"How do you know werewolves did it?"
"Because the family hired me to kill the first one. They told me."
I shook my head. "Whoa, what?"
"The parents, the kid's parents."
"The wolf was a kid ?"
"No, he was twenty years old! This is all coming out wrong."
"Then calm down. Start over." I held my coffee mug to my face and breathed in the steam. I had to calm down as well, if I expected Cormac to be civil. He was right on the edge.
"They knew he'd gone wolf, knew he was killing sheep, and they were afraid he'd start in on people. Nobody could control him so they called me."
"They just gave up on him? Their own son and they wanted him dead?"
"It's a different world there. Out in the desert, on the edge of Navajo Country. Shit like this happens and they look at it as evil. Pure evil, and the only thing to do with it is kill it. You've seen this kind of thing, you know they're right."
I had, and I did. I just hated to admit it. "What happened?"
"I knew his territory, knew how to find him, because he was going after livestock. But I got out there and found two sets of tracks. Werewolves are tough, but one of them couldn't have done that much damage on his own. His family didn't know there were two of them."
"Him, and the wolf who turned him?"
"Maybe. I don't know. They had no idea who the second one was. Or they wouldn't tell me. That was when I called Ben. The whole job was a mess, I should have just walked away. Too many details didn't fit—like the noise. These two had slaughtered three flocks by the time I got out there. Somebody should have heard something."
"How did you find them?"
"I left Ben by the Jeep, with a gun. He was on the hood, keeping a look out while I went to set bait."
I almost interrupted again. Bait? Is that how he hunted werewolves, with bait ? But I didn't want to stop him—he might not start the story again.
"I found them right away. One of them. I shouldn't have, it was too easy. And it still wasn't right—the wolf had red eyes. I've seen plenty of wolves, wild ones and lycanthropes, and none of them have red eyes. But this thing—if it wasn't a werewolf I don't know what it was. I sure as hell didn't like it. I aimed my rifle at it—and then I couldn't move. I tried to shout to Ben, and I couldn't move. I couldn't even breathe. I've stared down werewolves before. I've never frozen up like that.
"I'd be dead, I'm sure that thing would have ripped out my throat if Ben hadn't fired just then. Then it was like somebody flipped a switch and I could move. And there was Ben, on the hood of the Jeep, with a wolf on top of him. I don't know if he shot at the thing and missed, or if it was just too fast for him. But it got him. He didn't even scream."
Sunlight covered the clearing outside my house, but Cormac, turned away from the window, was still gray with shadows.
"What did you do?" I whispered. I almost didn't dare breathe.
"I shot the wolf. It was a lucky shot, one in a million. I could have hit Ben instead."
"Then what happened?"
"The other wolf—the one in front of me—screamed. Not howled, not barked. Screamed like a human. Like a woman. I turned back and was going to kill it next, but it was already running. I shot at the thing but it got away."
"And the wolf you did hit?"
"It was the kid, the one I'd been hired to get. The shot knocked him right off the Jeep. When I got to him he was dying. I put a bullet in his head. He turned back to human. Just like he was supposed to."
He was right to do it. A cold, rational part of myself knew that a werewolf who couldn't control himself, who killed indiscriminately, was too dangerous, impossible to control within the legal system. What are you going to do, call the cops and stick him in jail? Strangely enough, that rational part of myself included a little bit of the Wolf, who knew exacdy what to do when one of our kind got out of line. Only one thing to do. To my human side, to my gut emotional level, it still looked like murder. I couldn't reconcile the two views.
"And Ben?"
"I brought him here. That's the whole story." He drew in a slow breath and let it out with a sigh. "He's not cut out for this shit. He never was."
"Then why did you drag him into it?" My voice was stiff with anger.
For the first time, Cormac looked at me. "He's the only one in the world I trust." He walked to the doorway to the bedroom, leaned on the frame, and stared in.
It wasn't true, that Ben was the only one he trusted. If that were true he wouldn't have brought Ben here. But I didn't say that.
