“In the dark?”
“I have very good night vision,” he said.
“Do you want some coffee before you go out?”
“I don’t drink it,” he answered at once, and she wondered if he was making an excuse to end the conversation.
“Tea?” she offered.
“Not now. But herbal tea would be good in the morning.”
“I’ve got peppermint and cranberry.”
“Either one.”
He crossed to the sink, and she pictured him emptying out stew he hadn’t eaten.
She pushed back her chair, then reached for her own unfinished bowl.
“You cooked. I’ll clean up,” he said. “If you trust me to put things were they belong.”
“I trust you,” she said, meaning more than kitchen cleanup. “The dishes go in the dishwasher. Plastic wrap for the salad bowl is in the drawer under the cutlery. Put the salad and the stew in the refrigerator.”
When she’d finished the short speech, she turned and left the room, before she said anything else she regretted.
NOT far away, Shadow Man got out of his car and walked toward the sound of laughter and rock music coming from the Seagull’s Roost.
“Hey,” Hank Horngate greeted him.
“Hey yourself,” he answered.
Others around the room repeated the salutation, and he gave everyone a friendly smile and a wave. He was a fixture in town. One of the gang. An upstanding citizen whom no one would suspect of murder. Which was why he thought of himself as Shadow Man. Like the guy in that movie who called himself The Shadow. He’d learned to cloud men’s minds so they saw only what he wanted.
He ordered a Bud Light and relaxed on one of the stools at the end of the bar. The Seagull’s Roost was a good place to pick up information, so he came here pretty frequently before calling it a night.
He’d made a mistake a month ago. He’d known it pretty quickly. Fouling your own nest wasn’t the smartest idea in the world. Always before, he’d traveled away from Sea Gate to murder the damn bitches who reminded him of Helen. But he hadn’t been able to resist Elizabeth Jefferson. Not after her husband Bob had come into the bar night after night talking about her. She’d had MS. She was in a wheelchair part of the time. And she never stopped complaining about how life wasn’t fair.
Like Helen. The harpy who had ruined his life. It wasn’t his fault a drunk driver had jumped the signal and plowed into them. But Helen had never let him forget he had sped through the intersection a split second after the light had turned from yellow to red.
Since they’d been kids, she’d told him how stupid he was and how he’d never make anything of himself. Then she’d spent the last two years of her miserable existence dragging him down to her level. Finally he’d had enough of playing the loving brother atoning for his sins.
He’d fed her arsenic day after day, and the doctors had thought her pain was just part of her incessant complaining. Before he’d burned her up in an “accidental” fire, he’d had the pleasure of telling her what he’d done and hearing her plead for mercy. He’d laughed in her face.
With the others, he had to use poisons that acted quickly. But that didn’t dampen the satisfaction of killing women like Helen. Women who were handicapped and who made the lives of the people around them a living hell.
“What’s new?” Shadow Man asked.
“I hear Bob Jefferson is going to sell the property.”
“Good luck,” someone else answered. “Nothing like murder to knock the price down.”
“Yeah,” another voice chimed in.
Shadow Man was thinking that he’d done Bob Jefferson a big favor.
“You hear about the guy at Antonia Delarosa’s place?” someone else asked.
“What guy?”
“Looks like she’s got a boarder.”
“In the winter?”
“Maybe they’re having a little fun together. She’s got a nice set of titties on her. A shame to let them dry up from disuse.”
That brought a laugh from some of the men.
“She needs some fun.”
Another laugh.
Shadow Man joined the chorus, but privately he didn’t agree.
GRANT lay on his bed with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. He was still thinking that staying here was a mistake. But that car stopping in front of her house had given him a bad feeling. It might be the nosy cop. Or it might be someone else.
Had Officer Wright put his hands on Antonia? Really, he shouldn’t be dwelling on that. He had his own business to take care of. But he couldn’t get the picture out of his mind of the scumbag “accidentally” brushing against her breast.
He’d like to make the guy sorry he’d ever thought of touching her—except that her life was none of his business.
Around midnight he got up, dressed in black sweats, and slipped out the back door, then hesitated. He might have driven away from the house, but he liked the idea of leaving the car where it was visible, so anyone checking up on the place would think he was still there.
AFTER Grant left, Antonia went back into the kitchen and got a deck of cards from one of the drawers. She had about five different decks scattered around the house, the way her mother had cheap drugstore reading glasses. Even then, Mom had trouble finding a pair. But Antonia knew where she kept every deck of tarot cards.
Simply holding them in her hand helped steady her roiling emotions. After shuffling, she drew a card. It was the Knight of Wands. A man on a quest. Well she already knew that was true of Grant Marshall.
The Knight of Wands never did anything halfway. He could be a generous friend—or lover. His arrival might herald a major life change.
Her chest tightened. Scott Wright might want to fuck her. Probably that was how he thought about it. A mercy fuck. And a convenience for himself. But it wasn’t Scott Wright that she was thinking of making love with.
In her mind, the card flickered, and she saw a wolf running along next to the knight.
