The woman nodded again, slowly, troubled. "If you find what we hunt, call this number. Leave a message that any stranger might see without harm. One will find you."
She pressed a piece of paper into Caroline's hand, and then slipped away down the dry creek bed. She moved like a ghost herself, silent, never touching branch or thorn, never disturbing a single stone.
Reflex swiped Caroline's shirtsleeve across her forehead, wiping sweat that was already drying in the desert air. Sometimes she thought she knew too much, had heard too many legends in this ethnology thing, made too many connections. That woman frightened her. If she was a woman.
Call her the Hunter.
Chapter Ten
Daniel Morgan floated, nose just awash in cold salt water, the currents tickling his whiskers with news of a thousand fish within quick chase. He ignored their temptation, bobbing up and down with each swell and seeking glimpses of his tower and the village steeples and the burnt-out hulk of the Pratt's house with each crest.
Temptation. His selkie body loved the sea, called to him whenever he came within the smell of it and the feel of the tides within his bones. Even on the streets of Naskeag Falls he'd yearned for it. Twenty miles inland, the Naskeag River still answered that ebb and flow — salt water mixing with the fresh river scent flowing down from the hills and forests. The longer he'd walked the land, the stronger the call grew. Now he'd come home again.
Some ways, Ben was the lucky one. His feet belonged on solid ground. He'd never been an alien in his so-called native land.
Daniel bobbed to the crest of a swell and scanned the mists again, wishing a seal's eyes were better suited for distance vision. And that the rain and fog would clear enough to spot all his bearings in one glance. Out here in the middle of the bay, Morgan's Point and Pratt's Neck kept vanishing from their opposite horizons.
Ben had noted range and azimuth from the tower, vital data when lobbing shells from a recoilless rifle and then X-marks-the-spot on a chart, locating the shattered hulk of the smuggler's speedboat. Or what was left of it — secondary explosions had ripped it into flaming shreds. Dan had been a spectator for that show, barely able to hold his head up enough to look. Tupash had wanted Power, and the Dragon's Eye drew him like a moth to flame. He'd felt it before he'd even known it existed. He'd said that the Morgans had barely touched its powers through the centuries.
The bastard had proven he'd do anything to get the Dragon in his hands. Physical beatings from the fists of the brujo's thugs, mental torture by Tupash luring Maria to her death and then kidnapping Mouse and Ellie right out of the Haskell House through a golem constructed in Kate Rowley's form — blow followed blow followed blow. Daniel hadn't even had the strength left to change when Gary found him in the Pratt tunnels. The boy had towed him out to their lobster boat like a sack of clams, a helpless man nearly drowning in his native element.
The fog thickened, swallowing everything except the dark finger of Morgan's Castle and then fading it into a ghost image that might be there or might be just a memory. Daniel shrugged his shoulders, or the pinniped equivalent, and sank under the waves. The water came alive around him.
Gary had done this once already, searching for evidence, but the boy had barely found his way into his seal body. Daniel had needed years before he understood what he could do, heard what his new senses told him.
And how to ignore a salmon flashing silver across the currents. Just like with that girl of his, Gary had to learn how to keep temptations in their place. Keep the brain in charge of the body.
Daniel stood on his nose and dove. Tastes and vibrations and delicate shifts of temperature surrounded him, bathed him, bringing news of the currents for miles around. Faint and far at the edge of hearing, whistles told him of a pod of orcas hunting, four, five, and he reminded himself that his weren't the longest teeth in the sea. If they turned into the bay, he'd have to break off his search.
Gasoline tainted the water. Sharp and clinging and offensive, normally he'd avoid that smell. It would foul his fur for days. Now he skirted the edge of it.
The water darkened around him, closed in as he sank into black and cold. None of that bothered him. His human body would die so easily here, but the seal gloried in it. Pressure squeezed his body. Cutting back and forth across the current, he tasted, tested, searched. A corpse would spread its taint for miles.
He stirred a flounder from the muck and twitched after it, tracing its panicked flight by vibration and taste in the black water, memories of sweet blood erupting between his teeth. Temptation. "Once you change, remember to change back." Pointed warning, that was, echoing down the centuries. He pulled himself away from the lure and back to his real hunt. Gary had been right. No corpse-taint in the water.
Daniel had found bodies before, located wrecks before, lobstermen and scallop-draggers sunk or pulled overboard by their gear, clamdiggers cut off from their skiffs on a rising tide, pleasure-boaters who misjudged the lurking fury of these waters. Used that knowledge to direct a search, bring loved ones home for closure. He'd built a reputation as a wizard of wind and water. Even this long after the explosion, he should have found traces of the men who died on that boat. And he was sure that men had died.
Alice had ordered this second check, for whatever witchy reason troubled her thoughts. Something about that dead man in the abandoned
