The Howling

by Kimberly Zant

  Her heart leapt into her throat.

  She must have made some sound, for Blackhawk's head whipped in that direction. His body followed his head. One second he was lying breathlessly beside her, the next he was on his feet. By the time Diana had managed to snatch her blouse over her head and yanked her sweatpants back up, Blackhawk had vanished.

  Hopping on first one foot and then the other as she shoved her jogging shoes onto her feet, Diana reflected irritably over the fact that Blackhawk had had nothing to do but to snatch his jeans up and fasten them while she had been the next thing to naked. Cursing under her breath, she took up the rear, plunging into the woods where she'd last seen the man.

  Who ever it was had about a three minute lead on Blackhawk, and probably a good ten on her ... which would have made it a useless exercise except for the fact that she was pretty certain she had youth and stamina on her side. As brief as the glance was that she'd gotten, she was certain he was old, very old. She'd been crashing through briars and brambles for about fifteen minutes when she came upon Blackhawk. He was sitting on a ledge, staring out at the view.

  Diana stopped abruptly. “What happened?"

  "Lost ‘im."

  Diana looked around, fighting for breath. She hadn't counted on what the higher altitude would do to her when she'd given chase. Blackhawk, she saw, was barely winded. She sat abruptly, beside him. “Some Indian,” she said dryly.

  He threw her a quick glance and smiled wryly. “Me Indian, not bird,” he said in broken English.

  Diana lifted her brows at him questioningly. He shrugged. “You wouldn't believe me if I told you. To be honest with you, I'm not sure I believe it myself."

  "Try me."

  "The old man ... he moved through the woods like ... the wind. I was leaping bushes, crashing through, but he moved like nothing was there. And just as I reached the edge of the woods over there, he vanished."

  Diana frowned, looked around the area and looked back at him, then looked down. The ground dropped away rapidly, but it wasn't a sheer drop off. If the old man had gone over, he might have tripped and rolled down ... in which case she should be able to see a crumpled heap somewhere along the hillside ... it was certainly too steep to run, or walk down unless one were very careful. “Disappeared where?"

  He shook his head. “All I saw when I emerged was a hawk. It looked back at me for a full two minutes and then flew off."

  "So ... you're saying?"

  He frowned. “I'm not saying anything. I don't believe in it."

  "Why don't you tell me what you don't believe then?"

  He turned to stare at her a long moment, then smiled faintly and reached for her. Dragging her across his lap, he kissed her in a leisurely way. When he released her and pulled away, he was smiling faintly. “That was a hell of an abrupt ending to what promised to be an interesting afternoon."

  Diana returned his smile, but as tempting as it was to take up where they'd left off, she couldn't afford to be dragged in any deeper than she already was. “Umm,” she said noncommittally. “I always wondered what it'd be like to do it in the woods. Now I know."

  "Dirt in my knees."

  "Sticks up my ass."

  They uttered the comments at almost the same moment and then laughed.

  He gave her a smoldering look. “Next time ... in my bed."

  Diana chuckled. “Some Indian. Whatever happened to enduring stoically?"

  "I endured. I didn't even grunt when I put my knee down on that patch of briars. Now I want a comfortable bed."

  Diana slid off his lap and patted his thigh. “Next time, Chief. Tell me about the legend."

  He sighed. “Spirit walker. According to the old ways, only the most powerful medicine man, or shaman, had this ability. They could come and go from their own body at will, enter the bodies of the animals of the forest and control them, see through their eyes. When I was a child, I heard tales of an ancient shaman who once lived in these hills. But that was long before my time ... even before my grandparents’ time."

  "This shaman have descendants?"

  He shrugged, looked a little uncomfortable. “Me. Not that I believe the old tales, mind you."

  Diana frowned. “He could have thousands of descendants by now. Hundreds, at the very least, if it was before your grandparents’ time."

  "But only one in each generation inherits his gift. And sometimes not even one."

