“Jeremiah Chopin wasn’t a werewolf,” I said.
“No, but the packs drank with him, visited his big house, and when they demanded the city be rid of us, Chopin would have been dead himself had he not listened.”
“Go on,” I said, thinking of the screams that must have echoed off Cedar Hill as the Wendigo village burned in a tinder-dry night.
“After the survivors were rounded up, we were given a choice . . . leave the city limits and never return, or every last man would be slaughtered and every last woman bitten and mated with a wolf man so our clan line would never be passed on.”
“And they left you?” I whispered.
“I was no friend to any other Wendigo. I voted that we stand against Chopin instead of running into the night like whipped animals. They left me to be killed by the weres, and when I slipped the wolves I thought it best that I go underground.”
“So why did you help Laurel Hicks?” I said. “She was sleeping with a were, and she hated your kind after they killed him.”
“Because I’ve been alive a long time,” said the Wendigo. “And I’m not the young buck I once was. Your shaman is dealing with forces that no one alive today understands, and primal creatures don’t care what they hunt.”
“Can Wiskachee be sent back like a daemon?” I said. If only it were that simple—daemons were downright familiar compared with this blood-soaked new world.
The Wendigo laughed, short and ending in another series of phlegmy hacks. “He’s no daemon, Insoli. Wiskachee comes to the Wendigo when they offer him their own blood as payment, and he consumes whatever is in his path. You see Wiskachee coming, you go the other way, fast as you can. He’s a storm, and he will rip the ground open and surge into the world, and everything in his path goes to ashes and dust. If you wanna get poetic about it, that is.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks a lot. That was absolutely no help, in any practical sense of the word.”
”Luna . . . ,” Sunny rebuked, but I spun and stormed away. No closer to finding the shaman. No closer to discerning a motive.
Nothing I did would close this damn case.
So involved in my snit was I that I smacked into somebody, somebody who grunted. Somebody who smelled very, very familiar.
“You’re a long way from home, Luna,” said Lucas. I stared at him for a full five seconds in flap-jawed shock.
“Why are you down here?”
Lucas lifted one shoulder—healed from the bullet wound, I saw. He still stank of iron. “I followed you.”
“Okay, look,” I said. “I appreciate that you’re taken with me, but it’s never gonna work out. You’re a Wendigo, I’m a were, you’re family-oriented, I’m a workaholic . . .”
“I wanted to apologize,” said Lucas shortly. Like most men, he seemed to have trouble with the phrase.
“Oh,” I said, flushing. At the corner, I smelled and heard Sunny come to a stop. She wasn’t stupid, my cousin, but if I could sense her then Lucas could, too. “Look,” I said. “I know you’re under a lot of stress . . .”
“No,” he said, meeting my eyes. His were silver.
“Not for that.”
My hand dropped to my gun. “Then for what?”
Lucas flowed forward, and I felt a cold, deadened feeling in my side, just below my last rib. I looked down and saw his bone-handled knife sticking out of my skin, just the hilt.
“For that,” Lucas said.
“You son of a . . . ,” I started as my legs went out and I dropped to my knees.
“If you don’t want your tasty little cousin to die,” he hissed. “Then don’t scream.”
I looked back at Sunny’s shadow at the mouth of the alley. “I swear if you hurt her . . .”
“Shh,” Lucas said, stroking my neck. “You were very good to me.” He changed his hand and gripped my neck so tightly involuntary tears sprang to my eyes. “I mean that. As a surgeon, you weren’t half bad. I healed fast. As a kisser, you could do with some practice.”
My wound went ice cold, and I felt my heart flutter. The bullet-wound scar on my arm responded, flaring with chill fire. Shit.
“Silver blade,” said Lucas. “Just to be on the safe side. You’re pretty tough for a mutt.”
The pain wasn’t as bad as the phase, but it was close, and I groaned limply, trying to swat Lucas away from me. “Kill . . . you . . .”
“Those things you said. So impolite. My half-wit brother would never have the brains to plan four murders.”
Mind screaming, the were chewing at my human thoughts, I tried to gather myself. The silver was poisoning me every second it stayed in my gut, and soon I’d pass out and go into cardiac arrest.
