Bitten

by Kelley Armstrong

  "Wild dogs? Or just Clayton?"

  "Oh God," I muttered under my breath.

  I walked over to snatch the underwear from him, but he held it over his head, grinning like a schoolboy.

  "I see Paris, I see France, I see Elena's underpants," he chanted.

  "Everyone's already seen much more than that," Jeremy said. "I think we can safely resume the search."

  Peter plucked Clay's shirt from a low-hanging branch and held it up, peering through a hole in the middle. "You guys can really do some damage. Where's the hidden video when you need it?"

  "So this--uh--wasn't done by wild dogs?" one of the searchers said.

  Peter grinned and tossed the shirt to the ground. "Nope. Just wild hormones."

  The other men, who'd finally stopped casting sidelong glances at me after the "naked in the yard" incident, now looked me over with renewed interest. I smiled, trying hard not to bare my teeth, then hurried back into the woods.

  Jeremy, two of the searchers, and I were beating the bushes in the northeast quadrant of the woods when we heard another shout, this time infused with enough urgency to make us run. When we got there, Nick and two searchers were standing over a body. Nick looked up, caught my eye, and gave me a look that said he'd tried unsuccessfully to distract the men's attention. Jeremy and I walked to the body and looked down. It was the missing man. His shirt collar was torn and drenched with blood. Above the collar his throat was shredded, flaps of flesh hanging from the wound. Empty eye sockets stared up at us. Crows or turkey vultures had found him first, lying exposed in the clearing. Besides taking his eyes, they'd pecked at his face, leaving bloody holes where white bone peeked through. Bits of scattered flesh covered his shirtfront and surrounded his head, as if the searchers had scared the scavengers mid-meal.

  "Like the others," one man said, then turned away from the sight.

  "One difference," another said. "He wasn't eaten. Not by the dogs at least. Birds got to him though. Buggers don't waste any time."

  A younger man bolted for the woods. Seconds later, the sound of retching filled the air. Two of the men shook their heads in sympathy, both looking a little green themselves. My stomach wasn't feeling so great either, though it had nothing to do with seeing a dead body. When the younger man stopped throwing up, he was quiet a moment, then ran from the thicket.

  "Come here! You guys have to see this!"

  I knew what he'd found. I knew it and I dreaded stepping into that thicket to confirm my suspicions, but Jeremy prodded me on. When I stepped into the woods, the sickly sweet smell of vomit made my gorge rise. Then I looked down at the ground, following the path of the young man's finger. There, in the damp earth, were paw prints.

  "Can you believe the size of those things?" the young man said. "Christ, they're as big as saucers. Just like those kids said. These dogs are huge!"

  As I surveyed the thicket, my eyes caught sight of something snagged on a thornbush. A tuft of fur, shining golden even in the shadows. While everyone stared at the paw prints, I slipped over to the bush, stood in front of it, reached behind my back, and slid the fur into my pocket. Then I looked around for more. When I didn't see any, I glanced back at the paw prints, as recognizable as footprints from a familiar pair of shoes. As I stared at them, I felt sick. Then the disappointment turned to something else. Anger.

  "I have to go," I muttered, turning from the thicket.

  No one tried to stop me, the humans assuming it was a delayed reaction to the sight of the dead man, and the Pack not wanting to make a scene.

  "Clayton!" I shouted as the back door slammed behind me.

  Clay appeared in the kitchen doorway, wooden spoon in hand. "That didn't take long. Come in and get the coffee going."

  I didn't move. "Aren't you going to ask if they found the missing man?"

  "That would imply I give a damn."

  "They found him."

  "Good, so I presume they're leaving. All the better. Now come in and--"

  "I found this by the body," I said, pulling the tuft of fur from my pocket.

  "Huh. Looks like mine."

  "It is yours. Your prints were there, too."

  Clay leaned against the doorpost. "My fur and my prints in my forest? Fancy that. I hope you're not implying what I think you're implying, darling, 'cause if you recall, I was with you all last night, which is when Tonio says this guy went missing."

  "You weren't with me this morning when I woke up."

