I could check on at least one of those. "How are you doing?"
He thought for a moment, then shrugged. "All right, I think. I'm not feeling much of anything. It's a whole lot better than yesterday, though."
"Good," I said, inordinately pleased.
Ben and I were washing dishes when Cormac came back in. He didn't say anything about how his call went, and we didn't ask. If he didn't tell us, asking him wouldn't get him to talk.
It was strange, how I was getting used to having him around. Maybe the three of us still had a chance of coming to some sort of equilibrium. Some arrangement where Ben didn't lose his best friend, I didn't lose my new wolf pack, and Cormac could hold on to the only people who anchored him to the world. Or maybe that was wishful thinking.
Later, I found Ben changing the sheets on the bed. He'd found the clean set in the closet, and was stripping off the ones he'd sweated, tossed, and turned on over the last week.
"I thought I'd get it ready for you," he explained as I leaned in the doorway. "I've kept you out of it long enough."
This was going to be more awkward than I thought. We weren't wolves tonight, and the lycanthropy wasn't lighting any fires. Any acknowledged fires, at least.
"Where'll you sleep?" I asked.
Cormac answered, "The sofa. I'll take the floor."
"I can take the floor," Ben said. Cormac was already pulling out his bedroll and spreading it out by the desk. "We can draw straws."
"Do I get to draw straws?" I said.
"No," they said, in unison.
My, what gentlemen. I smirked.
Ben ended up on the sofa. Cormac was very hard to argue with.
Eventually, the lights went out and the house fell quiet.
I hadn't gotten any sleep the night before. Being in my own bed again, I should have been out for the count. But I lay there, staring at the darkened ceiling, wondering why I couldn't sleep. I had too much on my mind, I decided.
Then the floorboards leading into the bedroom creaked, very faintly. I propped myself on an elbow. The figure edging inside the room was in shadow, a silhouette only. I took a breath through my nose, smelling—It was Ben.
"I can't sleep," he whispered. He stepped toward the bed, slouching a little—sheepish, if I didn't know him better. "I keep fidgeting. It feels… weird. Being alone. I was wondering: could I… I mean with you—" He gestured toward the bed, shoulders tensed, and looked away.
He was a new wolf. A pup. A kid having nightmares. I'd been the same way.
I pushed back the covers and scooted to one side of the bed.
Letting out a sigh, he climbed in beside me, curling up on his side as I pulled the covers over us both. I put my arms around him, he settled close, and that was all. In moments, he was asleep, his chest rising and falling regularly. He was exhausted, but he'd needed to feel safe before he could sleep.
God help anybody who felt safer with me looking after him. I could barely take care of myself. But what else could I do? I held him and settled in to sleep. Tried not to worry.
As I faded, sinking into a half-asleep state, I glimpsed another shadow at the doorway. A figure looked in briefly, then moved away. Then I heard the front door open and close, and faintly, like a buzzing in a distant dream, the Jeep's engine started up, and tires crunched on the gravel drive.
He's gone, my dream self thought, and there wasn't anything I could do about it.
Chapter 10
"He's gone," Ben said, leaning over the kitchen sink and looking out the window to the clearing where Cormac's Jeep was no longer parked.
Cormac had cleared out his bedroll, his duffel bag, his guns. After sharing the space with him for a week, the house seemed empty without him and his things. He'd packed everything up and driven off in the middle of the night. It was how he often made his exits.
This time, though, the bastard had left me to figure out this curse business on my own. I'd been counting on his help.
"Why?" Ben said.
"You know him better than I do. You know what he's like." I sat at the table, feet up on the seat of my chair, hugging my knees. "Did he have someplace he needed to be? Maybe he's following up on his contact, about the blood magic."
Ben shook his head. "Three's a crowd. That's what he was thinking. That's why he left."