  Chapter Four

  "I discovered something interesting today,” Diana told Sly as she settled into the passenger seat of his rental car. They'd met at the construction site again, although at this point it was more a matter of Diana going to meet Sly than both going to a designated meeting place. Sly had been staking the place out for the past two nights.

  Sly was glaring out of the front windshield. “Let me guess—Chief Pussy-Hound is actually a female in drag?"

  Diana turned to look at him in surprise. “Not hardly."

  "Yeah, I thought that looked a lot like a dick he was pumping into you this afternoon."

  Diana gaped at him. “You were there?"

  His lips tightened. “I'm your partner. I thought you might need back up. You seemed to be handling everything OK, though."

  "Did you see the guy?"

  "Yeah. Hung like a horse. Congrats."

  Diana frowned. “Not Blackhawk, the old guy watching us from the woods!"

  Sly's brows rose. “What'd you do, sell tickets?"

  Diana glared at him, but then a thought occurred to her quite suddenly. “You're jealous!"

  His lips tightened. “You wish."

  Diana hid a smile. “I was just going with the flow. I thought it might help in the investigation."

  "Just cheap, meaningless sex, right?"

  It was a good bit more than that, but she didn't like to think she was growing attached to their prime suspect and she certainly wasn't going to admit the possibility to Muellin. “Something like that."

  "Something like that? It was or it wasn't."

  "Could we just drop it and focus on the case?"

  "I can. I don't know if you can,” Sly muttered under his breath.

  Diana decided to ignore the remark, although it had been perfectly audible. “Did you get a look at the guy, or not?"

  "Not."

  "I did. Blackhawk saw him too. Chased him through the woods, and then the guy just disappeared."

  "You saw him disappear?"

  "No. Blackhawk said he disappeared. He was a good bit ahead of me, because ... Anyway, by the time I got there there was no sign of the guy."

  "And you believe Blackhawk? Our prime suspect? Just because ... ?"

  "I'm not saying I believe Blackhawk. I am saying I wasn't that far behind him and there wasn't a sign of the old guy by the time I got there. Now, either he wasn't nearly as old as he looked, or ... well, there was something to what Blackhawk told me."

  Muellin shrugged. “Can't figure out a reason why anyone would be made up to look old, but that doesn't mean he wasn't ... for that matter, you might not have gotten as good a look at him as you thought. Blond hair could be mistaken for white at a distance. What did Blackhawk have to say about it?"

  "He told me there were stories about a shaman who once lived here who was powerful enough to spirit walk ... And that, traditionally, one descendant in each generation would also have the power."

  Muellin frowned. “So you're leaning toward another ghost hunt?"

  "Not a ghost hunt. The spirit walkers aren't dead. They have the ability, or at least believe they have the ability, to step outside their body and roam the countryside as spirits, entering the bodies of other creatures at will ... or assuming the spirit form of another creature."

  Muellin waved the explanation off as if it was an annoying insect. “Paranormal manifestation then, or whatever you want to call it."

  "Could be. It could also be somebody who believes they're spirit walking."

  "Blackhawk give you any idea of who might have these powers?"


  "It's his family line."

  "So you figure, since Blackhawk was with you that that eliminates him from the list of suspects?"

  Diana frowned. “Ordinarily, I'd say so, but something just occurred to me."

  "That you were too wrapped up in the guy to consider that it might have been staged because he might suspect why you're here?"

  "He was the one who told me it only occurred once in every generation ... and sometimes not at all ... What do you mean, staged?"

  "The man you saw."

  "Oh.” She frowned. “I don't think he suspects, but it is possible. What I meant, though, was that he could be wrong, or he could have just said it was only one out of each generation ... meaning he could still be the one responsible."

  "Which would mean he suspects you're here to investigate ... if he lied about that."

  "Any way you look at it, this is going to be a tough one to crack. If they keep tribal records, we might not even be able to get access to them. The only thing we could do would be to ask around and I just don't see that the local Indian population would be too eager to talk to any outsider, particularly white outsiders."

