Crossroads Burning

by Nash, Layla

  It was a man, whole and real. Normal. Completely naked, but normal. His hair trailed to his shoulders in wet tangles, and a heavy beard obscured half of his face. He squinted as he looked around the yard at the unconscious agents and the SUVs and the rest of us staring at him as if he’d just grown a third or fourth head.

  His voice was rough and raspy, and he rubbed his face before looking down at his hands. “Where am I?”

  “You keep naked men chained up in your shed?” Mason asked, leaning forward to raise his eyebrows at me. For a second, I thought he might even high-five me. “Damn, Luckett.”

  “It’s not what it looks like,” I said. The color rose in my cheeks and my mind raced, trying to figure out what the fuck to say to explain this. Announcing he’d once been a werewolf and we’d successfully turned him back to human probably wouldn’t work. “This is, uh, Frank. Our cousin. He was on something of a drinking binge and we didn’t want him to destroy the house. So we, uh, locked him in the shed.”

  The former werewolf gripped the door of the shed, swaying on his feet. I cleared my throat and raised my voice, gesturing for him to walk to the house. “Sorry about that, Frank. We just…didn’t want to worry about you tearing up the house. You can go on up to the porch; Lucia and Olivia will get you some clothes and some coffee to warm you.”

  He frowned, still studying Lincoln and the others, then began the long, slow trek to the porch. He staggered and wobbled in a zigzag through the patchy grass, his head hanging down and his hands periodically forming fists, like they couldn’t remember how to be hands. My sisters stared at him, then me, then back at the werewolf. It took him three tries to get his foot up to the first stair, and another couple of tries to figure out how to hoist himself up the three other stairs. He looked at them, and they looked at him, and eventually Olivia pointed at a chair for him to sit in.

  “That’s... different,” Lincoln said. He squinted as he looked up at the sky and the rain that still beat down on us. “Your cousin Frank? I thought there were no Luckett men?”

  “From my father’s side,” I said. The lies burned a little in my throat, but I couldn’t just tell Lincoln the naked man had been a werewolf. Not yet. Not until we figured out who the hell he was and what we were going to do with him. “Thanks for the, uh, help. Do you think you can keep Heathrow and his guys away from us?”

  “It’s too soon to tell,” he said. He scowled as the bald woman gestured for one of her partners to help drag the unconscious bodies closer to their SUVs. “He won’t like that you drugged him. Clearly.”

  “Would anyone like that?” Hazel asked. She winked at me and eyed the naked backside of Frank as he stood on the porch and pondered how to sit in the chair, and my sisters gave him a lot of room. “That’s a nice hunk of man, though. No wonder you had him naked and locked up in the shed. You don’t want an ass that fine wandering around on its own.”

  Mason choked on laughter, practically doubling over when he caught sight of Lincoln’s expression, and held the umbrella over my head so I could finally wipe the water out of my eyes. “That’s good to know. I need to start doing squats. Is that why your sisters called you back, Luckett?”

  “Partly,” I said. There wasn’t any disguising the werewolf fur and smells around the place, even though the rain tamped down a lot of that under the cleansing scent of water and fresh mud. “There was a werewolf here, too.”

  “Another one?” Lincoln’s expression darkened and he surveyed the house and yard. “How? Where? What did you do with it?”

  “It ran off,” I said. “We injured it, I think, but it got away. We were going to track it down but after I went into town to get more tranquilizers, your pal Heathrow grabbed me and started to follow me back here. I didn’t particularly want him sniffing around my sisters, so it took me a while to get back here after we radioed over to you.”

  Lincoln nodded to Mason and gestured at the yard around us. “See if you can catch a trail so we can track it down and finish it off before it bites anyone else.”

  “It headed toward the prairie,” I said. I didn’t want Mason to follow his nose from the shed to the porch and end up sniffing Frank out instead. Of course, maybe now that Frank was back in human form, he wouldn’t smell like a werewolf. I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes, starting to shiver as the downpour continued. “Can you even track it in the rain?”

  “Not well,” Mason said. He jogged off, though, and began a circuit of the yard.

