Kitty Takes a Holiday

Chapter 12

Twilight settled over the forest, clear and stark. The sky turned the beautiful deep blue of prize sapphires. The first star shone like a diamond against it. That clean, organic pine forest smell permeated everything.

Ben and I sat on the front porch and waited, watch­ing Tony make preparations. He'd parked his truck at a national forest trailhead a few miles up the road, and moved it to my driveway during the afternoon. He pulled a box of supplies out of the back and got to work. First, he leaned a broom against the porch railing, then placed unlit white votive candles along the porch and around the clearing. Moving around the clearing to the four quar­ters of the compass, he drew something out of the leather pouch he carried and threw it into the air. A fine powder left his hands, and the smell of home cooking in a well-kept kitchen hit me. Dried herbs. Sage, oregano. I felt better.

"You think this'll work?" Ben said.

"I've learned to keep an open mind. I've seen some­thing like this work before. So, yeah. I think it will."

"You look better already."

I felt a smile light my face. "What can I say? The man inspires confidence."

"Do you know in some regions it's traditional to pay a Curandero in silver?"

I blinked, then frowned, suddenly worried. Would the ironies of my life never end? "Well, that's unfortunate. He knows I don't let silver get within miles of me if I can help it, right?"

Grinning, Ben leaned back against the wall. "Maybe he'll take a check."

I reveled in the moment of peace. Ben was getting his sense of humor back.

The sound of a driving car hummed up the road, then crunched onto the driveway that led to the clearing. Marks's patrol car, a pale ghost in the twilight, moved into sight, then pulled in behind Tony's pickup.

Wary, I stood. Ben stood with me. I felt that same sense of foreboding and invasion I had every time Marks had come here. I understood it, now: the spite he brought with him, his part in the curse that had been cast. Now, though, I felt something else: like a wall stood between us, a defen­sive barrier. This time, I had protection.

Sheriff Marks, Alice, and Joe got out of the car, and Tony walked out to meet them. They all shook hands, like they'd come for some kind of dinner party.

"Sheriff, Joe, I'm going to have to ask you to leave your guns in the car," Tony said.

"Like hell," Marks said, as expected.

"This is supposed to be a peacemaking. Kind of misses the point if you bring guns."

It was asking a lot, telling men like that they couldn't bring their guns. The whole thing might have come to a screeching halt right there.

Alice said, "Please. I really want this to work. I want to make this right."

They listened to her, and Tony led them into the clearing.

"Everyone ready to get started?" he said. No one gave a particularly enthusiastic affirmation, but no one said no, either. Tony went around and started lighting candles. Golden circles of light flared from them, warm spots in the night. They wrecked my night vision; I couldn't see anything past the clearing now.

"Gather in a circle. Blood has been spilled here, in malice. There must be atonement for that."

The others did so, then looked to me. I hesitated—they needed atonement, and as the wronged party here I had the power to forgive, or not. In Tony's ritual, as I saw it taking shape, that gave me control.

But it wouldn't do any of us any good if I withheld that forgiveness out of spite. This ritual seemed to be less about magic than it was a mechanism for reconciliation. Get us all in one place, make us willing to talk it out. The actions themselves were as important as the result.

I stepped off the porch and into the clearing. Ben fol­lowed me.

Nervously, we looked at one another, because nobody but Tony knew what would happen next. Alice seemed sad but resigned, her face pulled into a deep frown, her eyes staring. Marks's frown was different, suspicious. He kept looking over his shoulder. Joe simply stood, stoic as ever.

Tony snuck up behind me. I flinched, startled, because I hadn't heard him. I'd been too distracted by the strange mood settling over the area—a kind of suspended, timeless feeling, like the air itself had frozen.

"Sorry," he said, smiling, and handed me something. A tightly bound bundle of some kind of dried plant. Sage, it smelled like, about as long as my hand and as thick as my thumb. He went to each of us in the circle, until everyone had a bundle.

I assumed he'd tell us what to do with it. I tried not to feel too silly just holding it. Alice clutched hers in both hands, held it to her chest, near to her heart, and closed her eyes.

Then Tony picked up the broom and began sweeping the dirt in front of the porch. Slowly, he made his way around the circle, clockwise.

An owl called. This wasn't a calm, random hooting, the low-pitched, hollow whisper I'd heard the first time Tony came to the cabin. This was rushed, urgent—a note of warn­ing, rapid and increasing in pitch. Branches rustled—there was no sound of wings, but the owl's cry next sounded from the roof of the cabin, above where Tony stood. I still couldn't see the bird. It hid itself well in the shadows, or my eyes weren't working right.

