Chapter Eleven
By the time they finished with the other locations where bodies had been dropped, Lily was tired. More than that, she was exhausted. With the exception that the presence of another predator was absent, they picked up the same info at the other two spots. Kyle was able to see through the eyes of the two dead women and, as with the first victim, was able to determine that it was a woman who left their bodies on the forest floor. They were no closer to an identity because, as with the dead man, all he could see was her back as she walked away from the women’s bodies. Not once did he glimpse the killer’s face.
After Ava cleansed the last two drop sites as she’d done with the first one, they returned to Jayne’s house. The moon was high in the sky and the countryside was quiet. The air was cool but no longer held the hint of moisture. It wouldn’t be long before the trace of snow would melt. It struck her again how nice it was here and how much it was like the area where she grew up. There too snow would fall one moment, covering the ground like powdered sugar, and then the sun would come out and melt it all away. These days she rarely thought of her life before becoming a hunter. There was no point. Yet here she was for the second time in a single day remembering a time and a place long ago lost to her.
“What are you thinking? You look a thousand miles away.” Jayne came outside and sat in the rocking chair next to hers. They were big wooden chairs and built to last. Comfortable, she’d been out here alone rocking back and forth while thinking over what they’d seen out there in the woods. Trying to make sense of it was driving her nuts.
She turned and looked at Jayne. In the muted glow cast by the ornate hanging light she decided that Jayne looked as tired as Lily felt. Shadows darkened her face, and dusty circles were beneath her eyes that hadn’t been there when she’d first arrived. Jayne’s bad attitude had been pretty consistent since the first moment they met and low-level irritating. Not that her attitude was a huge problem, considering she was accustomed to law enforcement resenting her and her hunters. What made this one different was this time with Jayne it felt much deeper than mere resentment at the intrusion of an outside organization. Instead, it had the feel of something more personally directed toward Lily, and that didn’t really make sense. They’d never met before. They’d never even spoken to each other until she walked up those steps and stood before her on the wide porch. So why did she so obviously dislike her?
Lily pressed her lips together, thinking it all through, and then said with honesty and curiosity, “I can’t help but wonder why here? It’s so much easier to hide violence like this in a city.”
Jayne nodded as she rocked slowly in the big chair, her booted feet stretched out in front of her. “I’ve been asking that same question since we discovered the first body. We’ve never had anything like this happen around these parts, and then to have it repeated two more times is astounding. Not in a good way either.”
Lily did understand that. Certain werewolves had an almost pathological need to kill, but usually when they killed in multiples, they were grouped closer together. The way these were spread out was definitely atypical. “I’m certain you’ve been scratching your head about this one. I’ll be honest with you, Jayne, it’s puzzling for me too.”
Jayne stopped rocking and stared at her. “I would think you’d be used to things like this, given what you do.”
Nothing much rattled her, because at this point in her long life she thought she’d seen everything. This was just a step off, and it was hard to explain to someone who had lived only a fraction of her lifetime. She tried to explain, “It’s that we don’t typically encounter such rampant violence.”
“I would have thought it was very typical of a werewolf.”
The snap to that last word let Lily know Jayne still wasn’t buying all the way in. That was all right. Give her time and she’d come around. They always did when faced with the impossible and had no earthly way to explain what was happening. “It isn’t exactly what I’d expect to see with a werewolf passing through, and they’re always passing through.”
Jayne turned and looked at her, her eyes filled with curiosity. “So tell me, what do you usually find?”
The disbelief and defiance were fading from her words. Whether it was the weariness that surrounded her like a cloak, what she’d witnessed during their earlier expeditions, or Lily’s quiet honesty, something was changing for Jayne. That too wasn’t unusual, except normally she could pick out what made them converts. With Jayne, it wasn’t so easy. She was a closed book that Lily dearly wanted to open.
Instead of trying to psychoanalyze the sheriff, she closed her eyes and thought about the hundreds, no thousands, of hunts she’d been on and tried to fashion an answer that would contain a common denominator. She opened her eyes and said, “Stealth.” It was the best descriptor she could come up with. “The vast majority of the time the creatures we hunt are sneaky because they value self-preservation beyond anything else. They don’t want us coming in and ruining their fun. They hate the Jägers and will do anything to avoid us.”
“There’s nothing stealthy about what’s been happening here.”
Lily shook her head. “No, there’s not, and that’s exactly my point. It’s what makes this one of those rare cases I find quite strange. It’s not often we have one killing so boldly and over such an extended length of time. The pattern isn’t typical in any sense.”
Jayne stretched her arms high over her body before resting her clasped hands on the top of her head. “You have no idea how much I want to believe it’s a garden-variety serial killer.”
“Who tears the bodies apart like an animal?” Devil’s advocate was a role she’d been playing for centuries. Sometimes it was the only way to get people to open their minds to alternate possibilities.
Jayne ran her fingers through her hair and then put her head in her hands as her elbows rested on her knees. “A wolf pack maybe?”
“You have a lot of wolves around here?” She knew they didn’t.
“No,” she said slowly and sighed. “We do not.”
