by Shara Lanel
The scene inside confounded him, though. He skidded to a halt and tried to understand. A huge gray wolf hunched and growled at the sniveling man pressed against the wall. To their left, someone was tied elaborately with red rope. Naked. He couldn’t understand. A wolf? The rope looked like decoration and made him think of Christmas ribbons and packages. He looked more carefully and saw the blood, a stream running over pale skin and soaking into the rope and the mattress below. Mattress. Hair. He pulled the images together. Victim.
He stumbled across the room and saw Kitty’s eyes. “I’ve got you.” He reached for a knot, but touched her naked flesh and yanked his hand back. Deep breath. Untie her. Stop the wolf. The knots were too tight. He went for the ball in her mouth instead, pulling it free and hating the suctioning sound it made.
“Haden!” Kitty screamed the moment her mouth emptied. “Haden! Change back! You don’t need to kill him!”
The growls and snarls increased, and the beast’s nails tapped on the wood floor.
“Daniel, put your gun on Richard, cuff him. Show Haden you have him. He doesn’t need to kill him.”
“I don’t see…” All he saw was the wolf, who had to be six feet long from its nose to the tip of its tail. Its paws would cover his face. The teeth were sharper by far than the knife Richard wielded, and the strength and speed in the haunches would allow the wolf to down a man long before the knife did its work.
“Haden! Change back! Please! I love you!” she screamed, tears smeared on her face. Daniel helped her sit up, then rose slowly to his feet. He couldn’t make sense of her words. Maybe he didn’t want to understand what she meant. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t put Richard in cuffs.
What if the wolf attacked him then?
The nasty taste of fear coated his tongue, but he walked forward, pulling his gun from his holster, clicking off the safety. His arms rose. The two-armed grip was proper, followed his training, would steady his aim. He pointed the nose of the gun at the wolf.
“Daniel, no! That’s Haden ‑‑ don’t shoot him!”
“It can’t be,” he whispered. His low voice caught the wolf’s attention. It turned its head and looked him dead in the eyes. “Oh, God.”
The knife flashed, and Kitty screamed as Daniel adjusted his aim, pointing the gun at Richard, but he was in motion. The bullet hit Richard’s shoulder, causing blood to spatter against the wall and over the fur. The wolf was hurt. Stabbed? It was crawling toward Kitty, dragging a leg, whimpering, but Daniel had to ignore that as he kicked the dropped knife out of the way and yanked Richard’s uninjured arm behind his back.
“Brother, brother. I told you. Magnificent. I smell, I smell…oh, and my art, my finest creation.”
Mechanically, Daniel began to recite the Miranda warning. He couldn’t look behind him. He didn’t want to see Kitty and the wolf.
“Change. Please change. Won’t that make you better? Please, Haden. I can’t tell how bad you’re hurt this way. Change.” She alternated between a low, calm voice, to a sharp, attention-grabbing voice. “Daniel, get the damn knife and undo me. Haden’s hurt!” She knew the sheriff had seen something, understood something, that he wasn’t ready to handle. That couldn’t be helped. “Cut me free, goddamn it! I need to help him!”
Daniel used his foot to kick Richard’s knee forward until he was kneeling. He cuffed both hands despite his injury. Finally he turned his head and looked at Kitty, refusing to look at the wolf. His thoughts skittered away from the truth.
“Daniel, get the knife. Cut me loose. That’s your job. You don’t leave the victim tied up.”
He nodded. “Right.”
“Come on.” Her low voice morphed into a hysterical one. “Get over here!”
Haden needed to change before any more cops got here too. He’d spent so long protecting his secret. Daniel would keep it, once he accepted it. The others would want the government to take him and turn him into a lab experiment.
Daniel brought the knife and started slicing through Kitty’s bonds, his eyes overly bright. He was careful not to cut her skin, though. As soon as she was mostly free, Kitty scanned the room for her clothes. “Damn, I don’t know where he put my clothes.”
