Kitty Takes a Holiday

  I glared at him, and part of the Wolf stared out of my eyes. I made the challenge and I didn’t care if he could read it or not. “His body will be fine. Physically, he’s healing. Mentally—that’s up to him. We won’t know until he wakes up if this is going to drive him crazy or not.”

  Cormac scrubbed a hand down his face and started pacing. Tension quivered along his whole body; sheer willpower was keeping him from breaking something.

  “Ben’s tough,” he said finally. “This won’t drive him crazy. He’ll be okay. He’ll be fine.” He said the words like they were a mantra. Like if he said them enough they’d have to be true.

  My glare melted into a look of pity. I wished I could find the right thing to say to calm him down. To convince him that yes, he’d done all he could. Cormac had never been weak. He’d never been this helpless, I’d bet. I wondered if I’d have to worry about him going crazy, too.

  Crazier than he already was.

  Cormac left the room, and a moment later I heard the front door open and slam shut. I didn’t run after him—I didn’t dare leave Ben alone. I listened for the Jeep starting up, but it didn’t. Cormac wasn’t abandoning me to this mess. Maybe he just needed to take a walk.

  I brought the laptop into the bedroom, pulled a chair next to the bed, kept watch over Ben, and wrote.

  I wouldn’t have wished lycanthropy on anyone, much less a friend. Life was hard enough without having something like this to deal with. I’d seen the whole range of how people handled it. In some people, the strength and near-invulnerability went to their heads. They became bullies, reveling in the violence they were capable of.

  People who were already close to psychosis tumbled over the edge. One more mental handicap to deal with was too much. Some people became passive, letting it swallow them. And some people adapted. They made adjustments, and they stayed themselves.

  I regretted that I didn’t know enough about Ben to guess which way he’d go.

  My cell phone rang, and I fielded the call from Sheriff Marks.

  “The deputy I had on the stakeout didn’t see any sign of your perpetrator,” he informed me.

  “You know he had the interior light on in his car half the time he was out here?” I replied.

  Marks was silent for a long time, and picturing the look on his face made me grin. “I’ll have a talk with him,” he said finally. “I’ll try to have someone out there tonight, too. You let me know if you see anything.”

  “Absolutely, Sheriff,” I said.

  Hours passed, dusk fell, and Cormac still hadn’t returned. I decided not to worry. He was a big boy, he could take care of himself. I certainly wasn’t capable of babysitting both him and Ben.

  Ben hadn’t stirred since the last time he passed out. I had no idea how long he had to stay like this before I had to start worrying. When I did start worrying, who was I supposed to call for help? The werewolf pack that had kicked me out of Denver? The Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology, the government research office that was undergoing reorganization after its former director disappeared—not that I knew anything about that.

  I stared at the laptop screen for so long I started to doze off. The words blurred, and even though the straight-backed kitchen chair I sat in wasn’t particularly comfortable, I managed to curl up and let my head nod forward.

  That was when Ben spoke. “Hi.”

  He didn’t sound delirious or desperate. A little hoarse still, but it was the scratchy voice of someone getting over a cold. He lay on the bed and looked at me. One of his arms rested over the blanket that covered him, his fingers gripping the edge.

  I slid out of the chair, set the laptop aside, and moved to the edge of the bed.

  “Hey,” I said. “How do you feel?”

  “Like crap.”

  I smiled a little. “You should. You’ve had a crappy week.”

  He chuckled, then coughed. I almost jumped up and down and started dancing. It was Ben. Ben was back, he hadn’t gone crazy.

  “You seem awfully happy about my crappy week.”

  “I’m happy to see you awake. You’ve been out of it.”

  “Yeah.” He looked away, studying the walls, the ceiling, the blanket covering him. Looking everywhere but at me.

  “How much do you remember?” I asked.

  He shook his head, meaning that he either didn’t remember anything or he wasn’t going to tell me. I watched him, feeling anxious and motherly, wanting simultaneously to tuck the blankets in tighter, pat his head, bring him a glass of water, and feed him. I wanted him to relax. I wanted to make everything better, and I didn’t have the faintest idea how to do that. So I hovered, perched next to him, on the verge of wringing my hands.

