Second Skin

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “You ready to go make your statement?” he asked, following me out the door. I stood and breathed the outside air for a few minutes to calm myself down, and dispel the stink of Joshua Mackelroy, my progenitor and would-be rapist, from my memory.

  He’d made me a were, but he didn’t own me, not then and not ever.

  “Yeah,” I said to Bryson finally. “I’m ready.”

  Nobody at the Twenty-fourth looked at me when Bryson led me through the back entrance. Detectives and uniforms studiously averted their eyes as we walked through the squad room to the interview closet. It really had been a closet, and now it was a slightly more friendly version of the interrogation rooms.

  Matilda Morgan, the Twenty-fourth’s captain, came out of her office as we passed and stopped me. “Officer Wilder. I was so sorry to hear about your attack.”

  Morgan and I had a rocky relationship when I worked under her, and I wasn’t exactly sure that we’d parted on good terms. She’d signed my transfer without so much as a flicker of emotion in her icy eyes or a hint of disapproval around her prim mouth. “Thanks, Captain,” I said. I was too tired to even attempt to spar.

  “Lieutenant McAllister is waiting for you in the interview room. He was quite perturbed as well,” she said. She patted me awkwardly on the shoulder, reaching up from her short, round height to do it. I hissed as she hit one of the spots that I’d pulled running and phasing, and she whipped her hand back to her side. “Detective Bryson, please see me after your interview is over.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said meekly. I couldn’t resist a half smile after Morgan walked away.

  “She trained you good, David,” I said.

  “If you weren’t an invalid right now I’d smack you,” he muttered.

  “Kinky,” I commented. Troy McAllister leapt to his feet as soon as we opened the door to the interview closet, long limbs going everywhere.

  “Luna!” He offered me a chair and whispered, “What the Hex happened to you?”

  “I wish I knew, Mac,” I said. Unlike Morgan, I had regretted leaving Mac behind. He was a good cop, a good friend, and a genuinely decent guy who had accepted me being were without so much as a raised eyebrow above his slate-blue, unflappable gaze. If it didn’t impact my case work, it didn’t bother Mac. If I was into that touchy-feely crap, I’d say he was almost brotherly.

  Bryson turned on his digital recorder and said, “You wanna stay and observe, LT?”

  “If it’s all right with you,” said Mac. “Get going, David. Let’s not keep Luna here any longer than she has to be.”

  “Thanks, Mac,” I murmured. Honestly, I didn’t mind being at the Twenty-fourth nearly as much after what had happened. It was familiar and secure, and even if Bryson’s cologne was stinking up the tiny room, it was seven long hells better than being stranded in the wilderness.

  “Okay,” said Bryson. “This is Detective David Bryson interviewing Luna Wilder in connection with her kidnapping and also a series of four homicides, case numbers 33457, 33420, 33458, and 33409. Luna, can you state your full name for the record?”

  I swallowed, my throat feeling very dry and closed. “Luna Joanne Wilder.”

  “And what is your occupation?” Bryson used a clipped tone that was almost professional, and totally foreign to me. I looked into his pinched face and saw that he was as uncomfortable as I was.

  “I’m a SWAT officer with the Nocturne City Police Department.”

  “Uh-huh, and can you describe what happened in the course of your kidnapping?”

  “I was paged to a scene with Tac-3,” I said. “I arrived at the Justice Plaza and was accosted by three men who were apparently drunk . . .”

  Thinking about how fast they’d come up on me, how easily I’d been subdued, made me squirm. I was supposed to be better, stronger than that.

  “And?” said Bryson. McAllister glared at him.

  “They distracted me, and two more men got out of a van from the cleaning service the city uses. They subdued me and gave me an injection of something and then drove me out of the city.” I licked my lips. “After that the next thing I remember is waking up in the woods.”

  “Can you describe the men?” said Bryson.

  “Darker skin. Black hair. One of them had a ponytail and silver buttons on his shirt.”

  “Anything distinctive you got a look at?” said Bryson.

  “No,” I said. The interview closet was starting to get very warm, or that may have been my abject humiliation.