“But you seem to be the only one who knows, in that grand solitary werewolf tradition,” Lucas said. “So unless your cousin gets curious, you’re the only person I have to kill today. Thank you, Luna.”
“Fuck you,” I responded, and slammed my forehead into Lucas’s nose. He hissed and loosened his grip on me enough to enable me to flop oh-so-gracefully onto the dock. I imitated a beached flounder for a few seconds more before I pulled the knife free. The pain got worse, but I could breathe again.
I rolled away as Lucas grabbed up the blade and drove the knife down again, spraying wood chips from where my heart had been.
“Oh, Luna,” he muttered, cracking his nose back into place. My vision was going hazy, like I was on the bottom of a swimming pool staring up through clear blue water. “You are so lucky that I’m tired and low on blood.”
I tried to scramble up and get to the mouth of the alley, the car, Sunny, but Lucas wrenched me backward by the shoulder and sent me flying into a wall.
Wood and glass and plaster crashed around me as I bounced off the surface and landed on the dock in a heap, my wound sending a hot jet of blood over my hip and thigh. I pointed a shaking finger at Lucas. “Stay away from me,” I rasped.
He sighed. “Now, Luna. Nobody is going to be unduly shocked when you turn up dead, I think. Involved in an investigation that you were told to stay out of, hanging around with all kinds of scary critters . . .” He smiled, revealing a silver crop of fangs. “Couldn’t have asked for a better cover. But you’re not a bad person—in fact, I think you try a little too hard for sainthood. If things had worked out differently, I’d tell you to lighten up. My point is, it’ll be quick and I will honor you, after death. I think you’ll taste divine.”
Lucas turned the knife in his hands and started toward me, reaching for my hair to expose my throat.
“Not again . . . ,” I muttered, my thoughts slow and dull as fat rain droplets in a muddy pool.
“I promise you won’t even feel it,” Lucas whispered. “I’m a good hunter. I know how to finish and dress a kill. Your Sunny will get a shock, though. Might need therapy.” And he laughed. It was a small laugh, and if Lucas were less intimidating I’d almost call it a giggle, but it flicked a spark of anger in me.
The son of a bitch was enjoying this.
I scrabbled down by my useless, blood-soaked legs and found a piece of glass from the broken window on the wall Lucas had thrown me into. I waited until he was close enough, spinning his knife between his palm and the tip of his opposite index finger. Before he could put it to work on me, I lunged, jamming the glass into the center of his stomach and making a mirror of my own wound.
Lucas screeched, that sound halfway between human and Other that the Wendigo made, and stumbled backward from me. He clapped his free hand down over the chip of glass in his gut as deep red-black blood dribbled down to pool in his belly button and the hollows of his slim hips. “Unbelievable! Don’t you goddamn dogs know when to give up?”
“Not this one,” I snarled. Blearily, some still-rational corner of my mind let me know that the panicky euphoria coursing through me was my body tipping over into shock, but I rode it and let it keep my eyelids peeled back and what was left of my wits about me.
“I take back what I said,” Lucas snapped, coming at me wi
th the knife again. “You’re not worthy of being eaten.”
“Color me disappointed,” I snarled, then something slammed into the back of Lucas’s head. There was a distinct crunch, and he actually staggered, the first light of the change rippling over his features.
“Get off her, you misty freak!” Sunny yelled.
Lucas turned, tossing his knife from hand to hand. “Mmm. Human. Magick. You’re tempting me, witch.”
Sunny brandished the tire iron from her car. “Stay back!”
“You hurt her,” I told Lucas, scrabbling at the wall with my fingernails to pull myself upright, “and there won’t be a place in this world that you can hide from me, you slimy, hairless piece of crap.”
“Luna, you’re not strong enough to brush a trail of ants off you,” he told me, pointing with the knife. “Stay put.” His nostrils flared as Sunny crossed swiped at him with the tire iron. “She’s not worth dying over, Sunshine.”
“It’s Sunflower,” she gritted. “And I won’t be dying anytime soon, you . . . toadstool.”
