“No kidding. Even zombified vampires heed the instinct to feed above all else.”
I frowned. The actions of my nighttime host were something I needed to think long and hard about.
I focused on catching up on current events. “So you followed Patricia here?”
“Not quite. After a few steps, she took off and flew. I shifted to give chase but lost sight of her within a few minutes.”
I stared at him in shock. “She flew without me? Without any problem?”
He nodded, his expression saying he was as amazed as me. “I guess it’s instinct for a vampire. I have my own instincts when I shift. Some things as a panther I just know.”
I thought about being lost in the urge to hunt, when impulse had overruled thought. I had flown without any trouble at all. Maybe all this time I had been over-thinking the ability. Maybe it was all about gut feeling.
I sighed. It was too much for me to figure out right then. I went back to our conversation. “How did you end up here?”
“You and Dan had said you’d come to the country club. Patricia’s body flew in this direction. I called up Levi and told him to meet me out here.”
“Good thing you did that. You kept Ryan from a murder rap. Too bad you got here too late to save me from the same, but that’s not your fault.”
“Do you really think you killed them?”
We reached the sign at the head of the road. Men’s clothes were slung over it. Gerald poked through the two sets, picking out his jeans and green tee-shirt that would bring out his kitty-cat eyes.
I was coming down from the blood high and the first thread of concern wormed its way into my gut. “How could I not have killed them? I attacked and fed on every one of them except Tattingail. I was so crazed from hunger and anger ... they shot me up pretty good. I didn’t have one trace of humanity left in me until Ryan knocked me halfway across the county.”
“You were shot? Where? With silver?”
I showed him the tiny holes peppering my stomach, chest, and back. There only a few left. I felt the burn of not quite a dozen bits of silver still working their way out of me. Once they were gone, everything would heal.
Gerald shook his head at the damage. “Vampires withstand silver better than us weres, especially with fresh blood helping things along. You still should be checked out. Go tell Warner to have a look, and take Wolf Boy’s clothes to him. I’ll go back and stay with Tattingail’s waste of skin.”
I did as he said. As I passed Duke and the other guy I’d taken on the trail, they screamed at the sight of me. They probably thought I planned to finish the job. Maybe I should have, but as myself, I am not a killer. I even started to feel guilt over what I’d done.
I had to face the fact that I possessed the capacity of a full-blown killer. I might even have to admit to the one thing that I’d sworn up and down – especially to myself – that I was not.
I reached the cabin. Steeling myself for the worst, I entered and went to the back room where Ryan had been caged and I had lost my mental stuff.
Ryan bent over his former good buddy, the treacherous Mark. I have to say, my opinion of Ashley’s husband soared to see him cover the unconscious man with a heavy blanket he’d found somewhere. I’d never have been able to help someone who’d betrayed me the way that guy had turned on Ryan.
The werebear glanced up at me as I stood there looking at my two extremely pale but still breathing victims. He smiled and said, “They all need treatment, but everyone should live.”
Levi snorted as he took the clothes I offered him. “What a shame.” He winked at me as he dressed. “You were apparently in such a hurry to wreak destruction that you didn’t stay around long enough to finish anyone off.”
“I’m relieved – I guess.” I’m ashamed to admit part of me wanted Mark to die. I took his actions personally, it seemed.
Levi gave me a stern look. “Be very relieved. You would have been executed, no matter what these idiots’ crimes are.”
From where his feet stuck to the floor, Dan added, “You still might be in a lot of trouble. Vampire attacks on humans are not looked well upon.”
“Hello to you too, handsome,” I smiled. Seeing Dan went a long way towards quieting some of my bloodier instincts.
Ryan looked confused. He looked all around to see who I talked to.
“Ghosts,” Levi informed him, buttoning up his flannel shirt. He did flannel much better than dorky Ed Duke. “She sees spirits of the dead. One in particular likes to follow her around.”
“Oh.” Ryan didn’t know how to respond to that, so he attended his patients.
