“I agree.” Jude took another bite of his first bacon and egg wrap.
Mack nodded and stared out the window, his hands perfectly human after the partial shift. If he hadn’t realized the aufhocker was still alive, would it have survived to hunt them down again? How it had survived direct hits with as much charge as Jude could pull, he didn’t know.
They reached the outskirts of Mercy as dawn was breaking. The tension Jude had been holding on to eased. Hellhounds hunted at night. He’d been checking the mirrors, half expecting the other one to be chasing them down the road. They were safe for the day.
Come dusk, they were in a kind of trouble that he had no idea how to deal with.
Mack wound down his window. “Slow down. There are cop cars and police tape out the front of the bar.”
Jude had planned to drive straight by. He needed to rest. While he didn’t need to eat the way Mack did, he still needed to sleep like a normal human being. An exhausted witch was pretty much useless. He’d been next to useless last night, not wanting to kill Mack as well as the creature. However, he slowed the truck.
There was blood on the ground and one large dog-like footprint.
While they’d been fighting one, the other had been hunting in town.
Mack sniffed. “It was here, and that’s human blood.”
While there was very little traffic on the road this early, one lane was closed, so they had to wait to be allowed to pass. Mack waved to one of the cops, and Jude inched the truck closer.
Jude glanced at what they were wearing and the takeout wrappers in the car. Did they look like they’d been up to no good last night, or was the cop going to assume they’d been out? Out together?
The cops nodded to Mack and glanced at Jude. If he thought anything was amiss, it didn’t show on his face.
Mack forced a grim smile. “What happened here?”
“Can’t say. But it’s a murder investigation.” The cop’s gaze drifted over to Jude again. “What have you been up to?”
Jude felt the accusation in those simple words. The cop knew something wasn’t right even if he couldn’t work out what. Jude was used to those looks. Humans could sense magic in the air and grew wary.
“Just grabbed some early breakfast. Showing my buddy from the city around the place.” Mack put a hand on Jude’s leg and gave him a very fixed grin.
“Been here long?” the cop asked Jude.
“A few days.” Just in time for a cow kill and murder. But the cow killings had been happening for weeks before he’d arrived.
“Watch yourselves if you go camping. There’s some rogue animal out there at the moment.” The cop glanced at the taped-off scene.
Even he knew it wasn’t out there anymore. The aufhocker had come to town to hunt.
“Looks like you can drive on.” The cop stepped back, and Jude drove forward as another cop waved him through. His gaze slid to the footpath and the one bloodied footprint.
It had all been for nothing.
“We should’ve been here, protecting them,” Jude said. “Not trying to lure them out of town.”
“We killed one.” But Mack didn’t sound happy about that either.
“And while we were miles away, the other one made merry.”
Mack’s scowl deepened. He had three new scars on his neck where the aufhocker had nearly gotten him. “That’s not normal animal behavior. It came to the bar where we met. They’re smarter than we think.”
“When this one realizes its mate isn’t coming home, there will be hell to pay.”
They drove the rest of the way to Mack’s place in silence.
Jude parked in the driveway. “We can’t do this on our own. I need to call the Coven.”
Mack rested his head back and closed his eyes. “We can do it. We need a better plan.”
“No, we need help.” Jude knew the cost of that help, but he was willing to pay so no one else died.
“Didn’t you say that if you fail you lose your magic? Doesn’t calling for help count as failure to them?”
He nodded. “Better than losing my life or killing you.” He’d rather be human. The pain of losing his magic would be nothing compared to the pain of losing Mack.
Chapter Twelve
Mack turned the water up as hot as he could tolerate. He needed to scrub the night’s misadventure from his skin. Jude helped peel his shirt off, but there was no hunger or desire in his touch, and Mack didn’t have the energy to send him away. He needed to sleep and eat, again. He’d need his strength as there was still one out there, and now it had killed someone.
But he had also killed.
He didn’t mind catching and eating fish or the occasional rabbit, but last night had been something else entirely. He got under the water even though no amount of scrubbing would remove the stain embedded on his soul.
Jude slid in behind him and kissed between his shoulder blades. “It will be fine.”
Mack hung his head, so the water drummed on the back of his neck. How would it ever be right? “If you call the Coven, you lose.”
“If I don’t, we could both die. Others will die.”
Jude was right, and it wasn’t Mack’s problem. It was Jude who’d been sent here to sort out the creature. And Jude would’ve been killed last night without Mack’s help. No matter what Jude had done in the past, he didn’t deserve to die trying to stop these creatures. “We know more about aufhockers now. We can find a way to stop it from killing again.”
“We only have until dusk. Will the other one come after us or go into town to hunt? We don’t know. No one is safe. I was sent to fix it or fail. I never expected to fix it or to have any chance.”
Mack turned. “Neither of us expected this. I didn’t ask for this, but the Coven is wrong if
