Sitting there among the living and the dead, I tried to figure out what I was going to do with the bodies. If we’d been farther south, I could probably have located an alligator, but locally, the Tennessee River didn’t have a sizable population of the carnivorous reptiles. No, I’d have to find another way. Could we bury three more bodies in the Sardis graveyard? I really didn’t feel up to digging a hole big enough. Where could I rent a backhoe? Hell, the Army trained me to kill, and they’d done a good job of it, but they’d never taught me how to dispose of bodies. In the Army, you carried your own bodies out with you and called a disposal crew for the enemy’s.
I glanced at the clock and hated myself for doing so. Fifteen minutes had passed since the last time I looked. I had an urge to throw the tablet against the wall, but that would mean moving again. I slid my chair toward the head of the bed until I could lean it against the wall. I couldn’t sleep. No matter what, I couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t.
“What the hell, Jesse? You want to get me out of this kinky bondage gear or do you plan on just staring at me all day?”
I sat back and focused. Gail was awake. The cabin was bright from the light coming in the three new skylights the weres had installed in the roof. On the bed, Gail lay on her back, her body still pulled tight by the ropes holding her to the bed. However, she was facing me and her irises were back to their normal hazel. My spirits lifted.
Damn, we made it to moonset.
“I thought you were going to sleep all day,” I answered wearily. I leaned forward, grasped the slipknots on the nearest ropes, and pulled them loose. Standing on rubber legs, I went around the bed to release each of the other ropes. When the last one was undone, I sat on the bed beside Gail and helped her sit up. Unclasping the two shoulder straps, I slid off the arm restraints and unclipped the wrist snap rings.
The silver wrist chains clinked musically as she brought her arms in front of her. While I unfastened each rope from her restraints, Gail groaned and massaged her shoulders. “Ah, damn, I’m stiff. I wish they’d had the straight jacket.”
She pulled her electronic earplugs out, set them on the nightstand, and smiled up at me. “That was thoughtful of you, thanks. It looks like it worked. I’m still here and you’re still alive. Did I change at all?”
“You don’t remember anything?”
“I remember you putting the bit gag in my mouth and not much else. Why’d you remove the gag?”
“I didn’t.” At her quizzical gaze, I added, “You bit through it.”
She stared at me for a moment, gradually her eyes shadowed, and her brow creased. She twisted to look past me, first at the morning light coming in the new skylights and then with widening eyes at the damage done to the cabin’s interior. Finally, she saw the bodies of the dead. “Oh. Damn. What the hell happened? I mean, some of it is obvious, but Jesus, Jesse, how many were there?”
“At least three, I have the trophies to prove it.”
Gail held out her arms, ropes dangling from the steel and leather bracelets. Any other time and I would have thought her appearance tremendously sexy, but just now … I leaned in and she hugged me to her.
For a full minute, she held me without either of us speaking. When she released her grip and pulled back, I saw her eyes were damp. “Sweet Jesus, Hoss, I’m glad you’re all right. I can’t believe you managed to keep me restrained. How … how much did I change?”
“Not much at all, your eyes went spooky yellow and your teeth must have gotten stronger and sharper, but not so much that I could tell, except for the biting through the gag.”
She blinked twice and shook her head sharply. “You’ll have to fill me in, but first things first. Bathroom and coffee, you’ve made coffee right?”
“Sorry, there’s no power until I go find out how they cut it. I’m hoping they just tripped the master switch.”
“What? Werewolves don’t trip power switches. They don’t have that much human reasoning … or at least I’ve never heard of one doing anything like that. Sure, the older ones can open doors and the such, but to—” She saw the staples in my arms and stopped. She took my hands in hers and gently pulled my arms up to better see the damage. “What the hell, Jesse? Why didn’t you say something?”
I shrugged. “What’s to say? They didn’t die easily.”
Her brow furrowed. “They’re just scratches, right? No bites?”
“No bites. I’m not sure about their blood. I did get some on me.”
I had washed most of the blood from my face and torso in the kitchen sink, but I still wore the jeans, which were now uncomfortably sticky with drying blood.
Gail took a close look at the staples and nodded. “They look okay, no inflammation. My bite was inflamed within an hour.” She glanced at the bandage on her arm. Unfastening the bracelet, she dropped it to