Tony looked around, searching for something.

Something wasn't right. I'd have sworn I hadn't heard anything, hadn't noticed any scent on the air, but the smell of herbs and candles might have covered up anything else. Still, an all-too-familiar tingling wracked my spine. A sense of invasion. My sense of territory being violated.

It was out there. Tense to the point of shivering, I looked out, trying to see into the trees, beyond the light of the candles.

"What is it?" Ben breathed. He'd moved—we'd both moved, until we stood apart from the others, back to back, looking out, ready for danger. I hadn't noticed it because it had happened so smoothly, instinctively, unbidden. Even our little pack circled in the face of whatever danger lurked out there.

This was driving me crazy. It was like the mornings I'd found the rabbits and dogs all over again. If something was out to get me, why couldn't it just show itself, let me face it down?

Ben grabbed my hand and nodded over to a spot north of the circle. The sky had deepened almost to black now, and the trees were lost in darkness.

Red eyes stared back. Points of glowing embers, about the height of a tall wolf. I wasn't imagining it.

"Was that the thing you saw in New Mexico?" I whispered.

"I never got a good look at it." His voice trembled, just a little.

The others looked out to where we stared.

"Jesus—" I thought that was Joe.

"Nobody move," Tony said, his calm slipping a little.

"It's not a wolf," I said. "It doesn't smell like wolf."

"It smells like death," Ben said, and he was right. The embers went out for just a moment—blinking. The eyes blinked at us.

"Oh, God—" Alice said, her voice gone high, like a little girl's.

Tony said, "Alice, stay where you are, don't run!"

Too late. She backed up, her footsteps scraping clumsily on the ground. Then she turned, arms flailing, and raced. Not to the cars, not to the house, either of which offered safety. She ran blindly into the darkness, guided only by panic.

That was exactly what the monster wanted.

"No!" Tony called.

"Joe, get your rifle!" Marks shouted.

The wolf shot out of the darkness like a rocket.

My senses collided. It wasn't a wolf. It didn't smell right, it didn't look right, nothing about this was right. But it had four legs, a long snout, a sleek body with a tail stuck straight back like a rudder. Its coat shone coal-black, and its eyes glared red. Angrily red.

I intercepted it.

It raced straight for Alice, latching on to her terror and marking her as prey. Movement attracted notice. I knew the feeling. I didn't think about it—I just knew that I could stand up to the monster better than Alice could.

I crashed into it from the side, tackling its flank, wrapping my arms around it, pulling it down. I wasn't human—I had this thing inside me that let me move faster than I ever thought I could, that made me stronger than I should have been. My Wolf was a match for it.

But the wrongness of it was overwhelming. As soon as I touched it, a numbness wracked my limbs, poured into my body. It made me want to curl into a ball, fetal, and scream until the world turned right again. My vision went gray.

We rolled together in the dirt. The black wolf snarled and twisted back on itself, snapping at the sudden anchor that had brought it down. Teeth closed on my arm, jaws clamping down hard, ripping into my skin. Better me than Alice. I was already a lycanthrope. I could take it.

I gasped, and my Wolf writhed, growling in pain and anger. Again, a sense of wrongness—the attack didn't just happen on the surface of my body, but crawled inside it, trying to eat through me from the inside. I'd never felt anything like it. My body slipped a little—she wanted to Change, she could fight better as a wolf, she wanted out so she could protect herself.

Claws, I needed claws to tear. But I couldn't move. I expected my hands to thicken, my arms to melt. I wanted to feel my nails grow thick, hard as knives, and break through that monster's skin.

But I didn't.

I usually resisted the Wolf, kept her leashed tight. This time, now, when I wanted to feel her, wanted her to break free and save me—nothing happened. I froze with aston­ishment. With fear, while the monster grabbed hold of me.

"Kitty!" Ben shouted.

I prayed he stayed back. I wanted him out of this. I didn't want him to have to fight like this.

In something of a panic I slashed, as if I had claws. My fingers raked rough, oily, ugly fur, causing no damage. The thing slammed me onto my back—and made a noise that almost sounded like laughter. My head cracked against the ground, and I saw stars. It pinned me, thick paws on my chest, claws digging in. Its breath smelled of carrion, of sickness. Plague and death. I thrashed in pure animal panic, kicked, got my hands up, took hold of its throat, and pushed. Get off… get the hell off me…

Its jaws opened over my throat, and its sickly breath gusted over me. I melted, my strength ebbing.

