His father leaned out of the way, giving Cormac a clear shot. He watched the wolf, large and unnatural, pause, nose leading, searching the carcass. Any second now, he’d aim and shoot, all in a heartbeat. He could do this.
Then the wolf was gone.
Its coloring blended with the wooded clearing, but Cormac had been watching carefully, he’d followed the thing’s movements, he knew where it was. He imagined putting the bullet into it—a good clean shot that meant they wouldn’t have to track it. But it had just vanished.
“Where’d it go?” Cormac whispered in a panic.
“Hush,” his father breathed. He raised his rifle in a clean movement. Didn’t take aim yet; just looked out, waiting.
Somehow, it had sensed them. Maybe smelled them on the cow or noticed the knife cut in the animal’s throat, showing that its death wasn’t natural, that this was bait and not scavenging. Maybe it had simply backed up the way it had come and slipped into the woods, avoiding the hunters. Cormac started to feel disappointed.
Then his father hissed, “Get back, get back. Cormac—” Douglas threw his arm and hit Cormac, shoving him out of the way as the creature leapt.
His father was strong, and Cormac fell hard and rolled, reaching to stop himself while keeping hold of his rifle. Turning onto his belly, he scrambled to look.
Another thing that made werewolves and wild wolves different: A wild wolf would have run away from the hunters, disappearing into the trees, finding safety in speed. This one attacked.
The thing planted front paws on Douglas Bennett’s shoulders and shoved. Douglas fired, the mouth of his rifle flashing, but the shot did nothing, flying uselessly into air. The man screamed while the monster clawed and bit, shaking its head, ripping at flesh like this was an unfortunate rabbit. Douglas kicked and bucked, his hands on the wolf’s head, fingers digging at its eyes and twisting its ears. The wolf kept on, lips curled back from red-stained teeth. Emanating from deep in its throat, its snarls sounded like the revving of a broken engine. And still Cormac’s father screamed. Full-lunged, tortured, gasping screams.
“Dad!” It happened in a heartbeat. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think. His scream was an echo of his father’s.
He raised his rifle, took half a second to aim. Fired. Later, he’d never know how he managed to hold the weapon steady, to exhale and squeeze the trigger rather than blasting off in a panic.
He got it. That perfect shot in the wolf’s head. The blast knocked the wolf away from Douglas, and it lay still.
“Dad?” He dropped the rifle and ran, sliding to the ground next to his father’s prone form. His voice sounded suddenly high-pitched and weak, no better than a child’s. He was five years old again. “Dad?”
His father reached, clutching at his son with bloody hands. Looking at him, Cormac’s gut jumped to his mouth, but he didn’t vomit.
Douglas’s face was gone, gory meat instead of nose, eyes, lips. His throat was gone, turned into frayed tubes and tendons and a hint of backbone, glistening in moonlight. A wheezing breath whistled and gurgled. Somehow, Douglas pulled another through the mangled windpipe, and his hand closed on Cormac’s arm, bunching his jacket in rigid fingers. He didn’t breathe again, and the fingers went slack a moment later.
Cormac knelt there for a long time, holding his father’s hand. A pool of blood was creeping under him, soaking into the ground. The air reeked. He’d never get that smell out of his nose.
A couple of feet away, a naked man sprawled on his side. He had stringy, shoulder-length hair, black going to gray. He was burly, powerful, the muscles on his arms and back well defined. He was weathered, older, maybe in his fifties. Blood and fragments covered his face.
“Dad?” He swallowed, trying to get his throat to open up. But his father didn’t move.
Cormac didn’t know what to do. The truck was a couple of miles away and had a CB he could use to call for help. He was pretty sure he had to get help, though he wasn’t sure what anyone would make of the situation when they saw this. He couldn’t tell them it was a werewolf.
He squeezed his father’s hand one more time, placed it gently on the body’s chest, found his rifle, checked it to make sure it was loaded and ready for another shot—just in case—and set out for the truck.