"But…" And I couldn't think of anything more to say. If Cormac had felt that way, he should have said something. He should have told me. Why couldn't he ever just come out and say it? "Should we go after him? Should we call him?" I had his number stored on my cell phone. I'd entered it in when I first got the phone, a short time after I met him. He was the kind of person you could call in an emergency.
Again, Ben shook his head. "If he'd wanted us to contact him, he'd have left a note."
"It's not a matter of what he wants, it's a matter of what's good for him. He's not going to go do something crazy to get himself hurt, is he?"
Ben arched a brow wryly. "Any more so than he usually does?"
He had a point.
"What's the plan now?" I said. "Cormac left us with that curse. I'd just as soon let the curse win and get out of here."
Ben continued looking out into the forest. He seemed peaceful, if sad. The calm was holding. "One more day. Give me one more day to pull myself together. I don't think I'm ready for civilization yet."
I couldn't argue with that. I'd give him all the time I could. "You got it."
So. That started our first day without Cormac.
I worked at the computer. I'd tried to pull off a modern-day Walden, but I'd failed to live up to Thoreau's ideals. The real problem was that I didn't have a pond. It was Walden Pond. I needed a large body of water for effective contemplation.
But really, what would Thoreau have done if a friend had shown up with a werewolf bite and begged for his help? Which made me wonder if maybe there was a more sinister reason Thoreau went off to live by himself in the woods, and he dressed the whole experience up in all this rhetoric about simple living to cover it up. Werewolves were not exactly part of the accepted canon of American literature. What would Thoreau have done?
A WWTD? bumper sticker would take too much explaining. And really, he'd have probably lectured the poor guy about how his dissolute lifestyle had gotten him into the situation.
I wasn't Thoreau. Wasn't ever going to be Thoreau. Screw it. I wrote pages about the glories of mass consumerism offered by the height of modern civilization. All the reasons not to run off to the woods and deny yourself a few basic indulgences in life.
That night, without a word spoken about it, Ben and I slipped into bed together and snuggled under the covers for warmth. No making out, no sex, not so much as a kiss, and that was fine. We were pack, and we needed to be together.
We should have left town that day.
Something happened, woke me up. I could barely feel it as it pressed against the air, making its own little wind with its passage. A predator, stalking me.
No. This was my place, my territory. I didn't have to take this. I wasn't going to run and let it win. Just no.
I slipped out of bed and stomped out to the porch, in the dark of night, no visible moon or stars or anything.
"Kitty?" Ben said, from the bedroom.
Leaning on the railing, I smelled the air. Trees, hills, and something. Something wrong. Couldn't see anything in the forest, but it was here. Whatever hated me was here.
"Come out!" I screamed. I ran into the clearing, turned around, searched, and still didn't see anything. "I want to see you! Let me see you, you coward!"
This was stupid. Whoever laid that curse on this place wasn't going to come out in the open. If they'd wanted to face me, they'd never have snuck around gutting rabbits on my porch in the first place. All I'd do with my screaming and thrashing around was chase it off.
But that feeling was still there. That weight, that hint that something wasn't just watching me. It had trapped me. It had marked my territory as its own, and
was now smothering me rather than letting me run.
Maybe this wasn't the curse. Maybe this was something else. Cormac said it might escalate, but escalate to what?
Something like eyes glowed, making a shape in the darkness.
My imagination. There wasn't really anything out there. But I went into the trees, stepping lightly. Think of wolf paws, pads barely touching earth, moving easily as air. My stride grew longer. I could jog like this for hours without losing my breath.
"Kitty!" Ben pounded down the porch steps, but I didn't turn around. If something was out there, if this thing was after me, I'd find it.
There, movement. That same shadow, large but low to the ground. Lurking. My pulse sped up, beating hot. This was what I should have been doing all along, turning the tables, hunting the hunter. Counterintuitively, I slowed, waiting to see what it would do, giving it a chance to leap this way or that. Once it moved, all I had to do was pounce and pin it with my claws.
Two red eyes, glaring, caught me. The gaze fixed on me, and I couldn't move.
