted to die and he tried, but he failed. His guilt and grief led him to give up."

Electra bowed her head. "He left the tribe, let his beast have complete control over their body and he has been a wolf ever since." She finished sadly.

"We've tried to talk to him, to draw him out, to give him a home and to tell him that his Snow would come back to him but he avoids everything, he avoids humans, Were, even normal wolves." Nathanael explained. "This is the closest anyone's ever gotten to him."

"Why is his case so sad?" Katie asked having caught the sadness they felt from his story.

"If he had a pack life," Electra answered, "if he was raised Were he would have understood that we believe that no one truly dies, that they get reborn. He would have known that he was immortal, that he couldn't kill himself and that he had to let it go." She finished.

"When he was young there were immortals, immortals had been around for so long that the problems they have watching those they love die was worked into the Were culture and he would have known." He added.

"I didn't know I was immortal until I was fourteen." Electra explained, "Most learn if they are immortal when they turn eleven or twelve, thirteen at the latest. Immortals start growing bigger than their age mates around that time with no exceptions."

"Then why didn't you find out until you were fourteen?" Eric asked.

Electra nodded that was a valid question. "Because my sire was a sadistic bastard who hated me." She said with no emotion in her voice. "On his order I was put in a lightless cell when I was nine, where I was raped, beaten and abused by members of his pack. The only reason why I found out I was immortal was because I was thrown into a fight pit when I was fourteen and I was already bigger than the adult Were in that pit." She glanced around, "a fight pit is when half a dozen or more Were are injected with a drug which induces fury, they are then tossed into a pit and a grate lowered. They then fight until one is left alive, most of the time albeit barely."

The room was silent; no one knew how to react.

"Some say that only those who are chosen become immortal, others say that only those who can cope become immortal. I believe that it's a bit of both." Electra told the room then took a deep breath and turned her attention to Nathanael. "We need to move him."

Nathanael nodded and stood, "he'll be all fangs and fury when he wakes." He said gently with concern, a hospital was not a place he would recommend for an immortal Were to wake up, not after what he had just gone through.

"There isn't a cage strong enough to contain an immortal in full fury." Electra said from experience, they were still trying to repair the box from the damage Mayhem had put it through.

"We need to put him somewhere until we can calm him down, a concrete pit with heavy steel grate should be enough, we just need him to calm down enough to talk to him." Nathanael said.

"Or calm enough to show him that we are like him." Electra tacked on.

"He will just assume we are other Were." Nathanael argued.

Electra nodded, "until he tries to kill one of us."

"Or maybe if we get Maria here, and all three of us shift before him he will know then, Maria is mortal, she's also clearly an adult and is average size for a female Were wolf." Nathanael suggested.

"That might work and if it doesn't we'll have three minutes to get ma here to force him to shift." She added.

"We have a plan." He told the room.

"Now all we need is a concrete pit." She said as she clapped her hands together, she glanced around, "anyone know where we can find one." She asked the room.

Katie nodded, "yeah... I have one... it was a pool but it leaked so I had it emptied and have been using it to hold wild animals while they recover. It has a heavy metal grate that is bolted and welded down."

"I hope you don't really like it?" Nathanael asked.

"I've been meaning to build a new one." She told him honestly.

"Good." He answered.