“And that’s what he’s going to do if I don’t go out there,” Renee said. “Josh—the body. And Malcolm. Those were just warnings. He’ll escalate. Soon he won’t even bother waiting for the door to open. It was stupid to try to hide from him, and I’m not going to let him hurt anyone or anything else. If biting me is going to make everything else go away, I’ll do it. I don’t even care anymore. It’s better than watching him turn my friends and kill my enemies.”
“We’re trying to protect you,” Jake said, his grip hard on her arm. “I’m not going to let you go out there. What if he goes after the rest of us while you’re out there, huh? Destroy all your connections until you have to go with him? Have you thought any of this out?”
“There’s no time to think!” Renee shouted. “If you want to protect me, have my back. But I’m not going to just sit in here while he plays his games with us. He already changed Malcolm. Getting the two of you would be a plus to him. But I’m the one he wants. And I don’t matter.”
“If you didn’t matter, we wouldn’t bother. And he wouldn’t bother,” Britt said. She let go of Renee, but although her voice was quiet, that did not take away from the weight of it. “If you had let him bite you because that was what you wanted, I would have at least understood that. I wouldn’t have known what to do about it, but I would have understood. It would have been your choice. But you’re letting him decide for you, which is what he’s been trying to do ever since he came into this place. He thinks he can force you into doing anything he wants. He thinks that you’re his, that because he’s marked you, you belong to him. But you don’t.”
“I’ll try to shoot him,” Renee said, shrugging off Jake’s hand. “But we can’t stay here forever. There’s no need to risk everyone else, just because he wants his teeth in me.”
“I’m going out there with you,” Britt said. She was shaking in spite of herself, but she managed to stay standing as she went to get something to wear outside.
“If you insist on going out there, I’ll go, too, but I swear, I’ll tie you to a chair before I let you go out there,” Jake said.
Renee brought the rifle up and cocked it. The tip of the knife was inches from Jake’s chest. “Please,” she said. She did not want to hurt Jake in trying to do the right thing. “Help me end this. One way or the other. But I’m going out there with or without you.”
Jake peered down at her, a little girl from his height, and his face was tight with pain—from seeing the body, from being cooped up in a barn for almost a week, from feeling helpless against Grant, from watching his friend get bitten, from thinking that another friend would be bitten against her will. Renee had a feeling it was all of the above.
She did not even feel the anguish anymore. She was past that now. All she wanted was for it to be over. If that meant offering herself to Grant even though it was not what she wanted, she would do it for her friends, and for the sanctuary.
When Britt came up behind Renee, dressed in a tan cable sweater and two layers of pants, Jake took a step back. “Fine, I’m going out with you.”
“Behind me,” Renee said.
“No fucking way.”
“If he can get to me more easily, I don’t have to worry about losing you to him.”
“If you don’t trust us to protect you,” Jake said, “how can you trust your own reflexes?”
“I don’t,” Renee said. She pulled the gun closer to her and started to head towards the barn door. “But I’ve got to try.”
“Renee,” Britt said softly as Renee reached for the barn door lock. “If he turns you… Turn me.”
Renee turned around and stared at Britt. “You hate werewolves. You’re afraid of them.”
“And if you’re trapped as one, I don’t want you to be alone. Not with him. Okay?”
Renee lowered the gun, pulling Britt down for a rushed, desperate kiss. It felt as if she was walking out there to be executed. Depending on Grant’s mood, she might be. And Britt was offering to be executed with her. Grant had told her that the shapeshifters could never give her what she needed. But this was what she needed—someone who needed her, whether that person could change into a dog or a wolf or nothing at all. It was all she could do to step back and turn around, turning away from Britt. It took even more effort just to undo the lock. Her hands were shaking, making the lock rattle, and when she took the gun in both hands, she could hear the gun rattling, too. Jake took the initiative and pulled the door open for her.
The cold was biting, and she realised that she had forgotten to put on her coat. However, she did not bother going back in for it. One way or another, things would be over quickly. At least she was wearing boots.
She curled her finger around the trigger and held up the gun in the darkness, prepared to shoot or thrust it out into whatever body came at her. It was practically pitch dark outside except where the light from the barn shone in a cylinder of limited vision. She was hyper-vigilant. Not a single snowflake escaped her notice. Nor did the dark, slumped shadow of a body reclining against the side of the barn, but she could not allow herself to be distracted by that.
She heard the growl the second it began. Her head jerked to the left, but she could not see anything. And the growl seemed to be moving, left to right, then all around until it filled her ears. But she still couldn’t see Grant. He had to be close, but the shadows were not moving. She had no idea where to even look.
“Goddamn it, just come out and do it,” Renee shouted. Her voice was lost in the snow. It sounded small and tinny to her ears.
“Just a few days ago, you were throwing me out at gunpoint to keep me from turning you,” Grant said. Like his growl, his rough voice seemed to be everywhere. “You’ve got your dog pack behind you. And I see the gun, love. You think they can protect you? You think you can shoot me fast enough?”
“No,” Renee said. “But I’m willing to try. You try to get me, I try to get you.”