When he turned away from me, I saw a gaping black hole in his skull where Sunny had hit him. I pulled out my gun and drew down on the spot. “I know these hurt when you’re human. You wanna test my aim again, you murderous little shit?”
He slipped the knife back into its holster at his waist and winked at me. “Always with the gun. That theme is tired.” He flowed past Sunny, knocking her down, and re-formed at the entrance to the alley. “Be seeing you real soon, Luna. It’s been fun.”
Lucas vanished with slipstream speed. Sunny got up, brushing herself off.
“Took you goddamn long enough!” I said when she pressed her jacket over my stab wound.
“Oh, be quiet. I had to run all the way back to the car and then sneak up on that crazy while he was distracted.”
I looked at the spot where Lucas had vanished. A small stain of blood was all that remained. “I don’t think he’s crazy,” I said. The bums, including the old Wendigo man, had started to come out of hiding.
“No?” Sunny said skeptically. “Look, you’re going to need stitches. There’s no help for this.”
“No,” I whispered, still looking at the blood. “I think he’s posse
ssed.”
CHAPTER 19
After I talked Sunny out of taking me to the hospital, I got her to help me hobble into the apothecary’s and get a clean dishtowel from the owner to press over the wound in my side.
“Trouble,” she murmured when she left Sunny and I alone in her tiny kitchen.
“I can’t believe this . . . ,” Sunny said tearfully.
“Why does this always happen to us?”
“Us?” I said, chomping on my lip to keep from yelling as I applied pressure. “Fate isn’t being cruel, Sunny. I walked right into this one.” The wound Lucas had given me wasn’t deep enough to be fatal, unless I stood up and started disco dancing, but it was deep enough and it bled steadily and constantly, sending feathers of pain through me every few seconds. The silver had turned the skin around the cut black.
“You’d better tell me everything,” Sunny warned, pulling up a chair across from me.
I looked around and found a sewing kit inside a sawed-off coffee canister. “Sterilize this needle on a flame,” I told Sunny. “Then we’ll talk.”
“What for?” She sniffed. I got out strong cotton thread and a pair of scissors.
“What do you think?”
“Oh, gods,” she murmured, taking the needle and passing it through the bright propane flame.
“On the subject of Lucas . . . I was stupid. I should have seen it.” I leaned my head back, allowing my sandy eyes to drift close. Blood loss made all the corners of the world fuzzy. “The Wendigo back there said that Wiskachee rides on the backs of the unwary—nonbelievers. Like Lucas. And like me.”
“He’d have to touch the fetish,” said Sunny. “For the spirit to jump into his body.”
“He did,” I said. “When he tossed Jason’s apartment. He had at least twelve hours from the time I left to the time Bryson and I got over there.” The towel was soaked and I lobbed it at the sink, missing. It landed on the floor with a splat and a spray of red drops. Sunny whimpered.
“It almost got me,” I continued. “I felt it, trying to get into my mind. Cold. Cold and passionless and hungry. Fortunately that idiot Bryson was there.” I pulled up my shirt and dabbed at the wound with a fresh towel. “See if she has anything to sterilize this with.” Both of my palms and most of my exposed stomach were crimson, blood filling the kitchen with a pungent copper scent that made it hard to breathe.
“Jason must have been a carrier, too,” I said. “And he realized it, and he got rid of Wiskachee the only way he knew how. Maybe the only way at all.”
“I’d believe Stabby Boy is possessed,” said Sunny. “In a heartbeat. But who would summon this thing? What purpose?”
We were back to that again. “I don’t know for sure,” I said. “But it has something to do with the treaty, the were packs who signed it, and fucking them up, I’m thinking. What better revenge than summoning Ye Olde Hunger God to feast on your enemies?”
“A working like that would take months, if not years,” said Sunny. “Why not just get the weres in human form and shoot them with silver bullets?”
“I don’t know,” I murmured. “I don’t understand the Wendigo well enough.” I had a beast in me, but not a monster. I didn’t know what it was to have their ceaseless hunger and their disregard for anything else.