"Kitty, get back!"

I kicked its ribs, and its hold broke. I twisted to slip from under its weight, obeying the voice instantly because I trusted it, because it belonged to a man who'd watched my back before. Cormac. As fast as I could, I rolled away from the black wolf.

In the same moment, a shot echoed, then another, and another. They were close, thunder in my ears, rattling my brain.

The wolf cried out—a human scream. Too human, a woman in pain.

The creature lay still before me. I swore I could see motes of dust settling around us, where we'd been fighting.

I couldn't think at all. I felt like I'd been locked in dark­ness and the prison door just blew open, and now my body floated through the opening. Now, Wolf wanted to ran. On my knees, I bent over double, clutching my stomach, trying to pull my body back into myself. Trying to make myself human again. Skin, not fur. I wanted hands and fin­gers, not paws and claws. Keep it together, keep the line between us drawn. Please, please…

My Wolf crept back to her lair, growling low the whole time, not believing the danger was over, not believing I could take care of us. Please…

I took a deep breath, and my body stopped slipping. I flexed my hands, which were hands again.

"Stay back. Give her space. She might still shift." Cormac was speaking.

I kept my eyes closed, stayed crouched over for another moment, taking advantage of the moment of space and silence he made for me.

I want you to take care of me, I wanted to say to him. I wish you were a wolf and could be my alpha.

"I'm okay," I said, though my voice was weak and uncertain. I looked up. Cormac stood just a few feet away, looking the worse for wear, a few days' worth of beard covering his jaw. He held a rifle in both hands, ready to fire again if he had to. Briefly, his gaze shifted from the body of the monster to me. His look was searching, asking. Are you all right? I tried to pour gratitude back to him. Yes, because of you. I smiled. "You came back."

"I got your messages."

"Was this the second wolf you'd been tracking?"

"Yeah."

Ben stood beside me, close enough to touch, but he held back, his body fairly quivering with anxiety. He seemed to need reassurance as much as I did. I reached for him, and he grabbed my hand and knelt beside me.

"You okay?" he said.

"I'll heal." My whole body ached, pain stabbing along every limb. I wouldn't know how badly the wolf had torn me up until I got into some light and looked.

"The wolf," Cormac said. "It's not changing back."

When a werewolf died in its wolf form, the body shifted back to human—returned to its original state. Cormac had put at least three bullets in it, and I knew he used silver. The thing lay in a widening pool of blood. It had to be dead. It even looked dead, a pile of dull fur rather than a glowing, rippling creature.

But it wasn't changing back. It had never smelled like a werewolf.

I crept forward. Wrong, this was all wrong, and my flesh crawled. I wanted to go inside and lock the door. But I had to know.

Cormac said, "Kitty, don't—"

I touched its neck. It felt cold and strangely pliant under my touch. Its chest was shattered, multiple flow­ering wounds on its back bleeding into one another. Cormac's bullets had found their marks. I ran my hand down its flank.

Fur. It was only fur.

I lifted back the head, and the fur and skin came off. Lifted right off, like it was a cloak. I pulled it all the way back and moved it aside. It was a tanned wolf hide, that was all.

A young woman lay before me, naked, sprawled on her side, exit wounds ripped in her chest. Her sleek black hair was long, tangled around her, matted with blood. Despite being marred by blood and destroyed flesh, her body seemed young, lean, and powerful.

"What the hell," Ben murmured, on behalf of us all, it seemed.

"Dios," Tony said.

He was on the other side of the clearing, with Marks, Joe, and Alice. They'd grabbed her before she'd gone too far. Joe held her around the middle, supporting her, because she seemed about to fall to her knees. Marks had had time to retrieve his handgun from his car, and he stood over them protectively.

Tony moved toward us, in something of an astonished daze. When he reached the body, he knelt, put out his hand, and seemed about to touch the woman's hair. Instead, he drew back and crossed himself.

"Dios," he said again. "I've heard of this but never thought to see it in my life."

"She's not a lycanthrope," I said.

"No. She's a skinwalker."

I'd read the stories, but wasn't sure I'd believed them. Everything started out as just stories. Even seeing the evi­dence lying before me, I didn't want to believe.

Then, as if belatedly responding to Tony's near-touch, she moved. Her head tilted a little, her lips pressed like she wanted to speak, and her eyes shifted under closed lids. Something in her still lived—something inside that ruined chest survived.

"Oh my God, she's not—" I only started to say it.