  “Did you get a license number off the van?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see anything that could be useful in getting these guys?” Bryson demanded.

  “I was drugged, David,” I snarled at him. “You try playing Sherlock Holmes when you’re stoned out of your gourd.”

  “Sherlock Holmes was stoned out of his—” he started.

  “Ease up, Bryson,” said McAllister shortly. “Move on.”

  I gave him a grateful half smile, but I was doubly sorry he had to be around to hear about how badly I’d let things go FUBAR this time.

  “Fine, fine,” Bryson muttered. “After you woke up in the woods, what then?”

  “Then,” I said, “then, it was a really long fucking night and I finally managed to find the highway and get back to the city.”

  “C’mon, Wilder,” said Bryson. “I’m not stupid. What else?”

  “That’s debatable,” I muttered. It seemed like the thing behind me, the noises, the certainty that if I didn’t run I would die were years ago, not last night.

  “Luna, help him out,” said Mac. “Gods know he needs it.”

  “There was . . . something, in those woods,” I said. “I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t a human or a were. I’m sure I got left there for it to hunt. Those people didn’t expect me to get away.”

  “How did you?” Bryson asked. I looked him straight in the eye.

  “I ran like hell, David.”

  “Okay.” He reached over and flicked off the recorder.

  “Off the record. You got any enemies, besides the ones I know about? You been poking people that don’t want to be poked? I know you, Luna. You could piss off a nun.”

  “Considering that the O’Halloran case tanked my career and I have no personal life, David, no.” I crossed my arms and dared him to pry harder. I’d already gone over a list of anyone who could want me dead. Mostly, they were dead themselves. I didn’t plan it that way, but it was fact. I had no idea why I’d been chosen.

  It infuriated me.

  Mac cleared his throat at Bryson after he stared at me with the fish-eyed expression for a few seconds too long. Bryson smoothed his tie and recovered. “All right. Thanks, Luna. You want me to take you home? We’ve already got uniforms on the place in case they try again.”

  “No,” I said. “I want to stay and go over case files. The guy who snatched me might be in there.”

  Mac and Bryson exchanged a look. “What?” I demanded.

  “Luna,” said Mac, “you’re part of this case now. I couldn’t let you assist Bryson any longer even if I wanted to.”

  “So I’m supposed to just go home?” I hissed. “They tried to kill me! I can’t just sit on my ass and do nothing about that, and you shouldn’t ask me to!”

  “It’s what I’d ask of any victim,” said Mac. “Not just you. Go home, Luna. Sit tight, let Dmitri pamper you, and we’ll call as soon as we have any news.”

  “Yeah, there’s a huge Hexed chance of that,” I snapped, then got up and stomped out of the interview room, slamming the door hard enough to rip the handle out of the frame.

  Sunny picked me up without asking any questions. She was quiet most of the way to the cottage except to make sure I wasn’t grievously injured and left me off in the driveway. I knew she was working herself into a royal snit about me getting myself hurt—again—so I didn’t push for conversation.

  “Wait,” I said when she put the car in gear to drive away. “Can you . . . come i
n?”

  Sunny’s eyebrows crinkled. “Everything okay between you and Dmitri?”

  “Have things ever been ‘okay’ between me and Dmitri?”

  She shut off the ignition and walked with me to the cottage, where Dmitri jerked the door open with a wild, black-eyed expression on his face.

  “Where the Hex have you been?”

  “The police station,” I said wearily. “Giving a statement.”

  I expected more yelling, but I didn’t expect Dmitri to grab me and crush me to him, kissing my forehead and my eyelids and finally my lips, long and slow enough that my wire-strung body finally relaxed a bit.

  “I came back and you weren’t here,” he murmured against my lips. “I thought you . . . well . . . I don’t know what I thought. Luna, I can’t lose you.”

  “I’ll just go make some chocolate milk for Luna,” said Sunny, slipping past us. “She used to like that after a hard day . . .”

  “Sweetheart, I’m okay,” I whispered into Dmitri’s neck. “I’m here.”

  “Come on,” he said, wrapping his arm around my shoulder. “Let’s get you upstairs.”