  Clay sputtered, nearly dropping the spoon. "I was gone five minutes! Five minutes to track and kill a guy? I'm good, but I'm not that good."

  "I have no idea how long you were gone."

  "Yes, you do, because I'm telling you. Come on, you know I didn't do it. Use your head, Elena. If I lost control and killed this guy, I'd have told you about it. I'd have asked for your help getting rid of the body and deciding what to tell Jeremy. I wouldn't have been frolicking in the pond while some dead human is lying in our forest waiting for another group of hunters to trip over him."

  "You didn't expect an immediate search party, so you thought you had more time. You planned to hide the body later, after you got me out of the way."

  "That's bullshit and you know it. I don't hide things from you. I don't lie to you. I don't deceive you. Not ever."

  I stepped forward, lifting my face to his. "Oh, really? Somehow, I forget the discussion we had before you bit me, when you told me what you were planning to do. Convenient amnesia, I guess."

  "I did not plan that," Clay said, looming over me. The wooden spoon snapped in two as he clenched his fist. "We've been through this before. I panicked and--"

  "I don't want to hear your excuses."

  "You never do, do you? You'd rather talk about things I didn't do, then toss that in for good measure when the opportunity arises. Why do I bother defending myself? You've made up your mind about everything I do and don't do, and the reasons I do them. Nothing I can ever say will change that."

  He spun on his heel and stalked back to the kitchen. I turned the opposite way, strode into the study, and slammed the door.

  As I sat in the study, I realized with some surprise that I had no urge to bolt. My fight with Clay hadn't left me with the usual overwhelming impulse to get free of Stonehaven. Yes, last night had been a mistake, but an instructive one. I'd let down my guard, given in to my most subconscious desire to be with Clay again, and what had happened? Within hours he was lying to me. Even while we'd been together in the woods, while I'd been sleeping, he was off indulging the darkest side of his nature. He wouldn't change. I couldn't change him. He was violent, selfish, and completely untrustworthy. If it took one regrettable night to remind me of that, it'd been worth it.

  About twenty minutes later, the study door opened and Nick peeked around. I'd been curled up in Jeremy's armchair. When Nick opened the door, I unfolded myself and straightened up.

  "Can I come in?" he asked.

  "I smell food. If you can share, you're more than welcome."

  He slipped into the room and put a plate of pancakes and ham on the footstool. The pancakes were plain, finger food without butter and syrup. I picked up one and gulped it too fast to taste it, not wanting to remember who'd made them and why.

  "All done outside?" I asked.

  Nick lowered himself onto the sofa and stretched out. "Pretty much. A couple more cops showed up. Jeremy sent Peter and me in."

  Antonio walked through the door. "Are they investigating the scene?" he asked, pushing his son's legs off the sofa and sitting down.

  Nick shrugged. "I guess so. They brought cameras and a bag of stuff. Someone from the morgue is on the way to pick up the body."

  "Do you think they'll find anything?" Antonio asked me.

  "Hopefully nothing that doesn't link this killing to a wild dog," I said. "If it seems clear-cut, they should wrap up the investigation pretty fast and devote their efforts to finding the dogs. No sense wasting time gathering evidence when the presumed killers will never
see a courtroom."

  "Just the business end of a shotgun," Antonio said. "If they see so much as a flash of fur in the woods, they'll shoot. When we need to run, we're going to have to find someplace far from here and Bear Valley."

  "Damn," Nick said, shaking his head. "When we find out who's responsible, they're going to pay for this."

  "Oh, I have a good idea who's responsible," I said.

  I took the tuft of fur from my pocket and tossed it on the footrest. Nick stared at it a moment, confused. Then his eyes widened and he looked at me. I avoided his gaze, not wanting to see the disbelief I knew would be there. Antonio took one look at the fur, then sat back in his seat, and said nothing.

