by Tess Grant
The fluorescent light over the kitchen sink buzzed, shaking and jumping like a mechanical firefly. Bright light, dim light, bright light, dim light. The M1 lay on the kitchen table in its oscillating glow. A piece of notebook paper fluttered to the pitted wooden floor as she picked up the lethal paperweight.
Four words only in Phinney’s block letters. “I knew you’d come.”
Slinging the supple leather strap over her shoulder, she took an odd comfort from the way the gun nestled against her back. There was no time to take solace from the stars tonight; she would take it where she could.
Kitty bolted down the steps, the path a dark swath against the silver weeds leading her to the woods. She jogged on, too afraid to look at her watch now. I wouldn’t be able to see those stupid bees anyhow. Geez, I need something that lights up.
Already the waiting stillness that she had felt the other two times was here under the trees. The woods held its breath, the very air eerie and thick. She made for their safe spot following the path Phinney had marked. The dim straight shadows of the sentinel oaks were close enough that she thought she might make it before the storm hit, but a strange ululating cry wafted through the trees.
“Shit,” Kitty breathed aloud. The safe spot wasn’t more than fifty yards from here. Shots popped off ahead, and she heard a roar from Phinney. A whisper floated through her head from a day long past, “If we can’t kill it in one or two shots, we may as well hang it up.”
She started to run, stickers snagging at her legs, gun bumping into her hip. Everything conspired to slow her down. Another crack from the .45 ahead. She felt something—fear, rage, both—leaking up out of the depths of her brain. Small bubbles coalesced like the silver in the crucible until her brain burned with it. “If we can’t kill it in one or two shots…, if we can’t kill it in one or two shots…”
Bursting into the clearing with her own roar, she snapped the gun around to the front.
Seeing what was happening in the clearing made the rational part of Kitty Irish want to weep and vomit and run away. But the primal Kitty who lived in the twisted convolutions of her animal brain made her pull the gun hard to her shoulder, plant her feet and draw a bead. The werewolf had breached the punji sticks, and Phinney was down.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Phinney’s arm was thrown over his head, trying to protect his face. The werewolf had the old man’s forearm in its massive jaws. With his other hand, Phinney repeatedly thudded the butt of the .45 into the side of the shaggy head. He must have been out of ammunition.
Without a thought, she double-checked her aim on the wolf’s vitals immediately behind the front legs and squeezed the trigger. The bolt shot backwards, ejecting the cartridge and racking another with a satisfying metallic thunk. At the whistle and crack of her shot, Phinney dropped the hand holding the .45 down so he was nowhere in her field of fire. She swung the muzzle instantly toward the immense ugly head and squeezed off another round. The great bulk of the werewolf dropped, flattening Phinney beneath it. The bolt thunked again, and she stalked forward in a half crouch.
The hulk lay unmoving, crushing Phinney beneath it. She dropped the gun down to her side, keeping it with her just in case, and leapt toward the jumble in front of the tangled brush pile. The carcass was huge and it smelled awful. Her muscles trembled so hard she could barely get any purposeful movements out of them. Come on, Kit, get it together.
Using the barrel, she prodded the rib cage. She couldn’t see it breathing, and from what she knew, it wasn’t cunning enough to play dead. Tossing the carbine away and falling to her knees, she shoved hard at the thing, hands sinking deep into bloodstained fur. “Come on, move,” she pleaded.
She jammed her shoulder into its side, trying to roll it. The werewolf began to change as she pushed, fur dropping away in chunks. The blood darkening her hands foamed away painlessly, but the sticky heat of it still coated her fingers and wrists. As the metamorphosis continued, Kitty was able to push the body off the old man. Flat dark hair trailed across her arm as the lifeless form flopped off, and she caught a glimpse of pale skin. Goth girl. Kitty felt the shock in her gut.
Phinney moaned. At the sound, she hunched over her friend and saw the blood soaking the fabric of his shirt. The shock amped into anger and she clenched her fists.