Levi’s brow creased in worry. “Doc, how quiet can we keep this at the hospital? I’d like to keep Ms. Keith among the undead.”
Ryan regarded me. He scratched behind one rounded furry ear. “We can’t. It’s obvious something got to these men.”
I was surprised at Levi. He was law enforcement after all, and good at it. “You would hush this up? For me?”
He gave me a look I couldn’t quite read. “We take care of our own. Right, Doc?”
Ryan gave him a weak smile. “I’m starting to see that. If you’ve got any ideas, come up with them fast. The ambulance will be here soon.”
“They’ll have to clear the road first,” I remarked. “If your patients can live with the delay, let’s keep it that way.”
Levi paced the room as he thought. Ryan stood up and stretched and then gathered the tattered remains of his clothing. He dressed as best he could in the rags.
Dan watched us all but mostly me. The worry in his face was plain to see. He forced a smile when I caught his eye. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
I grimaced. “For now. Levi, can I borrow your cell phone? Dan’s caught in a ward. I need our favorite witch to come out and release him.”
Levi nodded and passed me his phone. “After you talk to her, I want to know everything.”
Mark had regained consciousness while I wasn’t looking. He blinked at us all, his stark white face somehow going paler still as he looked at me. I was busy dialing however, so he focused on the man he’d turned against.
His voice barely registering as a whisper, he said, “Hey, Ryan. You know this is going to ruin a lot of people if it comes out we were hunting shifters.”
Ryan’s tone was cold. “Yeah. Stu is going to make a mint off you in legal fees.”
“I had no choice, man! It was all Cliff. He was behind the whole thing. He blackmailed me into it, same as you. Come on, for old times’ sake?”
Ryan didn’t bother to reply. His lip curled in disgust and he turned away. I turned away too, feeling a fresh pulse of anger. The gall of that man to beg for help from the guy he’d planned to kill! I couldn’t believe it.
Ylena, the witch who did a lot of work for Tristan and our gang, picked up the phone. I concentrated on our conversation, not wanting any new reasons to add murder to my misdeeds.
Fortunately Ylena agreed to hurry right out and get Dan unstuck. I gave her directions to the place and told her she might have to avoid being seen by EMTs and cops. Used to such drama, she never paused but repeated, “I’ll be right there.”
I rang off and handed Levi his phone. Mark was still awake but silent now. Hopefully someone had threatened him. From the looks on their faces, that could have been either Ryan or Levi.
We heard sirens in the distance. Levi said, “I’ve got Ryan’s story. Tell me yours and make it quick.”
I did so. With prompting ... okay, threats ... Mark corroborated what he could. Levi started pacing again. I felt encouraged that he didn’t look as grim as before.
Finally he said, “I’ve got an idea. You two stand guard over these meat bags while I go out and fetch the rest.” He glared at Mark and the other guy who was beginning to come around. “The sooner you agree to what I propose, the sooner you stop bleeding. I only told emergency services about the wreck on the road, not you two or your friends. You could still disappear. Keep that in mind.”
&n
bsp; With that, Levi walked out. I exchanged a look with Ryan and shrugged my shoulders. I had no idea what the agent could possibly come up with that would keep us out of trouble.
Minutes later Levi and Gerald showed up. Gerald carried a dazed and muttering Tattingail. Duke and the fifth hunter were on their feet, herded along by the werewolf.
“The paramedics are having trouble locating the trail. They’re still at the club itself,” Levi reported. “Then they’ll have to get past that bunch of cars. Still, we’ve got to get this sorted out pretty quick.”
He told us all what he had in mind. With the exception of the Tats, who was still too out of it to make much sense of what was going on, the hunters agreed to what Levi wanted them to tell authorities. We went over and over the plan, getting our tale straight. Ryan got to work, using Levi’s knife to make physical evidence match the story as much as possible without endangering anyone’s life. There was a lot of screaming from the humans, but it was either pain or being infected with the Zoo Flu. Not much choice. Meanwhile, Levi made sure to block the trap door at the back of the cage so it couldn’t open and allow anyone to escape. Then he and Gerald got naked to shift again. I averted my eyes so Dan wouldn’t see me enjoying the spectacular view.
