Holding the partial change was harder than she could have imagined. Her muscles felt like rivulets of lava and her nerves screamed as she exerted control. The run seemed to go on forever.
Finally, just as the moon began to set, she saw the lights of Mountainview. She dragged a final effort from her exhausted body and left the boy on the porch of a house on the outskirts of town. Then she staggered back toward where she’d left her clothes after ringing the doorbell.
She found her clothes and collapsed on top of them, letting her Becca self come back. The change back happened quickly this time, at least. Later she couldn’t remember getting dressed or dragging her leaden footsteps back to Hal and Marybeth’s. She made it as far as the porch swing before she collapsed. The sleep that took her then was like falling into a well, deep and dark and utterly black.
Chapter 7
~
Marybeth and Hal woke her up when they found her on the porch. Which left her coming up with a good story, before coffee even. She didn’t want them thinking she was the sort of divorced woman who spent her time in honky-tonks in hopes of finding herself another man but it was the most plausible explanation. Becca let her words spill over each other until they didn’t make much sense, but the general import was clear enough.
Embarrassment drove them all inside and Hal turned on the TV while Marybeth silently handed Becca a cup of coffee. Then the news came on and everyone stopped worrying about Becca and her late night doings. The headline that the Jensen boy had been found alive was national news. Apparently the kid was still in shock and his family wasn’t letting him talk to reporters yet. Becca uttered a silent prayer, hoping that he’d just think the whole thing was a really bad dream and forget about anything he’d seen.
The next headline was that his kidnapper, one James Harrison, had been found dead in the woods. His body had been badly torn up, like he’d been taken down by a pack of wild dogs. The reporters speculated on this until Becca wished the linoleum beneath her feet would open up and swallow her whole.
She opted to sneak off to the shower instead, then into the den to get some more sleep. Her dreams were full of running and blood and noise, but nothing was clear. Try as she might, she couldn’t remember exactly how she’d felt when James Harrison died. It was all one big blur. In a way, that was worse than remembering. She should feel a little guilty, she was sure of it.
Her nightmares got worse over the next couple of nights, the images clearer. She attacked a faceless man, her ears filling with his screams, and then something happened to wake her up. After the third time it happened, she thought she finally got it: she was still a werewolf and moving away hadn’t changed that. This meant that she could look forward to changing again next month. And next month, it might not be a child kidnapper and rapist whose throat she tore out.
Fears and all, she still tried to give Mountainview a chance, as if she really had the option to stay if she wanted to. She took long walks through the downtown and beyond. Plastic gingerbread and all, it was a pleasant little town. There were apartments she could rent and a couple of part-time jobs she could string together until she got back on her feet. People were friendly.
But it wasn’t home. And she had no friends here, no—and she hated to use the word–Pack so there was no one for her to really talk to. Even with all that had happened, she missed them, all of them, Shelly and Erin and Pete most of all.
After a week, she loaded her bag up into her car and thanked her cousins with mixed emotions. It seemed to her that Marybeth and Hal weren’t too sorry to see her go, but then, she wasn’t all that sorry to be leaving either. She started down the road toward Wolf’s Point.
All the while, her brain spun with the worries and fears and questions that she’d hoped to avoid. Why had the werewolf thing happened to her in the first place? She couldn’t even remember a dog bite, let alone a wolf one, yet here she was, changing just like in that old Lon Chaney movie. Now she knew she couldn’t outrun the curse or whatever it was but she wasn’t giving up hope that there might be a cure out there, one that didn’t involve a silver bullet.
But to find that out, she needed people to talk to and a town with the right resources. Surely if Shelly and the rest of the Club knew so much about turning into wolves, they would know something about not changing into one. Maybe. She tried really hard not to remember everything that had been said about magic and being called until she ran to the end of her limited information. Time enough for those conversations when she got home.