The wind tired of holding its breath and exhaled. The grass swirled, and the girl disappeared. Along with the dust, all the adrenaline flowed out of her in a rush. Weakly, she slumped down in the grass next to the old man.
“Kevin?” His head faced away from her and he spoke to the shadows. She could barely hear his voice, muffled by the mess flung over his face. His sleeve hung in tatters, dark with blood. His breath came in heaves.
Kevin? She shook her head. What had he said about that name? Then she remembered Phinney handing her the cricket. I haven’t had a partner since Kevin—that’s what he’d said. It had to be Thompson’s first name. He must be going into shock, thinking she was someone else.
She drew a breath but before she could speak, he called out, louder. “Kevin?”
She cast a glance under the trees in the direction Phinney called. Nothing. Then her head snapped back. In the gloom—was there one shadow darker than the rest? She sucked in a quick breath, blinked, and whatever she had conjured up in there was gone.
“No, it’s me, Phinney,” she said. “It’s Kitty.”
At the sound of her voice, he struggled to sit up. “I knew you’d come.”
“If I’d been here earlier—”
“If you’d been any later, I’d be dead.”
She scrambled up, grabbing his wrist and helping him stand. As he came face to face with her, she saw the blood streaking his cheeks as though it were some grotesque war paint.
“Phinney, your arm—”
“Where’s the carcass?” he interrupted.
“It’s gone.” She raised a finger to point, but Phinney was already staggering away, supporting his injured arm with his good one.
She went after him, trying to get in front of him, but every time she got close, he turned as if hiding what he cradled. “Did you get bitten?” she asked stupidly, her head leaden.
He snorted. “I sure as hell did. I’m almost afraid to look. How’s that for the greatest generation for you?”
“Maybe it’s blood from the wolf.”
He moaned. “Uhhh. For blood, it hurts like hell. I think I’m going to throw up.” He leaned over and his back heaved but nothing came up.
She put an arm around him as he retched again. The bones in his shoulders poked into her arm. He was so frail. He stood upright, blinking slowly and wincing. Looking back at the patch of crushed grass he’d been lying in, he said again, “Where’s the carcass?”
“Gone,” she said, moving to face him.
“It’s supposed to be the last one. Where the hell did it go?”
“We’ll figure it out later. Maybe you’re wrong, and they all disappear.”
“Maybe I’m wrong all right, and it’s not the last one.”
He swayed a little and she noticed the blood dripping off his tattered shirtsleeve. She tried to remember what her mother had told her about shock. Keep him warm? Or was it give him something sugary? He tottered toward a patch of brilliant moonlight, pulling at the plaid shreds. Kitty followed, drawn by a morbid fascination. The skin she could see was a mixture of red and white. Her stomach flip-flopped as more blood dripped into the grass, clinging thickly to the leaves. This kind of blood didn’t disappear.
She stopped, trying to quell the tide of nausea that was rising. Phinney’s back was to her, and he was staggering sideways. In all her days with him and his flask, she’d never seen him drunk, but he probably would have looked like this if she had. He reached the streaming moonlight and pulled at his sleeve, hissing as the tatters came away in his hand.
“I’ve got a work shirt in the pack.” His voice was hoarse but stronger. He planted his feet wide and stood still. “Grab it and we’
ll wrap it up, try to stop the bleeding.”
He was coming around. It was going to be okay. Kitty fled to the pack, feeling relief flood through her. Her stomach heaved once more and was still.
“Kitty?” Something in the way he said her name made her forget the shirt and rush back to him. Was it fear? That would be a first in all the time she had known him, everything they had gone through. He was staring at his arm, face unreadable. She came close. The arm was whole. Nothing but a marble white forearm with some red streaks. She touched it with a forefinger. The skin was warm and firm.
“Thank God.” Kitty burst out. “It was just blood from the wolf. We should have wiped it first thing. Would have saved us some freak-out time.”
“It bit me.”
She didn’t want to hear it. “You’re still freaked out, Phinney. There’s nothing there. It was loose blood. It needed to drip clear.”
