"I don't know. I'd hate for you to run off," Marks said.
What in God's name had happened? "I'm not going to run off. All my stuff is here. And why are you worried about me running off?"
"You'll see. Let's get going. Take your car, but I'm keeping an eye on you."
"Of course." I went to find my keys and backpack.
"Can I come with you?" Ben said.
I relaxed a little. It would be good to have a friend at my back. "Sure. You're my lawyer. I have this creepy feeling I might need my lawyer."
I drove behind Marks's car as close as I could without actually tailgating, so that I wouldn't give him the slightest idea that I was "running off." I watched him through his rear window as he checked his rearview mirror every five seconds.
Ben frowned. "It's a werewolf thing. Something happened, and he thinks a werewolf did it."
"Yeah. Maybe he's just trying to get back at me for all those times I called him about the dead rabbits. Maybe this is some practical joke. I'll end up on the first werewolf reality TV show. Wouldn't that be a hoot?" I muttered.
After a few miles we turned off the highway onto a wide dirt road, then after several more miles made another turn onto a narrow dirt road, then onto a driveway. A carved wood sign posted in front of a barbed-wire fence announced the Baker Ranch. A quarter of a mile along, Marks pulled off onto the verge behind a pickup truck, and I pulled in behind him. Dry, yellowed grass cracked under the tires.
An older man wearing a denim jacket, jeans, and cowboy boots leaned against a weathered fence post. Marks went to him, and they shook hands. The man looked over at us, still in the car. I expected to see the determined suspicion in him that I saw on Marks's face. But he looked at us with curiosity.
I got out of the car and went to join them. Ben followed.
Marks made introductions. "Ms. Norville, this is Chad Baker. Chad, Kitty Norville."
"Miss Norville." Baker offered his hand, and we shook.
"Call me Kitty. This is Ben O'Farrell." More handshaking all around. I looked at Marks and waited for him to tell me why we were all here.
"Why don't we all go take a look at the problem, shall we?" Marks said, smiling, and gestured across the field on the other side of the fence.
Baker slipped a loop of wire off the top of the nearest fence post, pulling back the top strand of barbed wire. The tension made it coil back on itself. We could all climb over the bottom part of the fence without too much effort.
We walked across the field, up a rise that overlooked a depression that was hidden from the road. Marks and Baker stood aside and let us look.
Six dead cows lay sprawled before me. They weren't just dead. They'd been gutted, torn to pieces, throats ripped out, guts spilled, tongues lolling. The grass and dirt around them had turned to sticky mud, so much blood had poured out of them. They hadn't even had time to ran, it looked like. They'd all dropped where they stood. The air smelled of rotten meat, of blood and waste.
One werewolf couldn't have done this. It would have taken a whole pack.
Or something lurking in the dark, gazing out with red eyes.
"You want to tell me what happened here?" Marks said in a tone that suggested he already knew exactly what had happened.
I swallowed. What could I say? What did he want me to say? "Ah… it looks like some cows were killed."
"Massacred, more like," Marks said. Chad Baker's expression didn't change. I assumed they were his cows. He was taking this very calmly.
"What do you want me to tell you, Sheriff? What do you think I know?" I spoke softly, unable to muster any more righteous sarcasm.
"I think you know exactly what I think."
"What, you think I can read minds?" I was just being cagey. He was right, I knew: I was Kitty, the famous werewolf, who moved into his jurisdiction and then this happened. I told him, "You think I did this."
"Well?" he said.
"I assure you, I'm not in any way, shape, or form capable of this. No single wolf, lycanthropic or otherwise, is capable of this."
"That's what I told him," Baker said, flickering a smile. My heart instantly went out to him.
"Thank you," I said. "I don't think I could bring down one cow on my own, much less a whole herd."
"Something did this," Marks said unhelpfully.
"We couldn't find any prints," Baker said. "My dogs didn't hear a thing, and they'll set up a racket at the drop of a hat. It's like something dropped on them out of the sky."
