by Jade Wolfe
"Yeah, well, I'm still waiting for you to explain the killing of dogs that turn into humans." There was a note of teasing in his voice, but something deeper, too. Accusation?
Well, why wouldn't there be? I was killing things in front of him, and whether they were men or beasts probably didn't matter much at this point. The only reason he wasn't pushing harder was probably because I had killed one of them while it was attacking him. Otherwise he might have taken me straight to Michaels and had me locked up.
I was trying to formulate an answer when I spotted movement near the edge of Confederate Circle, under a cluster of trees near Elm Street. At least eight werewolves, maybe the rest of the pack, loping along toward the center of town. Bingo.
"What?" Sam turned to see what I was looking at. "More of the dogs?"
I nodded. "Yeah. I'm gonna need to go. You should get home, in case Caleb is there waiting for you."
I didn't stick around for an answer. Those wolves were heading for the bridge. They'd be right on top of the emergency responders when they got there, and I needed to stop this. Now.
I took off toward them, trying to decide what to do as I ran. I knew I couldn't kill that many with a knife, or even all my knives. I was going to have to use my fire, and I just hoped there was no one around to see it. Better they see something inexplicable than get eaten by wolves though, right?
At twenty feet away, one of them turned its head and spotted me. I skidded to a halt in the shadows of a bush and waited to see if they would come after me.
The one who saw me hesitated, one enormous paw off the ground. Still beautiful animals, but the fact that he was sizing me up for lunch took some of the pleasure out of the sight. I never thought I'd see these creatures in town, and I definitely never imagined I'd be hunting them here.
Another werewolf looked after the first one and saw me. He let out a low growl, a rumble I could hear from where I stood. It was threatening enough to make me take a step back.
I pulled up a fireball, barely thinking about it, and hurled it toward the pack with all the force I had. The explosion sent werewolves flying and shattered the windows of a dress shop. Right before it caught a telephone pole on fire. Damn it. Well, better a little property damage than a dead citizen or two.
When the explosion subsided a bit I was able to see eight bodies lying scattered across the street and hear the first of the sirens as the cops headed this way. I turned and took off running.
"Wait!" Sam yelled, startling me as I ran past. I thought he'd gone home.
"Get out of here," I answered, not even slowing down.
"What happened?" he yelled.
"Gas main."
With the wolves hopefully dead, I headed for home. I knew I couldn't run that far - I really needed to take Lucy's advice and start running on a regular basis - so when I saw a ten-speed in somebody's yard I stole it.
I silently promised myself, and the owner, I would bring it back later.
The darkness closed in quickly once I was out of town. The bike was a nice one, with thick knobby tires and a comfy seat, but it didn't have a headlight, or even reflectors. I could barely see the gravel road in the moonlight that filtered through the overhanging trees. I didn't dare slow down, though. With the werewolves out of the way, I needed to get home and repair the barrier, if Pearl hadn't done it yet. The last thing we needed was vampires, banshees, or some other supernatural creature in town. Wilding had been through enough.
If I was really lucky, Lucy and Miranda were home, and they'd already helped repair the barrier and corralled the rest of the creatures. Maybe they'd even taken care of the rogue witch, because I was in need of a hot bath, about twenty pounds of food, and a good night's sleep.
I wasn't counting on any of that, though, and right now the witch and the barrier were my main objectives.
Home came into view about twenty minutes later and I was relieved. If the barrier was still down, who knew what was lurking in all that wild acreage? I hoped the lack of banshees, at least, was an indication that Pearl had gotten it fixed.
The lights were on when I pulled up to the house, but I didn't see any movement until I yelled for Lucy.
Miranda poked her head out the front door. "Indigo?"
I looked her way and waved, then got off the bike and jogged over to her. "Where are Lucy and Pearl?" I asked.
Miranda looked like she'd been crying. I was surprised we weren't having a tornado or something. "They headed into the woods to fix the barrier, but neither of them have come back yet. I'm getting worried."