He radioed an emergency channel, told them where to go, then went back to wait with his father. To chase coyotes and ravens away from the body. A forest service ranger, county sheriff’s deputy, and EMTs arrived to find him standing guard, still holding the rifle, covered in blood.
* * *
Slumped against the front corner of the cell, he stared at his hands.
It wasn’t your fault.
Everybody said that. But they didn’t know, they hadn’t been there. They were just words, didn’t mean anything. “Leave me alone,” he muttered. But he could feel her, as if she’d put a hand on his shoulder. He batted the imaginary hand away.
He heard shouting, ringing—inmates banging on the bars of their cells, echoing, thunderous. He couldn’t see anything out the window but the wall across from him. Pressing his ear to the crack along the door, he tried to make out what was happening. Not that it helped. Not that it gave him a clue what to do next. Not that he could pick his way out of this door. He couldn’t do a damn thing about anything.
Cormac had once felt that he’d been part of an unbroken tradition, a long line of warriors, secret and proud. It had all fallen apart. The line would end with him. He’d made his father’s legacy worthless. No better than dust. Nothing more than blood on his hands.
He was trapped, helpless in the face of a threat his father hadn’t taught him how to handle.
You aren’t helpless.
He tried to shut out the voice. “Leave me alone,” he muttered.
It’s a prison riot. I’ve seen it before. Too many guards stopped coming to work after the murders. The prison is understaffed and the inmates are frightened.
“What am I supposed to do about it?”
The demon will take advantage of it. There will be slaughter.
“I’m safest here.”
Not if the rioters unlock the doors.
The locks were electronic, connected to both individual and master switches. They’d have to take over the whole prison to do that. Which it sounded like they were on the way to doing.
He put his hands over his ears, shut his eyes, tried to block out the world. “Get out of my head. You’re driving me crazy.”
She scratched at the inside of his skull, like fingernails on a chalkboard. With the pain came a promise—that it would stop if she would just let him in. Open wide the door to his mind. He was almost there.
I won’t hurt you, she said, and he imagined the young woman in the meadow, proud and calm. If I tried to dominate you we’d both go mad. I see that now.
“I can’t trust you.”
You don’t trust anyone. He could see the scowl on her refined face.
He almost laughed because it was true. Mostly true.
You’re strong, Cormac. I’ll need that strength, to do what must be done. We both will.
He wasn’t strong. He just faked it real well. He saw his father’s blood on his hands and felt like a child.
Cormac—
Don’t use my name, he almost shouted at her. The noises outside grew louder, closer. The sound of the riot had changed, from defiance to triumph. A celebration, chaotic and fierce. It didn’t sound human anymore.
Then the lock on the door clicked and slid back with a metallic thunk. Cormac felt the vibration of it under his hand.
* * *
He thought of weapons, whether he could break off part of the bedframe, use the sheets as some kind of garrote, or find anything he could throw. Even a shoe. He had nothing but his hands.
Best to stay out of the way, then. Maybe he could get outside. Participating in a riot wasn’t going to get him anything but more years to his sentence. The door was unlocked, but he didn’t have to walk out. On
the other hand, he sure as hell didn’t want to get stuck in this hole with no place to run if the mob came after him.
Carefully, he slid the door open, keeping his back to the wall. Waiting, he listened.
A man ran past, a young guy Cormac didn’t know. His orange jumpsuit was torn, hanging off his shoulder, one leg shredded, and he bled from a wound on his temple. He was trying to hold his jumpsuit up while looking over his shoulder as he ran. Not that he had any place to go but in circles.
A second later, a mob of about a dozen followed, screaming in fury. A few of the men held makeshift weapons—a broken two-by-four as a club; a toothbrush handle, melted and sharpened, as a shiv.
Cormac waited until they’d passed and the corridor was empty again.
The cells in solitary were in a long corridor off the main block. From there, the sounds of riot swelled. Bullies used the chaos to take advantage. A prison riot was a thousand angry men trying to show they couldn’t be kept down. It was all a big lie.
