Low Midnight

Chapter 14

WALKING AWAY, Cormac’s cheek started to hurt. Probably meant that Nolan’s hand hurt worse, so that was all right.

Kitty’s wolf barely left a trail when she wasn’t racing. The creature stepped lightly, displacing only a paw-print’s worth of dirt every now and then. But he had a good idea what direction she’d gone, and she seemed to keep a straight path. He searched for an hour, which was fine because that gave her enough time to find a place to bed down and fall asleep in order to make the shift back to human.

He found her, a lean stretch of pale skin in contrast to the surrounding brown underbrush. She was curled up in fetal position, knees pulled to her chest and arms bent close to her body, head tucked in. He could see the shape of the wolf that had fallen asleep like that, limbs pulled in tight, tail tucked across nose. Now, she was human, naked, her blond hair a tangle blending into the strewn leaves around her. She was tense, her brow furrowed, as if she was caught in a bad dream.

He’d intended to sit back and wait for her to wake up in her own time. Picking a spot a little ways off, he sat on the ground against a tree trunk. That only lasted a minute. It was voyeuristic, kinky almost, him watching her sleep. Obviously, she’d had enough time to shift back, whether or not she was fully rested. They ought to get a move on.

“Hey. Kitty.”

She jerked, coming to awareness and instantly propping herself up to look around with wide, startled eyes.

“Whoa.” She slumped over, shook her head, stretched. He looked away. “Fucking skinwalker, who’d have thunk? Who was that guy?”

He sidled over, holding out the blanket as he continued to look off in the distance, though he could see her in the corner of his vision. He tried not to.

“Backwoods yahoo. Hired muscle. He won’t bother us again.” She seemed totally unselfconscious. Why should she be, she was a werewolf.

“Thanks,” she murmured, taking the blanket and wrapping it around herself. “Sorry about that. I probably shouldn’t have run off, but it was the only way we were going to track him.”

“Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

“But he’s dangerous—what if he comes after us?”

“We had a talk. He’s one of Nolan’s guys. Their whole operation up here is high school shit, not worth messing with.” Maybe he did kill Roy’s brother in some scuffle, or maybe that was all just a story. One way or the other, Cormac wasn’t about to get wrapped up in this mess.

“If you say so. Thanks for the blanket.” She climbed to her feet and rearranged the blanket for the trip through the woods, revealing glimpses of skin. Not that Cormac was looking.

She peered at him. “You know you have the start of a really pretty black eye?” She started to reach out to touch it, but winced and pulled away.

“It’s just a bruise. Zigged when I should have zagged.”

“Should we be grateful you weren’t shot?”

“Probably.” He walked on, and she followed.

“This may all be high school shit to you, but they’ve got guns and bad intentions and you’re getting involved.” She waited; he didn’t say anything, because what was there to say? “Just promise me you’re not getting sucked into anything that’s going to get you in trouble. I never want to have to make that drive to Cañon City again.”

He glanced at her and had to smile because she looked ridiculous, her hair hanging in tangles around her face, the gray blanket slipping off her shoulders as she clung to it. He had that wrenching feeling again, a flashback to when he’d intended to kill her, when she was just another job. And then—that endearing look that she was turning to him right now. The optimism. She trusted him, and that seemed the weirdest part of all. Any other ache he felt was superfluous. Old news.

“I promise,” he said.

“Good.”

WHEN THEY got back to the shed, Nolan and Eddie were both gone, which was good. It saved Cormac from having to do any more posturing. Who knew how much kerosene he’d already poured on the whole mess just by coming down here and mentioning Layne to Nolan. The war between them might have all been in Layne’s head—was it still?

He ought to just walk away.

Back at the Jeep, Kitty dressed as best she could, scowled at her torn shirt but managed to fit it on anyway, but held on to the blanket. Cormac kept busy retrieving the burnt-out flares and checking over the Jeep. The tires were intact, and it hadn’t acquired any new dents or scratches.

Nolan probably had a single-wide or some cabin out here or at the edge of town. Scraping by at the edges. Eddie might have been crashing at his place, might have had a dump of his own. Cormac didn’t much care. They’d be back here soon—he wouldn’t have scared them off entirely and probably didn’t have more than ten or fifteen minutes to check out the shed. But he wanted to check it out. He retrieved his gloves and flashlight out of the front of the Jeep.

“Wait here a second,” he said to Kitty.

“What? What are you doing?” she asked as he walked off.

“Just wait.”

She growled, slumping against the Jeep’s hood and crossing her arms to keep her shirt on.

What are you planning? Amelia, also checking up on him. He was getting it from both sides now. Typical.

“Those two’ll be back after us if I don’t take care of them,” Cormac said.

