We headed back toward the cabin. When we were nearly out of the woods, Jeremy stopped and raised a hand, silencing us.
"Did you rent a pickup?" he whispered to Clay.
"Nah, some little shit-box. Figured the Boxster might be a bit conspicuous in these parts. Why?" He followed Jeremy's gaze. "That's not mine."
I looked up the hill to see a pickup truck parked at the end of the drive.
"What time is it?" Clay asked.
"Too late for making out," I said. "Too early for hunting or fishing."
"I'd say we have company," Jeremy said. "I'll stand watch. You two circle the cottage and greet our guests."
Clay and I crept from the forest. The south side of the cabin was dark and quiet. As I listened, I caught the crunch of dead leaves from the north side. I waved for Clay to take the lake side while I slipped across the drive.
On the north side of the cottage I found my quarry, a single man standing lookout. I crept through the trees until I was beside the man. He was probably fifty, but with the physique and bearing of a man half that age. His stance was ramrod straight, eyes trained on the driveway, unblinking. A professional. Retired military, possibly, given the half-inch buzz cut and clothes so stiff I suspected he starched his underwear. He held his gun at his right side, lowered but tense, ready to flip up and fire like a pump-action toy. Where did Winsloe do his recruiting? Soldier of Fortune! With the way these guys were popping up, it looked like he'd bought himself a whole damned army.
Clay stepped from the forest, coming out behind the gunman. He caught my eye through the trees. I nodded and crouched. As he eased forward, some drunken lout across the lake yelled. The lookout spun around, but Clay was already in mid-flight. I leaped and knocked the gun from the man's hand as Clay grabbed him around the neck. A dull snap. Then silence.
Clay lowered the dead man to the ground. I opened the gun chamber. The bullets inside shone too brightly for lead. I flashed them to Clay as he dragged the body into the woods.
"Silver bullets," I whispered. "Not standard equipment for a B amp;E."
Clay nodded.
"Front or back?" I asked.
"You pick."
I headed for the front door. It was cracked open. As I slunk along the wall, there was a muted pop from behind the cabin as Clay broke the rear lock. When I was close enough to see through the front-door crack, I paused. No light, sound, or movement came from within. With my toe, I prodded the door open farther. Still nothing. I crouched and crept through, staying low enough that I wouldn't catch anyone's attention-or catch a bullet fired blindly at chest level.
The front and back doors were opposite each other, linked by a common hall, so as soon as I sneaked inside, I saw Clay. He lifted his brows. Hear anything? I shook my head. As we stepped into the main room, he pointed overhead and mouthed "light." I looked toward the staircase. Upstairs a light flickered, like a moving flashlight. Clay gestured from me to him, then pointed up again. We were both going. He led.
Three-quarters of the way up the stairs, one creaked. That was inevitable, wasn't it? I think carpenters do that on purpose, make at least one creaky step so no one can ever steal up or down undetected. We froze and listened. Silence. Clay stepped on the next tread, stooped, and leaned forward, peeking into the upper hall. He shook his head. Nothing. After a moment's pause, he climbed the last three steps. He went left into the back bedroom, where the light was coming from. I stood at the top of the stairs, back to the far wall, guarding the front bedroom, the steps, and Clay all at once.
"Shit," he whispered.
I turned. Jeremy had been using the back bedroom. He or one of the intruders had left on the nightstand light. In front of it, a pedestal fan rotated at the slowest speed, blades intermittently blocking the bulb, giving the impression of flickering light. As I shook my head, footsteps sounded on the main level. The hatch to the basement slapped shut.
"That's it," a man's voice said. "They're not here."
"Then we'll wait," another said. "Get Brant and we'll leave."
Footfalls on the front porch. "Brant's gone."
"Probably taking a piss. Fucking wonderful lookout. Go start the truck, then. He'll figure it out."
Clay whispered, "I'll head them off at the back. You take the front. Get them into the woods. Away from their truck-and Jeremy."
I hurried toward the stairs, expecting Clay to follow me. I should have known better. Why take the stairs when there was a more dramatic departure at hand? Still, it wasn't pure theatrics. Clay's exit did distract the two men from hearing me run out of the house. I was leaping off the front porch when the second-story bathroom window smashed. A shower of glass rained down on the men. As they looked up, Clay dropped to the ground in front of them.