Cormac straightened from the door. "You mind if I crash out on the sofa?"
"Be my guest," I said, trying to smile like a gracious hostess.
"I'll get my bedroll out of the Jeep." He went to the front door and opened it.
Then he stopped. He stared for a long time, holding the knob, not moving.
"What?" I set down my coffee and went to look out the door.
There on the porch lay another dead rabbit, gutted like the first. I wasn't surprised when I looked at the outside of the door and found a cross made of smeared blood, fresh blood covering the stained outlines of the old cross. It hadn't been there when Cormac got here with Ben. They hadn't been here that long, maybe an hour. So this had happened within the hour, and this time I hadn't heard a thing. Of course, I'd been a little preoccupied.
I groaned. "Not again."
Cormac glanced at me. "Again? How many times have you been animal sacrifice central?"
I went outside, smelling the air, staring at the ground, looking for footprints, for anything that showed someone had been here, how this had happened. But the blood and guts might have appeared out of thin air, for all the evidence I saw. I stood on the porch, circling, studying the clearing, the house, everything, which even in the morning light had taken on a sinister cast. The place didn't feel cozy anymore.
"I wanted Walden and got Evil Dead," I grumbled. I faced Cormac. "This is the second one. You have any idea what it means?"
The scene seemed to pull him out of his recent trauma-He sounded genuinely fascinated when he said, "I don't know. If I had to guess I'd say you've been cursed."
In more ways than I cared to count. I went back inside. "I'm going to call the sheriff."
He moved out to the porch, stepping carefully around the rabbit corpse, and said, "Let me hide my guns someplace first."
Cursed. Right. Cursed didn't begin to describe my life at the moment.
I had to explain Cormac to Sheriff Marks. "He's a friend. Just visiting," I said. Marks gave me that look, the judgmental none of my business what folks do in the privacy of theirown homes look that left no doubt as to what he thought was going on in the privacy of my own home. For his part, Cormac stood on the porch, leaning against the wall of the house, watching the proceedings with an air of detached curiosity. He'd hidden his arsenal—three rifles, four handguns of various shapes and sizes, and a suitcase-sized lock box that held who knew what—under the bed. My bed.
Marks and Deputy Ted repeated their search and found just as little as they had the first time.
"Here's what I'll do. I'll post a deputy out here for a couple nights," Marks said, after he'd wrapped up. "I'll also put a call in to somebody I know in the Colorado Springs PD. He's a specialist in satanism and cult behavior. Maybe he'll know if any groups operate in this area."
"If it were Satanists, wouldn't the cross be upside down or something?"
His expression of frowning disapproval turned even more disapproving.
"Sheriff, don't you think I'm being targeted because of who I am?" What I am, I should have said.
"That's a possibility. We'll have to take all the facts into account."
Suddenly I felt like the bad guy. It was that part of being a victim that made a person ask, what did I do to bring this on myself?
"We'll start our stakeout tonight. Have a better morning, ma'am." Marks and Ted headed back to their car and drove away, le
aving me with another mess on my porch.
Cormac nodded toward the departing car. "Small-town cop like him don't know anything about this."
"Do you?"
"It's blood magic."
"Well, yeah. What kind? Who's doing it?"
"Who've you pissed off lately?" He had the gall to smile at me.
I leaned on the porch railing and sighed. "I have no idea."
"We'll figure it out. You got a shovel and garden hose? I'll take care of this."
That was something, anyway. "Thanks."
When I looked in on Ben again, he'd rolled to his side and curled up, pulling the blankets tightly over his shoulder. Color was coming back into his skin, and the scabs on his wounds were healing. I touched his forehead; he still had a fever. He was still shivering.
The room smelled strange. It was filled with the scents of sweat and illness, with Ben's own particular smell that included hints of the clothes he wore, his aftershave and toothpaste. And something else. His smell was changing, something wild and musky creeping into the mundane smells of civilization. I'd always thought of it as fur under the skin—the scent of another lycanthrope. Right here in the room with me. My lycanthropic self, my own Wolf, perked up, shifted within my senses, curious. She wanted the measure of him: friend, rival, enemy, alpha, samepack, different pack, who?