To get to a corridor that would take him to the yard, where he could hunker down to wait out the riot in relative safety, he had to go through the central bay of the main block. He crept along the wall, looking ahead and behind, trying not to move too quick, careful not to get noticed. This wasn’t hunting; this was stumbling across a mama bear with her cubs and hoping you didn’t catch her eye. It was the most nerve-racking thing he’d done in his life. Any minute now, the goon squad would arrive and the tear gas would start flying. He had to get out.
He’d meant to take a quick look, just to get the lay of the land, then slip out. But the scene froze him.
They’d killed at least two guards, it looked like. A mob of maybe a hundred or so was crowded together in the main block, passing the bodies overhead, ripping apart the blue uniforms—and more, when hands couldn’t get a grip on fabric. On the fringes of the crowd, inmates turned on each other, clawing and fighting. Others cheered them on. Another group of a dozen moved along the cells, slamming open doors and pulling out the few people who hadn’t rushed to take part. The established gangs had splintered. No longer organized by race, affiliation, or anything visible. They’d become opportunistic, chaotic.
Good God, Amelia said. This isn’t right.
“I thought you’d said you had seen prison riots,” Cormac whispered.
This is something else.
Rage, fear, a million emotions that made a guy crazy when he was lying in a prison cell at night and the quiet closed in on him. What did that taste like to a demon who gained its power from fear and blood?
There!
He could almost imagine the woman pointing. He liked to think he’d have seen it on his own, eventually, but he wasn’t sure. Human in shape but somehow otherworldly, the figure lurked, slinking across the edge of the ceiling, no brighter than a shadow, no more real than the phantom hints of movement anyone might catch in the corners of their vision and discount as imagination. The little voice that whispered sometimes, Take it, steal it, break it. Or, Kill him, you know you could kill him.
A lot of the guys in here probably listened to that voice more often than most people.
Cormac could not have said the thing had eyes, but somehow he knew that it looked at him. That it saw him and didn’t like him. The thing had clawed hands and feet that clicked on beams as it traversed the ceiling. The claws glinted like steel, sharp as knives. There must have been dozens of them, like the thing was holding bouquets of daggers.
Cormac stood at the end of the corridor, watching the creature run toward him, a figure made of oil, and wondered what to do. Running wouldn’t help. Doing so would only rile it. Like a gang of bullies. But he also couldn’t fight it.
It’s looking for me, she said. I told you, I’ve been hunting it for a century. It knows me.
“And you think you can kill it? Get rid of it?”
I can.
“I don’t believe you.” He believed in bullets. He believed in being stronger than anything else on the range.
Cormac, we must stop this.
He shook his head. He’d worked too hard to hold on to himself to let his identity—his soul—go now. He’d kept such fierce control, all so he wouldn’t lose it and do damage that he couldn’t recover from. Now, he nearly laughed, because it had all been for nothing. The thing drew power from blood, and it would kill them all, slicing them to pieces.
“I can’t let go,” he murmured.
You can. You can keep your core. I’ll keep you safe, I can do that, I promise you. But I need you!
He felt how easy it would be to let go. He understood how it was that a psychotic gunman could walk into a crowded room and open fire. It was because they had let go, given themselves over to something that wasn’t them.
Please trust me. He felt something, someone, take his hands and squeeze. Soft hands, but firm, as if he and a woman were about to jump off a cliff together. He suddenly wanted to kiss her. Not an abrogation, then. A merging. He wasn’t giving himself over. He was loaning. Sharing.
He hoped she was right.
He couldn’t feel his muscles suddenly. His nerves were fire, but he couldn’t move. Closed his eyes, tipped his head back, thought of a meadow, opened a door, and felt Amelia step into the place where he was—
* * *
—and she looked out of his eyes, living eyes, for the first time in over a hundred years. Her body flared—his body. It was powerful, brilliant. Already rangy and athletic, he had kept himself fit, even locked behind bars. She wanted to shout, to sing. Tipping her head back, she felt the smile on her face, and hair on her jaw, odd and tingly, scratchy. This anatomy was most certainly not her own, feeding her a confusing flood of sensations that must have been maleness.
