Behind the woman a crime scene was in full swing: three or four police cars, an ambulance, many people in uniforms moving purposefully, and what seemed like miles of yellow caution tape. The camera caught sight of a spatter of blood on the ground and a filled body bag before the scene cut away.
A male reporter in a studio repeated the warning—stay indoors—and a scroll at the bottom listed the information: five deaths within the space of an afternoon, violence indicating a highly disturbed, animalistic killer.
Jane folded her phone away, hurried to the door, and locked it. “That’s just a few miles up the road from here. I hope nobody minds,” she said, regarding her customers with a nervous smile. No one argued.
He said he Changed, and hunted, and didn’t remember.
For a long moment, Kitty stared at the stranger across from her. Nervously, he glanced away, tapping his fingers, slumped in the plastic booth like he didn’t fit in the confined space.
She shouldn’t have automatically been suspicious, but David’s situation raised questions. Where had he come from? What had he been doing before he woke up and found—stole—the clothes he was wearing? Was it possible? The only thing she knew: David was a werewolf, and werewolves were capable of violent, bloody murder.
“Get up,” she said to him, growling almost. She didn’t like the feeling rising up in her—anger, which stirred her Wolf. Quickened her blood. Had to keep that feeling in check. But she’d offered him friendship and didn’t want that to have been a mistake.
“What?” he said, voice low.
“Come on. In back. We have to talk.” She jerked her head toward the bathrooms, down a little hallway behind her. Glaring at him, she stood and waited until he did likewise. She stormed into the back hallway, drawing him behind her.
Kitty pulled him into the women’s restroom. If anyone noticed, let them think what they would. Keeping hold of his collar, she pushed him against the wall. Working on sheer bravado, she tried to act big and strong. He could throw her across the room if he wanted to. Trick was not to let him try. Dominate him, play the alpha wolf, and hope his instincts to defer to that kicked in.
“Where were you before you showed up here?” she demanded.
Whatever attitude she’d been able to pull out worked. He was almost trembling, avoiding her gaze. Mentally sticking a tail between his legs.
She hadn’t been sure she could really pull it off.
“I was walking,” he said. “Just walking.”
“And before that?”
“I was out of it.” He grew more nervous, looking away, scuffing his shoes. “I turned. I don’t really know where I was.”
“What do you remember?”
“I never remember very much.” His voice was soft, filled with pain.
She understood what that was like—remembering took practice, control. Even then the memories were fuzzy, inhuman, taken in through wolf senses. He didn’t have any of that control to begin with.
“Did you hunt?” she asked, hoping to spark some recollection. “Did you kill?”
“Of course I did! That’s what we do, what we are.”
He tried to pull away, cringing from her touch. She curled her lip in a snarl to keep him still.
“Think, you have to think! What was it? What did you kill? Was it big? Small? Did it have fur?”
He growled, his teeth bared, and an animal scent rolled off him.
She’d pushed him too far. She almost quailed and backed down. His aggression was palpable, and it frightened her. But she fought not to let that show. Stood her ground. Being alpha was a new feeling for her.
“So you could have killed someone,” she said.
He pulled away and covered his face with his hands. She barely heard him whisper, “No. No, it’s impossible. It has to be impossible.”
He didn’t know. Honestly didn’t know. Now, what was she supposed to do about that?
She tried again, calmer this time. Pulled out whatever counseling skills she’d picked up over the last year.
“Try to think. Can you remember images? Scents, emotions. Some clue. Anything.”
He shook his head firmly. “I don’t know what it’s like for you, but I don’t remember anything. I don’t know anything!”
“Nothing?”
“It’s a blank. But you—how can you remember? You don’t actually remember—”
“Images,” she said. “The smell of trees. Night air. Trails. Prey.” A long pause, as the memory took her, just for a moment. A flood of emotion, a tang of iron, euphoria of victory. Yes, she remembered. “Blood. Now, what do you remember?”