  I let myself lean on Dmitri as he guided me to lie back on the bed and got me clean pajamas and a wash-cloth. He dabbed the dirt off my face, his breathing next to my ear going rough and hot.

  “Something the matter?” I asked.

  He stopped washing my face, and looked up at me, and then crushed one of my hands in his. “Luna, I’m sorry.”

  I blinked. “Sorry for what?”

  “This . . . what happened . . . this is all my fault.”

  “Oh, Dmitri.” I squeezed his hand. “Don’t be silly. None of this was anyone’s fault, except maybe the bastards who kidnapped me.”

  “No!” he growled, hitting the headboard. “If I had been there, I could have protected you! If I had just made you listen . . .”

  I removed my hand from his grasp. “Hey.”

  He stopped mid-tirade. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Do you need your pain medication?”

  “Do I look like I need my damn pain medication?” I put my hands over my face and pushed the tangled black mass that on good days was my hair away from it. “Dmitri, the only thing that would have happened if you’d been there is that you’d be as banged up as I am, or worse. These people knew what they were doing. Nothing you or I could have done differently would change what happened.”

  Before my internal censor could suggest that the next words were maybe not the best idea, they were out. “Believe it or not, Sandovsky, not everything that happens around you is about you. If you were really concerned, you’d be asking what you could do to find the sons of bitches that did this.”

  “Oh, they’re dead,” said Dmitri. “That’s a given. Luna, I understand that you’re upset . . .”

  “No,” I said softly. “You don’t. I want someone to stand next to me, not in front of me. I’m going to deal with the people who did this to me in my own way. What I’d really like is to know that you’ll help me, not chastise me.”

  He paced away to all the corners of our bedroom, the cords in his arms standing out as he looked for something to hurt . . .

  “When you went missing,” he said finally, looking out the window at the gentle whitecaps rolling under the afternoon sun outside, “my first thought wasn’t that you were cheating, or stolen. I thought Well, man, that’s it. She finally got sick of your ass and she left. I promised that if you came back I’d try to do better. But you make it so goddamn hard, Luna.”

  “You don’t make it easy, either,” I told him.

  “I’ll back off this thing,” said Dmitri, and his jaw twitched even speaking the promise. I knew it went against every instinct he had as a pack were. Pack weres avenged wrongs done to their mates. They protected them. But I didn’t want that, and I knew it wounded him.

  “Thank you,” I said. I stood up, even though it hurt, and went to him, leaning my cheek against his back. I slid my arms around his waist and swayed as he swayed, listening to his heartbeat echo itself. “I love you, Dmitri,” I murmured. “I like it when things are like this. Let’s try it more often.”

  He purred as my fingers stroked over his stomach and then sighed. “Luna,” he said. “I’ll back off here, but you have to promise me something.”

  I went stiff before I could stop myself. “What?”

  “If I leave you to dispense justice on this, you let me make you a Redback. Once and for all, you and me. Together.”

  I jerked away from him and crossed my arms, breath coming in furious little pants. “Not this. Not again.”

  Dmitri threw up his hands. “What? What’s so un-fucking-reasonable about wanting my mate to be committed?”

  “You don’t get to attach some kind of gods-damn conditions to any of this!” I shouted. “This happened to me and I am gonna be the one to see it through. I want your help, Dmitri, but I don’t want this!”

  “Well, tough shit, princess, because this is what you signed on for!” He jabbed his finger over the place where his heart beat. “I look after my women, and I don’t let them run off and get hurt!”

  “I’m not your property,” I shrieked, “and maybe if you’d done a little bit better job of looking after your women, Lilia would still be alive and I wouldn’t feel second-class whenever you bring up your fucking pack!”

  Dmitri stopped, just froze in mid-shout like I’d zapped him with a stun gun. “Shit,” I said, the words slipping out and tumbling over one another like water as I tried to make right what I had just done. “Dmitri, I’m sorry. That was so uncalled-for. Lilia and you is none of my business.”

  “It’s like that?” he asked me, and I could tell that he was close to losing control, that the daemon was cleaving his conscious mind with a desire for my blood.

