by Debra Dunbar
“Uh, I hate to admit it, but I screwed up. See that dot down there by the lake? That’s where we’re going.”
Gwylla stared where he was pointing. “This is humor, right? You are joking with me?”
“No.” He let that sink in a moment. “The good news is we can get there before nightfall.”
“The bad news is you have no shoes, and from what I remember of your naked feet, they are not conditioned for long treks across rocky ground without some sort of protection on them.”
She was right. “More good news, I’m a werewolf and I’ll heal any cuts or blisters or bruises.”
“More bad news. You’ll still feel the pain, and we’ll need to go incredibly slow while you carefully pick your way through this rocky ground.”
He glared at her. Shifting again would push him to exhaustion. He was just going to have to suck it up and deal. “I’ll be fine. You lead the way, and I’ll worry about my feet.”
By the time they made it to the lake, it was getting close to dark. Gwylla had been right. His feet were killing him. The non-stop cuts and bruises had healed almost instantly, but still hurt. He vowed that when he got out of all this, he was going to spend more time barefoot and try to build up some calluses. Gritting his teeth, Dustin put on a burst of speed, pain bringing tears to his eyes as he pushed himself hard. The cabin was off around the other side of the lake, and he nearly wept as he saw it.
There were no lights on, but it wasn’t dark yet. And even if Brenda and Mark were out, he knew they wouldn’t mind him going in and using their phone, and borrowing some clothes, under the circumstances. Gwylla was right behind him, urging him to be careful, but Dustin ignored her, pushed himself forward as fast as he could, energized now that his goal was in sight. He’d let Mark and Brenda know what happened. They’d sound the alarm within the Denali Pack. He’d call Jake. And soon, he’d be home.
Dustin jumped the porch steps two at a time and came to an abrupt stop. He smelled blood. It took a second to register, then he closed his eyes, inhaling deeply and trying to catalogue all the scents assailing him.
Brenda and Mark. Humans. Blood. Gunpowder. The sickening smell of entrails that had been decomposing for days. Knowing what he was going to find, Dustin waited for Gwylla on the porch and choked back his tears.
Chapter 12
His wounds hurt. His feet hurt. His muscles ached. He wanted nothing more than to go lay down and sleep, but a nightmare awaited him. And looking up at Gwylla, he could tell that she too knew what was inside the cabin.
“I’m sorry. Even I can smell…” she whispered. “I don’t want to go in there first. I don’t know these people, and feel you should be the one to enter their home first. I did do a spell to see if anyone was inside.”
He waited, raising his eyebrows.
“There is no one alive inside. They’ve left.”
Was it too much to hope that Brenda and Mark had been injured and, like him, had run to safety? Although without a surgeon or a sidhe nearby, running away would have ended in the same death as staying to fight. He only hoped that the entrails he smelled belonged to a human.
Standing, he swayed and leaned against the side of the house to get his balance. Then he went inside. The door was unlocked, but that wasn’t unusual for people who lived far away from any town or road. Inside, the house looked like there had been a robbery. Tables and lamps were knocked over. The phone had been ripped out of the wall and smashed. Sofas were pushed to the side. The dining room table had been flipped, and had several bullet holes in it. Dustin wondered if one of the werewolves had tried to use it as a shield.
There was blood splatter on the floor, spray on the wall. Then in the kitchen were huge pools of blood all over the floor and piles of intestines and organs. The hunters had shot them, bled them, and field dressed the werewolf couple in their own kitchen. Dustin remembered dropping them off at the dock, watching them walk toward their cabin hand-in-hand. And now this. Now they were dead and most likely in some taxidermist shop. Just eight days ago they were alive. Just eight days ago he’d seen them.
Dustin turned to the kitchen sink and retched, but he hadn’t eaten since breakfast and there was nothing in his stomach for him to throw up. He felt cool hands on his back, soothing his neck and shoulders.
“Monsters have done this,” Gwylla told him. “It is murder, and they will pay for their crimes.”