The wolf was connected with Grant. In some way that she didn’t understand. The image had come to her again and again in the cards. And then he had arrived in person. And the two had merged in her mind.
The wolf must represent some part of his personality that she didn’t yet understand. All she knew was that there was something different about him. An indefinable aura that set him apart from other men. And not just the shroud of sadness that he used like a suit of armor.
She wanted to rip off that protective layer. She wanted to give him back the will to live.
She knew that any intelligent woman should be frightened of him. But she wasn’t afraid. She wanted to help him. And she wanted to help herself.
She turned over another card and made a small sound. It was the Ace of Cups—a symbol of new beginnings, of new love.
It heralded joy and happiness. Hers? His? Both of them? Or was she simply finding what she wanted to find in the cards tonight?
GRANT walked to a deserted stretch of beach on the outskirts of town. Behind a sand dune, where he wasn’t visible from the road, he took off his clothes and stood shivering in the cold wind blowing off the ocean. Then he closed his eyes, gathering his inner resolve before calling on the ancient ritual that made him different from other men.
“Taranis, Epona, Cerridwen,” he said in measured tones, then repeated the same phrase and went on to another.
“Ga. Feart. Cleas. Duais. Aithriocht. Go gcumhdai is dtreorai na deithe thu.”
The first time he’d changed from boy to wolf, he’d thought his brain was going to explode. It didn’t help knowing that two of his older brothers had not survived the experience. But none of them had had any choice about it. It had happened to each of them at puberty.
He’d learned to anticipate disorientation as the physical changes gripped him. He felt his jaw lengthen into a muzzle, his teeth sharpen. Long ago, he’d learned to ride above the pain of bones crunching, muscles jerking, cells transforming fr
om one shape to another.
Thick gray hair formed along his flanks, covering his body in a silver-tipped pelt. As he dropped to all fours, he was no longer a man. He was an animal far more suited to the hunt.
A wolf.
One of the few of his species, because nature had not been kind to those who carried his genetic heritage. There were no female werewolves, as far as he knew. And half the boys died the first time they made the change.
He’d thought he was lucky to survive. He’d long ago given up that notion. Still, the freedom of the wolf grabbed him by the throat as he sniffed the wind with new clarity. He smelled salt and seaweed and small animals hidden in the dunes.
Even now, the wolf’s persona filled him with a kind of excitement no ordinary man would ever know. Though legend gave the full moon power over werewolves, it wasn’t true of him or any of the men in his family. Any night was his. Any day, for that matter.
Another time he might have hunted prey. Tonight he had more important business.
Staying away from the highway, he trotted toward the residential part of town, toward the charred remains of the house where Elizabeth Jefferson had lived and died.
His body might be that of a wolf. But his mind had not changed. He was thinking about staying out of sight and thinking about Mrs. Jefferson as he wove his way through the shadows.
She’d had MS. He’d found that out from his research. She’d been disabled. Like Marcy. Only his wife’s problem hadn’t been permanent. She’d broken her leg falling on the ice. And while she was still limping around with a cane, the bastard murderer had spotted her. Or maybe he’d seen her earlier, in her cast.
Grant didn’t know. He’d racked his brain, trying to identify some time when he’d seen the guy, but he always drew a blank.
Reaching the house, he prowled around the foundation, taking in the smell of charred wood. But that wasn’t his main interest. He focused on the men and women who had come here since the fire. He caught his own scent. And that of Scott Wright. And the locals from the dry goods store.
There were many others, too. One could be the killer—if he’d come back to admire his work. If he lived in town, he might have risked that. And Grant had reason to think that he might live here, because this town was so centrally located in the territory where he’d murdered in the past.
AS he often did since he’d dispatched Elizabeth Jefferson, Shadow Man drove through the night toward the blackened ruin of her house. There was a certain satisfaction in visiting the site again and again, knowing he was the only one who got the secret joke of his presence at her house. He was her killer, living only a few blocks away. He had a lock of her hair in his keepsake chest, along with hair from the other bitches he had sent to hell.
Nobody else was ever going to see that chest. And if anybody wondered what he was doing near the murder house, he was just heading home.
In the moonlight he saw the blackened ruin. And he saw something more. A form moving in the darkness.
A dog?
What the hell was it doing poking around the house?
The animal raised its head, staring toward the headlights. Then it faded into the shadows. But a flash of movement gave away its location, and Shadow Man turned off the car lights and drifted forward.
As Shadow man watched, the dog dodged into a driveway between two houses. The animal was obviously intelligent. Was it a tracking dog? Did some big-city law enforcement agency know about the murder?
Suddenly worried, he reached for the gun that he kept in the glove compartment, then sped up, looking for the animal.
Chapter 4
WARY of the car with its headlights off, the wolf backed farther into the shadows, thinking it would be easy to make a wrong move.
Someone was interested in the murder scene. In him.
After ducking around the side of a house, the wolf considered his limited options. He could race back to the place in the dunes where Grant Marshall had left his clothing. But that wasn’t such a great idea. If somebody managed to follow him, he’d be too exposed on the beach. Better to hug the shadows near the houses.
