It was another werewolf kill. Even if I couldn't smell the mutt through the rot and the blood, I knew it by the rough tearing of the throat, the gaping chew marks on the torso. The mutt had brought the body here. To Stonehaven. He hadn't killed the boy here. There was no sign of blood, but the caked dirt indicated he'd been buried and dug up. Last night, while we were ransacking the mutt's apartment, he'd been taking the body to Stonehaven, where we would find it. The insult sent tremors of fury through me.
"We'll have to dispose of it," Jeremy said. "Leave it for now. We'll go back to the house--"
A crash in the bushes stopped him short. I yanked my head from under the bridge. Someone was trampling through the undergrowth like a bull rhino. Humans. I quickly bent, rinsed my hands in the stream, and scrambled up the bank. I was barely at the top when two men in bright orange hunting vests burst from the forest.
"This is private property," Jeremy said, his quiet voice cutting through the silence of the clearing.
The two men jumped and spun around. Jeremy stayed on the bridge and reached one hand behind his back, pulling me to him.
"I said, this is private property," he repeated.
One man, a stout kid in his late teens, stepped forward. "Yeah, then what are you doing here, buddy?"
The older man grabbed the kid's elbow and pulled him back. "Excuse my son's manners, sir. I'm assuming you're ... " He trailed off, searching for a name and coming up blank.
"I own the property, yes," Jeremy said, voice still soft.
A man and a woman came up behind the two, nearly bowling them over. They stopped short and looked at us as if seeing apparitions. The older man whispered something to them, then turned back to Jeremy and cleared his throat.
"Yes, sir. I understand you own this land, but you see, we've got ourselves a bit of a situation. I'm sure you heard about that girl that got killed a few days ago. Well, it's dogs, sir. Wild dogs. Big ones. Two of our boys from town saw them last night. Then we got a call this morning, saying something had been spotted on the far side of the woods out here around midnight."
"So you're conducting a search."
The man straightened. "Right, sir. So, if you don't mind--"
"I do mind."
The man blinked. "Yes, but you see, we've got to check things out and--"
"Did you stop at the house to ask permission?"
"No, but--"
"Did you phone the house to ask permission?"
"No, but--"
The man's voice had gone up an octave and the boy behind him was fidgeting and mumbling. Jeremy continued in the same unruffled tone.
"Then I'd suggest you go back the way you came and wait for me at the house. If you want to search these woods, you need permission. Under the circumstances, I certainly don't mind granting that permission, but I don't want to worry about running into armed men when I'm taking a walk on my own property."
"We're looking for wild dogs," the woman said. "Not people."
"In the excitement of the hunt, any mistake is possible. Since this is my land, I choose not to take that chance. I use these woods. My family and my guests use these woods. That's why I don't allow hunters up here. Now, if you'll go around to the house, I'll finish my walk and meet you there. I can provide you with maps of the property and warn my guests to stay out of the forest while you're here. Does that sound reasonable?"
The couple had joined the boy in his grumbling, but the older man seemed to be considering it, weighing inconvenience with propriety. Just as he appeared ready to relent, a voice rang out from behind them.
"What the hell is going on here?!"
Clay barreled out from the forest. I winced and thought I saw Jeremy do the same, although it might have been a trick of the sunlight through the trees. Clay stopped at the edge of the clearing and looked from the search party to us and back again.
"What the hell are you doing here?" he said, stepping up to the group of searchers.
"They're looking for wild dogs," Jeremy said softly.
Clay's hands clenched at his sides. The heat of his fury scorched all the way across the clearing. The other day when we'd heard the hunters on the property, Clay had been furious. His territory had been invaded. Yet he'd been able to control it because he hadn't seen the trespassers, had been forbidden to get close enough to them to see them and smell them and react as his instincts demanded. Even if he'd come upon them, he would have had enough advance warning to get his temper under control. This was different. He'd come looking for us and hadn't smelled them until it was too late to prepare. The trespassers were no longer unseen guns firing in the dark, but actual humans, standing right in front of him, live targets for his rage.