"A werewolf isn't a normal wolf," Marks said, unable to let it go. "God knows what the hell you're capable of."
I took a deep breath, quelling the nausea brought on by the stench of death—not even Wolf could stomach this mess. I filtered out the smells I knew, looking for the one I was afraid I'd find: the musky human/lupine mix that meant werewolves had been here.
I didn't smell it.
"This wasn't werewolves," I murmured. What was weird, though: I didn't smell anything outside of what I expected. No predator, no intruder. Nothing that wasn't already here; no hint of what had been here. Just like around my cabin, when I chased after that intruder. Like Baker said, it was as if something dropped on them out of the sky.
"Kitty." Low and strained, Ben's voice grated like sandpaper.
He stared at the scene with unmistakable hunger. And revulsion, the two sides of him, wolf and human, battling over what emotion he should feel. His wolf might very well look on this as a feast and claw its way to the surface. The smell of blood—so thick on the air—was like an invitation, and he wasn't used to dealing with it. He clenched his hands. Sweat had broken out on his hairline. He was losing it.
I grabbed his arm and turned him away.
He squeezed his eyes shut, and his breaths came quick. I whispered, "Keep it together, okay? Don't think of the blood, think about something else. Keep it locked up inside, all curled up and harmless."
He started to turn around, to look back over his shoulder at the slaughter. Hand on his cheek, I made him look back at me. I held his face and pulled his head down closer to me. We touched foreheads, and I kept talking until I felt him nod, until I knew he heard me.
His breathing slowed, and some of the tension sagged out of him. Only then did I let go. "Take a walk if you need to," I said. "Walk back to the car and don't think about it, okay?"
"Okay," he said. Without looking up, he started back for the car, hunched in and unhappy looking.
"Weak stomach?" Baker asked.
"Something like that," I said. "Is there anything else I need to see here, or can we go back to the cars?"
We climbed back over the fence, and Baker replaced the top strand of wire. Ben was leaning on the hood of my car, arms crossed and head bowed. I wished Marks had given me some kind of warning, so I wouldn't have had to bring Ben into that. He wasn't ready to deal with that.
"We're having a hard time explaining what happened out there, Ms. Norville. Werewolves, though. That's a pretty interesting explanation," Marks said.
"Yeah, but it's wrong," I said. "I didn't do it. I don't know what did." I didn't tell him about the thing I saw outside my cabin. That thing I thought I saw. If I couldn't describe it, what was the point?
Marks clearly didn't believe me. He might as well have been holding a pair of handcuffs. Baker's expression was maddeningly neutral. Like he was happy to put it all in Marks's hands and get back to the business of ranching. Western reserve to the extreme.
"Look," I started, growing flustered. "It's easy enough to prove I didn't do it. Get somebody out here to take some samples, find the bite marks and get some saliva, test it. I'll give you a sample to compare—"
"You don't have to do that," Ben said, looking up. "Let him get a warrant first."
Marks glanced at him. "Who did you say you were?"
"Benjamin O'Farrell. Attorney-at-law."
The sheriff didn't like that answer. He frowned. "Well ain't that something."
Ben sticking
up for me settled me down. He was right; I didn't have to defend myself here. They had no proof. I said, "You think about trying the UFO people? I hear they have a bead on this sort of thing." Anything could have done this.
"This isn't a joke. This is a man's livelihood." Marks gave Baker a nod.
"I'm not joking. Can we go now?"
Scowling, he went to the door of his car. "Don't think about leaving town. Either one of you."
Whatever. I opened my own car door and started to climb in.
Baker called out, "If you come up with any ideas about what happened here, you'll let me know?"
I nodded. My only idea at the moment was that this whole town was cursed.
As soon as I left the driveway leading out of Baker's ranch, Ben said, "Do you have your phone?"
"It's in my bag." I gestured to the floor of the backseat.
Ben found it, then dialed a number.
He must have gotten voice mail. "Cormac, it's me. There's been some cattle killed up here. Matches the MO of those flocks killed at Shiprock. Your rogue wolf may have found its way out here. I don't know where you've gone, but you might want to get back."
