“Let’s see this security footage,” Billy said, voice gruff. It wasn’t a thank you, but it wasn’t an insult either. Rick and I unfolded ourselves from the seats and we all trooped upstairs into the small office. The manager had left the disc in the system, and Rick hit a button. I sent him a look questioning the readiness of the equipment and he shrugged slightly with one shoulder. I guessed that working as musical talent in a place like Henrii’s gave the help some leeway.
On the laptop we saw grainy images of two men entering the restaurant, shaved heads and faces, one in glasses. My heart thudded. It was the two wolves I had left unconscious and bound for the cops in the hotel room where the pack had held Rick prisoner. It was easy for my mountain lion self to accept their reality by scent alone, but my human half had a visceral reaction to the sight, electric, toxic. So did Rick, a faint reek of fear leaching from his pores, though his body posture didn’t tighten or appear to react. More and more like a cat.
I focused on the screen. One of the wolves was bigger than Big Evan and solid muscle. I’d nicknamed him Fire Truck. The other guy looked little next to him, but probably stood between five feet seven and five ten. It was hard to tell next to the mountain of Fire Truck. The smaller guy moved fast in the digital footage, seeming to jump through the intermittent progression of frames. He had squinty eyes and bulges under his hoodie that were likely weapons. He looked weaselly, which became his new name.
We watched Fire Truck and Weasel disappear inside, trailed later by a woman wearing a granny dress and old-fashioned boots, an open umbrella over her. Rick pressed a button and the digital footage again showed the woman leaving, her gait ungainly in the boots, followed by the two werewolves. The time stamp indicated that sixty-two minutes had passed. Another button showed us the parking area and the wolfmen helmeting up, starting bikes, and cruising out onto the street. An instant later, Rick entered, and the footage stopped.
“Again,” Billy said. When the bikes roared off, we got a glimpse of the license plates, enough to know they weren’t North Carolina plates. He looked at Rick. “You’re sure these two are the ones who kidnapped an undercover cop, held him prisoner, tortured him”—Billy’s eyes looked Rick over, as if searching for werewolf taint—“and tried to kill him.”
“Yes,” Rick said, not rising to the insult in the look.
“Before you go thinking Rick might turn into a werewolf and bite your men, you should know that the vamps’ Mercy Blade took care of any possibility of that,” I said. “He’s not a werewolf.” Rick laughed and the sound carried a bitter note. Yeah. No werewolf. Of course he might go big-cat-furry. And soon.
Billy frowned. “I’ll upgrade the BOLO on the bikers to include stills from this video, and list them as armed and dangerous, with orders to locate but not approach.” Chandler looked at me, unwillingness clear in his eyes. He didn’t want to be asking me anything. “If we find these guys, what are we supposed to do?”
“Call me,” I said. “I’ll bring the vamps.”
“And if the fangheads kill them instead of apprehending them?”
“You’ll have some paperwork to fill out,” I said, and pushed through the cops into the hallway and down the stairs. Outside, I sloshed through puddles to the SUV and roared out into the street. I had a lot to think about.
I do my best thinking when I’m not actively pursuing a thought. Ideas are like small prey, scuttling into corners when a cat tries to chase them, coming out to play when the cat sits silent and unmoving. Back in my room, I studied topo maps, maps of rivers and streams, and once again studied the map of the grindy sightings and the wolf attacks. I noticed a place I hadn’t hunted before, one that looked like promising terrain—not as steep as big-cats liked, but composed of shale too steep for human activity. While I packed a small backpack as a go-bag, I gave the security team instructions for the night, and orders to call Leo if the vamps resisted the plans. I texted Bruiser with two lines, telling him I’d be hunting and that the vamps were not to leave the hotel due to security concerns. He’d know to put Leo on if my guys called him.
I also discovered a recent voice message from Angie Baby. I punched in the code and listened to her soft voice say, “Aunt Jane. You got to come back to see me. Okay? Mommy’s not actin’ like she’s supposed to. You gotta come.”
Guilt wormed its way into me like a steel barb. It sounded as if Mol was still spelled. But Big Evan was on the job, and I had promised to give him time. “Soon, Angie Baby,” I murmured.
I set the cell Leo could use to track me on the table and left the hotel wearing clean jeans, running shoes, T-shirt, and a light jacket. I took off in the SUV I was coming to think of as mine. I bought a new throwaway cell at a strip mall and stopped at an Ingles for food supplies before driving up 70, a patch of road I was getting far too familiar with.
Almost everything about this gig seemed to point to the road between Asheville and Hot Springs: the wolves’ kill-sites, the grindy sightings, the wolf scent stalking Molly and her family, and even Lincoln Shaddock’s house and hunting territory. I didn’t believe in coincidences, and had seen little evidence to shake that faith. But there were a lot of them: Evangelina going to the dark side, Lincoln Shaddock under her spell, werewolves ending up in the area, to name a few. They had to be tied together, but how? I needed to try something new to shake things up, including my own thinking processes. Instead of hunting the wolves where they had killed and departed, I needed to hunt where they had hunted and not killed. In Beast form.