"Did you miss the fucking signs on the way in?" he snarled, turning on the younger man, the strongest of the group. "Or is trespassing too goddamned many syllables for you?"
"Clayton," Jeremy warned.
Clay didn't hear him. I knew that. All he could hear was the blood pounding in his ears, the need to defend his territory screaming through his brain. He stepped closer to the young man. The boy inched back against a tree.
"This is private property," Clay said. "Do you understand what that means?"
Jeremy started down from the bridge with me at his heels. We were halfway across the clearing when a sound trumpeted from the woods. A baying hound. A dog on a scent. I looked from Jeremy to Clay. They'd both stopped and were listening, trying to pinpoint the direction of the noise. I stepped back toward the bridge. With every second, the hound's song drew closer, the tempo rising, infused with the joy of triumph. It smelled the body under the bridge.
I took another step backward. Before I could think, the dog flew from the forest. It was heading straight for me, eyes unseeing, brain bound up with the smell. It got within a yard of me, then skidded to a halt. Now it smelled something else. Me.
The dog looked at me. It was a big crossbreed, something between a shepherd and a redbone hound. It dipped its muzzle and blinked in confusion. Then it lifted its head and pulled back its lips in a deep growl. It didn't know what I was, but it sure as hell didn't like me. One of the men shouted. The dog ignored it. It growled another warning. The older man ran at the dog. Seeing my window of opportunity evaporating, I met the dog's eyes and bared my teeth. Come and get me. It did.
The dog leapt. Its teeth clamped around my forearm. I fell to the ground, lifting my arms over my face as if protecting myself. The dog held on tight. As its teeth sank into my arm, I let out a wail of pain and fear. I kicked feebly at the beast, my blows barely connecting with its stomach. Over my head, I heard an uproar. Someone tore the dog away, jerking my arm with it. Then the dog went limp. Its teeth fell from my arm. I looked up to see Clay standing over me, hands still wrapped around the dead dog's throat. He threw the corpse aside and dropped to his knees. I buried my head in my arms and started to sob.
"There, there," he said, pulling me close and stroking my hair. "It's all over."
He was trying hard not to laugh, his body shaking with the effort. I resisted the urge to pinch him and continued wailing. Jeremy demanded to know who owned the dog and whether its shots were up to date. The searchers' voices drowned out one another as they babbled apologies. Someone tore off to find the dog's owner. Clay and I stayed on the ground as I sobbed and he comforted me. He was enjoying this far too much, but I didn't dare stand for fear the searchers would notice that my eyes were dry and I looked remarkably composed for a woman savaged by a vicious beast.
After a few minutes, the dog's owner arrived and was none too pleased to find his prized hound lying dead in the grass. He shut up when he found out what had happened and started promising to pay for medical bills, probably fearing a lawsuit. Jeremy gave him a dressing-down over letting his dog run unleashed on private property. When Jeremy finished, the man assured him that the dog had all its shots, then quietly hauled away the carcass with the help of the younger man. This time, when Jeremy asked them all to leave the property, no one
argued. When the chaos finally fell to silence, I shoved Clay off me and got to my feet.
"How's the arm?" Jeremy asked, walking toward me.
I examined the injury. There were four deep puncture wounds, still seeping blood, but the tearing was minimal. I clenched and unclenched my fist. It hurt like hell, but everything appeared to be in working order. I wasn't too concerned. Werewolves heal quickly, which is probably the reason we inflict injury on one another with such abandon.
"The first war wound," I said.
"Hopefully the last," Jeremy said dryly, taking my arm to examine the damage. "It could have been worse, I suppose."
"She did a great job," Clay said.
I glared at him. "I wouldn't have had to if you hadn't charged in ranting and raving like a lunatic. Jeremy had almost got rid of them when you showed up."
Jeremy shifted to the left, blocking my view of Clay, as if we were Siamese fighting fish that wouldn't attack if we couldn't see each other. "Come with me to the house and we'll get your arm cleaned up. Clay, there's a body under the bridge. Put it in the shed and we'll dispose of it in town tonight."
"A body?"
"A boy. Probably a runaway."
