by Jade Wolfe
As it turned out I got the first thing done, then Lucy showed up and gave me a whole new direction in life. Never in a million years would I have thought I'd be stomping through the woods, saving strangers from rivers, and keeping a bunch of supernatural creatures in line. It was a crazy turn of events, but I wouldn't change it now for anything.
Behind me in the driveway, Pearl honked the sedan's horn. I waved out the window and took off. From the side of the house, Peony watched us go, then turned back toward the woods.
Wilding was about five miles from home, so it wasn't much of a drive. I kept swearing that one of these days I'd take a road trip, just so I could drive my Escalade somewhere for hours and hours.
Not today, though. Strange things were happening around here. I had to slow several times for deer bounding across the road, and there seemed to be more activity in the trees, too. Birds and squirrels were everywhere, darting around frantically. Wilding was the kind of place where the squirrels sat up and chattered angrily if you walked too close. Today, they were running away at the sound of our vehicles. The air crackled with a sense of danger.
I was pretty sure this had something to do with the werewolves loose outside Red Rock.
I sped up. We had work to do.
Chapter Seven
Town was practically deserted. There wasn't any traffic on the road, there wasn't even anyone hanging out on the courthouse lawn. That was especially odd - because Wilding was generally a friendly place, the kind of place where friends walked downtown just to visit and window shop. There was always some event or other happening, whether it was a spaghetti dinner fundraiser or live music on the courthouse lawn. The lack of people was downright creepy.
I checked my rearview mirror - Pearl was still back there, and I didn't see any movement from the back seat or the passenger side. So far, so good.
I turned left at the second of two lights in town and made my way to the motel. Pearl parked beside me, jumped out of the car, and locked the doors with Tom inside. He was still passed out on his back, one arm flung into the rear floorboard. He looked peaceful enough, and he'd come around soon. If we were lucky, he wouldn't remember anything.
Pearl jumped into the passenger seat of the Escalade and looked across to see out my window. "You think he's all right? I left the window cracked for him."
"That's nice. He's fine. I didn't zap him that hard."
She glared at me. "Every zap is that hard. You hurt when you do that stuff."
"You asked me to do that!" I protested, pulling out of the lot. "You wanted to know what it felt like."
She pointed. "Right. That means I know what it feels like, and it hurts. Make a left, I know a shortcut through town."
I shrugged and made a left.
"Now take the next right. It's an alley, but I guess this cattle truck of yours will fit."
"I'm starting to not like you very much today." I made the right. There was a clutch of people standing on the sidewalk. Maybe thirty. The number didn't bother me, but the fact that they had guns did. "What's going on? This looks a whole lot like a posse or something."
"Or a hunting party," Pearl said, her voice low and shaky. "That's the sheriff's office. Indigo. The werewolves."
"Damn it." I hit the gas, and the Escalade responded beautifully. We needed to get home and get the barrier back up before things got worse, but first we had to deal with werewolves loose in town before they ate somebody. That is, if we weren’t too late already.
I shuddered at the thought. I'd seen first-hand what kind of damage these wolves could do. Once in a while I came across a deer carcass - or what was left of one - in the woods, and it wasn't pretty. The first time, I ran off the trail to hurl in the trees. I was doing better about that now, but I didn't want to see a human being in that kind of shape.
I made a sharp turn onto a side street and parked in the lot of the store where Lucy bought groceries. It was a regional chain store with a decent sized lot, so there were a few cars. The Escalade wouldn't be questioned for a while.
"C'mon," I said, jumping down from the driver's seat. "Let's go hunting."
She raised her eyebrows. "You see what I'm wearing?"
I glared at her. "Then change. But don't you dare change my car."
Pearl had more fun with her magic than the rest of us, and one of her favorite things to do was create new outfits out of thin air. She also had the vanity to change her surroundings at the same time - to match the outfits, of course. As a result, she always looked fabulous but could never find anything in her house. Until this moment, I never thought I'd see her use this trick for a good reason. Who needed to change clothes forty times a day?
