Kitty Takes a Holiday kn-3

by Carrie Vaughn

  This cabin was not built for three people who weren't actually all sleeping together.

  "Fine." I'd lost a lot of sleep over the last couple of days and was tired. Before I trudged over to the sofa, I faced Cormac. "If Ben wakes up, tell me, okay? He'll be con­fused, I'll need to talk to him."

  "I'll wake you up. Don't worry."

  "I can't stop worrying. Sorry."

  "Go to sleep, Norville." He raised his hand, started to reach out—for a moment, he seemed about to touch me. I braced for it, my heartbeat speeding up—what was he doing? But he turned around and left the cabin before anything happened.

  Slowly, I sat on the sofa, then wrapped myself in the blanket. The cushions were ancient, far too squishy to be comfortable. But it wasn't the floor, so I lay down.

  This was a mistake, I thought as I fell asleep. Cormac and I staying in the same house—absolutely a mistake.

  I woke up to find Cormac putting a log into the stove. I didn't feel cold. I probably would have let the fire burn out. Outside the window, the sky was pale. It was morning again already. He closed the door to the stove, then sat back on the rug and watched the flames through the tiny grill in front.

  I hadn't moved, and he hadn't noticed that I was awake, watching him. Shadows still darkened his eyes, and his hair had dried ruffled. He'd taken off his jacket and boots—and the gun belt. He wore a black T-shirt and jeans. His arms were pale, muscular.

  Suddenly he looked over and caught my gaze staring back.

  I stilled the fluttering in my stomach and tried not to react. Just stay cool.

  "Is 'Rosco' still out there?" I said.

  "Yeah. He fell asleep around two a.m. I expect he'll wake up soon and get out of here."

  "And no dead animal on my porch?"

  "None."

  I turned my face into the pillow and giggled, "If it weren't happening to me, this would be downright hilarious."

  "I did find this." He held out his hand.

  I looked at it first, then gingerly opened my hand to accept it. It was a cross made of barbed wire, a single strand twisted back on itself, about the length of my fin­ger. The steel was smooth, the barbs sharp. Not worn or rusted, which meant this hadn't been sitting outside for very long.

  "You think this is from my sacrificial fan club?"

  "Could be. If so, the question is Did they leave it on purpose, or did they just drop it? If it's on purpose, then it means something. It's supposed to do something."

  "What?"

  "I don't know."

  I could almost feel malevolence seeping out of the thing. Or maybe the barbs just looked scary. "What am I supposed to do with it?"

  "I recommend finding somebody with a forge and have them melt the thing into slag. Just in case."

  He thought it was cursed, and he brought the thing into my house? I groaned with frustration. I wanted to throw it, but I set it on the floor instead.

  "Why a cross?"

  "There's a dozen magic systems that borrow from Christianity. This part of the country, it might be an evan­gelical sect, or maybe some kind of curandero."

  "Curandero. Mexican folk healer, right?"

  "They do all kinds of stuff. Sometimes, they go bad."

  "You know a lot about this sort of thing."

  "It helps, knowing as much as I can. The people who hire me—they're believers. They have to believe in were­wolves and magic to call me in the first place. The sym­bols may be different, the rituals are different, but they all have one thing in common: they believe in the unbeliev­able. You know what I'm talking about. You're one of them. One of the believers."

  "I only believe because of what I am. I don't know anything about any of it."

  "Hell, I don't know anything. This is just scratching the surface. There's a whole world of freaky shit out there."

  He was being uncharacteristically chatty. I didn't know if it was stress or sleeplessness. Maybe something about sitting in a tiny cabin in front of a wood-burning stove on a cold morning made people personable.

  "How did you find out about the freaky shit? I found out the morning after I was attacked—the whole pack stood there telling me, 'Welcome to the family, have fun.' But who told you?"

  He smiled, but the expression was thin and cold. "I don't remember anyone telling me werewolves are real. I've always known. My family—we've been hunting lycan­thropes for over a hundred years. My dad taught me."

  "How old were you when he died?"

  He looked sharply at me. "Who told you he died?"

  "Ben."

  "Bastard," Cormac muttered.