“Wait, I saw some…outside. I threw them on the porch.” He went out and returned in moments with the clothes. Haden’s. He stared at the clothes, then at the bleeding wolf. Kitty felt sorry for him, but she also felt naked.
“Is there a shirt there?”
“Oh, yeah, here.”
Kitty slid it on and breathed in Haden’s scent. She took the undershirt and pressed it against the wolf’s wound, then she went back to whispering in his ear. “You’ve got to change back. You can do it. I need you here. We’ve got the bad guy. I really appreciate you scaring the shit out of him. Now come back to me before the sheriff’s backup gets here. You know explanations are going to be impossible once that happens.”
And the pictures rolled back into her head in black-and-white. She felt the power surge through her arm as if she touched an electric fence. The change happened so quickly that the naked eye couldn’t see it. One minute he was a wolf, the next a naked man. Kitty gasped in relief, and Haden moaned in pain. His forearm bled slowly, almost clotted. She moved the T-shirt and pressed hard. Daniel stood over the two of them, mouth hanging open and moving like he wanted to say something, but no sound came out. Finally he found his voice.
“Is he okay?”
“I think so. Is help coming? I’m sure he’ll need to go to the hospital.”
“I called for backup before I entered the premises, but there’s no road out here, and the path is hard to see.”
“Damn knife,” Haden said with a little groan.
“Better to avoid those next time.” Kitty smiled, glad he’d found his voice again.
“Next time? If there’s a next time, we’re doing something seriously wrong.” He looked over at his friend, who was basically babysitting Richard to avoid looking at the couple on the floor. “What’s he thinking?”
“Oh, I wasn’t paying attention.” She closed her eyes and sought out the sheriff’s mind. “He’s just replaying the scene between you and Richard. Yup, he’s good and freaked. It’s nice to not be the strangest person in the room for a change.”
“Kitty, you’re not strange.”
“And I’m loads of fun at parties.”
He laid the hand attached to his good arm on her knee. “I was so worried we wouldn’t find you, and I wasn’t sure if Daniel was going to let me out. If I’d had to stay in that cell not knowing where you were…”
“Well, I will have you know that I did not go hunting for him, not that time at least. He found me after I closed up the store.” And suddenly she couldn’t stop shivering. Her whole body shook, and she kept replaying the part where Richard started cutting her in between the ropes, the pain and helplessness.
Haden pulled her close and held her tight. “It’s okay. You’re okay now. Cry it out.”
He didn’t know if he was okay. His anger ate at him, tempered only by the pain from the knife wound and empathy for the sheriff. He couldn’t imagine trying to write this up in a report. He also couldn’t imagine the shock of discovering someone you’d known for decades was a werewolf, but it had to be better than thinking he was a murderer, didn’t it?
The cavalry rode in loudly in the county’s only Hummer. He listened to Daniel explain everything as the EMT stitched up his arm. Most of the details were true. He just skipped the part where Haden had turned into a wolf and just said he rushed in to confront Richard before he hurt Kitty anymore.
* * * * *
A few days later, Kitty sat at the bar and told Emilio, Gina, and Marsha a similar story. They were all amazed at Haden’s heroics. Of course, he wondered how brave he’d have been if the beast hadn’t taken over. No, truth be told, he probably would’ve rushed in just the same. The outcome might’ve been worse, though.
And finally he could hold his head high in Wolf’s Crossing ag
ain, because the prosecutor had dropped all of the murder charges and allowed him to plead out on some of the lesser charges. He gladly paid those fines. Anything to avoid being locked up. He hadn’t seen his parents since then, though, or Leslie’s mom. He was pretty sure that would’ve been painful, anyway. His dad rarely offered forgiveness.
Haden’s arm had healed completely during the following three full moon nights, but he still wore the bandages, since that’s what was expected. He listened as Marsha leaned close to Kit and whispered, “So what’s up with you two?”
“It’s good.”
“Are you moving in?”
“Marsha! We hardly know each other. And what happened to not being married by choice?”