Cormac's rifle fired again, exploding close by like a crack of thunder in my ears.

At almost the same instant, the woman's face disappeared.

Instinctively, my arm went up to cover my face. I fell back, but not quickly enough to avoid the spray of blood and bits that fanned out from her head and over my jeans, my arm—everywhere. Across from me Tony sprawled away from her in much the same way, arm protecting his face, spatters of blood on his clothing. I looked back at the woman under the wolf skin. Half her head, where Cormac's bullet hit, was now a jagged, pulped mess.

Nothing moved now, except blood dripping from the wound.

Cormac looked down at her over his rifle, finger tight on the trigger, like he still expected her to leap up and attack. He was ready for her to move again. I couldn't tell what appalled and frightened me more: his lack of hesita­tion in finishing her off, or the lack of emotion in his eyes over doing it.

I gagged, pressed my face against my arm, and man­aged to not throw up.

Marks aimed his gun at Cormac and approached him warningly.

Cormac's finger remained on the trigger of his rifle. He could shoot back in a fraction of a second. Marks had to know that. He had to know better than to start a shoot-out with the hunter. But for some reason it wouldn't have sur­prised me if he did anyway.

"Would both of you put your guns down!" I shouted. My ears still rang from the shot. Everything sounded muffled.

Cormac did, slowly. Marks didn't. But he did relax enough to glance away from Cormac and to the woman's body.

The sheriff said, "Who is she?"

"How should I know?" Cormac answered roughly.

Ben said, "You might check missing person reports out of Shiprock." He'd taken my hand again, and I leaned into him.

"But you knew she was going to be here," Marks said to the bounty hunter.

"I've been tracking it, yeah."

Marks said, "I'm going to have to arrest you. A formal­ity, you understand." But the look on his face said, Got you. He wore a thin smile.

Surely that was a joke. Cormac had saved my life. Then he'd… I didn't want to think about that. The look on his face, the woman's head vanishing in a spray of blood. But Marks didn't like either one of us. He didn't care about me—he had a dead woman and her killer standing there with the gun still smoking.

Cormac leveled that cold stare, unreadable and unsettling, at the sheriff. Beside me, Ben tensed. He didn't know what Cormac was going to do, either. The bounty hunter was going to spook Marks at this rate. Cormac was like some kind of animal himself, and Marks wasn't going to wait around to let him pounce.

Cormac put his left hand around the barrel of the rifle and dropped the gun to his side. "I kind of expected that."

Now, Marks approached him without hesitation. Still with his gun up and ready. I wanted to smack the guy. The sheriff held out his hand; Cormac handed him the rifle.

Marks holstered his handgun, tucked Cormac's rifle under his arm, and pulled out the handcuffs. Cormac han­dled it like he'd done this before.

"Don't talk until I get there," Ben said.

"Yeah, I know the drill." Handcuffed now, he went with Marks to his patrol car without argument.

"Joe, Alice, watch the body. Don't let anyone touch anything until the coroner gets here. Nobody leave until I get your statements," Marks said. The two were clinging to each other. Quick glances told that they'd heard him, but they didn't move.

I felt like I'd landed in a bad episode of some prime-time police show. Dead body, unlikely circumstances, too much drama.

"You want to go inside and get cleaned up?" Ben said.

I supposed I ought to. I felt like I'd been through a shredder. "Yeah. Should you go with Cormac?"

He looked after the pair, uncertain, his lips pressed together. "As soon as you're okay."

He helped me to my feet. My shoulders were stiff, and blood covered the front of my shirt. Another T-shirt ruined.

Tony had withdrawn, holding himself apart, hands folded in front of him. The candles had all gone out. I hadn't noticed how dark the clearing had become.

"That thing cut you," he said. "You're cursed. You're both cursed." He nodded after Cormac.

"Story of my life," I said. "Any recommendations?"

"A man can only meddle so much. Sometimes you just have to let things run their course."

That was the sort of thing people said when they had no idea what to do next. "Thanks," I muttered.

"I don't think you understand. That magic, the trade one must make to become a skinwalker—it's terrible. It's supposed to be too terrible to think about. But she did it, clearly. She sacrificed someone in her own family to work the blood magic." He held himself stiffly, the horror clear in his manner.

"I'm already a werewolf," I said. "So what are these cuts going to turn me into?"

Tony shrugged. "God knows. I tell you, though, this isn't over."

Well, no silver for him. I knew better than to ask how much worse this could get.

I started toward the cabin, wincing. I had to lean on Ben, because my whole body felt like glass on the verge of shattering.