“And have you seen the few wolves you do have tear bodies apart like that?”
Jayne sat back in the chair. “I get the point you’re trying to make.”
Maybe she did and maybe she didn’t. “I just want you to understand why we’re here.”
For a moment there was silence, and then Jayne turned to stare at her with intense blue eyes. “Okay, Lily. Here’s the thing. I get Kyle and I get Ava. What I don’t get is you. If you are, as you say, a werewolf yourself, then why would you hunt your own kind? It seems somehow wrong.”
If one only looked at the surface, it would be hard to understand. She didn’t consider herself a werewolf, even as crazy as that sounded. She could change at will into a creature who could outrun the wind, yet she was never a predator. In her five centuries of existence, she had never hunted a single human. She was, quite simply, a victim in her own right, which went a long way toward explaining her life after the night that ended her previous existence.
“They are not my kind,” she told her honestly and as simply as she could. “Let me ask you a question. Serial killers are human, and are you not one hundred percent human?”
Jayne looked as though her words were hitting their mark. “I think I follow where you’re going here. I’m a human and yet I’m not a serial killer.”
Lily nodded, glad that Jayne picked up so quickly. “Exactly. Technically, yes, I’m a werewolf. We are the same species, if you will, yet I believe we are fundamentally different just as you are different from a serial killer. I am a hunter, not a killer, and I will stop any and all who destroy life. It is who I am, and it is what I have dedicated my entire life to.”
Jayne tilted her head as she continued to stare into Lily’s eyes. “Why? You’re what, thirty? Thirty-five tops? Why spend your young life wallowing in darkness even if you are a werewolf?”
Lily nearly laughed out loud. “Trust me, Jayne. My life was stolen more
years ago than you can imagine, and it was far longer ago than a mere three and half decades. I made a promise on the night the Jägers came for me that I would spend every day that I had making sure what happened to me never happened to another soul.”
*
Kyle knocked on Ava’s door, which was right next to his room. “I know it’s really late and you’ve been on the go for a long time,” he said when she invited him in. “If you’re not too tired, would you want to take a walk with me? I can’t seem to settle in.” He knew it was imposing on her to even ask, but he couldn’t stop himself. They were married, after all.
Ava, who’d been opening her suitcase and pulling out some jeans and shirts, stopped and turned. He immediately felt bad, for the toll of her very long day showed in the dusty shadows beneath her eyes. She laid the clothing she still held in her hands on the bed. “What’s wrong?” Her face might show her fatigue, but her voice didn’t.
It might not be very manly, but he was never very good at hiding how he was feeling. Yeah, he was that guy and there was no sense pretending otherwise. Ava would see right through him. “I don’t know. The stuff I picked up out there got under my skin, and it’s impossible to just sit still. Each time I try to close my eyes I can see them and feel their pain. I need to shake it off, and the only thing I could think of was that a walk might help me do that.”
Her head tilted and she studied him. “A walk would be nice. Let me change, and I’ll meet you downstairs in five minutes.” She picked up a pair of jeans from the pile on the bed. “Out.”
The relief that loosened his chest surprised him. Until this second he didn’t realize how important it was to him that Ava go walk with him. Or maybe he really did. He’d been so excited to work with her again, and that feeling had intensified as the hours passed. What he felt for her went very deep, and he couldn’t deny that truth. Given the short amount of time they’d actually spent together it wasn’t reasonable, and that reality didn’t seem to make a bit of difference to his heart.
Throw in the giant wash of emotion he picked up from the residue left by the murder victims, and he was a big, fat mess. It was tough enough to deal with the kind of things he did for the Jägers. To have to find a way to deal with the realization he was falling for a gorgeous witch was a little much to ask of him right now, yet here he was face-to-face with the woman who held his heart. The universe played by some pretty dirty rules.
He smiled and nodded. That she said yes took all the sting out of her kicking him out the door. “Meet you in five. Front door?”
Ava nodded and smiled. “Now, out.”
Back in his room, he grabbed a jacket before he walked downstairs. As he reached the bottom of the staircase, Jayne and Lily came in the front door. Earlier he’d noticed them out on the front porch sitting in the big rockers and talking quietly. Outside, the temperature was dropping, and the cold was probably what drove them back into the warmth of the house. Being a California boy, it seemed really cold to him, and he wouldn’t be surprised to see snow start falling any moment, though the weather was reported to take a turn for the better. Even though he was accustomed to warm breezes and lots of sunshine, he liked the snow and hoped the forecast was wrong. Given that they were tracking a werewolf, a nice layer of the white stuff could definitely come in handy. Follow the paw prints was an easy game to play.
“Going out for a smoke?” Jayne asked when he stopped by the big front window. A smoke was almost funny. He wouldn’t touch the nasty things, and besides, he didn’t think he looked—or smelled—like a smoker. Off the top of his head he couldn’t even think of anyone he knew who did smoke these days. Wasn’t the politically correct thing to do even if it wasn’t a deadly habit.
He opened his mouth to say no and then realized she was kidding him. “Walking out the kinks,” he told her. “Too much time in the car today and too much despair picked up from the victims. I need to get out and shake it off, or I won’t sleep at all.”