He lowered the phone and switched it off.
I glanced at him, though I wanted to stare. I still had to drive.
"Rogue wolf," I said. "The one he wasn't able to kill back in New Mexico?" I remembered he'd mentioned the sheep that had been killed. That there'd been two werewolves, and he'd only shot the one. "Why didn't you say anything back there?"
"Because I couldn't." Ben's voice was tight, almost angry. "Because that smell hit me and—and I wasn't in my head anymore. Something else was. I couldn't talk, I couldn't even think."
My own anger drained out of me. "It's the wolf. Certain smells, sometimes tastes, or if you're scared or angry, all of that makes it stronger. Calls it up. You have to work extra hard to keep it locked away. If I'd known what we were going to see I would have warned you. Or kept you away."
"I hate it," he said, glaring out the side window. "I hate losing control like that."
This was Ben, who stood in courtrooms telling off judges, who stared down cops, who didn't pull punches. Probably couldn't stand the idea of something else inside him running the show. I reached over, found his hand, and held it. I half expected him to pull away, but he didn't. He squeezed back and kept staring out the window.
We returned to the cabin, but I didn't go inside. I went out, into the trees, the direction I'd run the other night, chasing that thing. That nightmare. If I hadn't just seen that slaughtered herd, I might have been able to convince myself that shadow had been a figment of my imagination.
Ben followed reluctantly. "Where are you going?"
"I've got to figure out what did that."
"Clear your name?"
It wasn't that. Marks couldn't prove I'd done it, however much he wanted to. Rather, I'd gotten this feeling that things would only get worse until I stood up and did something. I was tired of waiting, cornered and shivering in the dark. That might have been okay for a lone wolf, but I had a pack to protect now.
Running away wasn't an option because what if this thing up and followed me?
Ben said, "You think this is the thing you saw the other night?"
"I'm still not sure I saw anything."
"And you think it's the same thing Cormac was hunting."
"What if it followed him here?" Whatever had been here, the signs were two days old now. Harder to find—and I hadn't found anything in the first place. But if it was the same thing, I had a second point of contact now. I headed overland, as the crow flies or wolf runs, in the direction of the Baker ranch. "I'll look around. I can cover this whole area between here and the ranch. You should stay here."
"No. You're not leaving me out of this. I'll come with you. I'll help."
"Ben—"
"I don't want to hear any more of that alpha wolf bullshit. Just let me help, please."
I could have gotten angry and stood my ground on principle. That would have been the alpha thing to do. Alphas didn't let new wolves argue with them. But it was just the two of us. I didn't have anything to prove. Maybe we'd be better off together.
"Look for anything out of place. Any sign, any feeling."
"Anything that smells like those cattle," he said, his voice low.
"Yeah."
Together, we hunted. I let a bit of that Wolf-sense bleed into my human self. Smell, sound, senses—the least movement of a squirrel became profound, I looked sharply at every rustling branch. Daylight wasn't the time to be doing this. Too many distractions. Whatever had made that carnage had done so at night. This was a nighttime kind of evil.
I watched Ben, worried that he might let too much of his wolf out, wondering if he might lose control and shift. Mostly, he seemed introspective, looking around tike the world was new, or like he was waking up after a dream. He was right to want to come along, I realized. Being out here, learning to look at the world again, was better than him staying holed up at home.
We rounded the hill at the edge of the Baker ranch, overlooking his land. A backhoe was dumping the last of the carcasses onto a truck, to be hauled away.
We'd found no sign of the creature, and somehow I wasn't surprised. We turned around and went home.
That afternoon, I went online again, checking the usual weird Web sites and forums that might have the sort of data—or at worst, rumors and anecdotes—I wanted. I searched for livestock mutilations, particularly in the Southwest U.S. Sure enough, the hits I found included an inordinate number of UFOlogist sites. Kind of annoying. I tried to avoid knee-jerk skepticism, since lately I'd been forced to reassess a lot of my assumptions. About, like, the existence of werewolves for example. But I wasn't quite willing to believe that a vastly superior extraterrestrial intelligence would travel all the way to Earth just to turn a few cows inside out.