I parked down the mountain from Molly’s, in a little-used driveway just as rain started again. The chain guarding the drive was old, rusted, but solid. The lock holding it was rusted through and broke apart when I took a tire iron to it. I drove up the drive, weeds scraping the undercarriage, and parked around a bend where the SUV wouldn’t be seen come morning.
Sitting in the front seat, I stripped naked, rolling the clothes I’d been wearing around the throwaway cell and into my large travel bag. I packed light when I hunted as Beast, when I had territory that I/we claimed as ours. Or in summer. In New Orleans. Or when I was just hunting and could stay in Beast form if dawn caught us far from home. Tonight it was cold, with an unseasonably early frost warning. I had no idea where I’d end up by dawn. I might have to shift back to human someplace far off and hike to the nearest road. Maybe hike until my cell worked. I couldn’t stay in Beast form all day and do my job.
I wrapped a new fleece blanket around my shoulders. Someone had kindly replaced the small one I’d destroyed. Naked but for the miniblanket and a pair of cheap flops, carrying the go-bag and my mountain lion fetish necklace, I walked down the drive, the last of the hurricane’s sporadic rain pelting me. The path descended sharply before I came upon an old mountain house from the thirties or forties, roof caved in, asbestos-siding walls bulged out, burned windows like eyes into the underworld. It once had a view down the mountain, but saplings and scrub had grown over and obscured any vista. In the scrub, I found the rounded top of a boulder and cleaned a space around it, pulling vines and briars. I hurt my hands but the shift would fix that.
I scraped the boulder with the gold nugget I wore, to give me a way to home in on this location, and folded the blanket for a seat before sitting on the rounded stone. Cold stone can freeze a bare bottom fast. I put the backpack on around my neck and adjusted it to Beast-size, closed my eyes and breathed in, held it, and let it out, slowly. Again. And again. Tension I hadn’t known was there flowed from me like the rain. I relaxed and stretched my shoulders. The fetish necklace in my hands was comforting, a known in the midst of the unknowns of this job. I slowed my heart rate, breathing, letting my mind calm. And I thought of Beast.
Jane was gone. I lay still, smelling, listening. Water from sky, water running on ground, water falling from leaves was scent/see/taste/feel-on-skin. Scent of roebuck, skunk, lizards, and snake was strong. Mice and rats lived in ruined man house. Many-more-than-five birds and squirrels, smelling wet and cold, in tree-nests, asleep. Tasty but hard to catch. One mouthful crunch. Not worth the hunt. Twitched ear tabs. Heard waddling pads of raccoon moving down the mountain. Smell of man nearby, the stinky breath of cars always on air, old smoke, sour wood, and rot from man-den. Beast-sight made everything clearer, brighter, sharper than Jane eyes. Mountain curved on both sides, into trees. Saw house far off, lights dim and flickering, like TV pictures. Saw car moving on distant road. Heard trucks far away.
I rose from rock and stretched, pulling at muscles, stretching out chest and spine and along legs. I picked up necklace and blanket in mouth and padded back to car. Ugly car. Liked Bitsa, bike with roaring voice and nose in wind. Hunger pulled at stomach. Ache of hunger times, like claws. Jane woke up, deep inside.
Crap. I forgot to get the steaks out of the car.
I chuffed, cat laughter. Set necklace and blanket on ground and braced on side of car. Curled out claws. Opened door. Good hunter. Will eat cold dead cow and then hunt for wolves. Eat deer or rabbit if I find them.
Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. When did you learn how to do that?
Beast is smart. Drew down flesh above eyes, thinking. Jane does not have monkey necklace. Jane laughed. I did not know why. I set necklace and blanket on seat and jumped inside. Took cow package in teeth and jumped out. Tore through plastic and ate cold dead cow, taste old and watery. Wanted to hunt and eat live cow, fresh blood and hot meat, sound of cow cries, in pain and fear.
You are not hunting cows. They belong to people.
Raised lip to show killing teeth. Beast is not owned. Even by Jane. She was silent.
Sat beside car and finished meat, cleaned paws and face with long tongue, raspy and coarse, pulling blood and meat bits off of jaws and paws. Stomach satisfied, I stood and closed car door. I moved down mountain, smelling for wolf.
Moon was high and small, bright against cloudy sky. Rain fell in spats. Man lights were few here, many stars filling black spaces of night. Trees were covered in moss, dark and green and silver in Beast-sight, leaves rustling with breath of earth. I jumped over small streams. Saw trout in one, sleeping under rock. Trout tasty. But water was cold. Heard animals move, sounds Jane could not hear in Jane-form, could not see in Jane-form. Jane was slower than Beast, yet Jane had killed many wolf. Jane was good hunter with man gun and man claws of steel. The I/we of Beast was better than Jane or big-cat alone. Good hunter. Threw back head and screamed challenge into night. Beast is here. This is Beast’s territory. Raced down hill. Found wolf scent on cool breeze. Wolf smell was fresh. I set nose to earth and sniffed, long scree of scent-taking. Beast brain not good for nose-to-ground-hunting. Beast brain not like dog brain, not like bloodhound Jane had once been. But Beast could hunt this way if hungry. Had learned in hunger times. Had lived when other cats had died. Nose to ground, I started to run.