“Alone?” Did he hear a note of humor in Lily’s seemingly innocent question?
He shrugged and pretended he didn’t hear the bit of ribbing in her question. “No. Ava’s going to walk with me. We both spent most of the day in transit with our butts in seats.”
“Well,” Lily drawled. “That’s very nice of Ava to go out with you.”
He wasn’t sure how to take that. Word around the Jägers was that Lily was one dead-serious hunter. Not once had he heard anyone mention she might have a sense of humor. So, was she teasing him? That sure didn’t seem to fit with the picture he had in his mind after hearing what others said about Lily. Then again, he had to consider that he was basing his assumptions on gossip. Even the best of the Jägers could fall victim to the whispers and conjectures about a legend. If he was a smart guy, he’d toss out everything he’d heard about Lily and make up his mind based on his own personal interactions. That decided, he figured he’d go with the belief she was teasing.
“Yes.” He grinned at her as he leaned against the front door. “It is very nice of Ava.”
“What’s nice of me?” Ava came down the stairs wearing black jeans that fit very nicely and a puffy zip-up jacket. She looked beautiful.
Jayne joined in. “Keeping Kyle company. We don’t want him to get lost or scared.”
Yup, definitely teasing. It was a good sign. He swept his gaze over the three women. “How exactly did we get into pick-on-Kyle mode?” It was pretty clear at least two of the women in this room were having fun at his expense.
“Pick on you? Not at all. Just making casual conversation.” Lily smiled, and it struck him how lovely she was. He’d wager she’d broken more than a few hearts in her time.
He cut his gaze to Jayne. “Don’t believe her. She probably got a memo that said to mess with the new guy.”
Jayne patted him on the shoulder. “Makes sense to me. Seen a memo or two like that in my time.”
“Always happy to entertain where I can.” He bowed to Jayne.
“You’re a good man.”
Ava held out her hand as she reached him at the door. “Come on.” She gave him a wink the other two couldn’t see. “I’ll make sure you’re safe, and I promise not to give you a hard time.”
See, he thought. Ava’s here for me. It was a sign that she was sticking up for him. Proved his long-held belief that the universe had a way of working things out and it was bringing them together. Besides, he knew she would never pick on him. Wasn’t her way and there was that connection thing they had going. It wasn’t hopeful imagination. It was real. Yeah, real.
“Be careful,” Lily warned them as they reached the door. “We don’t know where the wolf might be, so keep your eyes open.”
“Always,” he told her and held the door for Ava.
Outside, the cold air was biting. It hit him in the cheeks and almost made his eyes tear up. Yeah, it was exactly what he needed. He zipped his jacket and pulled a cap out of his pocket. His long hair smashed against his skull as he slipped the hat on his head. That was better. The wind was now refreshing more than frigid.
“You didn’t bring a hat.” It was the first thing that popped into his head. A brilliant conversationalist, that’s what he was for sure.
She reached around her neck and pulled up the hood on her jacket. “This will work. Thanks for caring.”
“I’m a caring guy.”
“You are a funny, interesting, and talented guy.”
“You’re going to make me blush.”
Ava took his hand and squeezed lightly. “How am I to know when this wind is going to make us both red as Christmas bulbs? So tell me what the problem is. Why can’t you sleep?”
The surprise of her hand wrapped in his almost made him go mute. God, it felt great. Better than when Suz Belton kissed him in the sixth grade. Funny, he’d had the same reaction back then as he was having now. After a second, he found his voice and didn’t consider being anything except honest.
“You understand that I don’t have to actuall
y raise those people from the grave to know what they went through.”
She nodded. “I’ve seen you do it before.”
“Tonight wasn’t the same as in the past.”
“Why was it different this time?”
He’d been asking himself the same question all night and still wasn’t sure he figured it out. He gave her his best guess. “It was far more intense than I’ve ever experienced before. Energy and despair were soaked into the ground and the trees and the brush out there so heavy, it was like it had just happened. All three of the victims were terrified by what was done to them, and that strength of emotion came through like a hurricane.”
She stopped, brought his hand up, and pressed it against her chest. “It hurt your heart.”
It wasn’t the way he thought of it at the time, but once she said it he realized that’s exactly how it felt. “Yeah, it hurt my heart. I hated that they suffered so badly and were scared so much. It wasn’t right. No one should have to go through what they did.”
“That’s why we’re here.” Ava patted his hand, her eyes steady on his face. “We’re going to stop this monster and make sure no one else is harmed. Whoever this is has put out too much evil into the universe, and it will bring it back to them threefold. Trust me, Kyle. We will stop them.”
He brought his hand away from her chest but kept hold of her hand. Once more he began to walk. With Ava beside him and combined with the fresh, cold air he already felt calmer and more focused, and they hadn’t even walked a hundred yards yet. The air was crisp and clear, and their feet crunched as they walked across the snow-dusted gravel. No sounds of danger reached his ears, only the gentle murmur of the night. “You’re right because we have to stop him.”
She Wolf Page 10