Her mood lifted with each mile closer to Wolf’s Point. It wasn’t like she really felt like she had much of a choice in coming back, but she couldn’t help herself. At least there was the familiar to fall back on. Well, that and a sense of belonging, of rightness. It seemed right, for example, that the first thing she did when she got into town was to park near Millie’s Cafe and go in for pie.
No sooner had she greeted the regulars and settled in for a giant slice of apple pie than the door swung open. Becca looked up to meet the stare of the aspiring werewolf slayer she’d met by the river, what seemed like another lifetime ago now. The other woman was pretty banged up. Her arm was in a sling and she was wearing a couple of bandages, but apart from that, she appeared to be quite alive.
Becca found herself nearly giddy with relief. Killing a stranger like Harrison was one thing. Killing someone she’d recommended Millie’s pies to was quite a different matter.
As if she’d been invited, the woman walked over and dropped into the chair across from Becca. That made Becca shiver all over with all kinds of feelings she wasn’t about to express in Millie’s, and her sense of relief vanished. This woman had come here specifically to hunt her friends. Her, too, for that matter, not that she knew that. Now here she was acting like she owned the place.
“Looks like this town has a wolf problem, after all,” her companion said by way of greeting. She gestured at herself. “Oya. Remember me: I am the wind that brings change.”
Becca could feel her hackles rise. What was this, amateur drama night? “Indeed. Well, I’m Becca and I’d say I was pleased to meet you but I think you know that would be a lie. I’m sorry you don’t like our woods. Or our wolves. When are you leaving town?”
Her hands were clenching the edge of the table, her nails growing longer and sinking into the wood, or so her imagination told her. She tried to make herself relax, tried to calm the surging tide of her blood. It wasn’t as if she could change in broad daylight, after all. Or could she? The thought made her break out in a cold sweat.
Oya glared at her. “Somehow, I’m pretty sure you know exactly what happened the other night. My friends and I ran into some monsters in the woods. Stuart…well, they’re not sure he’s going to make it. And I think you told them about us.” She rubbed her hand over her eyes, almost like she was wiping away a tear.
A cold chill went through Becca. Had she hurt this Stuart guy, whoever he was? Or had someone else? Another thought replaced it almost as quickly: it had been self-defense. The Pack was ambushed, fired upon. Erin had been wounded, maybe others. Whatever happened to these people, they’d had it coming.
Becca’s mood switched fast enough to give her whiplash. Who was this woman to call her friends monsters? “Seems to me that when you go looking for monsters, that’s all you see. And sometimes you miss much scarier things.” Becca could feel her emotions swirling around like her insides were a washing machine. Great, she couldn’t suppress the thought, more hot flashes coming up.
“And sometimes, it’s just the monsters out there and they have to be stopped before they do any more damage.” The other woman’s eyes shone with a fanatic gleam, almost silver in the morning light. “That’s what happens when you don’t keep them under control.”
“Just what is it you have against wolves anyway? Seems to me they mind their own business when you mind yours.” A deep breath later and Becca had herself under control. She thought she knew what she was dealing with now. This woman, this Oya
, was like one of the hellfire preachers who came through once in awhile, preaching from their big tent in the park on the edge of town. Zealots and fanatics, she’d always thought they were, and this one seemed one of a kind with them.
Oya looked down at the table, her shoulders slumping a bit with the movement. She studied the tabletop for a minute before looking back up. “It’s not just any old wolf. It’s the kind you’ve got here. Wolves like yours killed my parents.” She stared back at Becca, her face gone suddenly haggard.
It struck Becca then that it wasn’t so much grief as it was emptiness, a gaping chasm that had to be filled with a purpose. She almost reached out for Oya’s hand on the table to try and bring some comfort, just like she would have done with any other woman. There was something about this woman that drew Becca in, some kind of kinship that she didn’t quite understand but responded to nevertheless.
But her story couldn’t be true, it just couldn’t. Her Pack would never kill innocents, right? So maybe the parents weren’t so innocent. Even so, she could hardly ask if the woman’s dead family had been drug dealers or murderers or something.
