The curse takes a lot of its cues from the beliefs of the accursed. Apparently, I think of Montana as “the West,” along with Wyoming, most of Utah, and parts of California. But not Idaho, or Oregon. One of Mama’s cousins had carried the curse for a while, and she had lived in Los Angeles for much of her life. I, on the other hand, had never seen the ocean except in pictures.
I’d made it as far north as Canada this time. I stood just on the US side of the border, staring across at another country entirely, and for just an instant I knew what it would feel like to be free of this curse. To be able to cross that border without fearing for my life.
Freedom.
It would feel like flying.
Of course that’s when the Calling hit me.
Now, as I drove through suburban Tucson, I still felt the deep dread I had felt several days ago when I’d been called to come back to Arizona to battle werewolves.
I knew where I’d find Daddy.
At home in his sun-bleached travel trailer—the one that hadn’t moved from its space in a Tucson trailer park since I started hunting on my own.
After Mama died, we lived in the trailer while he trained me—and sometimes he’d trained the cousins, too. Sometimes I went to their families, too.
As soon as I could go out on hunts without him, it was like he collapsed in on himself, like he’d used up all his strength, emptied it out teaching me how to survive.
Once that was done, he found the nearest bottle of cheap whiskey and tried to pour himself full again.
It hadn’t worked.
When he didn’t answer his phone, I assumed he was just drunk again.
As usual.
Probably passed out on the couch.
Giant saguaro cactus flashed by my windows.
You can live on the water those things collect in their barrels. It’s disgusting stuff, but it’s possible to tap the cacti.
That’s just one of the ways I knew to survive the desert, if it ever came down to it.
I flipped off the landscape as I drove by.
Next time I had a chance, once these werewolves were no longer a concern, I was going to try going to the Dakotas.
Maybe this time I’d get to stay away longer.
6.
I was right. Daddy lay face-down on the pull-out couch snoring when I shoved in through the door without even bothering to knock.
Even with his back to me, I could tell he was thinner and paler than the last time I saw him.
There are some things that even magic can’t fix.
I turned off the TV blaring a daytime ad for motorized wheelchairs, rolled Daddy over, and checked the level in the whiskey bottle on the floor beside him. Either he’d actually thrown away the empty before this one or he’d fallen asleep before he got good and drunk.
I couldn’t decide which seemed less likely.
It took me through lunchtime to get him upright and convince him to shower. I didn’t insist on a shave—I was afraid he’d slice himself with a razor, and I couldn’t find the electric shaver I’d brought him last time.
By two o’clock, though, he was as sober as he ever gets, sitting across from me at the tiny built-in table, ignoring the bag of tacos I’d stepped out to get from the nearest fast-food place, but drinking a cup of black coffee. I’d tried to sneak in some protein powder—anything to get some kind of nutrition into him—but he’d caught me and made me pour a new cup while I explained why I was there.
“You ran away from werewolves? Dammit, girl, I taught you better than that. You don’t need silver to fight. You have other weapons, just as good. When did you turn into a goddamn coward? Your mother’s probably rolling over in her grave to bury her head deeper in shame right about now.”
I have to say this for Daddy: drunk or sober, he never pulls his punches.
“I panicked.”
“You don’t say.” He picked up his coffee, saw me watching his hand shake, and thumped it back to the table, sloshing dark liquid over the top and down the sides. “Wolves in Tombstone, huh?” He rubbed one hand over his eyes, then down the graying bristles on his cheeks and jaw, smoothing all the way down until he was tapping his chest with his palm and fingers as he stared up at the ceiling.
Guess we’re done with the berating portion of this visit. Good. I can move on to discussing ways to deal with my immediate problem.
“I’ve never fought wolves on my own, and I can’t reach Grace or Cassidy. And yes, I’ve left messages,” I added as he opened his mouth to speak.
He looked at me suspiciously. “You been practicing your spells?”
I nodded. Not that they were spells, exactly—what I inherited from Ruby via my mother’s side of the family was elemental magic tied to the earth. It required willpower, not spells—but I could focus my will through repetition and incantation.
His knee bounced up and down as he thought. “You dealing with a whole pack, or just a few scouts?”
I turned my palms upward in a shrug. “I only saw two for sure—and maybe a third, the one who let me leave—but I heard a whistle, too, so there might have more in human shape.”
He nodded, then rapped his fist once on the table as he stood up to pull a pad of paper and a pen out of a supply cabinet. When he opened it, I caught a glimpse of his Smith & Wesson M&P Shield. From what I could tell, the 9MM looked well maintained.
I was absurdly glad to learn that despite his slide into full-blown alcoholism, Daddy hadn’t yet given up taking care of his firearms—or keeping them in a variety of hiding places so he always had one at hand.
Then again, he knew what was out there.
Going unarmed would probably never be an option for him.
“Okay,” he said, turning back to me. “Let’s map out what you know and come up with a plan.”
7.
By the time I left Tucson early the next afternoon to head back to Tombstone, I felt better about facing werewolves, even if they had killed a disproportionate number of my predecessors.
“Know your history,” Daddy reminded me. “But don’t let the fear of it control you.”