“It ripped me up. Bit me.”
Kitty shook her head stubbornly. “Well, it’s not there now. We both thought we saw something, and we were wrong.”
He ran his other hand over his arm testing its solidness, flipping a finger through the tatters of his sleeve. “Kitty,” he started, raising his eyes to study her face. He paused as if reconsidering, touching the smooth forearm again. In a rush, coming to a decision, he said, “You’re right. I guess I panicked for a little bit.”
“It’s over, Phinney. That’s the last one.”
“Where is it?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”
His eyes strayed off her face to the trees beyond the clearing.
“It’s over.” She wanted to hear him say it, had to hear him say it.
“I guess,” he said, and his voice was lifeless in the dark.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“So…what’ll it be?” The woman at the ice cream window looked as bored as she had the first day of summer. She ran a rag over the counter, mopping up the spilled drips of ice cream from the previous customer.
Kitty stared at her. What made a werewolf stand out in its human form? How would she know if she saw one? Both she and Phinney had discounted the newspaper clippings from the spotters about the missing girl who wasn’t missing, and that mistake cost both of them. Kitty sat right next to the Goth girl in the library, thinking she had bad postnasal drip and needed an antihistamine. The whole time, the girl was actually scenting her hunter.
If there was no way to tell…
“Hey,” the woman said, snapping her fingers. “What’ll it be?”
Kitty jumped a little. What difference did it make? She and Phinney had finished the job.
She ran over the list of flavors. Somehow, Full Moon Fever didn’t seem like the right choice this time. “How about Blue Moon?” ‘Cause I am not going out into that woods again until there is one.
“Coming up,” the counter lady said. She pointed over Kitty’s shoulder. “What’s he having?”
Kitty glanced over her shoulder at Joe. “Chocolate.”
He looked pleased that she’d remembered.
“Why don’t you try something new? Live a little?” Over Joe’s shoulder, she saw the blue Caprice turn into the parking lot. Whipping around, she said, “One more Blue Moon.”
“Mmm-hmm.” The woman grumbled her way to the cone dispenser.
If crankiness counted as a werewolf trait, Kitty could put a check next to this woman’s name. Of course, that meant she’d have to mark her mom’s name too, so that method was probably out.
She pushed at Joe’s shoulders. “Get a table for three. Phinney just drove in.”
Joe and Phinney were mostly quiet as she rushed over, ice cream dripping down her
fingers.
“Hurry, it’s melting,” she said as she held out the top-heavy cones.
Phinney didn’t look well. The skin under his eyes was thin and tinged purple. He held out a hand for the cone. “This is a good flavor,” he said, without any real enthusiasm.
Kitty swirled her tongue around the cone to catch drips. “Now I can put my own name on my Christmas presents.”
Both Phinney and Joe looked blank.
“I owed you ice cream,” she said pointedly to Phinney.
“Oh, yeah, I forgot.” He gave his cone one halfhearted lick.
Kitty frowned. Where was Phinney’s spark? She tried to catch Joe’s eye, but he was watching the parking lot. Following his eyes, she saw Jenna climbing out of a nearly new Ford.
“Cool,” Kitty said. “It’s Jenna. Do you know I haven’t seen or talked to her since we went swimming?”
“Me neither,” answered Joe. Deb climbed out of the driver’s seat, blonde ponytail bouncing. “And now we know where she’s been hiding.”
Kitty got up and met Jenna at the picket fence that divided the tables from the parking lot. “Hey Jenn, what’s up?”
“Hey,” said Jenna, and her voice had the wintry feel it had before the thaw around the fourth of July.
Kitty drew back a step. She hadn’t called Jenna, it was true, but Jenna certainly hadn’t called her either. She didn’t feel like riding the seesaw anymore. She raised her fingers in a peace sign and walked back to her own table.
“What’s she up to?” asked Joe.
Kitty rolled her eyes. Phinney stood up, stretched a little and pulled his car keys out of his pocket. “I’d better go. You two are going to have a tableful in a minute, and you’ll need the seat.”