  Hazel wrung out her hair, squinting at the porch. “Mind if we step inside for a bit, Luckett? It’d be nice to get out of the rain.”

  My throat tightened and suddenly my mouth filled with cotton. I really didn’t want them in the house, and I really didn’t want them near Frank until we had a chance to talk to him and figure out if the change to human was permanent. But I didn’t want to be the bitch who sent them back into the borrowed truck soaking wet. I rubbed my shoulder and sighed. “Sure. I thought you might be able to stop the rain, though. Isn’t that something you witches can do?”

  She smiled with only half her mouth and started for the house. “Some witches can, but this isn’t my doing. I thought maybe you or your sisters managed it.”

  “Musta been Luke,” I said under my breath, checking my phone, and followed her in a slow slog through the mud.

  Chapter 37

  On the porch, Lucia and Olivia still watched Frank, who wandered around and looked down at himself periodically. Hazel eyed him as she leaned on the porch rail. “So you’re Frank.”

  He blinked at her, the beard hiding some of his confusion, and I cleared my throat as I pushed past her to take his arm and pull him toward the door. “Yeah, but Frank is clearly still a little hungover. I’ll take him inside and get him settled. You all just hang out out here and I’ll bring some towels.”

  I shoved Frank through the door but paused in the doorway to gesture at everyone. “I think you all remember each other.”

  Hazel snorted and started shedding her clothes, eyeing my sisters with only half the interest she’d shown Frank. “Yep. The the rest of the crazy Luckett sisters.”

  Lucia’s response, cool and composed, was lost to me as I hustled Frank inside and into the guest room on the first floor behind the kitchen. I tossed a towel at him; it hit him in the face and then dropped to the floor, since he hadn’t even lifted his hands to try to catch it. Clearly hand-eye coordination didn’t translate from human to werewolf and back to human. I looked at him, then at the door, and dropped my voice in case Mason was closer to the house and could use his super shifter hearing to listen in. “Do you remember being human? Do you know what your name is?”

  “Frank?” he said. He looked around the room somewhat blankly, though. “Being human?”

  I rummaged in the closet, searching for some of the old sweatpants we’d saved to use as rags. “That’s just a name I made up. Is your name really Frank?”

  “I have no idea.” He bent to pick up the towel and almost pitched over as his balance shifted. “Where am I?”

  “In my house, in a town called Rattler’s Run,” I said. I handed him the sweatpants and started looking for T-shirts or something for him to cover up a very impressive set of shoulders. “Call me Luckett. My sisters are out on the porch; the angry-looking one is Lucia, and the surprised-looking one is Olivia. Pretend you’re our cousin.”

  “Why would I do that?” Frank rubbed the towel against his hair, apparently not concerned with covering his nudity. If I’d paused to appreciate his form, I might have blushed and tried to bat my eyelashes a little even with Lincoln sitting on my front porch.

  “Because the other three people will kill you if they find out you were a werewolf and we changed you back.”

  He froze, then started laughing. “A werewolf? Surely you jest. Is this some sort of ruse?”

  I stopped in my tracks. Maybe he didn’t remember anything. Maybe the animal had been completely in control and prevented him from witnessing his crimes. I won
dered if he’d changed anyone, if he’d been the first werewolf that got loose and bit the eleven we ended up killing. That I ended up killing. Maybe their deaths were rightly on his head instead of mine. If he remembered them, then maybe we stood a chance of finding out who those people were, so we could at least notify their families that they were gone. “You don’t remember anything?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, girl.” He dropped the towel on the bed and sat on it, working the sweatpants over one foot at a time. “Has someone given me a tonic?”

  A tonic? Something about his accent and choice of words felt stilted, deliberately archaic. Maybe he was one of the role-players from the fort, or the historical reenactors who got super into living like it was the eighteenth century. “Not that I know of,” I said. “And you were a werewolf. I know it’s hard to believe, but I promise you—my sisters and I are witches, and we turned you back to human. It’s not supposed to be possible, which is why those feds on the porch were prepared to kill you until we changed you back.”