  "That was all he said," I said quickly. "I asked how you two met and if you'd always been so humorless, and he said you had a right to be humorless. I asked why and he told me."

  He was staring at me, and I didn't like it. Among wolves, a stare was a challenge. The thought of a challenge from Cormac made the wolf inside me cringe in terror. I couldn't fight Cormac. I looked away, hugging the blanket tightly around me.

  "You still talk too much, you know that?" Cormac said.

  "I know."

  Finally, he said, "I was sixteen. I moved in with Ben and his folks after my dad died. His mother was my dad's sister."

  "Then Ben knew, too. He was part of the family history."

  "Hard to say. I think Aunt Ellen was just as happy to leave it all behind. Jesus, what am I going to tell her?"

  "Nothing," I said wryly. "At least not until the full moon falls on Christmas and Ben has to explain why he's not coming home for the holidays."

  "Spoken with the voice of experience."

  "Yup. If Ben wasn't in on the werewolf hunting from the start, how did you drag him into it?"

  "I didn't drag him—"

  "Okay, how did you get him started in it?"

  "Why do you want to know all this stuff about me?"

  "You're interesting."

  Cormac didn't say anything to that, just went back to staring at me with a little too much focus.

  I said, "Could you not look at me like that? It's making me nervous."

  "But you're interesting."

  Oh, my. That clenching feeling in my gut wasn't fear—not this time.

  I'd kissed Cormac once. It had been another situation like this. We were sitting and talking, and I let the urge overcome my better judgment. And he kissed back, for about a second, before he marched out of the room, call­ing me a monster.

  Too many incidents like that could give a girl a complex.

  He wasn't running away this time.

  I swung my legs over the edge of the couch and slipped to the floor. I ended up kneeling in front of him, where he was sitting, close enough to grab. And he still didn't run. In fact, he didn't move at all, like he was waiting for me to come to him. How did wolves do this? Weren't the boys supposed to chase the girls? He wasn't a wolf, though. He wouldn't understand the signals.

  Wolf was uncurling, overcoming her anxiety. Yeah, he was scary. Yeah, he was tough. That meant he could protect us. That was enough for her. That, and he smelled like he wanted me. He radiated warmth, and had a tang of sweat that wasn't even visible. A tension held him still as stone. All I had to do was touch him and break him out of his immobility. I raised my hand.

  "I—I can smell you." The voice was low and painfully hoarse.

  I must have jumped a foot. My heart raced like a jack­hammer and I got ready to run.

  Ben stood in the doorway to the bedroom, leaning against the wall. Still shirtless, his skin was pale, damp with sweat, and his hair was tangled. He only half opened his eyes, and he winced with what looked like confusion, like he didn't know where he was.

  "I can smell everything," he said, sounding like he had bronchitis. He touched his forehead; his hand was shaking.

  "Ben." I rushed to him, intending to take his arm and steer him back to bed. He wasn't well, he shouldn't have been up.

  As soon as I touched him, though, he flinched back. He crashed against the wall, his face stiff
with terror. "No, you smell—you smell wrong—"

  His new instincts identified me as another werewolf—a potential threat.

  I turned to call Cormac, but he was already beside Ben, holding his arm, trying to keep him still.

  "No, Ben. I'm safe. It's all right. Take a deep breath. Everything's okay." I tried to hold his face still, to make him smell me, to make him recognize that scent as friendly, but he lurched away. He would have fallen if Cormac hadn't been holding him.

  I put myself next to him again, intending to help drag him to the bed. This time, Ben leaned closer to me, squint­ing as if trying to focus. His eyesight was changing, too.

  "Kitty?"

  "Yeah, it's me," I said, relieved that he'd recognized me.

  He slumped against me, resting his head on my shoul­der, like he wanted to hug me. He found my hand and squeezed it tightly. "I don't remember what happened. I don't remember any of it," he murmured into my shirt.

  Except that he remembered that something had hap­pened, and that he should have remembered. A lot of his agitation was probably stress—the anxiety that came from blocking out the trauma.

  I held him still for a moment, whispering nonsense comforts at his ear until he stopped shaking. Cormac, look­ing stiff and awkward, was still propping him upright.