Once we’d finished working out a plan, we’d stayed up late trying to come up with all the possible contingencies. When Daddy’s shakes had gotten too bad, I’d poured his whiskey myself.
We both knew it was killing him, but I couldn’t bear to see him in pain.
And at least he might get to choose how he died.
Better than dying bloody at the hands of a monster.
After several drinks, I changed the sheets on his bed in the back of the trailer and steered him to bed, cleaning up and washing dishes to the sound of his snores.
I’d waited too long to visit this time, too determined to get away from my cursed life to think about anyone else.
I won’t let it happen again, I promised myself once I’d gone back out to the van, to my own mobile home, to bed down for the night. I’ll come around more often.
But I knew better. As soon as the Calling let loose of me for a little while, I’d be off to test the boundaries again.
So I took extra-good care of him before I left the next afternoon, making sure he showered and ate one of the tacos, reheated in his rarely used microwave. I left the rest in the tiny fridge along with instructions to eat them.
They’d probably still be there the next time I stopped by.
Soon, I swore.
Yeah, right, a quieter part of me answered.
Clenching my teeth, I drove on.
I hit Tombstone about four and parked my van in plain sight but hidden among the tourists’ cars in the parking lot for the O.K. Corral.
If you have to visit southern Arizona, September’s the time to do it. The sun’s still hot during the day, but it’s not as godawful hideous as it is just a little earlier in the year, and the desert nights are cool. The summer rainstorms are pretty much over. The summer tourists have mostly headed home and the snowbirds—the winter-only residents—haven’t yet descended from their sum
mer homes in the north.
I strolled through the town, checking out the remaining visitors, pretending to window-shop as I watched everyone around me, trying to sniff out any werewolves in tourists’ clothing.
No luck.
If they were there, their human forms were every bit as believable as the real people around me.
That was one of my least favorite things about werewolves—their ability to blend in with us.
Except, if legend has it right, during the full moon.
I knew for sure that they could change at other times, though. And I’d checked online—the full moon wasn’t due for another week.
When my walk didn’t yield any results, I returned to the van, cracking the windows to let some air in and bedding down in the back to try to catch some sleep before the real hunt kicked in at sundown.
8.
Loud pounding on the back door of the van pulled me instantly awake some time later. The reddish rays of the setting sun poured through the windshield and filtered through the curtain separating the front driving area from the back living space, allowing me to see. The air was hot and still, and the knocking reverberated through my tiny living space.
I slid silently to the edge of the built-in loft bed I’d added when I converted the van and leaned over to pull open one of the drawers beneath it. Feeling under a stack of sweaters, I hooked my nail into the false bottom to get to the [gun] underneath.
As I dropped my feet over the edge, I grabbed a knife out of its sheath suspended from the underside of the bed platform.
Daddy wasn’t the only one who kept weapons hidden in several spots.
Carefully, working not to rock the van, I crept toward the back, reaching out, preparing to shove the door open with the knife hand while the other held the gun steady.
“Dammit, open up. I know you’re in there,” Grace’s irritated voice filtered through to me.
I blew out the breath I’d been holding and pushed the door open, all in one relieved whoosh.
“Jesus, I almost shot you,” I said as my cousin climbed in and I closed the door again.
“It’s fucking hot in here,” Grace complained as she pushed open the front curtains and spun the passenger seat around to face the back. “How do you stand this thing?”
“Beats sleeping in the back seat of a car,” I said, pulling a bottle of water out of a cooler and handing it to her.
“It is sleeping in the back seat of a car. It’s just a bigger car than mine.” She took a long drink. “Ronnie called me after you left his place earlier. Said you told him you’d left me a message.”
“I did leave a message. Didn’t you get it?”
She pursed her lips and shook her head. “Nope. You really called? Glad I didn’t tell your daddy you’re a damned liar, then.”
Something wasn’t right about that. “What were you doing when he called?”
“Vegas. Winning, by the way—you owe me big-time.”
“Not hunting? You weren’t Called there?”
“Nope.”
Oh, hell. Literally.
Something really wanted me to face this one alone.
Thank heaven for family.
I glanced at the time on my phone, frowning. “You must’ve driven like a madwoman to get here this fast.”
“Nope. Caught the first flight out and rented a car in Tucson. I did mention you owe me, right?” Grace lifted the lid of the cooler. “Don’t you have anything other than water in here?”
“Thanks. And no—I drank the last Coke two days ago. Haven’t stocked back up yet. I haven’t been hitting the jackpot in Vegas.”
With a sigh, Grace dropped the lid and glanced over her shoulder out the front windshield. “Oh, well. Sun’s almost set, anyway.” She pulled a blade out from her boot. Its high silver content made my eyes tear up in reaction. “Ready to go kill some werewolves?”
“Only if you promise to put that thing away while we’re in here. Or I’ll pull out my collection.” It was a game we’d played as kids, each collecting coins and tokens in the metals the other two couldn’t tolerate.
Grace laughed as she resheathed the knife and held up her hands. “I surrender. I’ll wait till I see the whites of its eyes. Or fangs. Whatever.” Standing, she headed toward the back door. “Let’s go see what we can find.”