He moved out toward the parking lot, dropping his nearly untouched cone into the bin as he passed the trash. Kitty frowned again. He really wasn’t himself. She saw him stop near the car door and pull the flask out of his hip pocket.
“Man, that guy is such a nasty old drunk.”
Kitty stiffened, then spun around and faced Jenna. “You don’t know anything about him.”
“I know a seventeen year old shouldn’t be hanging out with some loser old man.”
In her peripheral vision, Kitty saw Deb duck her head to hide a smile and knew she’d egged Jenna on. Joe watched the two of them as if it were a tennis match. No help from that quarter. This wasn’t what she felt like doing today, but if it was time, so be it. Bring it on.
“You’ve been weird all summer,” said Jenna. “Hanging out with that old man like he’s your friend or something. What is going on?”
“He is my friend. And so what if I hang out with him? You’d be weird too if—”
“Yeah, I’ve heard it, Kitty. So has everybody else, and we’re all sick of it. My dad’s gone, blah, blah, blah.”
Joe’s head came up at that, and his half-smirk at the catfight disappeared. “Jenna.” There was a warning in his tone.
Kitty was white-hot with anger, stung to the point of tears. It was bad enough going after Phinney, but this was even worse. She refused to cry in front of Jenna. “I’m happy for you. Happy both your parents are here, happy they’ll get to see you graduate. I’m glad you don’t have to sit here and watch the hardware store sign to see who died this week. I’m glad you don’t have to lay awake and wonder what it will be like if it says, ‘Thank you, Sergeant Irish’ up there.”
Jenna’s face blanched, but Kitty was too far gone to care.
“And if I want to hang out with some old guy, I will. You have absolutely no idea how much you owe him.”
Jenna looked as if she had been slapped. “What is…”
“I know you thought I’d be the same old Kitty. Well, guess what? I grew a backbone over the summer.” She turned around and started for the car. Her cone went into the dumpster next to Phinney’s.
Joe met her at the Escort and pulled his keys out of his pocket. “I guess that’s that. Jump in. I’ll run you home.”
* * *
Kitty jogged across the meadow. A blue bird swooped in low, chiding her for the invasion, and she flapped a hand at it. Jumping the porch steps two at a time, she skidded in close to the door. Pushing her head against the screen, she rattled the knob. “Phinney? Phinney?”
&nb
sp; A door shut in the dim interior, and she saw Phinney approaching from down the hall. He came to the door looking a little guilty, a little boy with his hand in the cookie jar. He waved her in.
“Hey, I came to see how you’re doing. You didn’t look so hot at the ice cream store.” She narrowed her eyes, scanning from his face to the kitchen and down the hall. Something in the cabin bothered her, but she couldn’t place it.
“I got the start of a summer cold or something,” he said, shoving his hands deep into his pockets.
“I was worried. You weren’t yourself.”
He walked to the kitchen and started filling the enamel teapot.
Kitty started talking in a rush. “You met Jenna at the pizza place, remember? She’s the one who showed up when we were having ice cream. We’ve been having lots of ups and downs all summer, and I finally…” Kitty realized she was babbling. He wasn’t responding anyway. As she quieted, she realized what was bothering her. The smell of the propane torch still lingered in the air. She checked the table but there was no torch, no crucible. Her gaze flicked to the window. No molds on the sill. She crossed the kitchen and stood behind him. “I smell the torch. Have you been making bullets?”
The water spilled over the top of the teapot and ran down the drain but he didn’t turn the spigot. She reached past him and shut the water off. “Phinney?”
He shrugged and looked away.
She looked down the hall. “Were you hiding them from me?”
He took a long time to cap the teapot. “Hand me that dishtowel, will you?”
She pulled a towel off the handle of the stove and flipped it his way. “Why would you make bullets? We’re free.” She raised her hands in the air and spun around in a circle.
Phinney stood silently, wiping the water droplets that beaded on the side of the pot. After placing it on the burner, he pulled out his flask.