  An hour or so later, I was alone again in the study, the others having drifted off to find less sedentary pursuits or more amiable companionship. As I sat there, my gaze wandered to the desk across the room. The top was still scattered with the piles of papers and anthropology journals Clay hadn't got around to reading yet. They reminded me of how I'd met Clay, how I'd come to be in this mess in the first place. While I was a student at the University of Toronto, I'd had a peripheral interest in anthropology. In my sophomore year I'd done a term paper on anthropomorphic religions, which was Clay's specialty, and I'd referenced enough of his work to recognize his name when I saw a notice on his lecture series in the student paper. His public appearances were so rare that the lecture series had been full and I'd needed to sneak in. Biggest mistake of my life.

  I don't know what Clay saw in me to make him overlook his contempt for humans. He says it was a mirroring of something he recognized in himself. That's bullshit, of course. I was nothing like him or, if I was, I became that way after he bit me. Left on my own, I would have grown up, assimilated into the human world, and been a perfectly happy, well-adjusted person, leaving all my childhood baggage and anger behind. I'm sure of it.

  "Blood," Clay said, swinging open the study door so hard it smacked against the wall and added to a decade's accumulation of dents. "Where was the blood?"

  "What blood?"

  "If I killed that guy, I would have had blood on me."

  "You washed it off in the pond. That's why you made up the story about checking the water temperature, to explain why you were wet."

  "Made up? Why the--" He stopped, inhaled, and started again. "Okay, assuming I cleaned up in the pond and decided it would be easier to invent some excuse for being wet instead of just drying off, you still would have smelled blood on me. The scent wouldn't wash off that easily."

  "The smell would be weak. I'd have to be sniffing for it."

  "Well, then sniff for it now. Come on." He locked my gaze and held it. "I dare you."

  "You've had plenty of time to wash it off."

  "Then check my shower. See if it's wet. Check my towels. See if they're damp."

  "You'd have covered your tracks by now. You're not stupid."

  "No, just stupid enough to leave a body in the woods with my prints and fur scattered all around. Why do I bother? Nothing I can say will change your mind. Do you know why? Because you want to believe I did it. That way, you can hole up in here and dwell on how wrong you were to come to me last night, curse yourself for having given in to me again, for forgetting what a monster I am."

  "That's not what I'm--"

  "It's not?" He stepped forward. "Look me in the eye and tell me that's not what you've been doing for the last hour."

  I glared at him and said nothing. Clay stood there for at least a full minute, then threw up his hands and stormed out.

  A while later, Jeremy came in. Without saying anything, he walked to the footrest, picked up the tuft of Clay's hair and looked at it, then put it down and sat in his chair.

  "You don't think he did it, do you?" I said.

  "If I say no, you'll try to convince me otherwise. If I say yes, you'll use that as ammunition against him. It's not important what I think. What's important is what you think."

  "I once went to a therapist who talked like that. I canned him after two sessions."

  "I'm sure you did."

  I didn't know how to answer that, so I didn't. Instead, I feigned great interest in the patterns of the Turkish floor rug. Jeremy leaned back in his chair and watched me for a while before continuing.

  "Have you called him?"

  "Who?" I said, though I had a good idea who he meant.

  "The man in Toronto."

  "He has a name, though I'm sure you already know it."

  "Have you called him?"

  "I called the day before last. Yesterday was a bit hellish, if you recall, and I've been understandably preoccupied this morning."

  "You have to call him every day, Elena. Make sure he knows you're okay. Don't give him any excuse for calling here or showing up."

  "He only has my cell phone number."

  "I don't care. You can't take any chances. Clay knows he exists, though he's trying to forget. Don't give him any reason to be reminded of it. And don't start accusing me of protecting Clay's feelings. I'm protecting the Pack. We can't afford to have Clay distracted now. And we certainly can't afford to have this man show up on our doorstep. We've had quite enough visitors as it is."

  "I'll go call."

  "Not yet. I've sent Nick to round up the others for a meeting."

  "You can fill me in later."

  "A meeting implies a group meeting," Jeremy said. "A group meeting implies that all the members of the group are expected to be there."

  "What if I'm not a member of the group?"

  "You are as long as you're here."

  "I could remedy that."

  Jeremy lifted his feet onto the footstool and leaned his head back against the headrest. "Beautiful weather we're having, isn't it?"

  "Do you ever discuss anything you don't want to discuss?"

  "It's the privilege of age."