Wolf and panther tore up the cabin’s interior. When they were done, it looked like wild animals had gone berserk in there. Which they had, but they’d known what they were doing. The stage was set.
Five minutes before the paramedics and a host of police officers swarmed into the cabin, Ylena came in. The attractive witch with the trendy wardrobe told us about the tow trucks working to clear the narrow road of the cars clogging the way. That she’d gotten past them with no one the wiser was of no surprise. Witches are talented like that.
It took her only seconds to free Dan of the wards even though she said they’d been put into place by a talented spell caster. She paused and looked at me.
“You had no trouble getting in here?” she asked.
I shrugged. “My body marched in after demolishing the door there. It showed no hesitation.”
“Interesting,” she said, looking me over. “This building is warded well against vampires. Your unique circumstances seem to have nullified the spells.”
I had nothing to say about that. I decided to be grateful. Without Patricia’s body getting to me, Dan and I would still be trapped and Ryan might be dead.
Ylena didn’t waste time wondering. She left, never once asking what kind of mess we were in. Ylena is one of the few people I knew who minds her own business. As long as we’re all okay, she’s satisfied with that.
Dan hurried to me. His palm cupped my cheek, and I felt the ghostly brush that made me feel more right than gallons of fresh blood.
We trooped out to the porch. Ryan shucked off the sad remains of his clothes. He shifted. He and Levi, clothes in their jaws, ran off into the night. They still had work to do.
The first lights of police cars and ambulances appeared in the lane. I held out Gerald’s clothes to him in his panther guise, and he took them in his mouth as the other two had. He paused long enough to make sure I got off the ground. I hovered in the air to see him melt into the woods, a long, sleek shadow loping for his car before anyone noted its presence in the country club’s parking lot.
From the ground, Dan gave me a little wave and blew me a kiss. I blew one back and he disappeared.
I flew across the star-shattered sky, soaring as if I’d been born to it. I started to think everything might turn out all right after all.
Well, as all right as things ever get around the teapot tempest that was Fulton Falls.
Chapter 13
“...in the wake of the bear attack on the hunters who illegally caught it and planned to sell it to the highest bidder, the community of Fulton Falls is demanding a full investigation into their activities on country club grounds. The city of Waycross has also announced its intentions to call a vote relieving head prosecutor Edward Duke, already under investigation for other supposed misdeeds.”
Gerald chuckled as he finished reading the newspaper article on the latest scandal to excite the citizens of Fulton Falls. He lounged comfortably on the antique settee I’d decided belonged in my office. Carved wood and blush pink velvet upholstery? Of course I needed it.
Dan perched on one of the chairs in front of my desk. “So far the hunters are holding to the agreed story. No amount of questioning has shaken them for an instant.”
I repeated his comment to Gerald before saying, “Do they have a choice? Even shifter deaths get their day in court and occasionally some justice.”
Once they’d been taken into custody, the jerks who’d been blackmailing and hunting shifters for sport were safe from the threat of Levi and Gerald infecting them with Zoo Flu. It had been the one weak part of Levi’s plan. However that threat had gotten them to confess the locations of the missing shifters’ bodies and which guns had been used to kill them. A subsequent search of the country club’s property by Levi, Gerald, and others had swiftly uncovered the graves of the missing weres ... along with the ammunition that had killed them. Levi had ballistics evidence ready to fall on the hunters’ heads if they didn’t stick with the story about trapping a bear. Illegal trapping with intent to sell a wild animal didn’t carry nearly the same punishment as murder.
It probably didn’t hurt that Zoo Flu had been more than a threat to Tattingail. He’d been infected with it. We assumed it had happened when Ryan went after him. While in the hospital, his body raging with fever, the Tats had raved about Patricia Keith attacking him. Since his injuries were consistent with getting smacked around by a large animal and not chewed on by a vampire, no one took his screams seriously. Plus Ryan had covered my bite marks on the other men with gouges made to look like a mauling.