Doubt gnawed at her, burrowing its way in. She tried to banish it by thinking about her friends, her Pack. If they wouldn’t do something like that, Oya must be lying. Unless there were other packs. The enormity of that thought left her speechless for a couple of minutes. She hadn’t even thought about there being more of their kind out there somewhere. Cold shivers danced up her arms and she rubbed at her skin feverishly. Then she noticed Oya watching her, the gleam in her eye suggesting that she knew she was getting to Becca.
A mild surge of pure annoyance swept through her, warming her right back up. She made herself think about James Harrison in the woods. Protection took many forms; if wolves like hers had killed Oya’s parents, there had to be a good reason. Or maybe it was all a mistake and they’d been killed by ordinary wolves or wild dogs. She had to cling to that or turn herself in at the sheriff’s office this very minute.
“I think you’ve got the wrong idea about the wolves here. But if you can’t get past thinking of them the way you do, Wolf’s Point isn’t the town for you.” Becca could hear the door jangling behind her as people came and went but otherwise Millie’s was getting oddly quiet. It felt as if everyone there was listening in.
“You warning me out of town?” Oya’s voice was nearly a growl now and Becca bit back one of her own.
Taking a deep breath, she met the other’s stare. “Yep, I guess I am. I suggest you take your van and your buddies and go back to whatever role-playing crap you were doing before you appointed yourselves Buffy wannabes and came to Wolf’s Point. You’re not wanted or needed here.”
The other woman glared at her and started to say something, then looked over Becca’s shoulder and shut her mouth. Her face changed, her expression shifting in a weird way, like it was doing something it wasn’t meant to do. Her eyes glowed for a minute, then she shoved her chair back and stood. “You’ll pay for what happened here. And for my parents. We’ll be back,” she snarled as she stomped out.
Becca wondered what Oya had seen in her face that made her leave and she couldn’t resist a glance around Millie’s. Everyone to either side of her was eating their lunch and appeared oblivious, but behind her was a different story. Erin, Molly, Shelly, Gladys, Mrs. Hui and all the other women of a certain age from the Wolf’s Point Women’s Club stood behind her, watching the aspiring slayer get into her van and drive away.
It was a sight that Becca found both profoundly creepy and infinitely comforting. Shelly leaned over and squeezed her shoulder. “Welcome back.” Then she and the others walked out together, all of them, except Erin who sat down in the recently vacated chair.
“Just one question,” Becca said. “What are you doing when your cast comes off?”
Chapter 8
~
Everything started out differently in her head. Becca meant to talk to Erin about the whole whitewater rafting trip idea. She knew that she wanted to say that. Then she remembered that Erin had known what was going to happen to her and hadn’t said a thing to warn her ahead of time. A real friend would have done that much.
So what rolled out of her mouth was, “Why the hell didn’t you tell me? Why me anyway? Don’t give me any more of the whole ‘the magic picks its own’ crap, either.” She blushed the minute the words were out of her mouth; Ed always hated it when she got angry and used words like “hell.” She had rolled it around in her mouth before she said it, too, savoring it like it was a chocolate or something.
Erin flinched and studied her hands. “What exactly,” she said finally, “was I supposed to say? ‘Guess what, neighbor? I’m not sure, but we all think you might turn into a lady werewolf on the full moon, seeing as menopause is kicking in and this is Wolf’s Point and you’ve got a wolfy sort of vibe. It just works that way around here for some of us. But then again, maybe you won’t.’ You’d have really believed that story, wouldn’t you?” She scowled back at Becca.
They stared at each other across the table like strange dogs until Erin slapped her palm on the table and looked away with a frustrated sigh. “Look, I know this is all hard to take in. But I thought that since you came back—”
“That I’m okay with turning into a monster once a month? Plus an extra night, which believe me, came as a terrific bonus. That I’m okay with hurting and killing people? Okay with something like me killing some woman’s parents? Yeah, it all sounds hunky dory to me. Anything else I just need to roll with?” Becca crossed her arms and battled a new hot flash.