  I snorted. "It's the privilege of position."

  "That, too."

  Jeremy's lips curved in the barest of smiles and his black eyes flashed. I recognized the look, but it took me a few minutes to place it. Challenge. He was waiting for me to reengage in a debate we'd been grappling with since I first came to the Pack. As someone who'd once been a human in a democratic society, the idea of an all-powerful, unquestionable leader rankled. How many nights had Jeremy and I spent debating it, here in this room, drinking brandy until I was too tired and drunk to walk up to my room and fell asleep here, only to awaken later in my bed?

  I'd missed him. Even now, living in the same house with him for almost five days, I missed him. Everyone else in the Pack had welcomed me back, no questions asked, no grudges held. Not Jeremy. He hadn't been unfriendly or even distant, but he hadn't been himself. He was keeping me at a distance, as if unwilling to recommit himself until he was certain I wasn't going to bolt again. The problem was that I wasn't all that certain of it myself.

  I tried to think of a comeback, my brain rusty to the old argument, struggling to remember how it went. As I thought, Jeremy's eyes shuttered and his smile faded. I saw my opportunity skittering past and dove to catch it. As I opened my mouth, ready to say the next thing that came to mind, the door opened. The others came in and my moment alone with Jeremy evaporated.

  The first issue of business at the meeting was that Jeremy forbade us to run on the property until this mess with the police had been settled. When the time came for a run we'd all go on a field trip to the northern forests. Now, I have nothing against group runs and, under normal circumstances, I love running as a Pack, but there's something about turning a Pack run into an organized and scheduled event that sucked the pleasure out of it. Next thing you know, we'd be renting a bus, taking bagged lunches, and singing "On Top of Old Smokey" on the way.

  Issue two involved Jeremy's next plan of action. Once again, it didn't go over well with Clay. It didn't sit too nicely with me either, but I wasn't the one jumping to my feet and flipping out before Jeremy even finished.

  "You can't leave me here," Clay shou
ted.

  Jeremy's eyebrows went up the barest fraction. "I can't?"

  "You shouldn't. It's stup-- It doesn't make sense."

  "It makes perfect sense. And you're not the only one being left behind."

  I grumbled, but calmly and quietly and to myself, although Jeremy's eyes did flicker my way as I did it.

  Jeremy continued, "I won't have you and Elena coming along when you're at each other like this."

  "But I didn't do anything!" Clay said. "You haven't even accused me of killing that guy. You know I didn't do it. So why should I be punished--"

  "It's not a punishment. Whether you did it or not doesn't matter. So long as you two are fighting, I want you here, where the only damage you can cause is to each other ... and assorted pieces of furniture."

  "Why leave us both?" I asked.

  "Because I don't need either of you. I'm not intending to track or fight anyone. It's simple information gathering. Even if you two weren't arguing, I wouldn't take you. It's an unnecessary risk. I want to learn more about these mutts. I don't want to rely on secondhand information, so I'm going myself and I'm taking Tonio and Peter as backup. Nick isn't coming either and I don't hear him complaining."

  "It doesn't sound like much fun," Nick said.

  Jeremy smiled. "Exactly."

  "But--" I said.

  "It's past lunchtime," Jeremy said, getting to his feet. "We should eat before we leave."

  He left before we could argue, which was probably the point. When he was gone, I got to my feet.

  "I guess I'll make myself useful and fix something for lunch."

  Nick offered to help. For once, Clay didn't. He didn't even follow us into the kitchen to supervise.

  After lunch Jeremy, Antonio, and Peter left for reconnaissance duty. This was Jeremy's way of handling the curveball the mutts had thrown. The Pack was accustomed to dealing with only one mutt at a time. As I've said, mutts didn't team up. Not ever. This meant the Pack was ill-equipped to deal with the threat. Since Jeremy didn't have any experience handling a multiple-mutt onslaught, he was taking his time, gathering information before plotting a course of action. Logically, this made sense. Emotionally, it was infuriating. If I were in charge, I'd have been planning direct and immediate action against the mutts, risks be damned. That was why Jeremy was the Alpha and I was the lowly foot soldier.