I had good eyesight—a wolf's eyes. But I couldn't make out the form the eyes belonged to. Even when it moved closer, I only saw shadow. I heard a low noise, like a growl, so low it shook the ground under me.
All my instincts screamed for me to run. Get out. This wasn't right, this wasn't real. But I couldn't move.
Something grabbed my arm and yanked me from behind. I stayed on my feet, but I might as well have flipped head over heels, the way my vision swam and the world shifted.
"Kitty!"
My senses started working again, and I smelled friend. Pack. Ben.
"Did you see it?" I said, gasping for air, clinging to his arm.
"No, nothing. You ran out of the house like you were in some kind of trance."
And he followed, out of trust, out of loyalty. I pulled myself close to him. I kept looking out, scanning the trees, the spaces between them, looking for red eyes and a shadow. I saw skeletal branches against a sky made indistinct with clouds, earth rising up the hill, and patches of snow.
Both of our breaths fogged in the cold, releasing billowing clouds that quickly faded. Nothing else moved. We might have been the only living things out here. I shivered. Once I stopped running, the cold hit me like a wall, chilling my skin from toe to scalp. I was only wearing sweats and a T-shirt and went barefoot.
Ben blazed with warmth; I wrapped myself up with him. He was smart—he'd grabbed a coat. We stood, holding each other.
"What is it?" he asked. "What did you see?"
"Eyes," I said, my voice shaking. "I saw eyes."
"Something's here? What?"
"I don't know." My voice whined. Worse, I didn't know what would have happened if Ben hadn't come for me. If he hadn't shaken me loose from that thing's gaze. I made it a simple observation. "You came after me."
"I didn't want to be alone."
I hugged him tightly, still shaken, speechless. With my arm around him, I urged him forward, starting back for the cabin. "Let's go."
I'd traveled much farther than I thought. I couldn't have been following the shadow for more than a couple of minutes. But the cabin was over a mile away. I hadn't noticed the time passing. We followed the scent of smoke from the stove back home.
"It had red eyes," I said, but only when I could see the light in the windows.
"Like the thing Cormac saw," he said.
Yeah. Just like it.
That was it. This was war. I didn't need Cormac's help stopping this. I was a clever girl. I'd figure it out.
I hunted for it that day. Searched for tracks, smelled for a scent. I followed the tracks I'd made, the path I'd cut through the woods, ranging out from it on both sides. It had to be there, it had to have left some sign.
None of my enemies here had ever left a trail before. Why should they start now?
I walked for miles and lost track of time. Once again, Ben came for me, calling my name, following my scent, probably, whether he knew he was doing it or not.
When he finally caught up, he said, "Any luck?"
I had to say no, and it didn't make any sense. I should have found something.
He said, "I take it we're not leaving tomorrow."
"No. No, I have to figure this out. I can figure this out. It's not going to beat me." I was still searching the woods, my vision blurring I was staring so hard into the trees. Every one of them might have hidden something.
"It's after noon," Ben said. "At least come back and eat something. I fixed some lunch."
"Let me guess—venison."
He donned his familiar, half-smirking grin. How long had it been since I'd seen it?
"No. Sandwiches. Would you believe Cormac took most of the meat with him?"
Yes. Yes I would. "He uses it for bait, doesn't he?"
"You really want me to answer that?"
"No, I don't."
I worked while we ate, going online to search whatever relevant came to mind: barbed-wire cross, blood curses, animal sacrifice. Red eyes. Red-eyed monsters, to try to filter out all the medical pages and photography advice I got with that search. I found a lot of sites that skirted around the topics. A lot of people out there made jewelry that was supposed to look like barbed wire but wasn't nearly vicious enough to be the real thing. A lot of sites bragged, but few had any kind of authority.
As usual, the people who really knew about this stuff didn't talk about it, and certainly didn't blog about it.
I found one thing, though. A long shot, but an interesting one. The Walsenburg Public Library's electronic card catalog was online. Their three tides on the occult were checked out.
