"This sanctuary was meant to set an example. Serenity and caution are necessary if the dream it represents is ever to come true, but knowledge is equally important. If it could take thousands of years to usurp the humans, then that knowledge will need to be passed along."
Again, her father paused, and there was weight to his silence.
"I wrote it down. All of it. The history I know from oral tradition, the experiences of my own centuries of life, the purpose and philosophy of the sanctuary. I wrote it all down in a journal."
"Oh, my God," Tina gasped, one hand flying to her mouth in astonishment.
A journal. She had meant to ask her father about the book in Tackett's office, the scrawl of his handwriting, but in her grief over Alan's murder she had not yet gotten around to it.
"That's what this is all about?" She stared at him, horrified. "You're not even hunting. You're killing all these people, folks I've known my whole life . . . Alan . . .
You killed Alan over this journal?"
All the love and warmth went out of her father then. He glared at her, cold and savage. "It's a shame you wouldn't listen to me before. You might have kept him out of it. But now we've done what we had to. If that book ends up in the wrong hands - "
But Tina wasn't listening anymore. Her hands fluttered in the air as though she could brush the horror away, and she turned and stormed out of her father's house without another word. As her feet hit the dirt, she let the tears flow freely, and when she slid behind the wheel of the car, she slumped over the wheel and sobbed.
Tina Lemoine was not a fool. She knew what she was, what they were, her kind. But she had never really felt a part of it. Her father was right in that she had come back to Buckton after college because her mother was ill, dying, and because he had promised to buy the inn for her. But she had stayed because, in the end, Buckton was her hometown. These were her people.
And they were dying because for her father's pride, for his arrogant insistence upon creating a legacy that would live on after he was gone.
Tina wiped her tears away and started the car. She did a quick U-turn and took off down the road, dirt rising up in clouds again from the road. The hands in the field were still standing around staring expectantly at the dead tractor, though one of them had climbed up on top of the machine and seemed to be taking the engine apart.
She did not see if they waved this time. She was not looking.
Tina would leave Buckton and never return. After this was over, she was going to stay as far away from her father as she could, for the rest of her inhumanly long life. But she would not leave until she had put a stop to these killings, and she realized now that it was within her power to do that. Her father's journal was in Sheriff Tackett's office. She had no idea if Tackett knew that, but she was determined to retrieve it, and end the violence that was tearing her town apart.
Once the journal was in her hands, it would be over, and then she would leave Buckton - the sanctuary - and the pack behind.
CHAPTER 13
It was dusk and the waning sunlight gave way to the stranglehold of darkness without a whimper. Slow, inexorable, the night swept in. The afternoon had gone by painfully slowly. Several times, they had discussed not waiting, simply going after the sheriff right then and there. But wisdom had prevailed - such things were better done under the cover of darkness.
They had eaten lunch at the Jukebox just before two o'clock, then wandered through the few shops in town that were open on Sunday. Molly had been impatient for a shower, and Bill and Jack accompanied her back to the inn before dinner. Their fears had gone unspoken, but they were unwilling to leave her alone, even for an hour.
By the time they had sat down for dinner, they had run out of the energy it required to pretend at being carefree. They had eaten, mostly in silence, and then returned to the inn to await nightfall.
And now it had come.
Molly sat in the back of the Jeep with a pair of 9mm handguns clipped to her belt at the small of her back and the remaining pump shotgun on the floor at her feet.
Crazy, she thought. The whole world is crazy.
The window was open, and the night air was hot and sweet. A bit of sweat trickled down her throat and chest and it felt strangely cold to her, as though her every nerve were reaching out, examining each sensation.
This was not the first time she had gone knowingly into danger. In some ways, this was simpler. There was only the one monster to contend with. And yet, this was the first time she had had this much time to prepare for it, to roll it over in her brain as though it were a hard candy in her mouth that had to be worked at to surrender its flavor.
Danger had a flavor all its own. And though it terrified her, Molly would not turn away. She was bolstered by her hatred for the Prowlers. It gave her strength.
Jack shut off the headlights as they rolled into the lot behind the Town Hall. The police station was partially dark, but the light in the front reception area and