But I found something. It wasn't aliens, it wasn't werewolves. On a few sites people talked about a sort of haunting. Not by the dead, but by a kind of evil. It left death and destruction in its wake. It originated in the Native American tribes of the Southwest, particularly the Navajo and Zuni. They talked about witches laying curses that killed entire families, destroyed livelihoods, haunted entire communities. And about skinwalkers: witches who had the power to change themselves into animals. Like lycanthropes. They had red eyes.
Nobody seemed to want to talk about them in detail. Knowing too much about them drew suspicion onto oneself. In some places, a person could be excused for killing someone who was suspected of being a skinwalker. Like lycanthropes, again.
Again I avoided knee-jerk skepticism. In my experience, accusations of evilness often stemmed from the fears of the accuser rather than the real nature of the accused.
What attacked Ben in New Mexico was a werewolf, plain and simple. We had the proof of that in Ben himself. But there'd been two of them.
I grilled Ben about what he knew.
"Not much," he said. "Cormac picked up this contract for the werewolf, but he got down there and found signs that there were two of them. So he called me. I saw some of the sheep they'd killed. Completely ripped open, like the cattle today." He paused, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. The memory had triggered a reaction, caused his wolf to prick his ears. Ben collected himself and continued. "I only caught a glimpse of it, right before I was attacked. It was a wolf, it looked like a wolf. Something was wrong, Cormac was letting it walk right up to him. He could have shot the thing from ten paces off. I started to shout, then…" He shook his head. Then he was attacked, and that was that. He'd been watching Cormac, and not what came after him.
"Cormac said you saved him. You got a shot off and that broke some kind of spell."
"I don't know. I don't remember it too clearly. Anything could have happened, I suppose. I do know there was something messed up going on."
"And now it's moved here. I really hate my life right now."
"Join the club,
" he said. Then, more thoughtfully, "I grew up on a cattle ranch. Dead cattle—it's serious. Every one of them is a piece of the rancher's income. It's a big business. Marks will go after it until he figures it out."
"Well, as long as he's after me, he isn't going to figure it out." Marks didn't know about Ben; I figured we'd keep it that way. Nobody had to know about Ben.
"You suppose there's a connection with what's been going on here, with your dead rabbits and dogs?"
I shook my head. "Those were organized. Ritual killings. That today—was just slaughter." Like we needed another curse around here.
I almost wished they were connected, so we'd only have one problem to solve.
That night, we lay sprawled in bed, like a couple of dogs in front of the fireplace. He pillowed his head on my stomach, nestling in the space formed by my bent legs. I held one of his hands, while resting the other on his increasingly shaggy head of hair. We didn't look at each other, but stared into space, not ready for sleep.
He was still shaken by the day's adventure. Not quite comfortable in his skin. I knew the feeling. I let him talk as much as he wanted.
He said, "It feels like a parasite. Like there's this thing inside me and all it wants to do is suck the life out of me then crawl out of my empty skin."
Now there was a lovely image. "I never looked at it that way. To me it's always kind of felt like this voice, it's looking at everything over my shoulder and it always has an opinion. It's like an evil Jimmy Cricket."
He chuckled. "Jiminy Cricket with claws. I like it."
"It digs into your skin like a kitten with those needley little things." I giggled. Silly was better than scary.
Ben winced. "Ugh, those things are evil. You ever want to see something fun, throw a kitten down somebody's shirt. Watch them squirm trying to avoid getting clawed while not hurting the kitten."
Now I winced. I could almost feel those little claws scratching on my stomach. "You sound like you've done it before."
"Or had it done."
I couldn't help it. I giggled again, because I could see it: him and Cormac as kids, cousins fooling around at the family reunion, and I just knew who would have thrown a kitten down whose shirt. Oh, the humanity.
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