Sunny ran the needle through the gas flame until it was red hot, and threaded the needle for me with a fine, tight knot. I took it from her but every time I moved to make the first stitch, the sides of my wound pulled apart and fresh blood flowed.
I slumped in the ladderback chair, gasping. “You’re gonna have to do it.”
All of the color drained from Sunny’s face, like she was an old cartoon. “No. No. I’ll get arrested for you, I’ll drive you into bad neighborhoods, I’ll put up with as many bitchy comments as you can throw, but I will not stick a needle into your living skin.”
“Sunny . . .”
“Luna,” she said crisply, making a slashing motion with her hand. “I’ll faint.”
“If you faint, I’ll die,” I countered. Her eyes gleamed, but she picked up the needle with shaking hands. I wouldn’t die for a good two or three hours, but I was past the point where I felt bad for stretching the truth.
“What do I do?” Sunny asked in a small voice.
“Pull the skin around the wound together, put the needle and thread through the seam, and yeowch!”
Sunny jumped. “Did I do it wrong?”
“No . . . ,” I squeaked. “No, that was good. Just try not to surprise me next time, ’kay?”
Sunny worked for a few minutes in silence, face set and body stiff as the ones on slabs in the morgue downtown.
“At least he didn’t stick around,” she said at last. “Maybe I scared him a little.”
“Lucas?” I said. “Maybe. Although in the cottage—probably when he was going to try and kill me the first time, before the spirit made him try to eat my head—he was pretty smooth. Asking questions, seeming interested . . . he asked me about the Serpent Eye girl, Carla, and I told him about Bryson . . .”
I shot up in my seat, making Sunny shriek and drop her needle. “Hex me,” I moaned. “Bryson.” I dug Donal’s cell phone out of my pocket and stabbed at the keypad.
“Huhello?” Bryson grumbled, sounding like he was talking from the wrong end of a megaphone.
“David!” I shouted. “Are you with Carla right now?”
“No,” he said pointedly. “It’s the middle of the night, Wilder.”
“She has a protective detail?” I said, feeling my gut twist.
“I ain’t stupid,” said Bryson. “Of course she does. What is it, Luna?”
“Get to her,” I said. “Don’t let her out of your sight until I call you.”
&
nbsp; Bryson grunted and I heard shuffling on the other end of the line. When he spoke he sounded ten degrees more alert. “You pick up the trail?”
“It picked me,” I said. “Picked me up, stabbed me, and ran off to finish its murder spree.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind, David. Just call the detail, have them move Carla and get to her. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
“Hey, hey,” said Bryson. “Am I in some sort of personal jeopardy here?”
“Yes,” I said. “Ow!” Sunny spread her hands and mouthed Sorry. I snapped “Be careful!” back before I spoke to Bryson.
“I didn’t sign on for any of this . . . ,” he was muttering.
“David, believe me, you do not want to explain to Morgan how you let a material witness get all her blood sucked out,” I said. “She’s touchy about stuff like that.”
“Wilder . . . ,” Bryson started, but I hung up.
“I can’t believe this,” I muttered. “How could I be so dumb?”
“Don’t berate yourself,” said Sunny. “It looks like if he wanted the information from you, he was going to get it. With or without the making out.”
“Could we not go there right now?” I said, feeling my face turn hot. Lucas’s mouth had been so cool, without all the implied dominance Dmitri brought to our kisses, our everything. How could you be so stupid, Wilder?
Come on, I said, mentally throwing up my hands, did you see Lucas?
“He was . . . very nice,” I elaborated. “And . . . just nice.”
“Yes, and so was Ted Bundy,” Sunny said, tying off the thread and biting it. “Done. Thank the gods.”
I examined my side. The wound was closed, the bleeding slowed to an ooze of dark red between Sunny’s neat, tight stitches. “Good work.”
She managed a small smile. “As if I’d give you anything but.”
I wasn’t on the verge of passing out, and now the facts started to line up again, unpleasant and glaring as key marks on the side of a fresh paint job. I had to get to Lucas before he killed Carla. It was my only chance to find the wild Wendigo who’d started all this.
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