He nodded. They would. Eventually. But how many would die before they managed to catch them? It wasn’t just a matter of stopping Talligie and cutting off the supply of spelled bullets any longer. There were humans among them they could not trust, humans who wanted them dead, who were eager to track them down and hunt them in their own homes. These people weren’t just murderers. This wasn’t a crime of passion or a robbery gone bad, or even hunting for food. These humans were psychopaths. They justified murder, no doubt, by claiming that the shifters weren’t human. But in all honesty, they were one very small step away from killing humans as well. And psychopaths like this would kill humans eventually. The shifters just needed to convince the police that this was murder, and that if these people weren’t stopped, humans in Alaska were next on the kill list.
But that was something to face tomorrow. Right now he was facing a pile of rotting entrails in a blood-splattered house, and wanting nothing more than to mourn these two wolves. He couldn’t bury Brenda and Mark, but at least he could bury what was left of them.
“I’m going to go dig some graves,” he told Gwylla, pushing away from the sink and heading out the back door. She didn’t protest.
There was a shed out back. Although the ground was warm, it was rocky as all get out, and it was full-on dark by the time Dustin had found a shovel and managed to dig holes big enough for what remained in the kitchen.
“This isn’t very respectful, but it was all I could find,” Gwylla commented, handing him a cardboard box with a plastic bag inside. “I put what remained in there. And I cleaned up the blood. I know it’s not ideal given what happened to your friends, but we should probably stay here for the night.”
He was sweaty and beyond exhausted digging out in the dark. Gwylla was right. They would need to spend the night here. Maybe more.
He took the box from her hands and lowered it in the ground, thinking once more about Brenda and Mark walking off together from his plane. He hoped they were at peace. He hoped there was some sort of afterlife where they were together. He hoped they knew that he’d avenge their deaths.
Scooping a shovelful of dirt and rock, Dustin tossed it on top of the box, wincing at the sound of it hitting. Gwylla began to sing and he continued to fill in the grave. It wasn’t a sad song. He could tell even though he didn’t understand the words. This was a song of springtime, and new beginnings, of blossoms that burst from trees that had appeared dead all winter. She was a winter fae, her magic of death and rebirth. How fitting that she should sing for Brenda and Mark, and that what might have been a dirge was instead a song of hope.
Patting the last of the dirt on top, Dustin gathered up the larger rocks he’d set aside when he was digging the hole, and placed them across the surface. There. A cairn. And that too was fitting.
He stared down at the grave for a moment, everything crashing down on him. What the heck was he supposed to do about any of this? He wasn’t a warrior. He wasn’t a fighter. He was a pilot who liked to play video games in his spare time. Yet here he was. He’d managed to survive an attack by the hunters. He’d just buried two of his own. And no matter how ill prepared he was, it was time to be a fighter.
But first, sleep. Actually first would come a shower, and maybe some food, and then sleep.
Gwylla followed him into the house, unusually silent. To be careful, he went around and shut all of the shades and curtains before turning on any interior lights. If the hunters were waiting for more shifters to come by the house, if they were periodically checking, then he didn’t want them to know anyone was inside.
Gwylla had
done an amazing job of cleaning the house. The broken lamps were gone. The tables and sofa were righted, and the floor was clean. The only way he knew anything had happened was the gunshot holes in the dining room table.
Deciding that food was probably more of a priority than a shower, Dustin went into the kitchen and looked through the refrigerator. Gwylla’s stew was good, but it was nice to see a fridge stocked full of meat. He pulled out two pounds of ground beef, a pair of steaks, and a container of pre-cooked meatballs. Popping a few in his mouth, he grabbed two fry pans. Steaks went in one, burgers in the other. Throwing two more meatballs in his mouth he began going through the cupboards for spices.
“Are you a burger or a steak woman?” he asked Gwylla. “Better let me know now because I’m probably going to eat mine half raw and I want to make sure I save one for you.”
She’d been quiet, following him around the house and sitting on a stool at the edge of the kitchen island. She hadn’t spoken since her song outside.
“I don’t eat meat.”
What? What? “You’re joking.”