She tried not to remember the mountains and the man with his knife, tried not to feel the bloodlust that was humming along just under her skin. She could control this, she knew she could, if she only tried hard enough. A moment later, a bead of sweat trickled down her overheated forehead.
Erin looked stunned. “Huh? Who got killed? Those guys the other night had guns, Becca. They shot me, remember?” She gestured at the sling that held her injured arm with her good hand. “They would have killed all of us. And what do you mean by ‘an extra night’?”
Becca took a deep breath. “What about Oya’s parents? We’ll get back to me in a minute.”
“Who’s Oya? The one who just stormed out?” Erin frowned at Becca’s nod. “First of all, why do you believe her? It’s not like she or the other Nesters have a corner on truth. She’s new this time around but her buddies lied about us the last time they came through, tried to rile up the sheriff and a bunch of the local rednecks about the ‘monsters in the woods.’ It took nearly a year to get that settled down, Becca. Do you think everyone here loves us?”
“Well, you all make it seem like that, what with Lizzie Blackhawk and her whole ‘honor to be called thing.’ ”
“Lizzie’s smart. The sheriff, not so much. If he hadn’t been convinced that they were just out of towners here to mess things up for a thrill, we’d have been in serious trouble. And then what would have happened with this town? The pack protects Wolf’s Point and keeps it livable. I don’t see you moving to Mountainview, do I?”
“I thought about it. I tried.”
“Yet you’re back here. It’s harder to leave than that, Becca. Like it or not, you’re one of us now. The magic does call its own and once it does, you’re in it for the long haul.” Erin blew a breath out between puffed cheeks, and seemed to blow some of her anger out with it. “But I, for one, am glad you’re back.” She glanced sidelong at Becca and grinned.
Becca flushed a little more. “So how did you feel about it when it happened to you? And how often did you change?”
“Ummm…just the standard once a month. Why?” Erin took a quick glance around. “On the other hand, that may have to be a topic for a different time and place. We’re starting to attract a bit too much interest.” Erin’s voice pitched lower and Becca looked up to check out the rest of the Millie’s crowd in astonishment. Sure enough, there didn’t seem to be as much conversation as she expecte
d, or quite as many familiar faces.
She had very nearly decided to change the topic, and rafting was going to be the first thing that came out of her mouth. But then she looked back into Erin’s blue-gray eyes across the table and she chickened out. There was no other word for it.
What happened instead was that she agreed to come by later and help out with the yard work while her neighbor’s arm healed, maybe pick up some groceries and do some cleaning and talking. Then she bolted.
Now Becca was staring down at the water rushing by under the bridge and trying to figure out where to begin sorting out her problems, there being so many to choose from. For starters, there was the whole werewolf thing. The hot flashes weren’t so great either, but that wasn’t all of it. The weird knot of emotion she had started to feel whenever Erin Adams was around was icing on the cake. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to think about that too hard.
So for variety, she thought about Oya’s story and wondered again if any of it was true. She knew she didn’t want it to be but she’d never thought of herself as someone who cut and ran when she didn’t want to know something. There had to be a right thing to do. Trouble was, what was it and what should she do about it?
Her cell phone buzzed and she pulled it out of her purse and looked at the number. Whoever this was, they weren’t in her contact list and she didn’t want to deal with them now. But then she was feeling that a lot today and it had to stop sooner or later. She let out a weary sigh and clicked the answer button. “Hello?”
There was a pause before the voice on the other end answered, “That you, Becca? It’s Ed.”
Becca nearly dropped the phone in the river. She thought about clicking it off instead. But curiosity won out. “Ed? You got a new number, I gather. What the hell do you want?” She pictured him fidgeting in that way that he did, moving from one foot to another while he rubbed his bald patch.
Silver Moon (A Women of Wolf's Point Novel) Page 6
