“I know a couple,” I said. “And they’re individuals, just like anyone else. Which is probably really why they haven’t taken over the world. They couldn’t agree on anything. Aren’t I right, Gustaf?”
Ariel said, “Sue, you’re sounding just a bit angry about all this. Why is that?”
I hadn’t expected the question. In fact, I’d kind of expected her to move onto the next call by now. But no, she was probing. Which left me to decide: Was I going to answer her question? Or blow it off? What would make her sound like an idiot, without making me sound like an idiot?
I suddenly realized: I hated being on this end of a radio show. But I couldn’t stop now.
“Angry? I’m not angry. This isn’t angry. This is sarcastic.”
“Seriously,” Ariel said, not letting it go. “Our last caller practically worships vampires. Why are you so angry?”
Because I was stuck in the woods through nobody’s fault but my own. Because somewhere along the way I’d lost control of my life.
“I’m tired of the stereotype,” I said. “I’m tired of so many people buying into the stereotype.”
“But you’re not afraid of them. That anger doesn’t come from fear.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said, hating the uncertainty in my own voice. I knew very well how dangerous vampires could be, especially when you came face-to-face with one in a dark room. I’d seen it firsthand. They smelled dangerous. And here she was promoting one like he was a damned philanthropist.
“Then what are you afraid of?”
Losing. I was afraid of losing. She had the show and I didn’t. I was supposed to ask the difficult questions. What I said was, “I’m not afraid of anything.”
Then I hung up.
I’d turned the radio off, so the cabin was silent. Part of me wanted to turn it back on and hear what Ariel said about my—or rather Sue’s—abrupt departure, as well as what else Gustaf had to say about the inherent nobility of vampires. In a rare show of wisdom, I kept the radio off. Ariel and Gustaf could keep each other.
I started to throw the phone, and amazingly refrained. I was too tired to throw it.
Afraid. Who was she to accuse me of being afraid? The one with the radio show, that was who.
I couldn’t sleep. Part of me was squirming with glee at the mighty blow I had struck against my competition. Er, mighty blow, or petty practical joke? I’d been like a kid throwing rocks at the old haunted house. I hadn’t even broken Ariel’s stride. I’d do better next time.
The truth was, I was reduced to crank calls, followed by bouts of insomnia.
Run. Let me go running.
Restlessness translated to need. Wolf was awake and wouldn’t settle down. Let’s go, let’s go—
No.
This was what happened: I couldn’t sleep, and the night forest beckoned. Running on four legs for a couple of hours would certainly wear me out to the point where I’d sleep like a rock. And wake up naked in the woods, kicking myself for letting it happen. I called the shots, not that other side of me.
I slept in sweatpants and a tank top. The air was dry with the heat and smell of ashes from the stove. I wasn’t cold, but I huddled inside my blankets, pulling them firmly over my shoulders. I pulled a pillow over my head. I had to get to sleep.
I might even have managed it for a minute or two. I might have dreamed, but I couldn’t remember about what. I did remember moving through cotton, trying to claw my way out of a maze of fibers, because something was wrong, a smell in the air, a noise that shouldn’t have been there. When I should have only heard wind in the trees and an occasional snap of dry wood in the stove, I heard something else… rustling leaves, footsteps.
I dreamed of a wolf’s footsteps as she trots through dead leaves on the forest floor. She is hunting, and she is very good. She is almost on top of the rabbit before it bolts. It only runs a stride before she pounces on it, bites it, and it screams in death—
The rabbit’s scream was a horrible, high-pitched, gut-wrenching, teakettle whistlelike screech that should never come out of such an adorable fuzzy creature.
I jerked upright, my heart thudding fast, every nerve searing.
The noise had lasted only a second, then silence. It had come from right outside my door. I gasped for breath and listened: wind in the trees, a hiss of embers from the stove.
I pushed back the covers and stood from the bed.
Moving softly, barefoot on the wood floor, I went to the front room. My heartbeat wouldn’t slow. We may have to run, we may have to fight. I curled my fingers, feeling the ghosts of claws. If I had to, I could shift to Wolf. I could fight.