He dug the heels of his hands into his temples and dropped to a crouch. Gritting his teeth, setting his jaw, he groaned, a sound of anguish. Every one of his muscles tensed, the tendons on his hands and neck standing out. He was shaking.
Alone, out of control, he was over the edge. She knelt by him and touched the back of his head—simple contact, chaste, comforting. “Keep it together,” she said. “Pull it in. Hold it in. Breathe slower. In … out.” She spoke softly, calmly, until he matched his breaths to the rate of her speech. Slowly, he calmed. The tension in his fists relaxed. He lowered his arms. His face eased from a grimace to a simple frown.
She stroked his hair and rested her hand on his shoulder. “It’s possible to keep some control and remember.”
“I used to have a life,” he said. “I just want my life back.”
She didn’t know what to say. Of course he wanted his life back. So much easier if everything could go back to the way it was before. Nearly every day she thought of it. But if you wanted that life back, you had to fight for it. Fight for that control, every day.
“What am I going to do?” he said, voice shaking, almost a sob.
“Nothing,” she said. “We wait.”
If he hadn’t done anything, nothing would come of this. Nothing would lead the police to him. But she didn’t want to even suggest that much. In case he had done something, and the police did come for him.
* * *
David took a moment to recover after Kitty left the bathroom. Not that a moment alone would help. He felt fractured. The parts of his being had scattered, for months now.
He didn’t understand her at all. She was like him—the same, another monster, a werewolf. And yet she was completely different. So … with it. And he didn’t understand how she did it. How she looked so calm.
If he couldn’t remember what had happened, maybe he could learn what happened some other way. He couldn’t sit here waiting for the cops to find him and haul him away. Not that they could. The moment he felt danger, he knew what would happen—he would turn, and run.
He stepped to the end of the hall that tucked the bathrooms away from the restaurant. Kitty had returned to the booth. The waitress poured her more coffee, which she sipped. Hunched over the table, she looked out with a nervous gaze. He could see the wolf in her, intense brown eyes flickering to every movement, watchful, alert. Part of him was afraid of her, her strength and confidence. She’d had him cowed in a second.
She believed he was a murderer, and he couldn’t deny it. Couldn’t say that she was wrong. He couldn’t be sure that she wouldn’t call the police. He’d only known her for an hour. She might be a monster like him, but she also seemed like the kind of person who would tell the police. A law-abiding werewolf. He never would have believed it.
He had to prove that he didn’t do it.
From the hallway, he ducked and slipped to the back of the kitchen, moving quickly so Kitty or the waitress wouldn’t see him. She’d think the worst.
One guy in the kitchen, a Latino wearing a white apron, looked at him. “Hey—”
David didn’t slow down but ran straight through the kitchen, unlocked the back door, and slipped out. Outside, he paused, taking deep breaths of chilly air through flaring nostrils. Night had fallen, gray and overcast. A light snow fell. A dusting of it would mask scents.
Thinking like a hunter,
a wolf—he shook his head to clear his vision of the haze that covered it for a moment. Couldn’t let the wolf take over. Had to stay human. What had Kitty said? Keep it together.
His breathing slowed. He straightened his back and felt a little more human.
The lot behind the restaurant was lit by a single, fuzzy orange lamp. Only one car was parked here. Snow coated it, so it had been here a while.
Beyond that lay an interstate wasteland: scrub-covered verges, cracked parking lots and frontage road, ancient gas stations. Cars hummed on the distant freeway, even on Christmas.
A set of flashing lights traveled along the frontage road. David took off at a run after the police car.
In less than half an hour, he reached one of the murder scenes.
He caught a scent—blood, thick on the ground. A hint of rot, meaning guts had been spilled. Not fresh, the slaughter had lain open to air for a while.
Human blood. Somehow, he recognized it.
But did he recognize this place, this situation? Or was it a false memory? Did he recognize the scene from the newscast?