It did open up the suspicion that the bear the club had trapped in their cabin had been a shifter. However, only Tattingail had succumbed to Zoo Flu. Tests proved he’d caught his particular strain from a weregator, not a bear. The other men were cleared of contamination. With no one budging from the story of luring the animal in through the trap door and it going berserk, Ryan’s involvement stayed quiet.
Even his truck being there in the middle of the pile-up was explained to the satisfaction of authorities ... well, more or less. Mark, the worst friend in history, insisted he had borrowed Ryan’s truck when his Lexus started having problems. The nearly dead battery in Mark’s car substantiated that claim. Gerald and Levi said Ryan had been with them watching basketball when the accident occurred.
Yeah, it was a shaky alibi. Okay, it was a terrible alibi. The D.A. wasn’t convinced by a long shot. Yet it was sworn to by everyone involved and there was no concrete evidence otherwise. Case closed.
Gerald voiced the one thing that bothered us all. “It’s a shame they won’t face murder charges. Eight people heartlessly killed. Eight families lost loved ones.”
I offered the same empty consolation we’d all taken to saying. “We can’t bring back the dead.”
He nodded. “We have to concentrate on the living.”
“And undead?” I asked, trying to lighten the suddenly somber mood.
That earned me a chuckle from both men. I gestured to Gerald, wanting the newspaper. He folded it and tossed it to me.
I opened to the story and read it again. “That’s still something about Tattingail having a weregator mistress all this time. As much as he hated paras? Crazy.”
Dan smirked. “I’ve always said that the louder someone protests against something, the more likely you’ll find that particular skeleton in his closet.”
I repeated his observation to Gerald. The big guy nodded. His expression had that morose look again.
It was understandable. After all, Gerald’s brand of para got shafted more often than the rest. And he was so right in that with the exception of Tattingail, the killers got away with murder.
Looking for anything I could spin in a positive way I said, “We were able
to bury the dead. Trust me when I say that means something. The families have closure. They aren’t waiting and wondering anymore.”
We’d seen to it that the bodies were discovered, far away from the country club as part of the agreement with the hunters to keep their lips zipped, Ryan free from prison, and ‘Patricia’ out of the executioner’s incinerator. We’d gotten some measure of justice by leaving the corpses on a parcel of land owned by Tattingail and phoning in an anonymous tip. More posthumous scandal for the man who would have been a leader of Ford County.
Gerald sighed. “We got that. I suppose it will have to be enough. Like we all say, we take care of our own.”
Dan nodded, his tone adamant. “Yes, we do.”
With every ounce of the vampire heart that sat quiet in my chest, I added, “Always.”
On the heels of affirming our loyalty, my assistant walked in. I grinned at Wendy. With Tristan on the brink of leaving and her staying behind to be near her family, my former flying coach had taken the assignment of handling my needs. Now that I no longer freak her out, we’re on great terms. I think we might even end up as friends some fine day.
She played the part of professional right now though. Her answering smile slipped into that of the conscientious employee. “Ms. Keith, you have an unscheduled visitor. Ashley Warner?”
A thrill went up my spine. What was she doing here? I looked around to make sure no stray bottles of BP9 were about. “Oh. Yeah. Sure, bring her in.”
Wendy gave me a wink as if to reassure me it would be okay. As she left and Ashley entered the office, Gerald stood and smiled. “Mrs. Warner, it’s good to see you again.”
“Ashley, please,” my sister insisted. “I’m glad to run into you too, Gerald. I hope I’m not interrupting?”
He pulled out a chair for her in front of my desk, the one Dan quickly got out of. “Not at all. My business with Ms. Keith is done for the moment. Can I get you something? Tea, coffee, wine, water?”
Ashley took the seat and beamed up at him. “No thank you. I just wanted to drop in and thank Ms. Keith. And you too. I know you work closely with her and must have had something to do with getting my husband out of the trouble he was in.”
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