  “Look, girl.” He wobbled to his feet to pull the sweatpants up, then sat back down and ran his hands through his damp hair. “I’ve no idea who you are or what sort of lies you tell, but I will not tolerate your forward behavior. Bring me food and drink immediately so that I may recover my faculties.”

  Bring him what when? I started to bristle, but choked back the immediate “fuck you” that tried to slip past my teeth. He was just coming out of being a werewolf. I could excuse some bad manners until everyone got their feet back under them.

  I threw a couple of T-shirts at him and a sweatshirt as well, then pulled some thick socks from the dresser. “We’ll discuss that later, bucko. But for now, I need you to stay in this room until I can get rid of Lincoln and his pals. Please. I’ll explain everything later.”

  He eyed me, apparently not impressed, but he pulled on one of the T-shirts. “Mind your tongue, woman. I require a meal immediately—beef or chicken, something hearty. And ale.”

  “This isn’t a restaurant,” I muttered as I hustled to the door. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

  Just my luck that the werewolf we saved was kind of a dick. And apparently he couldn’t use a proper name to save his life.

  I closed the door quietly behind me, and pulled a stack of towels from the shelves above the washer and dryer before heading back outside. Luckily no one was fighting on the porch, and Mason stood next to Lincoln and Hazel as they shed most of their wet clothes. Unfortunately, Olivia practically drooled over the shifter, who was pretending not to notice that she wanted to sit next to him and help him dry off.

  “How’s Frank?” Hazel asked, one eyebrow arched. She rubbed the towel in her hair, frowning down at the pile of sodden clothes at her feet and the fancy hiking boots that looked much the worse for wear. “Aside from being handsome as hell and adorably confused.”

  “He’s resting,” I said. I cleared my throat and eased into one of the rocking chairs with an eye on the door, just in case Frank reappeared. Just my luck he didn’t remember anything and we’d have to explain to more people that witches and werewolves actually existed. “He’s a... unique guy. Thanks for your patience.”

  Lucia folded her arms over her chest. “We’d invite you all to stay for dinner but we weren’t expecting company and Sass isn’t much of a cook anyway. Were you all still staying in town?”

  “Yes,” Lincoln said. He tried to wring water from his sweater and undershirt. “And we appreciate the hospitality. We’ll be out of your hair shortly, I expect, if this rain lets up a bit. I want to give Heathrow and his team a chance to settle down somewhere before I try to talk some sense into him.”

  I rocked slowly in the chair, my stomach churning with unease. “You said you’d already written about us in the report. Is that true?”

  He hesitated, and my heart sank. Mason leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and fixed me with an earnest look. “Just that we were assisted by a local with detailed knowledge of the territory and the anomaly. Nothing about being witches. But since Newton, their witch, saw what you could do, it might not be enough.”

  “And keeping your cousin locked up in a shed deserves some mention,” Hazel murmured.

  Lincoln looked on the verge of smiling, but he rubbed his jaw instead and gave her a dirty look. “We don’t comment on family business, Hazel.”

  She shrugged and stretched, putting her hands behind her head. “Nelson should be along soon with clean clothes, since we were able to radio back to him to meet us. Hopefully you don’t mind us cluttering up your porch for a little while?”

  “It’s fine,” Olivia said. She bounced to her feet and almost beamed at Mason as she went around gathering up their wet clothes. “I’ll toss these in the dryer for a bit. Does anyone want a blanket? Coffee? Hot chocolate?”

  I eyed her with a hint of suspicion; even her little crush on Mason didn’t fully explain Liv’s desire to be helpful. Normally she wouldn’t have done a load of laundry to save her life, even with the fancy machines we’d rescued from a foreclosed home and an angry divorce where the husband sold everything for super cheap just to prevent his wife from getting any money. We’d practically refurnished the whole house.

  Lucia also watched our sister skip into the house, trailing sodden jeans and socks and shirts, and slowly pushed to her feet to follow Liv inside. “I’ll help. See if we can scare up something to take the chill off. The soup isn’t ready but we might be able to find some snacks.”