  Then he said, his voice flat, “Why did Cormac bring me here?”

  “He thought I could help.”

  “Why didn’t he just shoot me?”

  As far as I knew, Cormac’s guns were still under the bed. This bed. Ben didn’t have to know that. What if Cormac was wrong, what if Ben did have the guts to shoot himself? What would I have to do to stop him? I couldn’t let Ben die. I wouldn’t let him—or Cormac—give up.

  I spoke quietly, stiff with frustration. “You’ll have to ask him.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. He went out.”

  His gaze focused on me again, finally. A glimmer of the old Ben showed through. “How long have I been out of it?”

  “A couple of days.”

  “And you two have been stuck here together the whole time?” His face pursed with thoughtfulness. “How’s that working out?”

  “He hasn’t killed me yet.”

  “He’s not going to kill you, Kitty. On the contrary, I think he’d rather—”

  I stood suddenly. “Are you hungry? Of course you’re hungry, you haven’t eaten in two days.”

  Footsteps pounded up the porch then. Ben looked over to the next room at the same time I did, and his hand clenched on the blanket. Slowly, I went to the front room.

  The door slammed open, and Cormac stood there. He carried a rifle.

  “You have a freezer, right?” he said.

  “Huh?” I blinked, trying to put his question into context. I failed. “Yeah. Why?”

  He pointed his thumb over his shoulder to the outside.

  I went to the door and looked out. There, in the middle of the clearing in front of the cabin, lay a dead deer. Just flopped there, legs stiff and neck arced back. No antlers. I couldn’t see blood, but I could smell it. Still cooling. Freshly killed. My stomach rumbled, and I fiercely ignored it.

  “It’s a deer,” I said stupidly.

  “I still have to dress it and put the meat up. Is there room in the freezer?”

  “You killed it?”

  He gave me a frustrated glare. “Yeah.”

  “Is it even hunting season?”

  “Do you think I care?”

  “You shot a deer and just… dragged it here? Carried it? Why?”

  “I had to shoot something.”

  I stared at him. That sounded like me. Rather it sounded like me once a month, on the night of the full moon. “You had to shoot something.”

  “Yeah.” He said the word as a challenge.

  So which of us was the monster? At least I had an excuse for my bloodlust.

  “Ben’s awake,” I said. “Awake and lucid, I mean.”

  In fact, Ben was standing in the doorway, holding a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His hair was ruffled, stubble covered his jawline, and he appeared wrung-out, but he didn’t seem likely to topple over. He and Cormac looked at each other for a moment, and the tension in the room spiked. I couldn’t read what passed between them. I had an urge to get out of there. I imagined calling in to my own radio show: Yeah hi, I’m a were-wolf, and I’m stuck in a cabin in the woods with another werewolf and a werewolf hunter…

  “Hey,” Cormac said finally. “How are you feeling?”

  “I don’t know,” Ben said.
“What’s the gun for?”

  “Went hunting.”

  “Any luck?”

  “Yeah.”

  My voice came out bright with false cheerfulness. “Maybe you could cut us up a couple of steaks right now and we could have some dinner.”

  “That’s the plan. If you can stoop to eating meat that someone else picked out,” he said. “Oh, and I found another one of these.” He tossed something at me.

  Startled, I reached for it—then thought better of it and stepped out of the way. Good thing, too, because a piece of barbed wire clattered on the floor. It was bent into the shape of a cross, like the other, which was still lying on the floor by the stove. I kicked the new one in that direction.

  Ben moved toward the front door, stepping slowly like he was learning to walk again.

  Cormac could change his mind, I thought absently. He gripped the rifle, all he had to do was raise it and fire, and he could kill Ben. Ben didn’t seem to notice this, or didn’t think it was a danger. Or just didn’t care. All his attention was on the front door, on the outside. Cormac let him pass, and Ben went out to the porch.

  I went after him.