Moving low, almost on all fours, touching the ground with his hands every now and then to keep his balance as he ran, he approached the site. He kept out of sight, hiding among the dried vegetation, banked with crusted snow. This would be easier on four legs. As a wolf. He fought to ignore the voice whispering at him, clawing at him. He wanted to keep his awareness.
Police cars blocked off a place where a pickup truck had pulled over along the road. Yellow tape fluttered, marking off almost an acre of land within it. A half dozen people moved around the space, bent over, examining the ground.
David stopped and lay close to the ground, hidden, and studied the area as well as he could. Three body bags on stretchers lay by an ambulance. The pickup truck’s doors were open, lights shining around it. Its interior was covered in blood.
Did he even know what he was looking for here? What he hoped to find? He had to admit, he didn’t know. He just wanted to see the bodies. See that it had been guns or knives that had done this, spattered all that blood over the truck. Not teeth and claws.
But he could imagine a scenario: driving along the road, this family, or maybe group of friends, saw a huge wolf loping alongside them. Curious, they stopped to watch, because wild wolves weren’t found here. Maybe they stepped out to take a picture. And it wasn’t a wolf, and he was drawn by the promise of easy prey, of slaughter—
He buried his face in his arm to stop the vision. He choked on a sob, because his mouth was watering. At the same time, he wanted to vomit.
That wasn’t a memory. Just an overactive imagination. He couldn’t remember. Couldn’t.
He imagined Kitty’s voice telling him to slow his breathing, to hold the panic at bay. To keep it together.
Crawling on his belly, infantry-like, he inched forward to get a better look.
* * *
Kitty expected David to follow her back to the booth after he had settled down. They’d wait for news, hope for the best.
Surely he’d remember something if he’d killed someone. Surely. But who could say? For all her bluster, she knew so little about it.
Minutes passed, and he didn’t return. Not that she could blame him if he’d decided to avoid her. Maybe stay in the bathroom, hiding from everyone. This whole spending the holidays with people thing left something to be desired.
Finally, she went back to the bathrooms to check. He wasn’t in the women’s anymore. For the best, probably. She knocked on the door to the men’s. “David?” she called, and got no answer. She opened the door a crack, peered in. Empty. So where had he gone?
From the back hallway, the kitchen was visible, all stainless-steel surfaces and stove tops. The single cook on duty leaned on a counter, looking out at the TV. And on the other side of the room was a door to the outside.
Her heart thudded, contemplating what he was doing. She’d been stupid, confronting him like that. Now she’d driven him off. Who knew what he would do, an out-of-control werewolf roaming the countryside?
Of course, now it was up to her to clean up the mess. Or at least keep it from getting worse.
Crouching to avoid drawing the cook’s attention, she dashed across the kitchen and went through the door, which was already unlocked. As if someone had been this way already. Outside was freezing. But her blood was warm, Wolf running through her, firing her senses. Scent, sound, feel—she searched for his trail by the way the hairs on the back of her neck tingled. She felt the heat of his footsteps on the ground.
Breaking into a jog, she followed his trail, the faint touch of his scent, like a taste in the back of her throat. She let a bit of Wolf bleed into her consciousness. A bit of the hunter, tracking one of her own.
She shouldn’t have been surprised to find the trail leading straight toward what was clearly a crime scene of epic proportions. Flashing blue and red flared out over the countryside, turning the darkness into a surreal disco parody. The snow fell heavier now, large flakes burning on her skin. They glittered in the lights. She’d forgotten her coat, but hardly noticed; she was sweating from the exertion.
Not wanting to get caught, and certainly not wanting to answer questions about why she was out here, she dropped to the ground. She assumed David had done the same, since she couldn’t see him silhouetted against the lights. Instead, she saw what must have been dozens of cops milling inside a taped-off area.