I called them up. A woman answered.
"Hi," I said cheerfully. "I'm interested in a couple of books you have, but the catalog says they're checked out."
"If they've been checked out for more than two weeks I can put a recall on them—"
"No, that's okay. I was actually wondering if you could tell me who checked them out."
Her demeanor instantly chilled. "I'm sorry, I really can't give you that information."
I clearly should have known better than to ask. In retrospect, her answer didn't surprise me. I tried again anyway. "Not even a hint?"
"I'm sorry. Do you want me to try that recall?"
"No, thanks. That's okay." I hung up. I wasn't interested in the books. I wanted to know who in the county was studying the occult. What amateur had maybe gotten a little too good at this sort of thing.
Again, we slept curled up together, looking for basic comfort. Rather, I tried to sleep, but spent more time staring at the ceiling, waiting for that moment of pressure, of fear, the sure knowledge that something unknown and terrifying was out there stalking me. The feeling had changed from when it was dead rabbits on my porch. This new force didn't just want me to leave—it wanted me dead. It made me think there was nothing I could do but freeze and wait for it to strike me.
Nothing had been slaughtered on my porch in days. The barbed-wire crosses had disappeared. Did that mean the curse was gone, or had it turned into something else?
I waited, but nothing happened that night. A breeze whispered through winter pines, and that was all. I thought I was going to break from listening, and waiting.
The next morning, Ben chopped wood for the stove. He was getting his strength back, looking for things to do. Normal, closer to normal. I watched him out the window, from my desk. He knew how to use an ax, swinging smoothly and easily, quickly splitting logs and building up the pile next to the porch. For some reason this surprised me, like I assumed that a lawyer couldn't also know anything about manual labor. It occurred to me mat I knew as little about Ben's background as I knew about Cormac's. Ben had definitely spent some time in his past splitting logs.
He paused often to look around, turn his nose to the air, presumably smelling the whole range of scents he'd never known before. It took time sorting them out.
At one point he stopped and tensed. I c
ould actually see his shoulders bunch up. He stared toward the road. Then he set the ax by the woodpile and backed toward the front door.
I went to meet him, my own nerves quivering. That thing that was hunting us…
"Someone's coming," he said, just as the sheriff's car came over the dirt road and into the clearing. Side by side, we watched the car creep to a stop.
Ben's whole body seemed to tremble with anxiety. He stared at Sheriff Marks getting out of the car.
I touched his arm. "Calm down."
Ben winced, tilting his head with a confused expression. "Why do I feel like growling at him?"
I smiled and patted him on the shoulder. "He's invading our territory. And he doesn't smell like a real nice person, either. Just try to act normal."
He shook his head. "This is crazy."
"How you doing, Sheriff Marks?" I called out nicely.
"Not so good, Ms. Norville. I've got a problem."
My stomach turned over. Why was the first thought that popped into my head, What has Cormac done?
"Sorry to hear that. Can I help?"
"I hope so." He stopped at the base of the porch and took a good, slow look at Ben. I could almost see his little mind ticking off the points on a formal police description: hair, height, build, race, and general suspiciousness. Ben crossed his arms and stared back. Finally Marks said, "Who's this?"
"This is Ben. He's a friend."
Marks smirked. "Another one? How many friends you shacking up with out here?"
Right, now I wanted to growl at him. "You said there was something I could help you with?"
Marks jerked his thumb over his shoulder to point at the car. "You mind taking a little ride with me?"
I did mind. I minded a lot. "Why? I'm not being arrested—"
"Oh, no," Marks said. "Not yet."
"How about I follow you in my car?" I said, admiring how steady my voice sounded. Something was very wrong. It was Cormac. It had to be Cormac. I wasn't going to say the name until Marks did, though.
But Marks was staring hard at me. Like it was me he was after. He had no idea what his glare was doing to Wolf. I had to look away. That fight or flight thing was kicking at me.
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