"How long ago?"
"Maybe an hour? Ninety minutes? I'm sorry, Indigo. I'm not sure."
I ran up the porch steps and gave her a quick hug. She let out a little hiccup. "Don't worry. You must be tired from your trip."
She nodded, but she was still near tears. I needed to help her, and she could help me, too.
I let go of her and looked her in the eye. "Can you do me a favor? Can you have something to eat ready when I get back with them? They'll be starving and they might be hurt."
Her eyes lit up and I couldn't help but smile. Of all of us, Miranda was the most gentle, and her support right now gave me fresh energy. "Thank you so much. I promise I'll be back with them as soon as I can."
I hopped back down the stairs.
"Indigo?" she called.
"Yeah?"
"Hurry. I'm worried."
I nodded and waved, then headed for the woods.
The creek offered no reassuring jolt of barrier energy, so I had to assume that something was wrong. Lucy would understand the importance of fixing it, and if possible it would be the first thing she did. That meant something had happened to her before she could get the work done.
The woods were dark, so I made a fireball big enough to help me see and took the trail toward the cave. If there was trouble in Red Rock, I had a good idea of where to look.
The cave was maybe an hour away from the house, so I took off at a jog, being careful not to trip. If I broke an ankle while Lucy and Pearl were out of commission somewhere, we were all dead meat. Literally.
I made it to the tree line and the valley floor when I heard a faint voice on the breeze rolling in off the river. I stopped. It sounded like crying.
"So help me," I muttered to myself, "If Tom fell in the river again, I swear I'm going to let him drown."
I looked up the mountain toward the cave, then glanced toward the river again. Damn it. The voice was too faint for me to tell for sure it was Tom. It could just as easily be Pearl or Lucy, hurt and in danger. I ran that way.
It was like deja vu, except that last time there were more banshees in the trees, watching to see if I would save Tom before they got to eat him. Tonight I only saw one or two, and that worried me. Where were they, and if they were outside the barrier how were we going to get them back? Banshees were dangerous in large numbers, more timid when there were only a few.
I realized that I hadn't heard their nightly song for a few days now. The low, mourning wail was a constant night noise at Red Rock, as the banshees gave voice to all of history's bloodshed on the land. If they weren't singing, there had to be something really terrible going on.
The river water had gone down some, but it was still dangerously fast. I let my fire light flare and held it high, scanning the muddy bank for movement or a human form. I didn't see anything, so I walked a little farther.
That reminded me - I had never followed the Air Elemental's trail beyond the river that night when I'd saved Tom.
Now I was willing to bet it would have led me right to the witch and we could have avoided all of this. I felt an entirely irrational irritation at Tom.
I made my way down the bank toward the mountain, figuring that I would look that far, and then go uphill to deal with whatever was going on in the cave. At least it wasn't raining, and my clothes were dry for the most part.
I saw the figure waving just before I turned away from the bank and started up the slope. Whoev
er it was, they were too tall to be Lucy or Pearl, and too lanky to be Tom. "Hello?" I called, waving back. "Is something wrong?"
Maybe it was a camper, or maybe a hiker had twisted an ankle. Red Rock was public property, after all, so anyone could be out here. I made my way that direction, keeping my eyes on the oval, pale face in the darkness. As I got closer I realized that it was a child.
A boy.
Chapter Twelve
I waved back at him, hoping he could see me, and extinguished my fire light. That made the going tougher, but it kept him from asking too many questions. "Talk to me," I called when I got a little closer. "Where are you?"
His voice, carried on the breeze, was thin. "Over here! I think I broke my ankle. Help me."
"What's your name?" I knew the answer to that. "Tell me who you are."
"I'm from town. My name is Caleb, and my dad is Sam Salinger."
Even hurt, he sounded huffy, like I should know the name. Brat.