  He stared at the deer. Just stared, clutching the blanket around him and shivering like he was cold, though I didn’t think the chill in the air was that sharp.

  “I can smell it,” he said. “All the way in the bedroom, I could smell it. It smells good. It shouldn’t, but it does.”

  Fresh blood spilled on the ground, hot and rich, seeping out of cooling meat and crunchy, marrow-filled bones—I knew exactly what he was talking about. My mouth would be watering, if I wasn’t so nervous.

  “It’s because you’re hungry,” I said softly.

  “I could eat it right now, couldn’t I? If I wanted, I could eat it raw, skin and all—”

  “Come inside, Ben. Please. Cormac’ll take care of it.”

  Ben stood so tautly, his whole body rigid, I was afraid that if I touched him he’d snap at me, and I didn’t know if his snapping would be figurative or literal. Something animal was waking in him; it lurked just under the surface.

  Very gently, I touched his arm. “Come on.”

  Finally, he looked away from the deer. He turned, and let me guide him inside.

  Hours later, Cormac stacked cuts of wrapped venison in the freezer, while I pulled steaks out of the broiler. Turned out everyone here liked them rare. Go figure.

  Cormac came in from cleaning up outside and went to the kitchen sink to wash his hands. “Tomorrow I’ll find someone to take care of the hide. The rest of it I buried—”

  “I don’t want to know what you did with the rest of it,” I said, giving him a “stop” gesture while I took plates out of the cupboard.

  “Come on, it’s not like you haven’t seen any of it before. In fact, you might have offered some help.”

  “I don’t know anything about dressing a deer for real. I usually just rip into it with my teeth.”

  Ben sat at the kitchen table, staring blankly at the tabletop. Cormac had given him a change of clothes, but he still wrapped himself with the blanket. I tried not to be worried.

  He needed time to adjust. That was all. Not having him take part in the banter was weird, though.

  The table, an antique made of varnished wood with a couple of matching straight-backed chairs, was small, barely big enough for two people, totally inadequate for three. After I arranged the steaks on plates, Cormac picked up his and stayed put, eating while standing by the counter. I brought the other two plates to the table. I set one, along with a set of utensils, in front of Ben. His gaze shifted, startled out of whatever reverie he’d been in, and tracked the food.

  Determined not to hover, I sat down with my own meal. I couldn’t help it, though; I watched him closely.

  Meat looks different to a werewolf. I didn’t used to be much of a meat eater at all. I used to be the kind of person who went to a steakhouse and ordered a salad. But after I was attacked, and I woke up and had a look at my first steak, so rare that it was bleeding all the way through—I could have swallowed the thing whole. I’d wanted to, and the thought had made me ill. It had been so strange, being hungry and nauseous at the same time. I’d almost burst into tears, because I’d realized that I was different, right through to the bones, and that my life would never be the same.

  What would Ben do?

  After a moment, he picked up the fork and knife and calmly sliced into the meat, and calmly put the bite into his mouth, and calmly chewed and swallowed. Like nothing was wrong.

  We might have been having a calm, normal meal. Three normal people eating their normal food—except for the spine-freezing tension that made the silence painful. The scraping of knives on plates made my nerves twinge.

  Ben had eaten half his steak when he stopped, resting the fork and knife at the edge of the plate. He remained staring down when he asked, “How long?”

  “How long until what?” I said, being willfully stupid. I knew exactly what he was talking about.

  He spoke in almost a whisper. “How long until the full moon?”

  “Four days,” I said, equally subdued.

  “Not long.”

  “No.”

  “I can’t do it,” he said, without any emotion. Just an observation of fact.

  He was making this hard. I didn’t know what else I expected. He’d acquired a chronic disease, not won the lottery. Ben wasn’t a stranger to the supernatural. He was coming into this with his eyes wide open. He’d seen a werewolf shape-shift—on video, at least. He knew exactly what would happen to him when the full moon rose.

  “Everyone says that,” I said, frustration creeping into my voice. “But you can. If I can do it, you can do it.”

  “Cormac?” Ben said, looking at his cousin.