"Going somewhere?" he said.
Before either man could react, Clay kicked the pistol from the hand of the man on the left. The man on the right spun, saw me, lifted his gun, and fired. I dodged sideways, but something pricked my calf. A tranquilizer dart. Clay had realized which man had the more dangerous weapon and disarmed him, leaving the tranquilizer gun for round two.
The first man ducked Clay's next kick and thundered into the forest. Clay followed. The other man stood watching me, tranquilizer gun poised. I plucked the dart from my leg and charged. His eyes widened as if he'd expected me to keel over on the spot. Obviously anyone who thought he needed silver bullets to kill a werewolf also didn't know he'd need an elephant-sized wallop of sedative to drop one. As he aimed again, I dove for his legs, caught them and jerked backward, pulling him down with me. The gun sailed to the side. His hand flew up, not toward me, but left, reaching out across the ground. Shit. The other gun. The real gun.
I rolled sideways and knocked the gun out of his reach. He got to his knees, raised his fist, then paused. Guys did this. It was like some ingrained school-yard rule. Boys don't hit girls. Not ever. They usually only hesitated a moment before realizing there were exceptions to every rule. Still, it gave me time to duck, which I did. I brought my fist up into his gut. He doubled over, still kneeling. I grabbed his hair and slammed his face into the ground. He recovered fast, though. Too fast for me to snap his neck. His gaze went straight for the gun. As he lunged forward, I snatched it out of his reach, swung my arm back, and plowed the barrel into his heart. His eyes went wide, and he looked down at the gun protruding from his chest, touched the trickle of blood oozing from the wound, frowned in confusion, swayed once on his feet, then toppled backward.
Clay stepped from the forest, looked down at the man, and tilted his head.
"Hey, darling," he said. "That's cheating. Werewolves don't use guns."
"I know. I'm so ashamed."
He laughed. "How you feeling after that dart?"
"Not even a yawn."
"Good, 'cause we have one left. Guy headed into the bog. Figured I'd come back and see if you needed help before we give chase. He won't get far."
"Change, then," Jeremy said, walking up behind us. "It's safer. Are your arms all right, Elena?"
I peeled off the bandages, wincing as they came free. We healed fast, but the process still took longer than a few hours.
"I'll be okay," I said.
"Good. Go on, then. I'll look after these two."
Clay and I left to find places to Change.
***
After twelve years, I had Changing down to a science, a simple set of steps that I followed to keep myself from focusing on the upcoming pain. Step one: Find a clearing in the woods, preferably well away from everyone else, since no woman, vain or not, wanted to be seen in the middle of a Change. Step two: Remove clothing and fold neatly-this was the plan, though somehow my stuff always ended up hanging inside out from tree branches. Step three: Get into position, on all fours, head between my shoulders, joints loose, muscles relaxed. Step four: Concentrate. Step five: Try not to scream.
When I'd finished my Change, I rested, then stood and stretched. I loved stretching as a wolf, exploring the differences in my structure, the new way my muscles interacted. I started from the paws, pressing my nails into the soil and pushing against the ground with all four legs. Then I arched my back, hearing a vertebra or two pop, luxuriating in the total absence of any back or neck stiffness, the little aches and pains of bipedalism that humans learn to accept. I moved the end of my spine, curling my tail over my back, then let it drop and swung it from side to side, tail hairs swishing against my hindlegs. Finally, the head. I rotated my ears and searched for at least one new sound, maybe a woodpecker a mile away or a beetle burrowing in the earth beside me. I played the same game with my nose, sniffing and finding something new, cow manure from a field five miles off or roses blooming in a cottage garden. I couldn't do the same with my eyes. If anything, my sight was worse as a wolf, but I blinked and looked around, orienting my night vision. I didn't see in black and white, like most animals, but in a muted palette of colors. Finally, I pulled back my lips in a mock snarl and shook my head. There. Stretches complete. Time for the workout.