She shook her head. “No meat. Only plants.”
He stared at her. “You’re a vegan?”
She wrinkled her brow. “I do consume honey and dairy products, so I guess your word for it would be vegetarian.”
A vegetarian. “Are you telling me that for four days I’ve been eating only vegetables? No wonder I’m exhausted. No wonder I haven’t healed yet.”
She flushed. “You’re exhausted and haven’t healed yet because you were shot with magical bullets, not because you ate wholesome and nutritious food. I’m not criticizing you for frying up a bunch of dead animals in those pans. Don’t you dare criticize me for refusing to eat them.”
Crap. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you. It’s just werewolves…well, we’re omnivorous, but we tend to have a high percentage of meat and fish in our diet. I’m not sure I could survive as a vegetarian.”
She scowled and tossed her white-blonde hair. “You could. In this form you’re not any different from a human as far as digestion and anatomy. There are humans who don’t eat meat, right?”
He squirmed. “Yes. But I’m not a human. I’m a werewolf and I need meat.”
“You don’t need meat. You’re used to eating a meat-heavy diet because it’s what you’ve eaten your whole life. No doubt your parents told you that you needed to eat meat, and that notion has been reinforced by your werewolf peers. That doesn’t make it true, just habit.”
He shoved two more meatballs in his mouth and flipped the burgers and steaks. Actually it was a good thing she didn’t eat meat because he was hungry enough to eat all this food himself and probably want more.
“I’m a werewolf. Our metabolism is different. Wild wolves eat meat. I don’t see you out there in the forest, insisting the carnivores eat broccoli and carrots. I don’t see you telling predators that they shouldn’t hunt.” Wait, hadn’t she said something a few days ago about the sidhe hunting? “And you do too, right? If you guys hunt once per year, what do you do with the meat? Waste it? How is that any better than eating it?”
Her light green eyes sparked with anger. “It’s not that kind of hunt. We don’t eat meat. Elves do on occasion, but we don’t. And I see no need for you to hunt when you can satisfy all of your nutritional needs with non-meat foods.”
He was so not going to get laid tonight, or possibly ever. “What part of werewolf are you not understanding? My pack and I shift into our wolf forms and hunt together. Yes, that means we kill animals, and we eat them, although unlike wild wolves we take the kill home to cook first. And guess what? Like a lot of people in Alaska, I occasionally go fishing. I’m not that crazy about hunting with a rifle, but I’ve got nothing against it. I just don’t do it because I’m a lousy shot and I don’t feel like sitting up in a deer stand before dawn, freezing my butt off for hours just to waste a bunch of bullets and go home empty handed.”
She got up. “I’m going outside. The smell of your food sickens me.”
And now he felt like a total jerk. Could he blame it on hunger? On exhaustion? On his injuries that were screaming at him to lay down? On the fact that he was cooking burgers and steaks in a house where two werewolves had been murdered, where he’d just finished burying what was left of them?
No. There were no excuses. He was just a jerk. He didn’t have a whole lot of experience with women. Yeah, he’d dated on occasion. And he wasn’t a virgin, although his hand saw more action that it probably should. He was normally more diplomatic, less argumentative. He’d always prided himself on being a good listener, not sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong, on being that easy-going guy that anyone could talk to. And yet here he was, snapping at the very woman who’d saved his life.
Dustin turned off the stove and ate the food straight out of the pan, finishing off the meatballs afterward. Then he cleaned the pans, found a bottle of air freshener, and sprayed it liberally all over the kitchen. The lemony pine scent made him want to sneeze, but hopefully it covered up the smell of cooking meat. Then he went and took a quick shower, finding a pair of Mark’s pajama bottoms to wear, and once more looked in the fridge.
Cheese. And the yogurt? Baked beans? No, they had pork in them. Dustin dug through the shelves and cabinets, cursing the fact that this werewolf couple probably didn’t even have a piece of celery in the house.