He laughed. The sound was not cruel. He seemed genuinely delighted. “I would not expect anything less, my dear. You’ll turn fighting. And that’s good.”
Her cold fingers gripped the gun everywhere but the trigger, not ready but prepared. She was still shaking, but she was not paying attention to that. Every sense was straining to hear where he was coming from.
Someone’s hands yanked her backwards as Britt screamed, “Above you!” A giant shadow dropped where she had been. At the surprise, her trigger finger clenched and shot randomly in the dark.
The shadow unfurled into something that was half-man, half-wolf. His mouth was still human enough so that he could speak to her, but the teeth were sharp, and Renee suspected that he could turn her in this form. He was just three feet away, and he could have darted forward and taken her then, but he didn’t. He stood two feet higher than he did as a human and stared down at her.
“Go ahead and shoot me, Renee,” he said. Even closer, his voice seemed to fill her head as she tried to get her balance back.
“Shoot him,” Jake urged. “Come on, he’s not running. Shoot him before he gets you.”
“Can you do it? Can you really be that kind of person?” His long, flat tongue caressed his teeth as he looked over her with red eyes. “You came out here knowing that you would fail.”
“I came out here so that you wouldn’t have to go through my people to get to me,” Renee said.
“Of course. You own a sanctuary. It wouldn’t provide much sanctuary if the owner is the reason for its downfall.”
“Why won’t you come at me?” Renee asked tightly.
“Why won’t you shoot me?” He reached one furred arm out slowly. It was about as long as her leg. The claw stroked a harsh line down her cheek but did not break the skin. “Dare I suggest that you harbour something like love for me?”
Renee would have said that was a bit of an overstatement, but she did not give him the satisfaction of an answer. Snapping the gun up, she cocked it and shot straight at his right shoulder. It wouldn’t kill him. Somehow s
he couldn’t. She couldn’t kill him if he wasn’t attacking her. But she was damned if she was going to let him draw this out when all she wanted was for it to stop.
He stumbled backward, clutching his right shoulder. His mouth elongated as a howl transformed into a roar, and she reeled back, slipping on the snow. Britt caught her, pulling her farther away from that giant mouth, dark pink and glistening as he screamed at her. But it was the teeth—those two-inch long fangs that snapped down—that had her undivided attention. But he still didn’t attack. He panted, then pulled in his muzzle until the mouth was human again.
“Fucking bitch,” he gasped. “That hurt like hell.”
“For Malcolm,” she said.
Those sharp teeth locked in a glinting smile. “The fool who wanted to be a hero? He tried to kill me with his bare human hands. I let him off easy. I liked the man.”
Renee struggled to stand up again, although Britt kept her hand curled on Renee’s arm to keep holding her back, keep protecting her. She fought against Britt, her stomach sinking with each inch she put between her and her lover. She set the rifle again, held it between herself and Grant almost like a spear. The cold was beginning to get to her. Her knuckles were white, and while she knew her fingers were moving and clenching, she could barely feel them.
“Think you can shoot to kill, love?” he growled, breathing heavily. Black blood dripped from the wound in his shoulder and gleamed wetly.
“Kill him,” Jake hissed. “You’ve got the time.”
The gun was ready, her finger trembling on the trigger. She would have hit his head if she had taken the shot, and that might have been enough. But her trigger finger would not press down. His eyes glowed red, and her stomach dropped to her feet. His teeth clicked into a wide smile as he began to bear down on her.
In his half-wolf form, he towered over her. She knew now why he had never taken his lower than average human height to heart. Down the dark grey fur of his stomach, she could see his cock, dark red and rising as he reached for her. It pressed into her stomach when he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into him. The gun was forced upward and to the side, the knife pointing past his neck and into the air.
His heat kept her from the frigid weather, but she still trembled as though it was thirty below. And heat dipped between her legs. She was terrified out of her mind, and still her body reacted to Grant, wanting him to take her and free her. She wanted out of her body and mind. She had denied him because she knew that she would be going from one complicated life to another, from one unacceptable extreme to another. But with him covering her, swallowing his scent, it was hard to remember the reasons she wanted to stay herself when he could make her feel like this. She loosened her hands on the gun to feel the broadness of his furred chest, and she could not stop her hips from canting towards him, wanting him.
“You need me.” His voice rumbled through her like the vibration of an old train. “They can’t give you what you need. I will free you.”
Her head tilted back as she struggled with each wave of feeling that he always brought to her. She was going to give in to him, not because she wanted to, but because he was all there was, and she couldn’t think at all. That was bliss—not to think, just to feel him, to touch him, to want him to fill her.
“Renee, please,” Britt cried from behind her. It was as if Renee heard her from a mile away.
“I heard what she asked you to do to her when this is over,” he whispered in her ear. His breath was hot and wet, and her fingers clenched again. “I have no objection. I could use another bitch in the pack.”
His teeth were on her shoulder now, massaging the skin under her shirt, getting ready to clamp down. She thought of the woman behind her, afraid for her and afraid for herself. That woman was willing to become a wolf if she did.
She still wasn’t thinking clearly, but her hands found the gun. Her finger found the trigger again and pulled. The bullet went into the air, but she was not expecting to shoot him. She had taken a gamble that at the deafening noise, he would either clamp down his teeth and bite her by reflex, or jerk back.