She sighed, raised her hands, and let loose the curly purple smoke that allowed her to do her fashion thing. It swirled around her and flashed a few times.
I closed my eyes, but the white flash was still almost blinding. When I opened them again, she was wearing jeans, a flannel shirt, and hiking boots. "Weapons?" I asked.
She flashed again before I could close my eyes.
"Damn it." I opened my eyes and blinked away the stars and squiggles in my vision. She was wearing a belt full of knives and a couple of small pistols in shoulder holsters, tucked in near her ribs. She smiled brightly. "Ready. Let's go."
I looked at the guns. "Do you know how to use those things?" I asked.
She smiled, pulled one from its holster, leaned out the open window, and shot a stop sign in the intersection. Right in the middle of the P.
"Huh."
"Let's go," she said again, jumping down from the SUV and slamming the door behind her.
We walked back the way we had come, turned the corner and made our way down to the police department, trying to blend in with the other folks there. I saw fear on a few faces, anger on some others. Mostly men, but a few women, too. Everyone was armed.
A wide-shouldered, fairly brawny man with a crew cut and a silver badge clipped to his sleeve was standing at the door of the small gray building. "Until we have more information, I want you folks to go on home, now," he was saying. "Let us do our job, and we'll keep you safe."
"Who did this, Michaels?" someone called from the crowd.
He held up two meaty hands. "I already told you -."
"You told us you didn't know. We aim to find out."
I grinned at Pearl. She grinned back. This was like a bad biker movie.
"What we know is that Mr. Pickens was outside in his garden around three o'clock. His wife found him twenty minutes later. The last person to speak to him was Carly Myers. She was selling stuff for school, and Mrs. Pickens said he apparently bought a candle. She found it on the....” Michaels grimaced. “Near his body."
"Where is Carly?" somebody else yelled.
Michaels frowned. "She's inside, answering a few questions." He paused and looked over the crowd. His eyes were small, dark, and very serious. "You all want to leave her alone. She's just a little girl."
"She might have seen something." Same guy.
Michaels put his hands on his hips. "Don't y'all think we'll figure that out? Now, I know this was a bad thing to happen, but go on home and let us do our jobs."
Just ahead of me, a small woman held a double-barreled shotgun and shifted from one foot to the other, like she was impatient. She had bottle-blonde hair and she was pretty in a hard kind of way. I leaned in near her left shoulder. "What happened?"
She glanced at me. "An old man on my street was ripped to shreds an hour ago. They can't even find all of him." Her rough voice was louder than necessary. "Now this man's telling me to go on home and twiddle my thumbs."
I winced and looked at Pearl. She was staring back at me, her eyes round.
Werewolves. It had to be, if part of Mr. Pickens was actually missing. I was honestly surprised that the little girl was still alive. I jerked my head toward the back of the crowd, and Pearl followed me.
"We'll start the manhunt on Third," somebody said.
Michaels grimaced. "
Won't be no manhunt in town today, folks."
"Bullshit." That was from my new friend.
"Carol, do you really want to go waving that gun around and scaring your kids? And what will you folks do if you find this guy? Kill him in the street?"
There were plenty of murmurs, but no real answer to that one.
"So we head over to Third?" Pearl asked me.
I shrugged. "It's as good a place as any. We've got to start somewhere."
She glanced back at the crowd. "These people aren't going to settle down," she said. "Somebody might get hurt."
"Think you can fix it?"
"Maybe. Hide me."
I stepped in front of her. We were about the same size, but all I really needed to do was hide her hands. She whispered something, paused for a moment, and I felt a wave of energy pass through me. Several people in the crowd shifted a little, like they were uncomfortable, but nobody looked our way. A few seconds later, the whole thing happened again.