  Lilia was Dmitri’s former mate, before he and I even met. She died at the hand of a serial killer, and Dmitri still moaned her name in the night, when he tossed and sweated in his sleep.

  “No,” I said. “No, it’s not like that. I love you, Dmitri. I’m just not sure how to make this work. You don’t want me Insoli, I don’t want to be . . . committed. I just haven’t figured it out yet, but I will. I will.” I was begging and I pressed my fingers over my gritty eyes, disgusted with the whole situation.

  “I’m leaving before I do and say something I regret,” Dmitri almost whispered.

  “I’m sorry . . . ,” I started again.

  “You should be,” he snarled. That got my hackles up again.

  “Fine, if you’re gonna be a child, then Hex you!” I yelled.

  Dmitri spun to leave and almost walked into Sunny, who entered the room carefully balancing three mugs on a tray. She looked at me, at Dmitri’s rage-clouded face, and gave a game smile.

  “Who’s for chocolate milk?”

  CHAPTER 9

  “He’s not coming back,” I said after Sunny had gone to the window for the fiftieth time. It was dark, but not much cooler. “Hex him. I’m so sick of his Join me or die bullshit.”

  “You might try being a little more understanding,” Sunny said severely. “To him, it looks like you don’t care enough to even consider it.”

  I held up my hand. “I do not need to be getting this in stereo. I’m me. I’m not a Redback. Why does he have to change me? I’m not a DVD player he can take back to the store and trade up. I’m not here to be a silent partner for his rage issues.”

  “Tell him that,” said Sunny, and I heard the rumble of the bike. I groaned and put my hands over my eyes.

  “You want my advice?” Sunny said as the bike’s headlamp swept the living room.

  “No.”

  “You accuse Dmitri of being selfish, but you’re being self-righteous. Every time he brings up the pack thing, it’s an excuse to fight. You like fighting. Stop it. Say no and let that be the end.”

  And of course, being Sunny, she made perfect sense. I growled. “Maybe if I hadn’t been chased through the woods by a hellbeast made of fo
g and teeth, I’d be more inclined to listen, Dr. Phil.”

  “Hellbeast?” said Dmitri from the doorway.

  Sunny spread her hands. “News to me. What happened, Luna?”

  I told them about the thing. Thinking about how it had moved, how rocks passed through it, how it moved so inhumanly fast . . .

  “I probably just hallucinated it,” I said. “I mean, it sounds like Dracula, and vampires are firmly in the Don’t Exist column.”

  “Yes . . . ,” Sunny replied slowly. “But there are things that drink blood. Or were . . . they’re extinct now.”

  “Tell that to the thing in the woods,” I muttered. I tried to stand, and my foot spasmed. Dmitri caught me.

  “Easy.”

  “There are texts that I studied when I was training with our grandmother that mentioned shapeshifters other than weres,” Sunny said. “Skinwalkers, kitsune, Wendigo. But they’ve all died out in territorial wars, hundreds or thousands of years ago.”

  “Wendigo,” I said, seizing on the only name that sounded familiar. “What are they?”

  “Fucking savages,” Dmitri rumbled from where he held me, one arm lightly around my waist.

  I twisted to look at him in surprise. “You know about this?”

  He set his jaw and didn’t meet my eyes. “All pack weres around here do.”

  I pushed away and faced him. “And you were just going to keep that to yourself, then?”

  Dmitri sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Luna, the Wendigo are nothing you want to get involved with. Trust me on this.”

  “You say that about a lot of things, Dmitri, and in case you haven’t noticed that hasn’t stopped me yet,” I snapped. “Spill it.”

  “Yes, do,” said Sunny, coming to my shoulder. I felt the uncomfortable prickle of her power on the back of my neck. Sunny might not show it nearly as often, but she got angry as easily as me.

  Dmitri looked between us, nostrils flaring. “I hate it when you two gang up on me. You know that.”

  “Tell me,” I growled.

  “Fine!” Dmitri said. “Wendigo are barbarians, monsters who have no decency and no humanity. It’s no wonder that one attacked you. They hate weres. They hate humans. All they know how to do is consume.”