  Lucia and I traded looks as she headed in, and I shrugged. I had just as much idea what Liv was up to as Lucia did. There wasn’t a way to talk about it in front of Lincoln and his team, not without clueing them in to the odd goings-on, but hopefully Lucia could get something out of our younger sister once they were in the kitchen. I leaned back and called through the door after them, “See if you can find a beer and some food for Frank. He’s... hungry.”

  Lucia frowned more but didn’t say anything. I rocked a few more times as Lincoln, Hazel, and Mason watched me. I took a deep breath and clawed my hair back from my face. “So this has been an eventful day. How was the reservation?”

  “Luke was very welcoming but we didn’t learn a whole lot,” Mason said. “We checked in with the tribal police so they have our contact information in case they have any information on missing persons, and then made our apologies to his great-grandmother. Who is terrifying.”

  “She’s fantastic,” I said. I sighed, leaning back so I could stare up at the ceiling of the porch and imagine all the fry bread I could eat. I wished Nona could move in with us so I could take care of her and learn all her secrets, but she had her own family to do that. I’d daydreamed often enough as a kid that Nona would adopt me and I could become a coyote, too. “No one crosses Nona and lives to tell the tale.”

  “You neglected to say that she spends most of her time as a coyote,” Hazel said, shaking a finger at me like I was a naughty kid. “She surprised the shit out of us. And Luke thought it was hysterical.”

  I shivered a bit and wondered if I dared leave them alone long enough to run upstairs and change into clean clothes, though it would be hard not being drawn into the gravity around my bed for just a little rest. Probably easier to stay awake in cold, wet clothes anyway. “Well, to be fair, most of the time she’s a human around me. I know Luke is worried she’s getting a touch of dementia and that makes shifting back and forth trickier. She’s a hell of a lady.”

  “We weren’t able to make heads or tails of where the werewolves originated,” Lincoln said, clearly trying to get us all back on track. “If Mason and Nelson can track down the one that was here, once the rain stops we might be able to locate where they started. It’s important to figure out who is making them, or at least why they’re drawn to the Crossroads and your family. You said you’ve never had this problem before?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” I said. “I don’t remember any of the relatives talking about werewolves. We’re used
to the dire wolves, but they travel on the ley lines and pop up in certain places. They usually attack the house, but we can fend them off with rifles normally. No need for magic, since the ley magic draws them in more. We’ve had other beasties show up at the house and at the cave in the Crossroads, but they’re magical animals, not people turned into animals.”

  “Dire wolves?” Hazel blinked. “What the hell is a dire wolf?”

  “It’s like a regular wolf,” I said. “But—”

  “But more dire?” Mason jumped in, waggling his eyebrows and nudging me with his arm.

  Hazel groaned and slapped her forehead. “Oh my God, stop. You have the worst sense of humor.”

  “At least we can laugh,” Mason said. “But seriously. The dire wolves?”

  “They are more dire,” I said under my breath, though my cheeks warmed with embarrassment. I’d never questioned why the dire wolves were named that. That’s just what they were. “They’re larger and faster and smarter than normal wolves. That first night when you all came out here to jumpstart the car, there were four dire wolves hanging around to get us before we reached the house. They hunt effectively as packs and alone, and somehow they can sense and track magic.”

  Mason sighed, putting his feet up on the railing of the porch. “Where do you think the werewolves are coming from, Sass?”

  Lucia reappeared in the doorway, carrying a tray with coffee mugs and two carafes, one that smelled like chocolate and one that smelled like coffee. My numb fingers ached for a warm mug to hold, regardless of what liquid was in it, but I held myself back as she served the guests first. Lucia waited for Hazel to dump cream and sugar into her coffee before she moved on to Mason. “How are werewolves created, then? Is it a virus that’s transmitted through biting or bodily fluids? Is it a curse or a hex or something? We don’t even know what we’re looking at.”

  Hazel practically groaned as she sipped the coffee, drawing a clean towel closer around her shoulders to fend off some of the chill. The rain kept drizzling outside, pinging off the roof. “It can be both, although there are very few witches or sorcerers or druids who would put that kind of curse on an enemy. Fewer still are strong enough to do it and make it stick.”