  "Add to that the possibility that you're right and it's a spirit walker, how the hell are we supposed to stop it?” Muellin said.

  "Guess we'll have to face that hurdle when we get to it,” Diana said thoughtfully. “First, we have to prove that that's what it is ... or isn't."

  * * * *

  It wasn't often that Diana regretted a decision, but that was because she wasn't prone to making decisions based on primal needs. Her head had told her the moment she first assessed Blackhawk that it would be a bad idea to become intimately involved, but it hadn't taken much of a push for her lust for the man to completely turn her mind to mush.

  Unfortunately, it wasn't something that could be easily retracted. She could either continue as she'd already begun, which might completely jeopardize her investigation, or she could give the man the cold shoulder—which wasn't altogether a great idea since her cover was working for him.

  The middle road she'd opted for wasn't working.

  Blackhawk assumed—and why would he think otherwise?—that they had a ‘thing’ going. Casual friendliness just wasn't cutting it. Avoiding him wasn't working terribly well either. She could manage it well enough at work, but he'd arranged for her to stay in the room across the hall from him and it was the next thing to impossible to avoid him there.

  She ran into him in the hallway outside her suite upon her return from a meeting with Muellin. To be more accurate, she arrived at the suite to discover he was laying in wait for her.

  "Sadie."

  Diana, who'd just shoved her key into the lock, froze. She couldn't ignore him, however, and turned with what she hoped was a look of pleased surprise. Blackhawk was leaning against the door frame. It unnerved her that she hadn't even noticed the sound of him opening the door. She couldn't afford to allow herself to be that distracted. “Yes?"

  "Could we talk?"

  That sounded a little ominous. She couldn't help but notice that he was barefoot and bare chested. There was no getting around the fact that he had a damn fine body. She did her best to ignore the fact that his jeans were unfastened and the zipper at half mast. Either he'd heard her come in and slipped his jeans on to meet her at the door. Or he'd just been in the act of undressing. “Sure. What did you want to talk to me about?"

  He studied her a long moment. “I'd just as soon not talk in the hallway. Your place or mine?"

  Diana thought quickly. She couldn't think of anything that might be lying out in the open that might give her cover away, but she wasn't certain either. On the other hand, it didn't really seem like a good idea to go into his room.

  "Actually, I'm pretty tired. Do you think it could wait until morning?"

  "Yours,” he responded flatly, and stood away from the door frame.

  Diana surged toward him. Without a word, he grasped her hand and hauled her into his room. Closing the door behind them, he crowded her against the wall. “You've been avoiding me. Why?"

  Diana gave him a ‘why, whatever do you mean?’ look. “I've just been busy,” she said.

  He studied her a long moment, then leaned down and pressed his lips to hers in a searing kiss that made her knees go weak ... and her brain. The last coherent thought she had was the admonishion she gave herself to keep her head.

  She felt the mattress hit her back with no clear idea of how they'd made it across the room. She was even more surprised when she felt the brush of his bare chest against her own and discovered she was already half way out of her blouse. Dismissing it, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down, lifting her lips in mute appeal for another kiss.

  His mouth was hot, his tongue electrified her entire body as it stroked along her own. She felt a tug at her waist and then her hips as he unfastened her jeans and tugged them down her hips. The snug fabric peeled her panties away as he pushed the jeans over her hips and down her thighs, then slipped his hand between her thighs, parting the flesh of her sex. He grunted in satisfaction when he discovered she was already wet for him, teasing the nub of pleasure with a dexetrous finger that sent jolts of sensation through her as he released her lips and moved down to nudge her bra out of the way and caught one nipple between his lips.

  Diana moaned. The jeans, still around her knees, prevented her from parting her thighs to give him better access and she struggled to wriggle free of them. By the time she managed to kick them off her ankles, she was panting with frustrated passion, moaning as if she was dying.