"You mean that mutt brought a body--"
"Just get it out of here before they decide to come back."
Jeremy took my good arm and led me away before Clay could argue.
On the way back to the house, we talked. Or, I should say, Jeremy talked, I listened. The danger seemed to be escalating with each passing hour. First we'd been spotted in the city. Next we'd found a body on the property. Then we'd had a confrontation with the locals, calling attention to ourselves and probably raising suspicion. All in twelve hours. The mutt had to die. Tonight.
When Clay came back to the house, he wanted to talk to Jeremy and me. I found an excuse and hightailed it up to my room. I knew what he wanted to say, to apologize for screwing up, for confronting the searchers and causing trouble. Let Jeremy absolve him. That was his job, not mine.
After Jeremy and Clay had finished their talk, Jeremy took the others into the study to explain what had happened. Since I didn't need the instant replay, I stayed in my room and called Philip. He talked about an ad campaign he was trying to snag, something about lakefront condos. I admit I wasn't paying much attention to his words. Instead, I listened to his voice, closing my eyes and imagining I was there beside him, in a place where dead bodies in the backyard would have been cause for indescribable horror, not quick cleanup plans. I tried to think as Philip would, to feel compassion and grief for that dead boy, a life as full as my own cut short.
As Philip talked, my thoughts wandered to my night with Clay. I didn't have to work very hard to guess how Philip would feel about that. What the hell had I been thinking? I hadn't been thinking--that was the trouble. If I hadn't felt guilt a few hours ago, I felt it now, listening to Philip and picturing how he would react if he knew where I'd spent the night. I was a fool. Here I had a wonderful man who cared for me and I was screwing around with a self-absorbed, conniving monster who'd betrayed me in the worst possible way. It was a mistake I swore not to repeat.
After a late lunch, Jeremy took Clay for a walk to give him instructions for that night. I'd already received mine. Clay and I were going after the mutt together--I didn't have a choice in the matter, but I'd still argued. I would find the mutt and lure him out to a safe place where Clay would finish him off. It was an old routine and, as much as I hated to admit it, one that worked.
While the others were cleaning up the dishes, I slipped away. I wandered through the house and ended up in Jeremy's studio. The mid-afternoon sun danced through the leaves of the chestnut tree outside, casting pirouetting shadows on the floor.
I thumbed through a stack of canvases leaning against the wall, scenes of wolves playing and singing and sleeping together, curled up in heaps of intertwining limbs and varicolored fur. Juxtaposed with these were pictures of wolves in city alleys, watching passersby, wolves allowing children to touch them while mothers looked the other way. When Jeremy did agree to sell one of his paintings, it was the second style that earned him the big bucks. The scenes were enigmatic and surreal, painted in reds, greens, and purples so dark they looked like shades of black. Bold splashes of yellows and oranges electrified the darkness in incongruous places, like the reflection of the moon in a puddle. A dangerous subject, but Jeremy was careful, selling them under an assumed name and never making public appearances. No one outside the Pack ever came to Stonehaven, except chaperoned service people, so his paintings were safe displayed here in his studio.
Jeremy painted human models too, though only members of the Pack. One of his favorites was on the wall by the window. In it, I was standing on the edge of a cliff, naked, with my back to the viewer. Clay was sitting on the ground beside me, his arm wrapped around my leg. Below the cliff, a pack of wolves played in a forest clearing. The title was scrawled in the bottom corner: Eden.
On the opposite wall hung two portraits. The first showed Clay in his late teens. He was sitting out back in a white wicker chair, with a wistful half smile on his face as his gaze focused on something above the painter. He looked like Michelangelo's David come to life, youthful perfection all innocence and dreaminess. On a good day, I saw the portrait as Jeremy's wishful thinking. On a bad day, it smacked of outright delusion.
The portrait that hung next to it was equally unsettling. It was me. I was sitting with my back to the painter, twisting to give a view of my full face and upper body. My hair was loose, falling in tangled curls and hiding my breasts. Like Clay's picture, though, the expression was the focal point. My dark blue eyes looked clearer and sharper than normal, giving them an animal-like glint. I was smiling with my lips parted and teeth showing. The impact was one of feral sensuality, with a dangerous edge that I didn't see when I looked in the mirror.