Joe's words startled me because he spoke so seldom. "I can't believe you're all right. I thought you were dead. You ought to be dead after that."

"If I wasn't a werewolf, I would be dead." I still couldn't see how bad it was. My whole front was dark and shining with blood.

So much for the ritual of peacemaking. This situation had ramped up to a whole new level of surreal and fright-ening. I probably should have just left town. None of this would have happened.

I didn't want everyone to leave feeling like this.

"Do you guys want to come inside for some coffee? Or I might have some tea somewhere." Or a bottle of whiskey.

Joe and Alice exchanged a glance. Alice nodded, and the two of them approached.

"You, too," I said to Tony. "If you can stand being so close to someone who's as badly cursed as I am."

Tony hesitated for such a long time I thought he was going to refuse. That I was so tainted he really couldn't stand being near me, even though he'd declared me "not evil" earlier that day. I couldn't believe this was still the same day.

Then he said, "I have some tea. It should help. It helps to drink it when you've had a fright."

It certainly couldn't hurt, I hoped.

"Okay," I said, and he went to his truck.

The others gathered in the kitchen. Ben took me to the bathroom.

"Jesus, look at you," he said when he turned on the light.

I whimpered. I didn't want to look. I turned away from the mirror.

"Should we take you to a hospital or something?"

"No, it'll be okay. I've had worse." Brave words.

We had to cut away my shirt and bra. My chest and shoulders had a dozen puncture wounds where the skin­walker had dug in her claws again and again. My right arm was shredded. This was where she'd bitten and worried, and dozens of slashes and tooth marks streaked the flesh. I stood over the sink while Ben sponged me off. The blood had spattered on my face and hair as well. I'd have to stay in the shower for a week to get clean.

"I should have done something," Ben murmured. "I should have helped."

"I'm glad you didn't. We'd both have ended up like this. That thing—I was frozen. I couldn't move, I couldn't do anything. Just like Cormac said." Just like those cows. They couldn't run, they couldn't struggle. She'd slaugh­tered them at her leisure.

"When does this rapid healing start?"

"It should have started already." All the wounds still oozed and hurt like hell.

He shook his head absently, dabbing away fresh blood. "You have a first-aid kit? I think we're going to have to tape some of this up. You have something you can wear?"

"I think there's a button-up shirt in the closet. I ought to be able to get that on without crying." I was still propped up against the sink, afraid to move because I knew it would hurt.

Ben regarded me a moment, and then had the gall to smile. "For someone who says she doesn't like to get mixed up in the middle of things, you sure have a way of getting mixed up in the middle of things." He kissed my lips and left on his errand. That made me feel better. Heck, it was almost like I'd planned it: Ben was doing great now that he had someone else to worry about. I'd have to keep that in mind.

He came back with a flannel shirt, and I sent him back for something else. I didn't want to think about bits of flannel mixed with cuts scabbing over.

By the time we emerged back into the kitchen, Alice, Joe, and Tony were chatting. If not happily, at least cor­dially. Like they might actually come out of this as friends. Tony was pouring hot water from a kettle into mugs. His tea smelled rich, warm, soothing—just like he promised. I identified chamomile twined in with scents I didn't recognize.

Tony said, "You just don't seem like the kind of person who'd be into animal sacrifice."

"Well… I'm not. It was all roadkill Joe and Avery picked up. We added blood from the butcher shop to make it look fresh. The only thing I did, really, was fix it so nobody saw or heard them placing the things."

Of all the… Before I could say something snotty, Tony continued. "That explains a lot. It didn't work, she didn't leave, because you weren't willing to make the sacrifice yourself, to spill the blood. You weren't willing to take that onto yourself to get what you wanted."

Softly, she said, "Not like that girl out there."

After a moment of silence, I took the opportunity to bust in on the group. "I spend all that money in your store, and you still didn't want me sticking around?"

Alice's face puckered like she was going to start cry­ing and I regretted my cattiness. She really hadn't known what she was doing, had she?

"Oh, Kitty, I was just scared. We all were. We didn't know. You hear stories, and you think the worst. We were just trying to keep the town safe, surely you can under­stand that."

"So… the last couple full moons. Did you notice any­thing different? Could you tell that a werewolf was living in the neighborhood?" A law-abiding werewolf who made very, very sure that she didn't cause trouble.

"No, I didn't notice."

Joe said, "That's because we spent the night locked in the house with all the lights on."

"And the days I shape-shifted that weren't on the full moon—you didn't notice then, did you?"