I watched the window for movement outside, for shadows. I only saw the trees across the clearing, dark shapes edged with silver moonlight. I took a slow breath, hoping to smell danger, but the scent from the stove overpowered everything.
I touched the handle of the front door. I ought to wait until morning. I should wait until sunlight and safety. But something had screamed on my front porch. Maybe I’d dreamed it.
I opened the door.
There it was, lying stretched out in front of me. The scent of blood and bile hit me. The thing smelled like it had been gutted. The rabbit was stretched out, head thrown back, the fur of its throat and belly dark, matted, and ripped. The way it smelled, it ought to have been sitting in a pool of blood. It didn’t even smell like rabbit— just guts and death.
My nose itched, nostrils quivering. I—the Wolf— could smell blood, the thick stuff from an animal that had died of deep wounds. I knew what that smelled like because I’d inflicted that kind of damage on rabbits. The blood was here, just not with the rabbit.
I opened the door a little wider and looked over.
Someone had painted a cross in blood on the outside of my front door.
chapter 3
I didn’t go back to bed. Instead, I put a couple of new logs in the stove, poked at the fire until it blazed hot, wrapped myself in a blanket, and curled up on the sofa. I didn’t know what bothered me more: that someone had painted a cross in blood on my door, or that I had no clue who had done it. I hadn’t seen anything, heard anything after the rabbit’s death cry, or smelled so much as a whiff of a breath mint. What was more, I didn’t remember if I had only dreamed the rabbit’s scream, or if I had really heard it. If it had been real, and crossed into my dream, or if my subconscious had made it up. Either way, it was like someone killed the rabbit, smeared blood on the door, and then vanished.
At first light, I called the police.
Two hours later, I sat cross-legged on the porch—on the far side, as far away from the rabbit as I could get—and watched the county sheriff and one of his deputies examine the door, the porch, the dead rabbit, and the clearing. Sheriff Avery Marks was a tired-looking middle-aged man, with thinning brown hair and a fresh uniform with a big parka over it. His examination consisted of standing on the porch, looking at the door for about five minutes, then crouching by the rabbit and looking at it for about five minutes, then standing on the ground, hands on hips, looking at the whole ensemble for about ten minutes. His deputy, a bearded guy in his thirties, wandered all around the cabin and the clearing in front of it, staring at the ground, snapping pictures, and writing in a notepad.
“You didn’t hear anything?” Marks asked for the third time.
“I thought I heard the rabbit scream,” I said. “But I was still asleep. Or half asleep. I don’t really remember.”
“You’re saying you don’t remember if you heard anything?” He sounded frustrated at my answers, and I couldn’t blame him.
“I thought I heard something.”
“About what time was that?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t look at the clock.”
He nodded sagely. I had no idea what that information could have told him.
“I’m thinking this looks like some kind of practical joke,” he said.
A joke? It wasn’t funny. Not at all. “Would anyone arou
nd here think something like this was funny?”
“Ms. Norville, I hate to say it, but you’re well known enough that you may be a target for this sort of thing.”
You think? “So what are you going to do about it?”
“Keep an eye out. You see anything suspicious, you see anyone walking around here, let me know.”
“Are you going to do anything?”
He eyed me and gave the condescending frown that experts reserved for the unenlightened. “I’ll ask around, do some checking. This is a small community. Something’ll turn up.” He turned to the earnest deputy. “Hey, Ted, make sure you get pictures of those tire tracks.” He was pointing at the ones leading away from my car.
This man had not inspired my faith.
“How—how am I supposed to clean all this up?” I asked. I was grateful for winter. The smell hadn’t become too overpowering, and there were no flies.
He shrugged. “Hose it down? Bury the thing?”
This was like talking to a brick wall.
My cell phone rang inside the house; I could hear it from the porch. “I’m sorry, I should pick that up.”