  "Come on, Ben. Back to bed." He nodded, and I pulled his arm over my shoulder. Between us, Cormac and I walked him back to the bed. He sank onto it and fell back to sleep almost immediately. He kept hold of my hand. I waited until I was sure he was asleep, his breathing deep and regular, before I coaxed back his fingers and extricated myself from his grip.

  Cormac stood at the end of the bed, ran his hands through his hair, and blew out a frustrated sigh. "Is this normal?'

  I smoothed back the damp hair from Ben's face. "I don't know, I only know what I went through. I slept through the whole thing. At least, I only remember sleeping through the whole thing. I was hurt a lot worse than he is, though." I'd had my hip mauled and half my leg flayed. Not that I had any scars to prove it.

  "Don't lie to me. Is he going to be okay?"

  He kept asking me that. "What do I look like, some; kind of fortune-teller? I don't know."

  "What do you mean you don't know?"

  I glared at him, and part of the Wolf stared out of my eyes. I made the challenge and I didn't care if he could read it or not. "His body will be fine. Physically, he's heal­ing. Mentally—that's up to him. We won't know until he wakes up if this is going to drive him crazy or not."

  Cormac scrubbed a hand down his face and started pacing. Tension quivered along his whole body; sheer willpower was keeping him from breaking something.

  "Ben's tough," he said finally. "This won't drive him crazy. He'll be okay. He'll be fine." He said the words like they were a mantra. Like if he said them enough they'd have to be true.

  My glare melted into a look of pity. I wished I could find the right thing to say to calm him down. To convince him that yes, he'd done all he could. Cormac had never been weak. He'd never been this helpless, I'd bet. I won­dered if I'd have to worry about him going crazy, too.

  Crazier than he already was.

  Cormac left the room, and a moment later I heard the front door open and slam shut. I didn't run after him—I didn't dare leave Ben alone. I listened for the Jeep starting up, but it didn't. Cormac wasn't abandoning me to this mess. Maybe he just needed to take a walk.

  I brought the laptop into the bedroom, pulled a chair next to the bed, kept watch over Ben, and wrote.

  I wouldn't have wished lycanthropy on anyone, much less a friend. Life was hard enough without having some­thing like this to deal with. I'd seen the whole range of how people handled it. In some people, the strength and near-invulnerability went to their heads. They became bullies, reveling in the violence they were capable of. People who were already close to psychosis tumbled over the edge. One more mental handicap to deal with was too much. Some people became passive, letting it swallow them. And some people adapted. They made adjustments, and they stayed themselves.

  I regretted that I didn't know enough about Ben to guess which way he'd go.

  My cell phone rang, and I fielded the call from Sheriff Marks.

  "The deputy I had on the stakeout didn't see any sign of your perpetrator," he informed me.

  "You know he had the interior light on in his car half the time he was out here?" I replied.

  Marks was silent for a long time, and picturing the look on his face made me grin. "I'll have a talk with him," he said finally. "I'll try to have someone out there tonight, too. You let me know if you see anything."

  "Absolutely, Sheriff," I said.

  Hours passed, dusk fell, and Cormac still hadn't returned. I decided not to worry. He was a big boy, he could take care of himself. I certainly wasn't capable of babysitting both him and Ben.

  Ben hadn't stirred since the last time he passed out. I had no idea how long he had to stay like this before I had to start worrying. When I did start worrying, who was I supposed to call for help? The werewolf pack that had kicked me out of Denver? The Center for the Study of Paranatural Biol­ogy, the government research office that was undergoing reorganization after its former director disappeared—not that I knew anything about that.

  I stared at the laptop screen for so long I started to doze off. The words blurred, and even though the straight-backed kitchen chair I sat in wasn't particularly comfortable, I managed to curl up and let my head nod forward.

  That was when Ben spoke. "Hi."

  He didn't sound delirious or desperate. A little hoarse still, but it was the scratchy voice of someone getting over a cold. He lay on the bed and looked at me. One of his arms rested over the blanket that covered him, his fingers gripping the edge.

