pain.
Jeffrey was looking at the front door. “I want to try something. Kitty, can you stay out of sight?”
“What are you going to do?” I said.
“Just don’t let Provost see you through the window.”
He went to the front door and opened it.
Tina gasped and reached after him. “Jeffrey, don’t!”
Jeffrey called out, so the man in the trees could hear, “Joey! We want to make a deal! Let’s talk!”
Grant joined Tina by the front door to listen. Still holding the gun, I crouched nearby, under the window.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Grant demanded.
Jeffrey kept calling. “You’ve made your point! Cabe just shot Kitty out back—”
I thought I saw where this was going. I ducked and listened.
“Except for the vampire in the basement, the monsters are all gone. The rest of us are human. We know this is all about the monsters. If you let us go, the four of us will walk away. We’ll leave the vampire to you.”
It just might work.
The thing was, Provost and Cabe couldn’t let anybody walk away. They’d already killed their witnesses, the show’s assistants. But maybe he didn’t know that we knew that. Jeffrey was good with people. Maybe he really could lure him into the open. All I needed was a clear shot…
“Conrad and Odysseus are hurt. We need to get to a hospital. We just want to talk to you, Joey. Stay there if you want, but talk to me.”
A long moment passed. This wasn’t going to work. Provost was in communication with Cabe, who might or might not have seen whether he actually shot me. I wanted to yell to Jeffrey to get back inside.
From the trees, Provost yelled, “The werewolf bitch is really dead?”
Jeffrey hesitated, but it didn’t sound like a man about to lie. It sounded like fear, grief, helplessness. All things we were feeling anyway. “Death by silver bullet isn’t pretty. But I’m sure you know that.”
Provost’s answer was filled with mirth, with victory. “You’re a dead man, Jeffrey Miles. You’re all dead.”
Provost appeared, moving out from behind the shelter of a pine tree. Like Valenti, he had transformed himself from the slick Hollywood guy. He wore black fatigues, a belt holster—gun in place, I noted—a knife at his belt, combat boots.
In seconds I’d have a shot. I was lining him up. Jeffrey said over his shoulder, “Don’t shoot him. He’s not holding a weapon. I want to see where this goes.”
He had better be right about this.
“Just tell me why,” Jeffrey said. “I keep trying to understand this.”
When Provost smiled, it was a slanted, wicked expression. “There’s nothing to understand. None of you is human. You, the psychic bitch, the magician, the atheist. You’re still monsters. The things you do? Makes you all witches. And you ought to be burned!”
Atheist? I had to assume he was talking about Conrad, who didn’t have a magical cell in his body. I glanced at Conrad and muttered, “Since when does being an atheist make someone a monster?”
“It does to the kind of people who threaten to burn witches,” he said. “Trust me, I’ve heard this line before.”
Provost was still ranting. “We wanted to see if we could kill monsters. Turns out we can, and we’re going to show the world how to do it,” he said. He walked toward the lodge now, casually, step by step. Carelessly, almost. He had to know we had the weapons we’d taken from Valenti. Maybe he really thought Jeffrey didn’t have it in him to shoot anyone. But Jeffrey didn’t have to.
“Ron Valenti doesn’t agree with you,” Jeffrey said, and Provost stopped walking. “In fact, he’s pretty upset.”
Provost said, “You haven’t really talked to him.”
Jeffrey shrugged. “You might as well burn this place to the ground, because it’s going to be very haunted when this is all over. Then again, all that negative energy doesn’t need a place to anchor to. It’s hanging over you, Joey.”
Provost was frowning now. “This isn’t about Valenti. It’s about who gets out of here alive.”
“You’re right. I’m just telling you—free consultation—that this isn’t going to end here. But you might get yourself a few points to balance that out if you let us go. I know you believe all that—some kind of balance, some kind of life after death—or Tina and I wouldn’t be here. I’m making the offer: let us go. Because if you kill us, you’re never getting rid of us.”
It didn’t work quite so simply. Jeffrey had said as much. But maybe Provost didn’t know that, and maybe he was just keyed up enough to believe it. The men looked at each other across the clearing. Jeffrey faced Provost with all the courage in the universe. Arms at his sides, calm, nonthreatening. Treating Provost like he was an approaching predator.
Provost shot him. A quick draw, he’d grabbed his gun from his holster, aimed and fired in a heartbeat, before any of us could react. Jeffrey fell back, boneless.
I stood, leveled my gun out the door, and fired at Provost.
I didn’t practice much and wasn’t very good at the gun thing, but I hit him. He staggered, his right arm flung back, the gun flying from his grip.
Which was good, because I lost it. I flung my own gun aside and ran at Provost.
From the stress of the last few days, the rage at losing friends and good people for no reason at all, I lost control. Wolf had been battering at me, at the mental bars of the cage that kept her calm, since all this started. I’d shot Provost, but she—we—wanted more. Wanted his blood in our mouth, his flesh in our teeth.
I was Changing without even feeling it.
The fury in me felt molten. Like I had turned into fire, liquid iron. The Change had never come so smoothly, so painlessly. I had always fought it, but this time, Wolf was simply there when I wished it. My limbs melted. I stretched my fingers and they were claws. I hunched my back, bared my teeth. My clothing tore away.
I run fast, with Wolf’s speed and strength. He doesn’t have time to reach for his fallen weapon. I shove into him, and my claws are into him. I can’t see through the anger, I only feel. Hear his scream. He doesn’t think I have it in me to tear his throat out. No one ever thinks I have it in me.
For a moment we look into each other’s eyes. I can’t imagine what he sees in mine, what amber fire is blazing in them. But I see that he is frightened—eyes ringed with white, terrified. I