“You do that. I’ll let you know when I find something.” Marks and his deputy moved toward their car, leaving me alone with the slaughter. I felt oddly relieved by their imminent departure.
I dodged the rabbit, made it through the door without touching blood, and grabbed the phone. Caller ID said Mom. Her weekly call. She could have picked a better time. Strangely, though, I realized I needed to hear her voice.
“Hi,” I said, answering the phone. I sounded plaintive. Mom would know something was wrong.
“Hi, Kitty. It’s your mother. How are you?”
If I told her exactly what had happened, she’d be appalled. Then she’d demand that I come stay with her and Dad, where it was safe, even though I couldn’t. I’d had to explain it a million times when I told her last month that I wasn’t coming home for Christmas. I didn’t have a choice: the Denver pack had exiled me. If I came back and they found out about it, they might not let me leave again. Not without a fight. A big fight. Mom still gave me endless grief. “We’re in Aurora,” she’d said. “Aurora isn’t Denver, surely they’d understand.” Technically she was right, Aurora was a suburb, but as far as the pack was concerned, Denver was everything within a hundred-mile radius.
I’d have to try to keep this short. Without lying outright. Damn.
“Oh, I’ve been better.”
“What’s wrong?”
“The book’s not going as well as I’d like. I’m beginning to think coming here to get away from it all may have been a mistake.”
“If you need a place, you can always stay here for as long as you need to.”
Here we go again… “No, I’m okay. Maybe I’m just having a bad day.” Bad week? Month?
“How are other things going? Have you been skiing?”
I had absolutely nothing to talk about. Nothing that I could talk about without getting hysterical, at least. “No, I haven’t really thought about skiing. Everything’s fine, it’s fine. How are you doing? How is everyone?”
Mom launched in on the gossip. Everyone included Mom, Dad, my older sister Cheryl, her husband and two kids—a regular suburban poster family. Topics included office politics, tennis scores, first steps, first words, who went out to dinner where, which cousins were getting into what kind of trouble, and which of the great-aunts and -uncles were in the hospital. I could never keep any of it straight. But it sounded normal, Mom sounded happy, and my anxiety faded. She kept me in touch, kept me grounded. I may have exiled myself to the woods, but I still had a family, and Mom would call every Sunday like clockwork.
She brought the call to a close, making me promise to be careful, promise to call if I needed anything. I promised, like I did every week, no matter what kind of trouble I was in or what had been gutted on my front porch.
I left the conversation feeling a little better able to deal with the situation.
Hose it down, Sheriff Marks said. I went to get a bucket of water and a scrub brush. And a garbage sack.
The next few nights, I didn’t sleep at all. I kept listening for footsteps, for the sound of another animal getting butchered on my front porch. The anxiety was killing me.
Human civilization was becoming less attractive every day. During daylight hours, I didn’t even try to pound out a few pages of the memoir. I didn’t even turn on the computer. I sat on the sofa and stared out the window. I could go out there and never come back. It would be so easy.
In the middle of another wakeful night, I heard something. I sat up, heart racing, wondering what was happening and what I was going to do about it. But it wasn’t footsteps on the porch. Nothing screamed. I heard gravel crunching, the sound of a vehicle rolling up the drive to my cabin. My throat closed—I wanted to growl. Someone was invading my territory.
I got up and looked out the window.
A Jeep zoomed into the clearing, way too fast, swerving a little when the brakes slammed on.
Arms stiff, claws—fingers—curling, I went to the front door, opened it just enough to let me stand in the threshold, and glared out. If the invader challenged, I could face it.
But I knew that Jeep, and I knew the man climbing out of the driver’s seat. Thirty-something, with light brown hair and a mustache, he wore a leather jacket, black T-shirt, and jeans, and carried a revolver in a holster on his belt. Cormac, the werewolf hunter. I’d never seen him panicked like this. Even from here I could tell he was breathing too fast, and he smelled like too much sweat.