OK, not really. He was most likely just scared. "I'm almost there." My foot slipped in the mud and I almost went head first into the river, but landed on my knees instead. The freezing water immediately soaked through my jeans. "Just a few more feet. What are you doing out here in the dark?"
"A project for school. I was looking for leaves." He was getting more hysterical. His voice broke on that last word. Or maybe it was just puberty.
I got close enough to where I thought he was. "Hold out your hand."
Slimy cold fingers slapped against mine. I missed, grabbed again, and caught his wrist. The slope was steep here - no wonder he fell. I dug around with my free hand and found some exposed roots before he dragged me down with him. "Got you. Can I pull you up?"
"Yes. Please."
I smiled at how polite he was trying to be, even in danger. For a twelve year old, he wasn't heavy, but I still had to work hard to get him up onto safer ground. He did his part, too, scrambling with his free hand and the foot that wasn't hurt. By the time he sat down beside me at the top of the bank, we were both panting. "So you're Caleb. Your dad has been looking for you."
"I didn't mean to be gone so late." His face was a pale dot in the dark. I couldn't see his eyes at all.
"Please don't ever come out here without telling somebody where you're going. And please don't leave the trails."
"I needed a sycamore leaf. They grow close to the water."
I knew for a fact that sycamores grew downtown, near the bridge, but I didn't say anything. "We need to get you out of here. It's too dangerous."
"I thought I heard a snake."
I didn't say anything to that, either. Snakes were the least of our worries. "Can you walk?"
"I think so. If we go slow." He stood up carefully and leaned against me a little. His clothes were soaked.
"All right. I'm going to put my arm under your arm and help you along, OK?"
I felt him nod and he held out his arm. I slipped mine around his back and we took a couple of slippery steps. "If you see a tree, grab it. That'll help."
For a while, as we moved across the field and made our way back toward home, the only sounds were our breathing and our footsteps brushing through the tall grass.
We were halfway back to Miranda's house when his body tensed. "What was that?"
I looked around. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness well enough to make out the path and the trees on either side, but that was all I saw. "What?"
He shifted his weight and pointed, just as a tall pale figure disappeared behind a copse of trees. Uh-oh.
"Sorry, I didn't see anything," I lied.
"It looked kind of like a person, but...weird." He craned his neck, almost losing his balance and dragging us both to the ground.
"Stop that. It was probably a deer."
"If you say so."
"Yep. Let's get out of here."
What he had seen, and what I could never explain to him, was a vampire. There weren't many out here in Red Rock, but enough that you spotted one once in a while. Mostly all I found were dead animals laying here and there, looking like they had died peacefully in their sleep. Underneath the fur they were unnaturally pale, even in death, but if you didn't go looking you'd never know the difference. I pushed a little faster. The sooner I got him out of the park, the better.
By the time we made it back to the field, we were panting again. Getting him all the way home was going to be a pain in the ass, and I still needed to come back for Pearl and Lucy. This was turning into a long night.
But at least I saved the kid. Two rescues in one week felt pretty amazing, if I did say so myself. "We can call your dad to come get you when we get back to my house, all right?"
He didn't answer. He was busy trying to figure out a rhythm to our walk, hop, walk, hop, walk. It wasn't easy, and there was a lot of resting against various trees, but by the time I saw the lights of Lucy's house we'd pretty much figured it out.
Getting him across the creek was harder, but we managed that, too, and then I took him straight to Miranda's back porch.
She opened the door and gasped. Her dark eyes found mine. "You didn't find Lucy?"
"Haven't had time to look yet. Miranda, meet Caleb Salinger. Found this one in the woods. He's hurt. Can you help him, and let him call his dad?"
"Of course." She opened the door wide to let us in, but I gave Caleb a gentle shove. "Go ahead, Caleb. She's a friend. I have to go."
Lucy and Pearl could be in real trouble. I didn't have time to waste. Caleb hopped inside and found a seat in a chair in Miranda's lamp-lit living room. She handed him the landline. "Go ahead and call your dad," she told him.