Marsha lifted her left hand. Haden didn’t have to see the sparkle, since Kitty’s squeal told the story. “If I’m taking the plunge, then you certainly can.”
“We’ll see.”
She glanced his way, so he quickly immersed himself in Emilio’s story about the way-too-obvious food critic. Thank God, Zeke had wowed him. His arrest and whatnot had only enhanced the story.
Half an hour later, he stood up. “Kitty, you ready to go home to your lonely dog?”
“Yeah, I suppose.” She winked at Emilio and gave Marsha a hug. “Tell Brad congratulations for me.”
* * * * *
The car hummed, and Kitty counted the streetlights they passed. She’d been trying really hard to keep from reading Haden’s thoughts. She didn’t want him to feel like his girlfriend was a permanent eavesdropper, but it was hard, especially when they made love. They were so connected.
“Kitty, is something wrong?”
“No.”
“You smell nervous.”
She laughed. “Here I was trying to stay out of your thoughts, and you’re reading me by my body odor.”
“Why were you trying to stay out of my thoughts?”
“I just can’t imagine that you’d want someone around you all the time who always knows what you’re thinking.”
“You don’t always know. Besides, then I can be my usual brooding self, and you’ll still think I’m communicating with you.” He grinned, glancing over at her, then back out the windshield.
“Really?”
“Kitty, if you can deal with me turning into Canis lupus every month, then I can deal with you in my head. I do think Fergie and I are going to have to deal with the dominance issue, though. I can’t have the mutt growling at me every time I spend the night.”
“He’s not a mutt! He’s purebred.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I think we should look for your real family next.”
“Why’d you say that?”
“Well, you were thinking about your dad, and I just think you’d like to know the whole story about where you came from.”
“Maybe, but I need to recover from this little adventure first.”
At Kitty’s house, Haden let the dog out and had a little chat with him that involved rolling him onto his back, paws up. Then he found Kitty half asleep on her bed, wearing a long T-shirt with shoes all over it. The window unit hummed, since Richmond’s humidity was at seventy percent. Haden joined her on the bed, stripping off his shirt and pants, leaving on a pair of navy boxers.
“So Marsha’s getting married?”
She smiled. “Yeah. I hope she’ll want me to be maid of honor. She probably doesn’t even know she needs one yet.”
“What do you think about marriage?”
“I always wanted to get married. Two people sharing their lives, helping with day-to-day life, growing old together. But you know, once I started reading minds, I figured it just wouldn’t work out.”
“I know it’s too soon, but you know, it might work out with us.”
She lifted herself up to her elbow. “Really? You’d want to marry me?”
“I might like that. Maybe we could ring shop.”
She smacked his chest, then curled her fingers into the hair covering his pecs. “Kiss me.”
THE END
Shara Lanel
Shara began her writing life at the age of five, creating those little About Me books with the balloon on the back. She finally managed publication in high school, writing and editing the Entertainment Page in the school paper, and she toyed with the idea of being a rich and famous author.
Of course, there was a large period of time during which she planned to be an astronaut or rock star, whichever came first. But since neither of those careers panned out, she went to college in New York City to study film.
A fellow writer, who shall remain nameless, implored Shara to “come to the Dark Side,”-- referring to writing erotic romance ‑‑ so she did, and now she may never go back. She's having too much fun writing the sexy, sinful stuff she loves to read. In fact, she's pretty good at it, and the research is fantastic.
Oh, get your mind out of the gutter! Research, as in background for creating her authentic characters and settings. For example, Shara recently participated in her local Citizens' Police Academy, and had a blast shooting things, meeting sexy SWAT guys, and riding around in cop cars during high speed chases. All in the name of research for her books, of course.
Shara lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband, son, and ancient cocker spaniel. When she's not writing, she's killing chile plants, setting fires in her oven, and avoiding housework at all costs.
Visit her on the web at www.sharalanel.com, and she loves to hear from her readers at [email protected].