That doesn’t answer my question.

“You’ll see.”

Of course I will. Bloody hell.

Flashlight in hand, he went through the shed and into the mouth of the tunnel, a symmetrical opening of granite, roughhewn with nineteenth-century tools and smelling of chalk. The place hadn’t changed much. The same chain-link gate was bolted across the tunnel a few feet in. The metal NO TRESPASSING sign had been replaced with a plastic one at some point. So had the padlock, a straightforward commercial one with a key, which Cormac set about picking and had open in under a minute.

The tunnel on the other side of the door didn’t go too far back; the rest of the place had collapsed and filled in with debris years ago. It wasn’t below the water table, which meant the extant cave stayed cool and dry—not a bad place to store a weapons cache. And there it was, crates stacked up, metal gun lockers shoved against stone walls, cheap metal shelving holding boxes of ammunition. Further back he found some other survivalist gear—boxes of canned and dried food, army surplus MREs, blankets, bottled water, batteries, radios. A nice little setup. All on federal land, which was a problem if Nolan didn’t have someone in the Forest Service covering for him, the way Uncle David had back in the day. He wondered.

Part of him had an urge to strike up his lighter in here. Find a fuse, light it all up, watch it go boom. That’d piss more than a few people off.

But he didn’t see much sense in setting the whole valley on fire. He ignored the itching in his hand and walked back out. After replacing the lock on the gate, he emerged into warm sunshine.

“Well?” Kitty asked when he got back to the Jeep.

“Well what?”

“I figured you went off to blow something up,” she said.

Was he really that predictable? “I have a better idea,” he said. “You’ll like this one.”

She seemed skeptical, studying him with a raised brow. He wrote down the GPS coordinates of the spot, then they drove down the mountain for better cell reception.

Guys like Nolan and Layne would call what he was about to do ratting out. They’d call him a snitch and a bastard with as much contempt as they knew how to muster. What Cormac figured: wasn’t much point holding to some kind of honor system where folk like Nolan and Layne were concerned. Cormac had a goal, and that was to get Nolan and his crew out of the way so he didn’t have to worry about them. If he had an easy way to do it without implicating himself in anything that might get him thrown back in prison? All the better.

Pulling over, he called information and got the number for the San Isabel National Forest district office. As he was hoping, he got a menu that let him leave a message rather than talking to someone. They’d see his phone number, but he wouldn’t have to talk to them if he didn’t want to.

He could sound like an upstanding citizen when he needed to, pitching his voice just a little higher and sounding a little bit confused. “Hi, yeah, I was hiking up south of Cotopaxi on one of the service roads and I found something weird. Didn’t look right, and I don’t know who to tell, but I figured you all would want to know. Looks like someone’s got a storage locker or something in one of the old caves up there. It’s locked up. A lot of bullet casings on the ground, stuff like that. I thought maybe it might be drugs or something; I didn’t really want to stick around, just in case. But I thought you guys would want to know. I had my GPS with me.” He listed off the coordinates and ended the call without giving his name.

Now he just had to wait and see what happened.

Kitty was staring at him. Ignoring her, he pulled back onto the road, heading for the highway and the long drive home.

“The indirect approach? You?” she said finally.

“I might as well let someone else do the work for me.”

Shaking her head, she giggled. “I am constantly in awe of how sneaky you can be.”

Wasn’t trying to be sneaky. He just had a job and wanted to get it done with as little fuss as possible.

She slept on the drive back to Denver, which told him he hadn’t let her sleep long enough back in the woods and she was still recovering from shifting. Weird, to feel so protective. Of a werewolf. He’d never get over the disconnect.

Could have been so much different if he’d been able to, when he first met her. Years ago now, but he still thought of it. Maybe it should have been different.

Amelia sounded put out when she muttered at him. I know what happened. You showed me what happened, letting it seep out of your memories whether you liked it or not. You had your chance with her. She gave you a chance, and you walked away. Can you imagine what that does to a woman? She’s told all her life that what men want is carnal knowledge of her, she offers herself, her body to you—and you refuse her? All she can think is, My God, what is wrong with me?

“She’s a werewolf.” That was his excuse. He’d gotten close—sometimes he imagined he could still taste her lips, feel her eager hands gripping him. Then some kind of flight instinct kicked in. Self-preservation, and suddenly he could only see that he was feeding himself to the wolf. He’d gotten scared. Him, scared.

He still saw the wolf in her. He just didn’t mind it so much, now.

At least you have the sense to accept her friendship.

Glad you approve, he muttered back.

I’m only trying to be helpful.