He wove through the residential district, keeping his profile low. Stopping in the shadows, he realized several things almost simultaneously.
As far as he knew, he had lost the car. He was near Antonia’s house. And all the lights were off.
It was late, and she was probably sleeping. Which meant he could slip inside, change back to human form, and wait a few hours before retrieving his clothing.
The wolf had learned to turn a doorknob with his teeth. Opening the back door, he slipped inside.
As soon as he’d crossed the pantry and entered the kitchen, he stopped in his tracks. He wasn’t alone.
Antonia was sitting in the dark at the kitchen table. The sound of her breathing mingled with his. The woman scent of her body reached out toward him.
He was caught in a snare of his own making, and he had time to wonder if he had wanted to be trapped.
He heard the click of his claws on the wood floor as he backed away.
For an eternity, that was the only sound besides the beating of his own pulse in his ears.
Then she spoke into the darkness, her voice carrying just the hint of uncertainty. “Grant?”
The sound of his name startled him into absolute stillness. She must know an animal had walked into the kitchen. Yet she called out to him.
Even if he’d wanted to speak, he couldn’t do that now. Not as a wolf. And as a wolf, he didn’t dare approach her. Instead he made a wide circle around her chair, blood roaring in his brain. She didn’t move, didn’t say anything more.
Without looking at her, he walked on past, then into the hall and up the stairs. When he reached his room, he quietly closed the door. In his mind he said the words that would reverse the process of transformation.
Once again, his limbs lengthened and contorted. Once again, animal fur changed to human flesh, and his eyes lost some, but not all, of their keen night vision. He stood naked in the darkness, breathing hard, his pulse still pounding.
She had called his name. How much did she understand?
More than an ordinary woman might.
ANTONIA sat in the darkness, longing to doubt her own senses, yet knowing that she would only be fooling herself. Her hearing was quite good. The click of claws had told her that a four-legged animal was crossing the kitchen floor, staying as far as he could from her chair before reaching the hall.
An animal. A large dog. Or a wolf.
She might have gotten up and run screaming from her own house. But she was no coward. And she was trained to interpret what she saw in the tarot cards. So she stayed where she was, working her way patiently through layers of logic.
She could throw that logic aside. Or she could accept the evidence of her own senses.
This evening, she had been trying to unravel the puzzle of Grant Marshall. And she had sensed he was the human aspect of the wolf who had been invading the cards for weeks.
Then the real wolf had somehow opened the back door and walked into the kitchen like he belonged there.
There were two more possibilities, of course. She could be losing her marbles, or she had made it all up out of her own needs and desires.
But she didn’t think either one of those was true.
Which left her with Grant Marshall and the wolf.
Was he really some creature beyond normal human experience?
Falling back on old habits, she laid out the cards again. Her practiced fingers could identify each one from the braille markings, but her mind was too scattered to call up the pictures.
One thought drove everything else from her mind. She had heard a wolf in the kitchen. And if she was right about that, and if she was sane, she should be terrified of the man upstairs.
Yet he had awakened feelings inside her she had long suppressed. And now she wondered if she had recognized his death wish because she was half dead herself and hadn’t wanted to ad
mit it.
She didn’t feel half dead now. Her heart was thumping inside her chest, and her ears strained for some sound from the second floor. Standing, she walked to the bottom of the stairs and clutched the newel post, her head raised toward the second floor. She could hear him moving around. Was he going to cut and run?
She wanted to influence his decision. But the ball was in his court now. So she turned and went into the lounge where she sat down in one of the comfortable armchairs.
GRANT climbed into jeans and a tee shirt, then paced the room, wondering what he was going to do next. Pack his bag and leave? Confront her?
Since Marcy’s death, he had been afraid of nothing because nothing could happen to him that was worse than what he’d already experienced.
He was afraid now. Afraid of facing the extraordinary woman who was waiting for him to come downstairs.
Thinking he might as well get it over with, he pulled on socks and running shoes, then opened the door again and descended the steps.
“I’m in here,” she said from the shadows of the sitting room.
The quaver in her voice told him she was no steadier than he.
She was still in darkness. Maybe to make the confrontation easier for him. Or maybe because light was the last thought that entered her mind when she was nervous.
He stopped in the entrance to the room and cleared his throat to make sure she knew he was between her and the door.
Now he could see her rigid shape in one of the chairs.
“Do you want me to leave?” he asked.
“Is that what you’re planning?”
For months, there had been only two plans in his mind. Kill the monster and end his own pain. Suddenly he could see a glimmer of light beyond the monster’s death.
He shoved his hands into his pocket. “How did you know that was me?”
He heard her drag in a breath and let it out in a rush. “For weeks, I’ve seen the wolf.”
“How?”
“In the cards. He invaded the pictures, like he had every right to be there. He crept into the scenes where he shouldn’t be. And I didn’t know what it meant. But I knew he was coming here.”
Cravings Page 25
