Kitty Takes a Holiday

  “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 like 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 wit
ches 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 Jiminy 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.

  Wearing a wry smile, he looked at me. His voice turned thoughtful. “I don’t think I’d have made it this far without you. Cormac did the right thing, bringing me here.”

  “That’s nice of you to finally admit it.”

  “When this happened to you, did you get through it alone or did someone help you?”

  “Hmm, I had a whole pack. A dozen or so other werewolves, and half of them wanted to help and half of them were worried I’d be competition. But there was someone in the middle of all that. T.J. looked out for me. The first time I Changed, he held me. I tried to be there for you the same way. But T.J.—he was special. He was very Zen about the whole thing most of the time. He used to tell me not to look at the Wolf as the enemy, but to learn to use it as a strength. You take those strengths into yourself and become more than the sum of the parts.” Always, this was easier said than done. But I could still hear T.J.’s voice telling me these things. Reminding me.

  “Where is he now?”

  To think, I had just been about to congratulate myself that I’d spent a whole minute talking about T.J. without crying. I spoke softly, to keep my voice from cracking, because I was supposed to be the strong one. “Dead. I called out the alpha male of our pack, and T.J. swooped in to back me up. We lost. He died protecting me. That’s why I had to leave Denver.”

  “I hear that happens a lot, in werewolf packs.”

  “Maybe. I don’t really know. There’s a lot of different kinds of packs out there.”

  “I’d just as soon keep this one to you and me.”

  “Afraid of a little healthy competition?” I said wryly.

  “Of course. I’d hate to have to share you with anyone.”

  “Or is it that you’d hate to have to fight to keep me to yourself?”

  He shifted so he was looking at me. I looked back, down the length of my body. “You know, I think I would. If I had to.” The playful tone went out of his voice.

  My whole body flushed. Suddenly we weren’t two friends snuggled together for comfort. He was male, I was female, and there were sparks. The weight of him leaning against me sent warm ripples through my gut.

  “Is that you talking—you the human, I mean. Or is it the wolf?” I said.

  He hesitated, then said, “It’s all the same thing. Isn’t it?”

  Helplessly, I nodded.

  He moved again, propping himself on an elbow so he leaned over me. Tentatively, he touched the waistband of my sweatpants. I didn’t say anything. In fact, I pulled my arms away, tucking my hands under my head, so I wouldn’t be tempted to stop him.

  He pushed up the hem of my tank top, tugged down on my sweatpants, exposing a stretch of naked skin across my belly. He kissed this, working his way across, gently and carefully, like he wanted to be sure to touch every spot. Warmth flushed along my skin everywhere he touched. He eased the edge of my pants down farther, until he was kissing the curve of my hip, using his tongue, tasting me. My heart was beating hard, my breaths coming deep. I closed my eyes and squirmed with pleasure.

  It was all I could do to keep from grabbing him, ripping off his clothes, and pulling him into me. He started this, so I let him work, reveling in the focused intensity of his attention. He kept at it until I gasped, a sudden jolt of sensation startling even me.

  Then I grabbed him and ripped all his clothes off.

  After that, we acted like we were on some kind of honeymoon. We’d start out washing dishes and end up making out over the sink, pawing each other with soapy hands.

  The bed got a workout. The sofa got a workout. The floor got a workout. The kitchen table—after one attempt we decided it wasn’t stable enough to withstand a workout.

  I got a heck of a workout. I was sore.

  It distracted us from our problems, from the curse, from the slaughter, from the threats that had taken up residence
in my dreams. The reason Ben gave me for not sleeping was a much better one than lying awake waiting for doom to strike.

  Then there was the nagging little voice that kept telling me it wasn’t Ben, it was the wolf inside of him that had inspired this heroic passion. He wouldn’t be here if he weren’t a werewolf. Circumstance had brought us together, but I was enough of a romantic to want to be in love.

  Neither one of us brought up the subject.

  Over the next several days, two more herds of cattle were attacked. A dozen cows in all were slaughtered, torn to pieces. Each time, Marks called me up, wanting to know where I’d been the night before, what I’d been doing, and did I have witnesses who could verify that. Not really, seeing as how Ben and I were each other’s alibi. Each time, Ben and I went out and searched the area, looking for something out of place, unnatural. Something that turned the world dark, and glared out with red eyes. But it must have been avoiding us.

  I tried calling Cormac again, more than once. Voice mail picked up every time without ringing, so he was out of range or his phone was off. He didn’t have a message, just let the automated voice carry on. I tried not to worry. Cormac was fine, he could take care of himself.

  The second time Marks called I accused him of racial profiling—the only reason he suspected me was the fact that I was the only known lycanthrope in the region. He replied that he had applied for that warrant to collect a DNA sample from me.

  I finished that phone conversation to see Ben sitting on the sofa holding his forehead like it ached and shaking his head slowly.

  Ben and I were on the sofa, undressed, snuggled together under a blanket, basking in the warmth of the stove and drinking morning coffee. Didn’t do much talking in favor of reveling in the simple animal comforts.

  A tickling in the back of my mind disturbed the comfort. I lifted my head, felt myself tilting it—like a dog perking its ears up. And yes, I did hear something, very faint. Leaves rustling. Footsteps.

  Ben tensed up against me. “What’s wrong?”