KITTY’S PHONE—sitting on the edge of the seat, tucked against her leg where she’d set it before she fell asleep—rang a couple of times before Cormac took the liberty of shutting it off. Ben, both times. Cormac didn’t want to talk to Ben. He probably should have woken her up so she could deal with it, but he didn’t. Dodging. He shut the thing off so she wouldn’t hear the ringing.

Dusk had fallen when they finally pulled into the driveway of her house. Ben kept odd hours and was often out, meeting with clients, springing them from jail, or jumping through hoops at court. Cormac was hoping that Ben would be out when he dropped Kitty off.

She was awake by then, wrapped up in the blanket. The slashes on her arms from the skinwalker had healed, but he was pretty sure traces of blood still lingered in her clothing and that Ben would smell it. Not to mention the lopsided shiner he’d developed, a purplish half moon sloping under his left eye. He kept poking at the puffy skin, and yeah, it hurt. He ought to get some ice on it. He didn’t want to have to explain any of it to his cousin. His plan was to let her out without him ever getting out of the car. She could do all the talking. She was good at it.

But Ben was waiting in the driveway. He must have heard the Jeep’s engine and come out to meet them. He was barefoot, in his casual/sloppy mode, wearing jeans and an untucked T-shirt, and his arms were crossed.

Kitty scrambled for her phone. “Why is it off? Did you turn it off?” She fiddled with it a few seconds and groaned. “He’s been trying to call for an hour. Did you turn your phone off, too?”

“Yup.”

She let out a growl and stormed out of the car, slamming the door behind her.

He still might have had a chance to escape, but Ben came over and put a hand on the roof over the driver’s-side door. Cormac had spent all day going face-to-face with blowhards, and found he couldn’t stand up to Ben. He rolled down the window.

Kitty went around and leaned next to her husband.

“And how was your day?” Ben asked wryly.

She said, “You’re gonna have to ask him, I’m done playing go-between.”

Ben tilted his head, took a searching breath. “You shifted. What happened—wait a minute, are you bleeding?” The anger vanished. He held her shoulders, faced her, studied her all over, searching and smelling.

“Not anymore,” she said brightly.

He breathed a word that might have been a curse, wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her into an embrace, kissing her forehead, resting there a moment. When he turned back to yell at Cormac, he didn’t let her go. Kept that arm around her, kept her pulled close, and she melted into the contact.

Cormac thought, not for the first time, that she was better off with him. He couldn’t do what Ben did, wrapping her up with affection so casually. She got sliced up and the best Cormac could do to comfort her was hand her a blanket.

Ben said, “What the hell have you gotten into? And is that a black eye? You got into a fight? Thank God you’re off parole.”

He didn’t know where to start, and when he looked at Kitty—the talker, who was so much better at explaining things than he was—she wasn’t any help. She blinked those big brown eyes expectantly at him and stayed quiet.

Cormac sighed. “You remember Anderson Layne?”

He had to think about it a minute. Kitty was watching for his reaction. “The militia nut who hung out with my dad? You ran into him? While looking into a century-old murder? I’m confused.”

“I didn’t go looking for him. He’s hired himself a wizard and is getting into the prospecting business. Jess Nolan’s around, too. The two of them are working up a rivalry and I got caught in the middle.”

“And you got Kitty caught, too.” That edge of anger returned.

“We agreed I should keep an eye on him, right?” she said. She brushed an arm against Ben, and he visibly calmed. “He hasn’t shot anyone. Yet.”

“Did either one of them try to hire you?” Ben said, in full interrogation mode now.

The Jeep’s engine was still running. Cormac could drive away, right now.

“Layne did.” The fact that he took Layne’s money meant he’d essentially been hired.…

“You told him no, right?” Ben sighed, not bothering to wait for an answer. “Okay. Fine. I trust your judgment, and if you need to work with these guys to learn more—”

“I don’t,” Cormac said. “I’m done with them. I’m walking away and won’t run into them again,” he added.

“Seriously?”

“I’ll figure out some other way to get at Crane’s murder. Or get at Amy’s book without help. I don’t need these guys. You’re right, they’re trouble.”

Ben might say he trusted Cormac, but that pause revealed a little too much uncertainty. Like they were still kids, right after Cormac’s father died and everyone walked on eggshells around him, wondering when he was going to blow up.

“Good,” Ben said finally.

His cousin might have been about to invite him in for a beer and further debriefing, but Cormac cut him off before he had the chance. “I’d better get going,” he said, shifting the Jeep into reverse. “It’s been a long couple of days.”

“We’ll talk later,” Ben said.

“Yeah.” He was used to being by himself, and he’d spent the whole day dealing with people. Enough was enough.