She stepped out from behind me, and I pointed. A couple of the people here were already nodding and sauntering away down the sidewalk, presumably toward home. The others had relaxed a little, and I didn't feel the intensity of a mob in the air anymore. Much better.
Michaels looked relieved, and I didn't blame him. "We'll let you know as soon as any news becomes available," he was saying. "Please keep the kids inside this evening, and go ahead and lock your doors."
I looked around, and now that Pearl had nudged them in the right direction, people were starting to take his advice, or they were at least thinking about it. Beyond Pearl, also at the edge of the crowd, like us, I saw a man standing there with his arms crossed. He looked interested, but sort of detached, like he was listening to one of those recorded museum lectures.
Something about him told me that he wasn't from around here, but I knew one thing for sure - he was the best-looking guy I'd ever seen. Dirty blonde hair that was almost too long, solidly built and a tan that most women would kill for. I leaned back a little for a better view. Yep - nice ass, too.
Pearl looked, then looked back at me and smacked my arm. "Hello? Indigo? We've got werewolves, remember?"
"I know. I was just looking."
The crowd was thinning out now, and Michaels noticed us standing there. He came down the steps. "Evening, ladies," he said, looking at me. "Don't believe we've met."
Pearl said, "Hey, Sheriff - you wouldn't forget me now, would you?"
He blushed like a giant strawberry. "No, Miss Pearl. I never would. I was talking to your friend here."
"This is Indigo," she said. I shook his hand, which swallowed mine but felt soft and kind of sweaty. "She's Lucy's granddaughter, here to stay with us for a while."
His eyebrows came up. "Two pretty ladies out there? I'm going to have to spend more time hiking Red Rock."
Ick. He was old enough to be my dad.
I noticed Captain SexyButt had moved a little closer, though. Was he listening in?
"It's nice to meet you, Sheriff. I guess you've had some excitement around here."
He shook his head. "Buddy Pickens. Poor guy."
"What happened to him?" I asked.
"You don't want to know. It's a mess. Looks like some dogs got hold of him, or maybe a psychopath, but I doubt even a psychopath has enough stamina to take somebody apart like that." He looked a little green just talking about it. Then his attention shifted. "You look a little bit like you're gunning for bear this evening, Pearl."
She looked down at the holsters. "I'm legal, Sheriff."
He nodded. "I know you are. Just wondered why you felt like carrying today."
She gave him a shy smile. "I felt the need to be extra safe, I guess."
"Well, you be careful with those things, all right?" He hitched his uniform pants up over his belly. "Liable to blow off a foot if you ain't careful."
She gave him a sassy look.
"I mean, I can see where you'd need the protection, though, pretty as you are."
She smiled and patted his cheek. "I'd knew you'd understand."
He looked at me. "Make sure she don't hurt herself, all right?"
"Sure." I didn't know what made him think I was any authority on the subject of guns, but I agreed, just to make him feel better.
The good looking guy was moving closer. Slowly, but I could tell. He was now within hearing distance. Another five feet and he'd bump right into the sheriff. Neither Michaels or Pearl seemed to notice him.
"What's your plan to catch this guy?" Pearl was asking him.
"We’ve got three men on duty this afternoon, and about twenty others that I call in when necessary."
"Why would you need twenty extra men?" I asked.
"We've used them for search and rescue a few times, either out at Red Rock or when the river floods."
"How often does that happen?"
He looked at me oddly, like he wasn't sure if he should be answering my questions.
I smiled to show I was harmless. "Just wondering - I might be staying for a while, and I'd like to know about the place."
He relaxed. "Sure, sure, I get that. We've got a few newcomers moving in these days."
"Oh, yeah?"
"A few. Nice to see our little town growing."
We said our goodbyes and walked back toward the Escalade. Once out of sight, Pearl tugged my arm and we made a left onto Magnolia. "You want to go see?" she asked.
"Maybe. You think the werewolves are even still around?"
She made a face. "Oh, yeah. This," she waved her arms to encompass the whole town, "Is like a buffet."
