by Rebecca York
The coven was in full flight. Probably the wolf could have killed at least one of them.
Instead he turned and raced back toward the car. He reached her door, standing with the mist swirling around him, staring up at her through the window. And she would have sworn that he was begging her to tell him she was all right.
She should have been terrified. He had savagely attacked the people who had come to hurt her. But she felt a kind of awesome calm settle over her. In her heightened state of awareness—her witch’s state of awareness—she knew who he was.
It made no sense. But she knew the wolf was Adam, and that he had come in response to her call for help, come to her with no regard to what might befall him.
Last night, the reverse had happened. She had known he was in danger. And she had been terrified. Then she had seen the sheriff’s boots and called out a warning. But she hadn’t seen Adam. Now she knew why. He had been a gray wolf in the darkness, and her mind had rejected that vision.
Tonight it was impossible to turn away from the knowledge of the wolf. Man and animal were the same. She was staring down at him through the glass when flashing lights in the rearview mirror suddenly captured her attention.
A police car. The wolf saw it, too.
He waited for a few more seconds, then turned and dashed away, disappearing into the fog. And she was left sitting in the car, breathing hard, trying to deal with the unthinkable.
Paul Delacorte stepped out of the police car and came toward her car, shining his light through her window.
She raised her hand to shield her face, and he directed the beam away from her.
“Dr. Weston? Are you all right?”
She opened the door. “Yes. I…I had an accident.”
“Are you all right?” he repeated.
“I’m all right,” she assured him, trying to keep her voice steady.
“Please get out of the car.”
She did, wanting him to know that she hadn’t been driving under the influence. As he shined the light on her, she started shivering.
He moved the beam away from her and inspected the damage. “What happened? Did you fall asleep?”
“No.”
He played the beam around the bottom of the car, then at the trees along the side of the road, then onto the blacktop.
“Did you swerve to avoid an animal?”
“No.”
He made a more thorough inspection of the area, then came back to her.
“I always call for an ambulance. But it looks like you don’t need one.”
“No, I don’t.”
She waited while he spoke into the microphone clipped to his collar, canceling the emergency vehicle.
She was debating what else to say to him, when more headlights cut through the night.
A surge of fear shot through her. She was sure Delacorte caught her contorted features. Then he turned toward the newcomer pulling up in back of the police car.
It couldn’t be the witches coming back, she told herself. Not now. Not when the sheriff was here. But logic had nothing to do with the sudden chattering of her teeth.
She cringed against the car, then breathed out a small sigh as she saw who it was—Adam, looking disheveled, as though he’d just thrown on his clothing.
A feeling of unreality seized her as she stared at him. He had been here only a few minutes earlier. He had come to her rescue. But the last time she had seen him, he had been a wolf.
She fought off a jolt of hysterical laughter. If she thought he had been a wolf, she had another reason to doubt her own sanity. Yet she knew it was true.
He ran across the road, his eyes fixed on her, yet he stopped a few yards away, and she knew that he was hesitant to approach her, now that she’d seen the wolf in action. Then another thought struck her. She hadn’t said anything to him. He didn’t even know for sure if she had recognized him.
Yet she felt unspoken messages passing between them.
A sane person would be afraid to get near him now. But she wasn’t frightened of him. Really, she was more afraid of herself.
“Adam.” She raised her hand toward him, and he closed the distance between them, taking her in his arms.
“Are you all right?” he asked, and she felt the question rumbling deep in his chest.
“Yes.”
“Thank God.” He pulled her tightly to him, and she leaned into his warmth. He was here. He had come to her again. Even when he didn’t know if she was going to run screaming from him.
His hands stroked up and down her back, and she knew he must feel the fine tremors of her body.
Behind her Delacorte was speaking. “I was trying to find out what happened.”
She turned to face the sheriff, letting Adam hold her against his body. “I…I…” She stopped and started again. “A car was coming toward me. I swerved off the road to avoid it.”
The lawman looked around. “I don’t see another car.”
“It managed to keep from hitting me. I guess…” She stopped, wondering what to say.
Adam filled in the gap. “What I think is that the witches were lying in wait for her. They forced her off the road. Then they came to finish her off.”
Her head swung toward him. Then to Delacorte. Then back.
FALCON gripped the arms of the easy chair.
“What the fuck are you doing? Trying to burn my skin off?”
“I’m trying to disinfect this bite,” Willow answered as she dabbed antiseptic on his mangled flesh. “You don’t want to end up in the hospital, do you?”
Falcon gritted his teeth as she slopped more of the stuff on the places where sharp teeth had punctured his skin. He had a bunch of deep bites on his legs.
So did the rest of the clan. They were gathered in the living room of the house where a big plastic sheet hung between them and the construction mess.
Until a few days ago, the addition had still been open. Now he was profoundly glad that the house was secure and that the wolf or dog or whatever it had been couldn’t get in.
“What was that thing?” Razorback asked, echoing his thoughts.
“I don’t know. But it was something strange,” Starflower answered.