Grant jerked back.
And when he did, Renee thrust the rifle forward as hard as she could before she could stop herself. If she had hesitated, she might not have made it through the mat of fur and the skin beneath. But she did not hesitate, and she felt a spurt of almost boiling blood on her face from the force of the blow, and she stumbled back. She had caught him under his rib, possibly puncturing a lung. But it would not have mattered if she had just grazed bone or scratched him. The silver had made it in.
Grant opened his mouth to scream at her, but somehow it was like the jaw didn’t stop, gaping wide as though the bone was unhinged. The entire face became like a wolf, then tried to transform back, then tried to transform again. He was a mass of change and creaking bone and sinew, but no matter which way he turned, he could not escape the trace of silver sweeping through his bloodstream, subject to each contraction of his heart. His mouth foamed and snapped, but he was in too much pain to walk the three steps to bite her—not that biting her was a priority to him now.
He stared at her with glowing eyes, seeming blankly stunned that she had actually poisoned him. In spite of the crimson glow behind the blue, those eyes looked terribly human, terribly taken aback.
Renee could lower her arms now. She was shaking and cold, but that wasn’t what was important. She couldn’t believe that she had done it, either. She couldn’t believe that he was falling to the ground in a growing pool as the stab wound and gunshot wounds continued to pour blood. While he was writhing, the human side of him finally started to emerge, the wolf slowly being eradicated from his system. Finally, he was simply a man—naked, screaming as if acid was moving through him. But his eyes never left hers.
Not even when he finally stopped moving and his gaze became marble.
The rifle fell from her hands, and the bloody knife stained the snow. After that, it was a blur. Jake went back into the barn to tell everyone what had happened. Britt took her to the log home—there was no reason to fear now—digging her way while Renee tried to figure out whether anything was real.
The log home was still warm, since the heater had been working steadily while they’d been gone. Britt tried to get her to the upstairs bathroom to wash, but Renee, her thinking mind finally surfacing, told Britt that she shouldn’t wash yet. She went back out and stopped the shapeshifters from moving the bodies of Grant and Josh, which the snow had already started to cover. She might have been sleepwalking. Her voice was even and monotone, and she thought her demeanour scared them enough that they listened when she told them to cover the bodies with a blanket so that the scene could be preserved. Then she went back to the log home and found Detective Ebon’s card in the computer room.
“Hello, I’m calling for Detective Ebon,” she said.
“That’d be me. Who’s calling?”
“Renee Chambers, from the dog sanctuary. I know who was mutilating the animals. He killed a man. Josh Beall.”
“You mean Josh Beall killed the animals and murdered a man?” Detective Ebon asked. He sounded distracted, and Renee could imagine him scrambling for a pen and paper to write things down.
“No. Grant killed Josh Beall. Grant’s dead. I shot him when he was coming at me, and my knife got him when the gun didn’t work. He’s dead.”
There was silence on the other end. Then, “So there are two dead bodies at the sanctuary, Josh Beall and Grant…?”
“Grant Heath. He’s been staying at the sanctuary to help out. But…”
“You were hiding him,” Detective Ebon said. He didn’t sound accusatory. Instead, his voice was just as flat as hers.
“No,” Renee said, and she did not think she was lying. “I didn’t know it was him, not until a few days ago. He started stalking me. I kicked him out of the sanctuary, but I knew he hadn’t gone far. I couldn’t call you before. We ran to protect the dogs, and we don’t have cell phones.”
“You don’t have cell phones.”
“We don’t need cell phones. At least we didn’t, until… I kept my people from cleaning up, but the cold will freeze everything by the time you get here.”
“That’s very considerate of you.”
“I got his blood on me. Should I wait to wash it off?”
Another pause. “On your clothes, or on your skin?”
“Both.”
“I’ll requisition a helicopter. This needs to be done now. Don’t wash off.”
“Okay.”
“You’re not alone?” Detective Ebon asked.
“No. I have my people with me. There were witnesses.”
“Good. Try and hold it together until we get there. I know how awful this kind of thing can be. And Ms Chambers?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry this had to happen to you.”
She hung up.
Britt tried to get her into the shower, but she shook her head. “Not yet,” she told Britt. “They’re coming for the bodies. They need pictures.”
Britt looked at Renee with more than a little concern in her eyes, but she stayed at Renee’s side while they waited for the sound of a helicopter. All Renee did was sit on one of the dining room benches and stare at the darkness on the other side of the window.
Her shapeshifter pack slowly filed in. Max and Leslie were helping Malcolm because he couldn’t quite put his weight on his bitten leg. Malcolm looked just as empty as Renee, and the room was almost completely silent while they waited. Britt explained what was going to happen, and Renee asked whether someone was watching over the bodies, but other than that, there was not much more than the snapping of the fire that Jake had built in the living room hearth.
It was three o’clock in the morning when they finally heard the muffled thump-thump-thump of the helicopter. There was enough open space on the top of the hill for it to land with safety, if a little precariously. Jake got the door when Detective Ebon knocked.
Winter Howl (Sanctuary) Page 28