  “No,” the hunter said. “I didn’t do it then and I won’t do it now. Norville’s right, that isn’t the way.”

  Ben stared at him a moment, then said, “I swear to God, I never thought I’d hear you say anything like that.” Cormac looked away, but Ben continued. “Your father would have done it in a heartbeat. Hell, what if he’d survived? You know he’d have shot himself.”

  My mind tripped over that one entirely. My mouth, as usual, picked up where intelligent thought failed. “Whoa, wait a minute. Hold on a minute. Cormac—your father. Your father was killed by a werewolf? Is that what he’s saying?”

  We embarked on a three-way staring contest: Cormac glared at Ben, Ben glared back, and I glared back and forth between them. Nobody said anything until Cormac spoke, his voice cool as granite.

  “You know where my guns are. You want it done, do it yourself.”

  He walked out of the kitchen, to the front door, then out into the night, slamming the door behind him.

  Ben stared after him. I was about ready to scream, because he still wasn’t saying anything.

  “Ben?”

  He started eating again, methodically cutting, chewing, swallowing, watching his plate the whole time.

  I, on the other hand, had lost my appetite. I pushed my plate away and comforted myself with the knowledge that if Ben was eating, he probably wouldn’t kill himself. At least not right this minute.

  After supper, Ben went back to bed and passed out again. Still sick, still needing time to mend. Or maybe he was avoiding the situation. I didn’t press the issue. In the continued absence of Cormac, I took the sofa. Dealing with Ben had exhausted me. I needed to get some sleep. Or maybe I was just avoiding the situation.

  I fervently hoped Cormac wasn’t out shooting another deer. My freezer couldn’t handle it.

  I dreamed of blood.

  I stood in a clearing, on a rocky hill in the middle of the forest. I recognized the place; it was near the cabin. When I turned my face up, blood rained from the sky. It poured onto my face, ran across my cheeks, down my neck, matting my fur. I was covered in fur, but I couldn’t tell if I was wolf or human. Both, neither. The forest smelled like slaughter. Red crosses ma
rked the trunks of the trees closest to me. Painted in blood. Then the screaming started, like the trees themselves were crying at me: Get out, get out, get out. Leave. Run. But they hemmed me in, the trees moved to stop me, ringing me, blocking my way. I tried to scream back at them, but my voice died, and still the blood rained, and my heart raced.

  It only lasted a second. At least, it only felt like a second. It felt like I had just closed my eyes when I woke up. But early sunlight filled the room. It was morning, and Cormac was kneeling by the sofa.

  “Norville?”

  Quickly I sat up. I looked around for danger—for blood seeping from the walls. I expected to hear screaming. My heart beat fast. But Cormac seemed calm. I didn’t see anything unusual.

  “How long have you been there?” I said, a bit breathlessly.

  “I just got here. I found something, I think you should come take a look.”

  I nodded, pushed back the blankets, and followed him, after pulling on a coat and sneakers.

  The air outside was freezing. I wasn’t sure it was just the temperature. After that dream, I expected to find another gutted rabbit on the porch. I expected to see crosses on every tree. I hugged myself and trudged over the forest earth.

  Cormac stopped about fifty paces out from the cabin. He pointed down, and it took me a minute to find what he wanted me to see: another barbed-wire cross, sunk in the dirt as if someone had dropped it there.

  “And over here,” Cormac said, and led me ten paces farther, along a track that paralleled the cabin.

  Another cross lay on the ground here. Without prompting from him, I continued on, and after a moment of searching, I found the next one on my own.

  I looked back at Cormac in something of a panic.

  He said, “There’s a circle of them all the way around the house.”

  The barbed wire had become more than a symbol. The talismans literally fenced me in. They created a barrier of fear.

  “Who would do this?” I said. “Why—why would someone do this?”

  “I don’t know. Do you smell anything?” he asked.

  I shook my head. I didn’t smell anything unusual, at least. “That’s weird, I ought to be able to smell some trace of whoever left these. But it’s like the crosses just appeared out of thin air. Is that possible?”