They both looked at me. Alice said, "You turn into a wolf on other days, too?"

Even Ben looked at me sharply. I wasn't supposed to shape-shift on other nights. He knew I wasn't supposed to do that. Now what kind of role model was I?

"Whenever I want."

"I didn't know that," Alice said softly.

Tony straightened from where he'd parked by the counter. "Hey, Alice, you want to help me with something?"

"What?"

"That thing out there left a lot of bad feeling in the air. No reason we can't try to clean it up a little, even if things didn't go the way we planned."

"But the coroner, shouldn't we wait—"

"This won't bother them. We won't have to touch anything."

She brightened. Tony had offered a chance for redemp­tion, and she seemed eager to take it. "All right."

The two left the cabin, and Tony flashed me a smile on the way out.

Joe busily rinsed out mugs.

I started toward him. "Don't worry about that, I can get it."

Ben interceded. "No, you sit down and start heal­ing." He pointed at me until I sank into a kitchen chair. Funny—I hadn't noticed I was dizzy until I sat down and the room stopped trembling. Ben put a mug of something steaming in front of me, then went to help Joe.

Clutching the mug in both hands and sipping carefully, I watched Ben and Joe washing coffee and tea accoutre­ments at the sink, side by side. Joe, who wouldn't let me, the werewolf, into his store without holding a gun on me, stood next to another werewolf and didn't even know it.

Over the next half hour, Sheriff Marks's backup arrived, including a coroner's van and a few deputies to take statements. While they worked, Tony and Alice walked around the clearing, each waving a smoking bundle of plant matter—some kind of incense. Some kind of bless­ing, or cleansing. I didn't know if it would work. Alice seemed to feel better, at any rate. At least it worked for someone.

One of the deputies took Joe and Alice home. The cops had taken statements from everyone, and Tony was the next to leave. Before that, he found me, sitting on the porch steps to watch the proceedings.

He sat next to me.

"Here. Take this." He reached over his neck and pulled something from under his shirt: a small leather pouch on a long cord. Before I even had time to lean away in surprise, he put the cord over my head, so I was wearing the pouch around my neck. "It's protected me through the years. It may help protect you."

I put my hand over it. Small enough to fit inside my fist, the brown leather was soft. Stuffed inside was some­thing crunchy and fibrous. Dried herbs, maybe.

"May?" I said.

He shrugged, like we were talking about the weather. "I do what I can."

"Well. Thanks for trying."

"If I had known that's what we were dealing with, I might have been able to do more." He nodded to where the coroner's people were loading the body onto a wheeled stretcher. Some forensics officers wrapped the wolf skin in a plastic bag and carried it away.

"Any advice for what to do next?" I said.

"Let it end here. Don't go asking any more questions. Don't look for any more trouble."

I hid a smile. Good advice, to be sure. Not sure it was the right advice. I had way too many questions, and this hadn't ended because Cormac was still sitting in the back of Marks's car, wearing handcuffs.

"Ben told me about the silver," I said. "I don't usually keep that sort of thing around, but we could probably pay you with some of Cormac's bullets." I'd pay Cormac back later. He'd understand.

"This one's on the house," he said. Then, as unobtrusively as he'd arrived, he disappeared into his truck and away.

Finally, after the coroner's crew and deputies were gone, the sheriff left with Cormac riding in the backseat, leaving the clearing suddenly empty and quiet. Ben and I stood on the porch, watching the chaos disperse. The night wasn't over for us; we had to get in my car and go spring Cormac.

"I don't know if I can do this," Ben said, watching the cars leave.

"Do what?"

"Sit there and argue with those clowns. Not without… something happening. Losing my temper. You know."

"You've done it before, haven't you?" They'd both acted like this was routine. Which was kind of scary.

"Lost my temper? Sure." He smiled a little. "Or do you mean representing Cormac? You keep saying you and I are a pack and we have to look out for each other. I feel like Cormac is part of my pack. I have to protect him. The wolf side would do anything to protect him." He flexed his hands, like he could already feel that anger, that determination, waking up inside him.

I touched his hand, to bring him back to himself. He let out a nervous breath.

"I'll go with you," I said.

Looking away, he nodded. "I was hoping you would."

I hadn't ever considered not going.

The truth was, the thought of him leaving me here, of being alone after all that, made me ill. Between that and the queasy, injured feeling that still lingered after the fight, I wanted to throw up. I wasn't okay at all, and I wasn't going to sit around waiting for the next curse to arrive.