AMUSEMENTS
Since Clay left him, the man had covered a lot of ground. He'd run at least two miles-all in the same quarter-mile radius, circling and zigzagging endlessly. Some people have no sense of direction. Tragic, really.
Clay had driven him into a boggy area where no cottagers had reason to venture and thus no cottagers had carved paths. As we drew close, we could hear the man out there, the squelching of his boots constructing an aural map of his movements. East a dozen feet, veering a few inches south with each step, then turning abruptly southwest, moving twenty feet angling north, another turn, a few more steps-and he was pretty much back where he'd started. Clay's sigh tremored through his flanks. No challenge. No fun.
At this point, we should have finished the guy off-gone down into the bog, one in front, one in rear, jumped him, tore out his throat, and called it a day. That would have been the responsible thing to do, dispatch the threat without risk or fuss. After all, this was a job, damn it, it wasn't supposed to be fun. Still, there was one problem. Mud. Mud oozed between my toes, and the cold water inched up my forelegs. I lifted one front paw. It came up a thick, black club, mud coating every hair. As I put my paw down, it shot forward on the slick ground. I couldn't work like this. It wasn't safe. There was only one option. We had to get the guy out of the bog. Which meant we had to chase him. And, damn, I felt bad about that.
We split up, circling in opposite directions around the man fumbling in the mud. I took the south and found the ground was still marshy. When we met up at the far side, Clay swung his head north, telling me the ground there was dry. I paused then and audibly located the man again. Southwest, maybe fifty feet away. Clay rubbed against my side and growled softly. He circled me, brushing along my flank, tail tickling across my muzzle, then walked around the other side. I shifted closer, ducked my muzzle under his throat and pressed it there. Anticipation quavered through his body, a palpable vibration against my cheek. He nuzzled my ear and nibbled the edge of it. I nudged him, then stepped back. "Ready?" I asked with a glance. His mouth fell open in a grin, and he was gone.
I slogged through the mud after Clay. We went south-southwest. About twenty feet south of our target, we stopped. Then we headed north. Ahead, the man was still squelching through the bog, punctuating every few steps with a muttered oath. Having decided he'd lost Clay miles back, he was intent on getting out of what must have seemed the largest bog in North America. As we drew closer, we slowed, trying to quiet the sound of our approach. Not that it really mattered. This guy was so engrossed in escaping the endless bog that we probably could have bounded up wearing castanets and he wouldn't have heard us. We came within a dozen feet of him and stopped. Although the breeze was at our back, we were now close enough to smell him even upwind. Clay brushed against my side to get my attention. When I looked over, he lifted his muzzle to the sky miming a howl. I snorted and shook my head. Warning our prey had its attractions, but I wanted to try something different.
I inched through the scrubby brush. When the man's scent hit gagging intensity, I paused and checked his direction. Moving due north, his back to me. Perfect. I ducked my head, eased my belly to the mud and crept along until I could see the man pushing through a sumac. He could just as easily have gone around the scraggly tree, but he was fumbling in near darkness, having either dropped his flashlight or left it with his dead partner. Other than the sumac, the area surrounding him was clear. I backed up-much tougher to coordinate as a wolf than a human. Clay slid forward to meet me. When he was alongside, I dropped my forequarters to the ground and waggled my rear in the air. He grunted and tilted his head to one side, a clear "What the hell are you doing?" I snorted, stood, and repeated the performance, this time bouncing back and forth. It took a second, but he finally got it. He brushed against me one last time, burrowing his muzzle into my neck. Then he turned and loped northwest.
I went north again, creeping only a few feet farther before seeing the man. He was plowing through ankle-deep water, curses coming at two for every step. I swiveled my ears right and caught the sound of Clay's paws clumping through the mud. When he was parallel to me, he stopped, blue eyes glinting in the darkness. I didn't need to communicate my location to him. My pale fur glowed under all but the darkest skies. Turning toward the man, I double-checked his location. He'd gone maybe two steps in the intervening moment. I added those extra two feet to my position. Then I crouched, forequarters down, rear in the air, wiggling as I shifted position and tested my back legs. Up, down, side, side, down again, tense, hold… perfect. I moved my concentration to my front legs, coiling the muscles. One last check on the target. No change in position. Good. Now launch.