Grabbing what he felt were safe options, Dustin arranged them on a plate. Raisins. Sunflower seeds. There was a tomato and the cheese. He took them out, grabbed a knife and hesitated. Wait. She had some sort of metal allergy. If he sliced food with a steel knife, would that hurt her? What else was he supposed to use? It wasn’t like Brenda would have had gold-plated knives lying around. Eventually he found a plastic one and hacked his way through the tomato, hoping that it didn’t look too mangled. He added a lemon that he’d sawed in half with the plastic knife, then he sliced up the cheese and stacked it on the side.
He found Gwylla on the front porch, sitting in a rocker and staring out toward the lake.
“I set wards a hundred feet out around the house,” she said, not looking at him. “It won’t give us much time to prepare in case of attack, but at least we’ll have a warning, and not be caught in bed asleep.”
“Thank you.” He sat beside her and extended the plate. “And I’m sorry about earlier. I was a total jerk and that’s not normally me. Here. Peace offering?”
She took the plate, her lips trembling slightly before curling up into a smile. “A lemon? Is there some significance to you giving me a lemon? Am I a sourpuss?”
He laughed. “Two werewolves live here. True or not, they, just like other werewolves, have a fridge stocked full of meat with very little in the way of fruit or vegetables. This was all I could find that I was sure was vegetarian friendly.”
She picked up a lemon half. “I’m sorry, too. I was wrong to criticize you for your food. And for your hunting. I don’t know your world. I don’t know shifters. I’m making assumptions that have no basis in fact or experience. As difficult as it is for me to believe, you probably do require the types of protein in animal flesh. Just because I felt you all over and healed you doesn’t meant I know everything about your metabolism or digestion.”
“Apology accepted.” He grinned. “Did you really feel me all over?”
She put down the lemon and scooped some raisins into her mouth. “Of course. I needed to ascertain the extent of your injuries, and that required a thorough examination.”
“While I was unconscious? Doesn’t that violate some kind of sidhe doctor ethical rule?”
“While I would rather you had been awake, at least for part of the examination, it was probably just as well. As injured as you were, I wouldn’t have wanted to risk exciting you too much.”
He was getting pretty excited now, and Mark’s pajama pants weren’t doing much to hide it.
“As it was, you had a surprising physiological response to my touch that I had
n’t expected in one so injured. Clearly you are very sensitive.”
Even unconscious he could get it up. He’d figured as much from wet dreams and morning wood over the years, but that he could be shot twice, lose a huge amount of blood, be at death’s door, and still get an erection was gratifying. The thought made him rather proud.
“I’ll bet you’re sensitive, too. Can I examine you? I mean, it was a long difficult journey today, and we were moving fast.”
“Not that fast,” she countered. “I’m sidhe. I can move quickly and for long distances, even though I’m not accustomed to it.”
“Still, if you’re not accustomed to it, you may have...pulled a muscle? In fact, I’m sure teleporting may have resulted in some sort of injury. I should check you over, just to be sure. And if I find any tight muscles, I can massage them. I’m good at that, I’ll have you know.”
“Are you?” She shot him a wicked grin before turning her attention back to the almonds on her plate. “I’ll admit that I am tired. Perhaps this examination should take place in the bed where I can lay down.”
Holy moley. Was this going in the direction he thought it was? Did sexual innuendo carry across their cultural barriers? Because it would be horribly embarrassing if he were to make a move on her only to have her slap him down. He didn’t want to mess this up. And he wasn’t exactly Casanova when it came to women.
“Finish your dinner, then you lay down and I’ll massage your back. We can save the full examination for later. Some other time when we know each other better.”
He was botching this big-time, but the fear that she’d say no loomed over him. Better to delay, to hopefully convince her that he was charming and sexy and someone she’d want to sleep with. Well, charming if not sexy.
“Oh.” She cast him a bewildered look. “That’s fine. In fact, I’m sure you’re very tired yourself, and you’re still injured. We should probably just sleep, and save the rubbing and examinations for some other time.”
Yep. Shot down. At least it was now and not after he’d groped her or tried to kiss her or something. This way he could always claim misunderstanding.