“It was a dog gone mad,” Razorback said.
“And it came streaking out of the night and started tearing at us just when Sara Weston needed help,” Starflower said. “Don’t you think that’s a little convenient for her?”
“What are you saying?” Falcon demanded.
“Maybe she’s the kind of witch who has a familiar. In fairy tales, it’s a cat. But maybe she’s got a damn wolf.”
“Oh yeah, right,” Razorback said, trying to sound sarcastic and not quite pulling it off.
“If it’s true, it’s another reason we have to get rid of her. Because next time, that wolf of hers could rip us to pieces.”
“WHY would the witches be after her?” Delacorte asked Adam in a slow, careful voice.
Adam watched Sara drag in a breath. He thought she was going to speak, but she evidently changed her mind and closed her mouth. He pulled her closer and filled the silence by saying, “I think they’re afraid of her.”
“Why?”
“She’s some kind of threat to them. They didn’t just drive her off the road. They came after her with their psychic powers! The way they came after me that night in the swamp.”
The sheriff was watching him closely. “How do you figure that?”
His own tension level was so high that he didn’t have to fake a show of emotion. He ran a hand through his hair in a good imitation of a man who was thoroughly perplexed. “Maybe I’ve got a little of their…their powers. All I know is that I sensed that Sara was in trouble out here—from them. And I came running. Or rather driving.”
Which left out the part when he had come running. But he wasn’t going to bring that up. He was pretty sure Sara wouldn’t, either—if she’d understood what had happened. He didn’t even know that much.
He kept
his gaze fixed on Delacorte, to see how the explanation had gone over. The sheriff nodded as if the answer didn’t really surprise him. “I’ve got a theory about that,” he muttered.
“Oh yeah?”
“It’s the Olakompa. There’s something in the swamp that seeps into your system. From the water. Or the rotting vegetation. And if you’ve got the right receptors in your brain, it acts like a drug to…to…give you psychic power.”
Adam tried not to gape at him. Obviously the man had been mulling over this rationale for Wayland’s supernatural troubles for quite some time. The lawman focused on Sara. “Have you found any plants that might be involved?”
“There are plants that cause hallucinations. I…I don’t know about ones that…that increase psychic power,” she stammered.
Adam tipped his head to one side, torn between this fascinating discussion and his need to be alone with Sara. “That’s a pretty enlightened point of view from a small-town sheriff.”
“I’ve lived in Wayland all my life. I grew up with the witch tales. I’ve had a lot of time to think about what’s happened here over the years.”
Adam nodded.
“If you’ve got a better hypothesis, I’d like to hear it,” Delacorte said.
“I don’t. And I’m not going to stand on the side of the road speculating about it,” he added, finally unable to control his own emotions a moment longer. He could feel Sara leaning more heavily on him, and he suddenly wondered how she was managing to stay on her feet at all. Probably she’d had an emotionally draining experience at her parents’ house. And she’d come home to this. Now she must be beyond exhausted.
“I’m going to take this woman home,” he said, hearing the tightness in his own voice. “We can arrange for towing tomorrow. Unless you need her for something else.”
Delacorte looked at the wrecked vehicle. “I’ll call a truck and have the car towed to Jerry’s Garage in town, if that’s agreeable with you.”
“Yes, thank you,” Sara murmured.
When Adam started to shepherd her toward his SUV, the sheriff shook his head. “Before you leave, I need some basic information from you.”
“Like what?” Adam demanded.
“Dr. Weston sideswiped a tree. I have to fill out an accident report, and for that I need her driver’s license, vehicle registration, insurance card, home address, phone number—that kind of information.”
Adam nodded tightly, stepping back so Sara could comply with the request. She had to call him back, though, to ask for the phone number at the park.
He waited for Delacorte to finish, listening to Sara’s even voice, trying not to look like a pressure steam valve was about to burst in his chest.
When the sheriff had taken the basics, he put away his notepad. “Did you recognize any of the…witches?”
Sara shook her head. “They were all wearing black capes with hoods.”
“Okay.” Delacorte didn’t write it down. Obviously the witch part wasn’t going into the official report.
“Are we done?” Adam asked.
“Yes.”
Adam silently led Sara to his vehicle, opened the passenger door for her, and then closed it after she climbed in.
He had been desperate to be alone with her. Now he walked slowly around the car, putting off the moment. But finally there was nothing left to do besides slip behind the wheel.
He looked back, seeing Delacorte watching them. The sheriff had already seen him pull Sara into his arms and hug her, so he knew something was going on between them. But it could be over in the next few moments.
So instead of dragging her close and hanging on to her, he started the engine, then headed back to the safety of Nature’s Refuge.
Taking his eyes from the road, he glanced at Sara. She didn’t speak.
His voice was gritty as he asked, “So, what about the wolf?”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
ADAM HAD DROPPED the question into a deafening silence. He clamped his hands on the steering wheel, thinking that he’d made a terrible mistake.