Friend. I hoped he was still a friend when he woke up.
I made him drink some water. With Cormac's help I lifted his shoulders, held his head up, and tipped a glass to his mouth. As much spilled out as went in, but his throat moved, and he drank a little. He didn't wake up, but he stirred, squeezing his eyes shut and groaning a little. I shushed him, hoping he stayed asleep. He needed to rest while his body sorted itself out.
Then I made Cormac eat something. He wouldn't tell me when he'd last eaten, when he'd last slept. It might have been days. I made bacon and eggs. I hadn't yet met a meat eater who could resist bacon and eggs. Whatever else he was, Cormac was a meat eater.
After breakfast, he spread his sleeping bag on the sofa and lay down. Broad daylight outside, and he rolled over on his side and fell asleep instantly, his breathing turning deep and regular. I envied that ability to sleep anywhere, anytime.
I sat at my desk, because I didn't have anywhere else to sit, but I didn't turn on the computer. I rubbed my face, hugged my head, and leaned on the table.
I didn't think I could take it anymore. I'd reached my limit. If ever there was a time when turning wolf and running away sounded like a good idea, this was it.
"Norville?"
Startled, I straightened, looked. Cormac wasn't asleep after all. He'd propped himself on one elbow.
"Thank you," he said.
I stared back, meeting his gaze. I saw exhaustion there. Hopelessness. I'd told him Ben would be okay, but I wondered if he'd believed it.
"You're welcome." What else could I say?
He rolled over, putting his back to me, and went to sleep.
Chapter 5
I turned on the computer and wrote. Typing whatever came into my head, I wrote about the random shocks of life, the events that brought friends to your doorstep begging for help, even when you felt that your own life had tumbled irrevocably out of control. You did what you had to do, somehow. You kept racing ahead and hoped for the best. I wrote about being at the end of my rope and made a list of the reasons I had to stay human. Chocolate, as always, was near the top of the list. I was in the kitchen eating chocolate chip cookies when Cormac woke up, after dark.
I was looking out the kitchen window, to where Deputy Ted's patrol car was parked at the end of the road, hidden in the trees. I spotted him when he turned on his dome light to eat a sandwich.
Cormac sat up, rubbed his face, then stretched, twisting his back, pulling his arms up. Something cracked. "What're you looking at?"
"Take a look," I said. "You'll like this."
He came to the kitchen area, and I moved aside to give him room to look out the window. The deputy still had his light on, making his car a glowing beacon among the trees.
Cormac made a derisive grunt. "They're not going to catch anyone if that's how they run a stakeout."
With the cop sitting there, nobody would come within a mile of my place to lay any sort of curse. Nobody smart, anyway. "At least I won't have rabbit guts all over my porch in the morning."
"You're a werewolf, I thought you'd like that sort of thing. Fresh meat, delivered right to your door. Maybe it's a secret admirer."
"I like picking out my own dead meat, thanks."
"I'll remember that."
He crossed his arms, leaned on the counter, and looked at me. I blinked back, trying to think of a clever response. Finally, I offered him the bag I was holding. "Cookie?"
He shook his head at it. "How's Ben?"
"Asleep. How are you?"
"Feeling stupid. I keep thinking of everything I should have done different."
"That's not like you. You're a head down, guns blazing, full steam ahead kind of guy. Not one to dwell in the past."
"You don't know anything about me."
I shrugged, conceding the point. "So what's the story? You know all about my dark past. I don't know anything about yours."
"You're fishing," he said and smirked.
"Can't blame a girl for trying."
"Save it for your show."
Ouch. If only I were doing the show. It occurred to me to consider how big a favor I would have to do for Cormac before I could talk him into coining on the show for an interview, if taking in him and Ben in their hour of need didn't do it.