"Did you rent a pickup?" he whispered to Clay.
"Nah, some little shit-box. Figured the Boxster might be a bit conspicuous in these parts. Why?" He followed Jeremy's gaze. "That's not mine."
I looked up the hill to see a pickup truck parked at the end of the drive.
"What time is it?" Clay asked.
"Too late for making out," I said. "Too early for hunting or fishing."
"I'd say we have company," Jeremy said. "I'll stand watch. You two circle the cottage and greet our guests."
Clay and I crept from the forest. The south side of the cabin was dark and quiet. As I listened, I caught the crunch of dead leaves from the north side. I waved for Clay to take the lake side while I slipped across the drive.
On the north side of the cottage I found my quarry, a single man standing lookout. I crept through the trees until I was beside the man. He was probably fifty, but with the physique and bearing of a man half that age. His stance was ramrod straight, eyes trained on the driveway, unblinking. A professional. Retired military, possibly, given the half-inch buzz cut and clothes so stiff I suspected he starched his underwear. He held his gun at his right side, lowered but tense, ready to flip up and fire like a pump-action toy. Where did Winsloe do his recruiting? Soldier of Fortune! With the way these guys were popping up, it looked like he'd bought himself a whole damned army.
Clay stepped from the forest, coming out behind the gunman. He caught my eye through the trees. I nodded and crouched. As he eased forward, some drunken lout across the lake yelled. The lookout spun around, but Clay was already in mid-flight. I leaped and knocked the gun from the man's hand as Clay grabbed him around the neck. A dull snap. Then silence.
Clay lowered the dead man to the ground. I opened the gun chamber. The bullets inside shone too brightly for lead. I flashed them to Clay as he dragged the body into the woods.
"Silver bullets," I whispered. "Not standard equipment for a B amp;E."
Clay nodded.
"Front or back?" I asked.
"You pick."
I headed for the front door. It was cracked open. As I slunk along the wall, there was a muted pop from behind the cabin as Clay broke the rear lock. When I was close enough to see through the front-door crack, I paused. No light, sound, or movement came from within. With my toe, I prodded the door open farther. Still nothing. I crouched and crept through, staying low enough that I wouldn't catch anyone's attention-or catch a bullet fired blindly at chest level.
The front and back doors were opposite each other, linked by a common hall, so as soon as I sneaked inside, I saw Clay. He lifted his brows. Hear anything? I shook my head. As we stepped into the main room, he pointed overhead and mouthed "light." I looked toward the staircase. Upstairs a light flickered, like a moving flashlight. Clay gestured from me to him, then pointed up again. We were both going. He led.
Three-quarters of the way up the stairs, one creaked. That was inevitable, wasn't it? I think carpenters do that on purpose, make at least one creaky step so no one can ever steal up or down undetected. We froze and listened. Silence. Clay stepped on the next tread, stooped, and leaned forward, peeking into the upper hall. He shook his head. Nothing. After a moment's pause, he climbed the last three steps. He went left into the back bedroom, where the light was coming from. I stood at the top of the stairs, back to the far wall, guarding the front bedroom, the steps, and Clay all at once.
"Shit," he whispered.
I turned. Jeremy had been using the back bedroom. He or one of the intruders had left on the nightstand light. In front of it, a pedestal fan rotated at the slowest speed, blades intermittently blocking the bulb, giving the impression of flickering light. As I shook my head, footsteps sounded on the main level. The hatch to the basement slapped shut.
"That's it," a man's voice said. "They're not here."
"Then we'll wait," another said. "Get Brant and we'll leave."
Footfalls on the front porch. "Brant's gone."
"Probably taking a piss. Fucking wonderful lookout. Go start the truck, then. He'll figure it out."
Clay whispered, "I'll head them off at the back. You take the front. Get them into the woods. Away from their truck-and Jeremy."
I hurried toward the stairs, expecting Clay to follow me. I should have known better. Why take the stairs when there was a more dramatic departure at hand? Still, it wasn't pure theatrics. Clay's exit did distract the two men from hearing me run out of the house. I was leaping off the front porch when the second-story bathroom window smashed. A shower of glass rained down on the men. As they looked up, Clay dropped to the ground in front of them.