Kitty reached through the still-open window to squeeze his shoulder. “Be careful, okay? Get some ice on your face.”

She turned to walk with Ben back to the house. A conventional ranch house at the edge of the suburbs that they paid for with their real jobs. They might have been werewolves, but they were more normal than he’d ever been.

You would never have chosen normal. Would you?

“Can’t say I ever got the chance,” he muttered, and swung the Jeep out of the driveway.

ON THE drive back to his apartment, he called Layne, who didn’t answer. He left a message. “I tracked down your werewolf. He isn’t. Nolan and his crew, they’re just screwing around. You don’t need to worry about them, I took care of it. If it’ll make you feel better, have your guy put up protection charms against skinwalkers and keep a good watch. I don’t need the second half of your bounty, and I don’t need to sign up for your operation, whatever the hell you’re doing. I’m out.”

He’d spend tomorrow coming up with a plan B. Tonight—he deserved a cold beer and a long sleep in. At home, he started on the beer and would have forgotten about the ice on his face if Amelia hadn’t reminded him. Enough time had passed—hours—ice probably wouldn’t do any good. But he chanced a look in the bathroom mirror and the bruise had acquired a couple more colors in the intervening time. So he made up the ice pack and rested it over his eyes while he lay flat in bed.

He hardly had to think of it anymore. He closed his eyes, wanting to step out of his world. He wanted to talk to Amelia—and there they were. The meadow—dusk this time, a sunset like a lot of Colorado sunsets he’d stopped to look at, streaks of clouds glowing bright orange over shadowed mountains, bursts of fading sunlight breaking through.

He was sitting on his usual rock, looking over the creek. Amelia leaned in, doing the exact same thing Kitty had, wincing and reaching for his wounded face.

“I shouldn’t have looked in the mirror. I wouldn’t be picturing myself with a black eye then.”

“But your body remembers,” she said. She closed the last little distance, carefully touching his cheek. He flinched, but sat his ground. She wasn’t real, but her touch was gentle, a warmth against the injured skin. “Does it hurt?”

“It’s just sore.”

“Something of a badge of honor, I suppose. What’s next, then?” she asked.

“Exactly what I said. We find another way.”

“You aren’t the least bit curious about what the current Milo Kuzniak has to do with the old Milo Kuzniak and what kind of magic really is involved?”

“I’m curious, but it doesn’t matter. We’re moving on. I told Ben I wouldn’t get wrapped up with those guys, so I won’t.”

She sat on her own chunk of granite, hands folded on her lap, regarding him. She wasn’t happy, judging by her pinched expression. “I can’t let a mystery like this go.”

He knew that, had a shocking amount of experience with that now. The mystery of tracking down the vampire priest last year, the magic centered around Denver’s Speedy Marts before that—Cormac would be living a nice, quiet life, except that Kitty kept bringing him problems to solve, and Amelia was too damned passionate about digging up the powers behind them.

“I can,” he declared.

“That’s not true. You’re just as curious as I am. You hate a mystery, which means you can’t stand letting it go unsolved. I just give you the means to solve it.”

He didn’t think he hated unsolved mysteries so much as he hated loose ends. “Well, what do you suggest?”

She licked her lips, leaned forward. “There’s a spell. It’s rather complex, but not difficult. The plateau where Crane was killed—we know there’s residual magic there, we know some sort of power lingers. If we can gather the right materials—we’ll have to go to Sand Creek, do you know about Sand Creek? I think we can draw out the information we need.”

“What does this spell do?”

“It will re-create what happened—or a shadow of what happened. Perhaps then we’ll learn how Crane died.”

He didn’t really want to know what Sand Creek had to do with this kind of spell, and he didn’t want to go back to the plateau if it meant a chance of running into Layne again. The whole thing was more trouble than it was worth.

“It’s a dead end,” he said. “We keep after Layne and them, we’re just going to keep running in circles. We’ll find another way to decode Scanlon’s book.”

“I hardly care about the book anymore, I want to know how Milo Kuzniak killed Augustus Crane.”

“So you can have that spell for yourself?”

She gave a curt nod. “Yes. And you do, too. How many times today did you wish for a gun that you didn’t have? You won’t need a gun to defend yourself if you have the right magic.”

“I did just fine.”

“What about the next time?”

“There isn’t going to be a next time, that’s the whole point.”

“Cormac, don’t you dare—”

He opened his eyes and sat up. The ice pack was dripping cold water everywhere, soaking his pillow. He went over to the kitchenette, tossed it in the sink, and stretched. Ignored Amelia poking at him, trying to change his mind.

He just wanted to get some sleep. He pulled off his T-shirt and jeans, stretched some of the ache out of his muscles, and collapsed back on the futon.