"Ah-ha," Nick called from the doorway. "So this is where you're hiding. Phone call for you. It's Logan."
I was out the door so fast I nearly knocked over a pile of paintings. Nick followed and pointed me to the phone in the study. As I was heading down the hall, Clay walked through the back door. He didn't see me. I slipped into the study and shut the door as I heard Clay asking Nick where I was. Nick made some noncommittal answer, not daring to risk Clay's anger by admitting the truth. Clay was still pissed off over me contacting Logan during my absence. He didn't suspect I was screwing around with Logan or anything so banal. He knew the truth--that Logan and I were friends, very good friends, but that was enough to ignite his jealousy, not of my body, but of my time and my attention.
I picked up the phone and said hello.
"Ellie!" Logan's voice boomed through a blanket of static. "I can't believe you're actually there. How's it going? Still alive?"
"So far, but it's only been two days." The line buzzed, went silent for a second, then hissed back to life. "Either L.A. has worse phone service than Tibet or you're on a cell phone. Where are you?"
"Driving to the courthouse. Listen, things here are wrapping up fast. We got a settlement. That's why I called."
"You're coming back?"
His laugh sizzled across the line. "Eager to see me? I'd be flattered if I didn't suspect you just want a buffer against Clayton. Yes, I'm coming back. I'm not sure exactly when, but it should be tonight or tomorrow morning. We've got to finish up work here and I'll catch the next plane out."
"Great. I can't wait to see you."
"Likewise, though I'm still miffed you wouldn't let me come to Toronto at Christmas. I was looking forward to burnt gingerbread. Another great holiday tradition lost."
"Maybe this year."
"Definitely this year." The phone crackled and went silent, then clicked back. "--lo?"
"I'm still here."
"I'd better sign off before I lose you. Don't wait up for me. I'll see you tomorrow and I'll whisk you away to lunch so you can relax for a while, catch your breath. Okay?"
"Definitely okay. I'll s
ee you then."
He said good-bye and hung up. As I put the receiver back in the cradle, I could hear Nick in the hall, rounding up players for a game of touch football. He stopped outside the study door and tapped.
"I'm in," I said. "I'll meet you out there."
I looked back at the phone. Logan was coming. That was enough to make me forget all the problems and annoyances of the day. I smiled to myself and hurried out the door, suddenly eager for a good roughhousing before the excitement of the mutt hunt.
CHAPTER 9
PREDATOR
After dinner, I prepared for the evening. The choice of clothing posed a problem. If I was going to hook this mutt, I needed to pull on the mask that worked best with werewolves: Elena the sexual predator. This didn't mean miniskirts, fishnets, and see-through blouses, namely because I didn't own any. And I didn't own any because they looked ridiculous on me. Skimpy tops, stiletto heels, and barely there bottoms made me look like a coltish fourteen-year-old playing dress up. Nature didn't bless me with curves and my lifestyle didn't let me develop extra padding. I was too tall, too thin, and too athletic to be any guy's idea of centerfold fodder.
When I'd started living at Stonehaven, my wardrobe was strictly thrift-shop casual, no matter how much money Jeremy gave me for shopping. I didn't know what else to buy. When Antonio had bought us seats to a Broadway opening, I'd panicked. There were no women around to ask for help in choosing a dress and I didn't dare ask Jeremy for fear I'd end up in some taffeta and lace monstrosity fit only for a high school prom. I'd gone to a row of upscale shops in New York, but I got lost, literally and figuratively. My savior had appeared in a most unlikely form: Nicholas. Nick spent more time around women, particularly beautiful, rich young women, than any man outside of a James Bond film. His taste was impeccable, favoring classic designs, simple fabrics, and smooth lines that somehow turned my height and lack of curves into assets. All of my dress-up clothes had been bought with Nick in tow. Not only didn't he mind spending an entire day touring Fifth Avenue, but he'd have his credit card on the counter before I could fish mine from my wallet. Little wonder he was so popular with the ladies.