"Going somewhere?" he said.
Before either man could react, Clay kicked the pistol from the hand of the man on the left. The man on the right spun, saw me, lifted his gun, and fired. I dodged sideways, but something pricked my calf. A tranquilizer dart. Clay had realized which man had the more dangerous weapon and disarmed him, leaving the tranquilizer gun for round two.
The first man ducked Clay's next kick and thundered into the forest. Clay followed. The other man stood watching me, tranquilizer gun poised. I plucked the dart from my leg and charged. His eyes widened as if he'd expected me to keel over on the spot. Obviously anyone who thought he needed silver bullets to kill a werewolf also didn't know he'd need an elephant-sized wallop of sedative to drop one. As he aimed again, I dove for his legs, caught them and jerked backward, pulling him down with me. The gun sailed to the side. His hand flew up, not toward me, but left, reaching out across the ground. Shit. The other gun. The real gun.
I rolled sideways and knocked the gun out of his reach. He got to his knees, raised his fist, then paused. Guys did this. It was like some ingrained school-yard rule. Boys don't hit girls. Not ever. They usually only hesitated a moment before realizing there were exceptions to every rule. Still, it gave me time to duck, which I did. I brought my fist up into his gut. He doubled over, still kneeling. I grabbed his hair and slammed his face into the ground. He recovered fast, though. Too fast for me to snap his neck. His gaze went straight for the gun. As he lunged forward, I snatched it out of his reach, swung my arm back, and plowed the barrel into his heart. His eyes went wide, and he looked down at the gun protruding from his chest, touched the trickle of blood oozing from the wound, frowned in confusion, swayed once on his feet, then toppled backward.
Clay stepped from the forest, looked down at the man, and tilted his head.
"Hey, darling," he said. "That's cheating. Werewolves don't use guns."
"I know. I'm so ashamed."
He laughed. "How you feeling after that dart?"
"Not even a yawn."
"Good, 'cause we have one left. Guy headed into the bog. Figured I'd come back and see if you needed help before we give chase. He won't get far."
"Change, then," Jeremy said, walking up behind us. "It's safer. Are your arms all right, Elena?"
I peeled off the bandages, wincing as they came free. We healed fast, but the process still took longer than a few hours.
"I'll be okay," I said.
"Good. Go on, then. I'll look after these two."
Clay and I left to find places to Change.
***
After twelve years, I had Changing down to a science, a simple set of steps that I followed to keep myself from focusing on the upcoming pain. Step one: Find a clearing in the woods, preferably well away from everyone else, since no woman, vain or not, wanted to be seen in the middle of a Change. Step two: Remove clothing and fold neatly-this was the plan, though somehow my stuff always ended up hanging inside out from tree branches. Step three: Get into position, on all fours, head between my shoulders, joints loose, muscles relaxed. Step four: Concentrate. Step five: Try not to scream.
When I'd finished my Change, I rested, then stood and stretched. I loved stretching as a wolf, exploring the differences in my structure, the new way my muscles interacted. I started from the paws, pressing my nails into the soil and pushing against the ground with all four legs. Then I arched my back, hearing a vertebra or two pop, luxuriating in the total absence of any back or neck stiffness, the little aches and pains of bipedalism that humans learn to accept. I moved the end of my spine, curling my tail over my back, then let it drop and swung it from side to side, tail hairs swishing against my hindlegs. Finally, the head. I rotated my ears and searched for at least one new sound, maybe a woodpecker a mile away or a beetle burrowing in the earth beside me. I played the same game with my nose, sniffing and finding something new, cow manure from a field five miles off or roses blooming in a cottage garden. I couldn't do the same with my eyes. If anything, my sight was worse as a wolf, but I blinked and looked around, orienting my night vision. I didn't see in black and white, like most animals, but in a muted palette of colors. Finally, I pulled back my lips in a mock snarl and shook my head. There. Stretches complete. Time for the workout.
AMUSEMENTS
Since Clay left him, the man had covered a lot of ground. He'd run at least two miles-all in the same quarter-mile radius, circling and zigzagging endlessly. Some people have no sense of direction. Tragic, really.