Cormac pulled himself from the counter. "You have a bathroom in this place?"
"In the bedroom."
He stalked off to find it. A minute later, the shower started up. At least he'd be clean.
I found my cell phone, dialed the number I wanted, and went outside. The air was cool, energizing. The inside of the house had become stifling. I sat on the porch and put my back against the wall.
A woman answered, "Hello?"
"Hi, Mom."
"Kitty! What a nice surprise. Is everything all right?"
"Why wouldn't it be?"
"Because you never call unless something's happened."
I sighed. She had a point. "I've had kind of a rough couple of days."
"Oh, I'm sorry. What's wrong?"
Between the extracurricular shape-shifting, animal sacrifices on my front porch, my lawyer getting attacked by a werewolf, and a werewolf hunter camping out in my living room, I didn't know where to start. I didn't think I should start.
"A lot of stuff. It's complicated."
"I worry about you being out there all by yourself. Are you sure you don't want to come home for a little while? You've had such a busy year, I think it would be good for you to not have to worry about things like rent."
Strangely enough, rent was one of the few things I wasn't worried about. As much as going back to my parents' and having Mom take care of me for a little while sounded like a good idea, it wasn't an option. Not that Mom would have understood that.
"I'm actually not by myself at the moment," I said, trying to sound positive. "I have a couple of friends staying over."
"That should be fun."
If I would just break down and tell Mom the truth, be straight with her, these conversations would be much less surreal. I'd called her because I needed to hear a friendly voice; I didn't want to tell her all the gory details.
"Yeah, sure. So how are you? How are Dad and Cheryl?"
She relayed the doings of the family since her last call—more of the same, but at least somebody's world was normal—and finished by turning the questions back on me, "How is the writing going?"
"It's fine," I said brightly. If I sounded like everything was okay, maybe it would be, eventually. "I think I've gotten over the writer's block."
"Will you be starting your show again soon? People ask me about it all the time."
&nbs
p; I winced. "Maybe. I haven't really thought about it."
"We're so proud of you, Kitty. So many people only ever dream of doing what you've done. It's been so much fun watching your success."
She couldn't have twisted the knife any harder if she'd tried. I was such a success, and here I was flushing it down the toilet. But she really did sound proud, and happy. To think at one point I'd been worried that she'd be scandalized by what I was doing.
I took a deep breath and kept my voice steady. Wouldn't Jo any good to break down now. "Thanks, Mom. That means a lot."
"When are you finally coming to visit?"
"I'm not sure… you know, Mom, it's been great talking to you, but I really need to get going."
"Oh, but you only just called—"
"I know, I'm really sorry. But I told you I have friends staying, right?"
"Then you'd better get back to it. It's good to hear from you."
"Say hi to Dad for me."
"I will. We love you."
"Love you, too."
I sat on the porch for a long time, the phone sitting in my lap. I was looking for someone to lean on. Cormac and Ben showed up with all this, and I wasn't sure I could handle it. Wolves were supposed to run in packs. I was supposed to have help for something like this. But I didn't have anyone. I went back inside, back to my milk and cookies.
From the bedroom, the shower shut off. Ten minutes or so later, Cormac, hair damp and slicked back, came into the front room. He'd shaved, leaving only his familiar, trademark mustache. He was cinching on his belt and gun holster.
"I'm going to help Rosco out there with his stakeout. Do a little hunting around on my own." The contempt in his voice was plain. He was restless; I hadn't really expected him to stay in bed for twelve hours.
"Be careful."
He gave me a funny look, brows raised. "Really?"
Exasperated, I sighed. "I wouldn't want him to shoot you because he thinks you're the bad guy."
"Who says I'm not?"
Wincing, I rubbed my forehead. "I'm too tired to argue with you about it."
"Get some sleep," he said. "Take the sofa."
"Where'll you sleep?"
"The floor, if I decide I need it. You looked after Ben all day, I'll keep an eye on him tonight. Take the sofa."
Kitty Takes a Holiday kn-3 Page 4