Time for that later.
With a body came life, and with life came power, and that was what she had traveled all this way for, waited for all this time, so she could face down the darkness, raise her hand, curl her fingers into a fist as if holding a ball, and shout a word of Latin in a strange, deep, male voice that wasn’t hers.
A crackling purple sphere of light came to life in her hand.
* * *
He felt it, the power burning through him, and it was like dying, because he couldn’t move, react, or change the outcome, and he didn’t want to because he felt closer to the source. To God, maybe.
Amelia was using his body to create something astonishing.
* * *
The demon approached, arms raised for a killing blow.
She lifted her hand and the light crackled and snapped, sending out tendrils of static, like some mad scientist’s machine. The demon paused as if confused, its claws extended midreach.
“Back!” she shouted, startled again that it wasn’t her voice, but his, the vessel’s. Cormac. She had chosen well—he burned with so much life. The man watched through her eyes, which looked through his.
Respect him. He wasn’t simply a tool to be used at will. That had been her mistake. No more.
Her power struck it. It might have been their combined wills as much as anything that forced the demon to fold back on itself. It shrank, screaming—the sound of static dissipating, of a star contracting. The shadow turned red.
It lashed out with fire. The wave of heat scalded—please, let his body be strong enough!—but she stood her ground, raised her other hand and built a shield, an unseen wall painted on air with a gesture and a word of power. The demon beat itself against the shield—it buckled, and she stumbled back before she could brace herself. She was still not used to the bulk, solidity, and sheer inertia of this male body. Cormac was a man who relied on brawn more often than not. Perhaps she would do well to learn to use such brawn.
If they got through this, and did not go mad after.
His muscles strained against the force. What this must look like to an observer: A great clawed shadow pushed against nothing as if throwing itself against a door, and a man dressed in an orange jumpsuit braced and leaned forward as if trying to k
eep the door closed. She couldn’t stand this for much longer.
But she had an ally. She needed to call up power again. To do that, she needed life, energy that a bodiless soul and a shadow creature couldn’t draw on.
She turned inward and cried, “Cormac!”
* * *
And he shoved. Imagined every muscle in his body working at once. Wondered what it might be like to have light pour from his soul and illuminate the world.
* * *
Spheres of energy formed in both his hands. She brought Cormac’s callused fists together, aimed them at the beast. She couldn’t contain the power, couldn’t guide it. Could only force it away from her and hope for the best.
Colored light bathed the world, at least the space of it in front of her. She closed her eyes, ducking away from it, and still it burned.
The demon took the full force of it. The light chipped away at its form, tearing off pieces until it became pockmarked, full of holes, and the holes grew larger, and it screamed. Then there was nothing but light, and the light itself disappeared.
She blinked—or he did. She was having difficulty with pronouns. They looked around together.
An amplified voice filled the cavernous room, barely audible. Prisoners milled, confused, staring perplexed at bloodstained hands. Projectiles flew in from far corridors, people scurried out of the way, and white smoke began to fill the air. Someone shouted.
Tear gas, Cormac supplied. Then he collapsed, and Amelia fainted for the first time in her life.
* * *
A soft hand lay across his brow. A woman’s hand, smelling clean, like soap and lavender. He opened his eyes and saw Amelia sitting at his bedside.
Taking stock: He wasn’t in a cell, but in a soft, single bed, part of a row of them lined up, heads against the wall. Several of the other beds were occupied by sleeping, bandaged figures. Prison infirmary.
He didn’t feel hurt. Only tired. He also didn’t want to try and move.
Amelia smiled at him. “Good morning.”
He was confused. He was here, awake, and she looked solid. He could feel her, flesh against flesh.
Kitty's Greatest Hits Page 31