  I slid out of the chair, set the laptop aside, and moved to the edge of the bed.

  "Hey," I said. "How do you feel?"

  "Like crap."

  I smiled a little. "You should. You've had a crappy week."

  He chuckled, then coughed. I almost jumped up and down and started dancing. It was Ben. Ben was back, he hadn't gone crazy.

  "You seem awfully happy about my crappy week."

  "I'm happy to see you awake. You've been out of it."

  "Yeah." He looked away, studying the walls, the ceiling, the blanket covering him. Looking everywhere but at me.

  "How much do you remember?" I asked.

  He shook his head, meaning that he either didn't remem­ber anything or he wasn't going to tell me. I watched him, feeling anxious and motherly, wanting simultaneously to luck the blankets in tighter, pat his head, bring him a glass of water, and feed him. I wanted him to relax. I wanted to make everything better, and I didn't have the faintest idea how to do that. So I hovered, perched next to him, on the verge of wringing my hands.

  Then he said, his voice flat, "Why did Cormac bring me here?"

  "He thought I could help."

  "Why didn't he just shoot me?"

  As far as I knew, Cormac's guns were still under the bed. This bed. Ben didn't have to know that. What if Cormac was wrong, what if Ben did have the guts to shoot himself? What would I have to do to stop him? I couldn't let Ben die. I wouldn't let him—or Cormac—give up.

  I spoke quietly, stiff with frustration. "You'll have to ask him."

  "Where is he?"

  "I don't know. He went out."

  His gaze focused on me again, finally. A glimmer of the old Ben showed through. "How long have I been out of it?"

  "A couple of days."

  "And you two have been stuck here together the whole time?" His face pursed with thoughtfulness. "How's that working out?"

  "He hasn't killed me yet."

  "He's not going to kill you, Kitty. On the contrary, I think he'd rather—"

  I stood suddenly. "Are you hungry? Of course you're hungry, you haven't eaten in two days."

  Footsteps pounded up the porch then. Ben looked over to the next room at the same tim
e I did, and his hand clenched on the blanket. Slowly, I went to the front room.

  The door slammed open, and Cormac stood there. He carried a rifle.

  "You have a freezer, right?" he said.

  "Huh?" I blinked, trying to put his question into con­text. I failed. "Yeah. Why?"

  He pointed his thumb over his shoulder to the outside. I went to the door and looked out. There, in the middle of the clearing in front of the cabin, lay a dead deer. Just flopped there, legs stiff and neck arced back. No antlers. I couldn't see blood, but I could smell it. Still cooling. Freshly killed. My stomach rumbled, and I fiercely ignored it.

  "It's a deer," I said stupidly.

  "I still have to dress it and put the meat up. Is there room in the freezer?"

  "You killed it?"

  He gave me a frustrated glare. "Yeah."

  "Is it even hunting season?"

  "Do you think I care?"

  "You shot a deer and just… dragged it here? Carried it? Why?"

  "I had to shoot something."

  I stared at him. That sounded like me. Rather it sounded like me once a month, on the night of the full moon. "You had to shoot something."

  "Yeah." He said the word as a challenge.

  So which of us was the monster? At least I had an excuse for my bloodlust.

  "Ben's awake," I said. "Awake and lucid, I mean."

  In fact, Ben was standing in the doorway, holding a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His hair was ruffled, stubble covered his jawline, and he appeared wrung-out, but he didn't seem likely to topple over. He and Cormac looked at each other for a moment, and the tension in the room spiked. I couldn't read what passed between them. I had an urge to get out of there. I imag­ined calling in to my own radio show: Yeah hi, I'm a were­wolf, and I'm stuck in a cabin in the woods with another werewolf and a werewolf hunter…

  "Hey," Cormac said finally. "How are you feeling?"

  "I don't know," Ben said. "What's the gun for?"

  "Went hunting."

  "Any luck?"

  "Yeah."

  My voice came out bright with false cheerfulness. "Maybe you could cut us up a couple of steaks right now and we could have some dinner."

  "That's the plan. If you can stoop to eating meat that someone else picked out," he said. "Oh, and I found another one of these." He tossed something at me.