I gave him a wave. As Miranda started to close the door I saw tears on her cheeks in the light from the living room and stopped her. "Miranda, what happened?"
She hitched her breath. "Raul called. They found Peter dead this morning. Isadora killed him."
"Isadora?" I asked, blanking. Then I remembered the story. Isadora must be the witch who stole Miranda's husband. "Oh."
"They can't find her."
I paused, knowing what that implied. "Do you really think she's here?"
Miranda shrugged despondently. "I have no idea, Indigo. She was power-hungry and vicious, so she could just as easily have killed Peter and taken up with another witch. She was...erratic. Peter told me that she was acting pretty strange these last couple of months, too."
"Wait - you kept in touch with him?" I asked.
She smiled. "I was in love with him. We spoke on the phone every week or two."
It must be so sad to have someone hold your heart and then crush it like that.
"Uh...ma'am?" Caleb was trying to stand.
I looked at him.
"I can't get my dad on the phone, and I really want to go home now."
Miranda and I looked at one another. "You stay here in case they come home," I said. "I'll drive him."
She nodded and got him a blanket from the hall closet. He wrapped it around his shoulders and held it in front with one hand, and we started the little hoppity walk to the SUV.
"Nice ride," he mumbled as I hoisted him up into the passenger seat.
"Thanks. Don't get it dirty."
I slammed the door and went around to climb in behind the wheel. "You can tell me where you live, right?" I asked him.
"Well, yeah." He said it like I was asking a stupid question.
"Well, your dad said you were new in town, so..."
"Sorry." He slumped against the seat. "We live on Picket Avenue."
I raised my eyebrows at that but didn't say anything. Picket was one of those cutesy little neighborhoods where everybody was worth a few million dollars but they liked to pretend they were regular folks. They called their houses cottages and their back yards the garden, even though nothing ever grew there but grass. In other words, Mr. Sam Salinger was worth a lot of money. I bet he was fighting off the local ladies with a stick.
Not that I cared. It was just surprising. He didn't strike me as th
e kind of man who lived on Picket. He seemed too...nice. And ordinary. And not an ass.
The trip back into town was a lot more comfortable than the bike ride, and fifteen minutes later we were pulling into a boy toy dreamland of a house. I saw a boat, a three-car garage, two motorcycles, and a GTO that my foster father would have sold his arm to own. The house itself was big, like all the other houses on this street, with a low brick wall outlining the property.
"He's not here," Caleb said, pointing. "The truck is gone."
I swallowed a sigh. "Are you sure it's not just in the garage?"
"No, the garage is full of my...of stuff."
"OK, well, let's go find him, then."
I couldn't afford to take the time, but I wasn't about to let the kid out of my sight until we found his dad. I backed out of the driveway and headed downtown, my headlights flashing across lots of the wrought iron and brick that was so popular around here.
We passed the little bakery where I'd killed the werewolves. It was hard to miss with blue and red lights flashing all over the place and men walking around. One cop stopped what he was doing long enough to watch us drive slowly by, looking as tired as he did suspicious. I didn't see Michaels anywhere, or the guy with the dog. I hoped they weren't still traipsing around out at Red Rock.
"Wonder what happened?" Caleb asked, leaning forward to see.
I pushed him back with an arm. "Hard to tell." We were a block past the scene when I saw a familiar form walking along toward the bridge. "It's my dad," Caleb said, pointing and leaning forward again.
"I see him." I pulled over and tapped the horn, making him turn. Caleb started to get out of the car, but I said, "Wait until I help you. You'll fall on that ankle."
Sam came to the driver's side and I rolled down the window. "I have something of yours," I said.
His eyes lit up with relief and a smile that made me smile, too. "Caleb."
He jogged around to the other side of the car and opened the door. "Be careful," I said, "He's hurt."
The relief was replaced by worry.
"Not badly, I don't think," I added. "Just be careful."