Clay had driven him into a boggy area where no cottagers had reason to venture and thus no cottagers had carved paths. As we drew close, we could hear the man out there, the squelching of his boots constructing an aural map of his movements. East a dozen feet, veering a few inches south with each step, then turning abruptly southwest, moving twenty feet angling north, another turn, a few more steps-and he was pretty much back where he'd started. Clay's sigh tremored through his flanks. No challenge. No fun.
At this point, we should have finished the guy off-gone down into the bog, one in front, one in rear, jumped him, tore out his throat, and called it a day. That would have been the responsible thing to do, dispatch the threat without risk or fuss. After all, this was a job, damn it, it wasn't supposed to be fun. Still, there was one problem. Mud. Mud oozed between my toes, and the cold water inched up my forelegs. I lifted one front paw. It came up a thick, black club, mud coating every hair. As I put my paw down, it shot forward on the slick ground. I couldn't work like this. It wasn't safe. There was only one option. We had to get the guy out of the bog. Which meant we had to chase him. And, damn, I felt bad about that.
We split up, circling in opposite directions around the man fumbling in the mud. I took the south and found the ground was still marshy. When we met up at the far side, Clay swung his head north, telling me the ground there was dry. I paused then and audibly located the man again. Southwest, maybe fifty feet away. Clay rubbed against my side and growled softly. He circled me, brushing along my flank, tail tickling across my muzzle, then walked around the other side. I shifted closer, ducked my muzzle under his throat and pressed it there. Anticipation quavered through his body, a palpable vibration against my cheek. He nuzzled my ear and nibbled the edge of it. I nudged him, then stepped back. "Ready?" I asked with a glance. His mouth fell open in a grin, and he was gone.
I slogged through the mud after Clay. We went south-southwest. About twenty feet south of our target, we stopped. Then we headed north. Ahead, the man was still squelching through the bog, punctuating every few steps with a muttered oath. Having decided he'd lost Clay miles back, he was intent on getting out of what must have seemed the largest bog in North America. As we drew closer, we slowed, trying to quiet the sound of our approach. Not that it really mattered. This guy was so engrossed in escaping the endless bog that we probably could have bounded up wearing castanets and he wouldn't have heard us. We came within a dozen feet of him and stopped. Although the breeze was at our back, we were now close enough to smell him even upwind. Clay brushed against my side to get my attention. When I looked over, he lifted his muzzle to the sky miming a howl. I snorted and shook my head. Warning our prey had its attractions, but I wanted to try something different.
I inched through the scrubby brush. When the man's scent hit gagging intensity, I paused and checked his direction. Moving due north, his back to me. Perfect. I ducked my head, eased my belly to the mud and crept along until I could see the man pushing through a sumac. He could just as easily have gone around the scraggly tree, but he was fumbling in near darkness, having either dropped his flashlight or left it with his dead partner. Other than the sumac, the area surrounding him was clear. I backed up-much tougher to coordinate as a wolf than a human. Clay slid forward to meet me. When he was alongside, I dropped my forequarters to the ground and waggled my rear in the air. He grunted and tilted his head to one side, a clear "What the hell are you doing?" I snorted, stood, and repeated the performance, this time bouncing back and forth. It took a second, but he finally got it. He brushed against me one last time, burrowing his muzzle into my neck. Then he turned and loped northwest.
I went north again, creeping only a few feet farther before seeing the man. He was plowing through ankle-deep water, curses coming at two for every step. I swiveled my ears right and caught the sound of Clay's paws clumping through the mud. When he was parallel to me, he stopped, blue eyes glinting in the darkness. I didn't need to communicate my location to him. My pale fur glowed under all but the darkest skies. Turning toward the man, I double-checked his location. He'd gone maybe two steps in the intervening moment. I added those extra two feet to my position. Then I crouched, forequarters down, rear in the air, wiggling as I shifted position and tested my back legs. Up, down, side, side, down again, tense, hold… perfect. I moved my concentration to my front legs, coiling the muscles. One last check on the target. No change in position. Good. Now launch.