But he wasn’t going to take it back. He risked a glance at Sara. She had knit her hands in her lap so tightly that her knuckles were white.
Instead of answering his question, she said, “We were talking about the witches like some science fiction movie we’d seen! But it’s not a science fiction movie. I’m one of them.”
“Jesus! That’s not true!”
“What am I?”
“A woman with…with some special talents.”
She twisted her hands in her lap. “I told you I was going home to find out about my background. While I was there, I had one of my old daymares. Only this time, it made better sense. It was the one about the little girl and her mother in the cabin. I put some of it together, and I made my adoptive mother tell me some of it. I’m Jenna Foster’s little girl. My mother was the witch they killed. My father was there that night. He got me out of the cabin, then found adoptive parents for me.”
She let that settle into the darkness before demanding, “Say something.”
“I was starting to wonder if you were her daughter. Delacorte was, too.”
“You talked about that? About me?” she demanded.
“That’s not how the conversation started. He dropped by while you were away to talk about the wolf he’d seen downtown at the historical society building. The wolf he almost shot.”
She made a low, moaning noise.
“So, yeah, we were having a pretty…intense conversation. And you came into it. I told him that even if you were Jenna Foster’s daughter, you hadn’t come back to town to get revenge on Wayland. You weren’t one of them.”
“It doesn’t worry you that I’m her daughter?”
“That didn’t bother your natural father when he was having a relationship with your mother.”
“Oh, I think you’re wrong. He was ashamed of his liaison with her. He kept it hidden from everyone in town. After she died, he took me to North Carolina and found a childless couple to adopt me.”
“It didn’t have to have anything to do with the damn witch thing. He could have been married, for all you know.”
He saw her taking that in and went on quickly. “But he loved you. He didn’t let you down. He found good parents to bring you up.”
“Far away from Wayland where nobody would know who I was.”
He made an exasperated sound. “Maybe he sent you far away to keep you out of danger.”
She shot him an astonished look. “I didn’t think about it that way. But it doesn’t change anything. I’m still worried about my…background. When I was driving back here, I kept wondering how I was going to face you.”
He started to speak, but she waved him to silence.
“Let me finish! The closer I got to Wayland tonight, the more I felt the world closing in on me. I kept thinking, What happens when he finds out the real truth about the woman he made love with? I kept thinking, The witches are after me. And they could hurt Adam. Or I could hurt him. Somehow, something bad could happen.”
“No!”
She kept talking, staring straight ahead, as though he hadn’t spoken. “Then…then they forced me off the road, and they started that stuff with me that they did the other day. Only it was worse. They had on those damn hoods. And they were using their minds to attack me. Sending mental energy bolts at me. And you know what I did? I fought back the same way!”
“Good.”
“You can accept what I’m telling you…just like that?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He thought about the answer for a moment, recognizing the importance of what he told her—to both of them. “I guess because my whole life has been lived knowing there were things in the world that would scare the…the spit out of ordinary people. If there are men who change themselves into wolves and roam the woods at night, who knows what the hell else is lurking in the genetic heritage of humankind.”
As they�
�d been talking, he had been driving, going on automatic pilot, going home. When he looked up, he saw that he was in the parking lot of Nature’s Refuge. He’d left the gate open when he’d come tearing down the road in his car.
He’d driven inside the park grounds without even thinking about what he was doing.
Sara sat staring straight ahead. “The witches would have finished me off except that the wolf came along and started tearing into them. He could have gotten hurt. Or killed.”
“The wolf did what he had to do! The problem is that he is a wolf.”
She had avoided looking at him. Now she turned and met his eyes. “I saw the wolf before tonight. Not in real life. In a daydream about the past. When it started off, I was my mother, living in that cabin. Then I looked up and saw the wolf. I didn’t know his identity. But I knew he had come…for me.”
“Were you afraid of that?”
“Yes.”
“And now?” he asked, hardly daring to breathe.
Instead of answering the question, Sara asked one of her own. “Why aren’t you running screaming from a woman you know is a witch?”
“Because I love her!” he fairly shouted, then realized what he’d said.
AFTER Adam and Sara drove away, Paul Delacorte focused on routine tasks, like drawing a quick sketch of the scene. Then he took some measurements, triangulating the vehicle to a big tupelo tree, so three or four years later, he could place the car in the exact position where it had come to rest—in case there was going to be a trial for some reason. Next he took some flash pictures of the Toyota and the road surface and a couple of comprehensive shots covering the scene from different angles.
Finally, he looked around for any evidence he might have missed: drugs, alcohol, anything that might have been thrown out of the car. But he found nothing. So he drove to a nice quiet spot on a side road and began writing up the accident report. When he’d first come upon Sara Weston’s battered Toyota at the side of the road, he’d wondered if he’d come upon a case of falling asleep at the wheel or DWHUA, driving with head up ass. Swerving to avoid a porcupine or a raccoon fell into that category, and she looked like the tender-hearted type who wouldn’t want to hurt a small animal. Instead, she’d come up with the story about another vehicle that had vanished into the night.