  She reached for his cock, wrapping her fingers around him, giving a tug as she scooted toward his hips, trying to align their bodies.

  He lifted his head, moving over her. “Easy, baby."

  "Now!” Diana demanded breathlessly.

  His face hardened with desire. Grasping her hands, he pushed her arms up and wrapped her fingers around the bars of the wrought iron headboard, then reached between them and shoved the head of his cock into her pussy. “Hold on, baby,” he growled as he caught one of her thighs, lifting it up and burying his cock inside her to the hilt. Diana gasped, tightening her grip on the metal rods as he withdrew and impaled her again with his hard shaft.

  "Oh God, yes!” Diana groaned.

  He rose up, slipped his an arm under her other thigh and began to pound into her in short, swift strokes, looking down at them where their bodies connected. He looked up at her, saw that she was watching him and a shudder went through him. He hesitated, gritted his teeth, slipped his cock in and out of her slowly a couple of times. A groan was rent from him. “I can't hold it, baby!"

  His words sent a shaft of need through her. Her kegel muscles clenched around him in response. He groaned again, thrust deep and hard, touching off a quake inside of her. Diana released her grip on the bars and clutched the bulging muscles of his upper arms as her climax took her into the mindless oblivion of ultimate pleasure, crying out as she felt her body milking him, felt his seed explode inside of her in a hot wash.

  She was panting as if she'd run a mile as he slowly pulled his arms from beneath her thighs and moved to the bed beside her. She was too weak to protest when he dragged her up against him and slipped a knee between her thighs. She was hovering on the edge of sleep when her mind finally shook her sufficiently to remind her she wasn't in her own bed.

  "I should go back to my room,” she murmured.

  "We might as well stay here."

  As close as she was to sleep, she didn't miss the ‘we'. She subsided, giving up the fight.

  Chapter Five

  Diana had the workings of the bar pretty well down pat by the time Saturday rolled around. There was more to remember than she would ever have thought, and it was grueling work when the bar filled up with thirsty men out for their weekend unwinding, but she thought she was muddling through, as far as her cover story was concerned.

  She was having difficulty focusing, however, on
either job. She could feel Blackhawk's gaze on her as she moved around the bar and it did things to her she wished she could ignore.

  At first, she thought it was just her imagination, thought she had developed a hypersensitivity to being in Blackhawk's vicinity. She supposed she had, but it wasn't just her imagination that Blackhawk's gaze touched her every time she moved within his view. Any time she managed to sneak a glance in his direction, she saw he was looking directly toward her and concentration went right out the window.

  What unnerved her the most, she supposed, was that she couldn't tell whether his interest was personal, or if she'd blown her cover and he was watching her because he knew she had a reason being there that bore no resemblance to the story she'd told him.

  Any way she looked at it, she was in trouble.

  She hated to admit, even to herself, that she'd compromised her investigation by allowing personal considerations to get in the way of business. She certainly didn't want to admit it to Sly, but it was beginning to look like she was going to have to if she wasn't to end up jeopardizing his cover, as well.

  It had been hell reporting in to Skinnard. She'd been on the case a solid week and had turned up pretty much zilch. He hadn't seemed too ticked about it. He'd told her the new construction crew—which had arrived on Thursday and started work the next day—was bound to accelerate things so that she and Muellin could crack the case.

  There had been an underlying—get it done—order beneath the pep talk.

  If only he knew how anxious she was to solve the case and hightail it back to the big city—before she did something really stupid!

  Correction—make that, she was sure as hell glad he didn't know how anxious, or why she was anxious, to tie things up and head back to Atlanta.

  By the time Muellin had talked to half the people in the county, trying to pump them for information—and hadn't turned up much more than she had—they'd decided between them there wasn't much point in skulking around anymore ... at least not in his case. He'd decided to ‘openly’ admit to having been hired by the construction company as job site security.