9.
Downtown Tombstone wasn’t quite shut down for the night yet. Stores were still open, hoping to grab the last of the late-summer, early-fall tourists. But we weren’t hoping to find werewolves on the main drag in Tombstone, Arizona.
No, we were going to follow the plan Daddy and I had sketched out the night before.
At least one of the werewolves had almost certainly recognized me as a hunter—the one who had growled at me and threatened me that first night. I needed to let him know I was back in town.
That had been part of my reason for parading all over town that afternoon. I’d left my scent all over town, wandering through gift shops, touching everything I passed. I’d trailed my fingers along the bricks and wood facing the buildings. I’d stopped for a soda and when it was halfway gone, I had licked the straw and dropped it on the ground. Then I’d dribbled some of the rest along the sidewalk.
I had done everything I could think of other than actually squatting down and peeing directly on the sidewalk.
That’s part of why I’d been so panicked when Grace started beating on my van door—I was convinced the wolves had found me sooner than I’d intended.
Now, Grace and I simply walked and waited.
It wasn’t much of a plan, granted, but it was the best we’d been able to come up with on short notice.
Everything the Silvers knew about werewolves suggested that they were fiercely territorial. Our best bet was to hope that wolf who’d warned me out of his territory would be angry enough at my reappearance to come after me.
This time, though, he’d also encounter Grace.
When the main strip ended in the highway stretching out into the Sonoran Desert, Grace and I kept walking. We stepped off the sidewalk and onto the gritty side of the road. Our boots left almost identical tracks in the dust behind us, and I realized we were dressed alike, both in cowboy boots, faded blue jeans, and dark, nondescript T-shirts. We’d been trained by the same people, after all.
Unlike my long brown braid, Grace’s blonde hair had been chopped off into a pixie cut since the last time I’d seen her, and she looked like a vengeful elf when she pulled out her sharp, curved short sword.
“Somebody is going to call the cops if you don’t put that thing away,” I said.
“Someone would have to drive by first.” Grace’s voice echoed with irritation. “Jesus, I hate these desert gigs you always get.”
I nodded “You and me both. I would love to get a Calling to Vegas.”
My cousin elbowed me in the ribs. “I told you, I didn’t get a Calling. I just went.”
Glancing around the corner my eye. “For which guy?”
“Well...” She drew the word out, and we both cracked up laughing. That’s when wolves came out of the darkness around us.
10.
They didn’t take us by surprise the way they had wanted to, though.
As we had joked, Grace had cut her eyes to the left and I’d given her an almost imperceptible nod in response. She’d seen them coming. I hadn’t seen or heard anything, but I trusted her senses implicitly. I’d begun pulling my magic to me, spooling it into my knife hand.
If I’d been by myself, my plan would have been to draw them back toward town. With Grace here, though, I didn’t have to. She had silver bullets in her gun. I could smell them.
She whipped out her silver knife and started slashing left and right as the wolves converged on us. I turned my back to her to give us a full 360-degree view of the surroundings. I could still feel the silver in her weapons leeching through to my bones, but it didn’t hurt the way it did in the closed space of my van.
There were only three of
them.
Good. We’ll be able to take them down easily.
If there’d been more, it would have been more difficult, but with Grace’s silver, we could be done in a few minutes.
As long as we avoided the snapping fangs coming at us.
I ducked and spun out of the way of one leaping toward me, slipping into fighting mode, gun in one hand, knife in the other.
It would be better to keep the fight quiet this close to town—but in the end, it was more important to take down the monsters. My shot took the beast in the stomach—not a kill-shot, of course, as my ammo wasn’t silver, but designed to hurt. As I moved to one side, I flicked my knife and magic out with my left hand, aiming to slide both across the wolf’s throat.
But I missed with the knife, leaving only a whirlwind of dust and sand flying up into the wolf’s eyes. Eyes closed against the dust-devil I’d conjured, the creature clamped its jaws down on my wrist. Fiery pain flashed up my arm and I dropped to my knees, then backward as I felt the bones in my wrist crunch. The magic I’d spooled there sank back down into the ground.
Clamping my teeth down on the scream I couldn’t completely quash, I pulled my other hand up, burying the barrel of my gun in the werewolf’s stomach and pulled off several shots.
Its jaws loosened as it yelped in pain, and I rolled away, clutching my ruined wrist to my chest.
The wolf and I watched each other warily from a few feet apart.
I glanced around to see how Grace was doing, taking my eyes off my own opponent only long enough to check my flanks.
One wolf lay perfectly still on the ground—dead, I presumed.
The other circled Grace, ducking back into the darkness as she tried to get a bead on it and reappearing in a different place. I turned enough to be able to watch both werewolves at once.
I wanted to get up off the ground—if the wolf facing me attacked while I was down, it would be harder to defend myself. But scrabbling up would put me at jeopardy, too.
Just as I decided the risk was worth it and had pulled my feet under me, the two wolves attacked simultaneously, flying through the air as if they had communicated their plans telepathically.
Heavy Metal Page 2