"That's nasty."
"No, I bet what happened to Buddy Pickens is nasty. This is just a fact."
"And we need to keep it from happening again."
"Yep."
"What did you do to those folks back there, anyway? To make them go home?"
"Apathy spell. They just lost interest. It'll wear off by morning."
"Nice."
"I try." She pointed to a sign that told us we were on Third Street, but from the number of police cars and official looking vans clogging the street, I could have guessed.
"How do we get in there without being seen?" I asked.
She laughed. "We don't. Invisibility is for superheroes, not witches."
"We're kind of superheroes," I said.
"No. No we aren't. Not even a little bit."
With this much activity, most of it in front of a small, tidy ranch-style house, I would have expected there to be more bystanders floating around. As it was, everyone had gone home except for the police and people running around in jackets that said CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION on the back. An elderly woman sat on a porch swing, rocking quietly and clutching what looked like a white handkerchief.
"Oh, look," Pearl murmured.
I turned to see what she was talking about, and groaned. "Just kill me now."
Tom Turner was standing near the back door of a dark blue van, talking to a woman in dress slacks and one of the crime scene jackets. She was pretty, but from the way he frowned at her and scribbled stuff down in a little pad in his hand, I suspected he wasn't flirting.
"Is there a way to go around the back?" I asked. "The sheriff will probably be here any minute."
"Hmm. Maybe." She turned and walked toward the opposite side of the street. "Follow me."
We cut through the yards across the street until we got to the corner, then went another half block and cut through those yards, effectively creating our own block that led back to the Pickens house. There was a six-foot fence surrounding their back yard, and the back yard itself was bigger than the ones on either side.
"Look." We were standing at the side of the yard. Pearl nudged me with her elbow and pointed toward the back.
"The woods," I said. They could have come in directly from that direction, which meant Pickens was just the first human they came across. The question is - how do we get in there?"
"It's so sad," Pearl murmured, looking at the
house again. "She looked sad, didn't she?"
I nodded agreement.
"I don't think we need to go in there," Pearl said. "It’s a mess, we know it's a mess. Let's just get out of here and hunt some werewolves before they hurt someone else."
I agreed. "You don't think we'll at least see any tracks that will help?"
"Look." She pointed at a pickup truck pulling in, right behind Michaels's car. "There's our direction."
"Who is that?"
A man who looked to be in his forties climbed out of the truck, adjusted his ball cap, and sidled around to drop the tailgate. Michaels maneuvered his bulk out of a silver and black patrol car and met him there. They talked about something while the man fiddled with a giant box that almost filled the bed of the truck.
"Mercer Kane," Pearl said. "The dog's name is Daisy."
Mercer Kane pulled something from his back pocket, unrolled it, and reached one end into the box. When he pulled it out again, it was attached to a big, gorgeous, floppy red bloodhound. I grinned. "Oh, she's pretty. I always wanted a bloodhound." Even from here I could see the dog's soft brown eyes, taking everything in while she snuffled the air.
"Really?" Pearl asked.
"Yes, really. Isn't she beautiful? Look at that shiny coat."
Pearl wrinkled her nose.
"Shut up. You have sharks. What are you going to do with sharks? You can't walk them."
"I can't get drooled on by them, either," she said. "That's a win for me."
"Whatever." I turned my attention back to the dog. Mercer Kane was helping Daisy down onto the pavement. The minute her feet touched down, she was working, checking out the tires, a pothole, Michaels' shoes, and a drainage vent. Kane whistled, and she was back to his side and sitting in a matter of seconds. He reached down and gave her a treat.
"So we follow them?" I asked.
"Daisy will find them faster than any of us will," Pearl said. "She's a legend around here."
Someone shouted from the Pickens backyard, getting the sheriff’s attention. Both men turned and started walking that way.
The person who shouted turned out to be a her - she stepped out from the back yard gate, holding something up for the men to see. Michaels got there first and took it from her.