And she smelled blood. Great quantities of reeking, rotten blood and bile. People hadn’t just died; they’d been shredded. Her human sensibilities gagged. The Wolf merely cataloged the information: several bodies, human, gutted, and they’d been out awhile. Carrion, Wolf thought. Kitty shook the thought away.
Had they been dead long enough for David to be the culprit? Almost, she turned around and went back, because she didn’t want to know.
Just a little bit farther, though. If she could smell the bodies, she ought to be able to catch a scent of what had done this to them. Since she couldn’t get close, she concentrated on the land around them. If something had killed them here, then that same something had to have fled. The trail might be covered with snow now, but she might find a trace of it.
She smelled David.
Pausing a moment, she tasted it, fearing what it meant. But no, this was fresh. Still warm. The touch of him on the air was more human than wolf. He was in human form. His trail didn’t have the reek of a predator who’d just devoured prey.
Ahead, she saw him, a dark figure stretched out on the ground, collecting bits of snow in the wrinkles of his clothes. She was in the perfect position to sneak up on him and pounce. In fact, her hands itched, the claws wanting to come out, Wolf wanting to grab this opportunity.
And wouldn’t that be a complete and utter disaster? She refrained, not wanting to give him a heart attack—or a good excuse to turn wolf at this particular moment.
“David,” she called in the loudest whisper she could manage, creeping up until she was beside him.
Despite her caution, he flinched and twisted back to look at her. Then he sagged with relief.
“What are you doing here?” he hissed back.
“Following you. Have you found out anything?”
He took a deep breath. “I don’t think a werewolf did it. There’d be some trace of it, wouldn’t there?”
There would. She’d smelled the aftermath of a werewolf-killed body before, and he was right—if David had done it, they’d be smelling blood, bodies, and wolf.
“Yeah, there would,” she said.
He slumped and made a sound that was almost a sob. He’d come out here for no other reason than to reassure himself.
Tentative, she touched his shoulder. Leaned close to him in a wolfish gesture of companionship. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. Let’s go back now.” Back to the warmth, light, virgin eggnog, Jimmy Stewart, and a wonderful life.
“If I didn’t do this,” David said, “who did? What did?”
> “That’s for the police to find out.”
Something seemed to have taken hold of him. Some newfound determination. Like the evidence had given him confidence—proof that he wasn’t an out-of-control ravening monster.
“We ought to be able to find something out,” he said. “We can smell the trail. The police can’t do that. If we can, shouldn’t we help—”
“‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ Is that what you’re thinking?” she said with a smirk.
Looking away, he frowned. “It can’t hurt to try.”
She wanted to apologize. She shouldn’t tease him.
“So,” she said. “You feel like a hunt?”
He stared out at the murder scene. He might have had a human form, but crouched there, his gaze focused, body tense, ready to leap forward in an instant, his body language was all wolf. She felt the same stance in her own body.
“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”
Together, they took off at a jog, keeping clear of the cordoned-off area and the circle of lights that marked it.
Prowling out of sight of the police, they found a trail, the barest scent of blood on the air. Probably not so much as a drop was left on the ground for the police to find. But it was there, lingering, fading rapidly because of the falling snow. If they were going to do this, they needed to hurry.
They ranged back and forth along the same half-mile stretch of prairie leading away from the frontage road, looking for the sign they’d discovered: blood on the air, and oil, like the person they were looking for worked in a garage. There was something indefinable—something she as a human being couldn’t describe. But the Wolf inside her knew the flavor of the smell. This was a predator they were looking for. A taste of aggression rather than fear, like there’d be with prey. The feeling put her on edge. She was sure, though: The murderer was human.
A few miles from the interstate, another set of police cars gathered around a house at what looked like a junkyard. Acres of wrecked and rusting cars lined up on the land around it, roped in by strings of barbed-wire fencing. The familiar ring of lights and yellow tape bound the house. And the tang of blood and slaughter drenched the air. This scene was more recent than the other.