Leaning on the hood, he came around to the front of the Jeep and shouted, “Norville!” He took a few steps away from the vehicle, glaring at me—challenging me, the Wolf couldn’t help but think. His voice was rough. “Norville, get over here. I need your help.” He pointed at the Jeep, as if that explained everything.
I didn’t speak. I was too astonished. Too wary. He looked like someone getting ready to rush me, to attack, screaming. I knew he could kill me if he wanted to. I didn’t move.
“Norville—Kitty, Jesus, what’s wrong with you?”
I shook my head. I was caught up in some Wolf-fueled spell. I couldn’t get over how weird this was. Suspicious, I said, “What’s wrong with you?”
Anguish twisted his features. “It’s Ben. He’s been bitten.”
“Bitten?” The word hit my gut and sent a tremor up my spine.
“Werewolf,” he said, spitting the word. “He’s been infected.”
chapter 4
I ran to the Jeep. Cormac steered me to the passenger door, which he opened.
Ben sat there, relaxed, head slumped to the side— unconscious. Blood streaked the right half of his shirt. The fabric was torn at the shoulder, and the skin underneath was mauled. Individual tooth marks showed where the wolf had clamped its jaw over Ben’s shoulder, and next to it a second wound—a messier, jagged chunk taken out of the flesh near his bicep—where the creature had found its grip and ripped. Ben’s forearm also showed bite marks. He must have thrown his arm up to try to protect himself. All the wounds had stopped bleeding, were clotted, and beginning to form thick, black scabs. Cormac hadn’t bandaged them, yet they were already healing.
They wouldn’t have been, if it hadn’t really been a werewolf that did this. If Ben hadn’t really been infected with lycanthropy.
I covered my mouth with my hand and just stared, unwilling to believe the scene before me.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” Cormac said. “You have to help him.”
Feeling—tingling, surreal, blood-pounding feeling— started to displace the numbness. “Let’s get him inside.”
I touched his neck—his pulse raced, like he’d been running and not slumped in the front seat for a five-hour car ride. Next, I brushed his cheek. The skin was burning, feverish. I expected that, because that was what had happened to me. He smelled sharp, salty, like illness and fear.
His head moved, his
eyes crinkled. He made a sound, a half-awake grunt, turned toward my hand, and took a deep breath. His body went stiff, straightening suddenly, and as he pressed his head straight back his eyes opened.
“No,” he gasped and started fighting, shoving me away, thrashing in a panic. He was starting to develop a fine sense of smell. I smelled different and his instincts told him danger.
I grabbed one arm, Cormac grabbed the other, and we pulled him out of the Jeep. Getting under his shoulder, I tried to support him, but he dropped his weight, yanking back to escape. I braced, holding him upright and managing to keep a grip on him. Cormac held on to him firmly, grimly dragging him toward the cabin.
Ben’s eyes were open, and he stared in a wide-eyed panic at shadows, at the memory still fueling his nerves.
Then he looked right at Cormac. “Kill me,” he said through gritted teeth. “You’re supposed to kill me.”
Cormac had Ben’s arm over his shoulder and practically hauled him off his feet as we climbed the steps to the porch.
“Cormac!” Ben hissed, his voice a rough growl. “Kill me.”
He just kept saying that.
I shoved through the open front door. “To the bedroom, in back.”
Ben was struggling less, either growing tired or losing consciousness again. We went to the bedroom and hauled him onto the bed.
Ben writhed, then let out a noise that started as a whimper and rose to a full-blown scream. His body arced and thrashed, wracked with some kind of seizure. I held down his shoulders, leaning on him with all my weight, while Cormac pinned his legs.
I shifted my hands to hold on to his face, keeping his head still and making him look at me. His face was burning up, covered with sweat.
“Ben! Sh, quiet, quiet,” I murmured, trying to be calm, trying to be soothing, but my own heart was in my throat.
Finally, I caught his gaze. He opened his eyes and looked at me, didn’t look away. He quieted. “You’re going to be okay, Ben. You’re going to be fine, just fine.”
I said the words by rote, without belief; I didn’t know why I expected them to calm him down.