Kitty Takes a Holiday

'Fine.' I'd lost a lot of sleep over the last couple of days and was tired. Before I trudged over to the sofa, I faced Cormac. 'If Ben wakes up, tell me, okay? He'll be con­fused, I'll need to talk to him.'

'I'll wake you up. Don't worry.'

'I can't stop worrying. Sorry.'

'Go to sleep, Norville.' He raised his hand, started to reach out—for a moment, he seemed about to touch me. I braced for it, my heartbeat speeding up—what was he doing? But he turned around and left the cabin before anything happened.

Slowly, I sat on the sofa, then wrapped myself in the blanket. The cushions were ancient, far too squishy to be comfortable. But it wasn't the floor, so I lay down.

This was a mistake, I thought as I fell asleep. Cormac and I staying in the same house—absolutely a mistake.

I woke up to find cormac putting a log into the stove. i didn't feel cold. i probably would have let the fire burn

out. Outside the window, the sky was pale. It was morning again already. He closed the door to the stove, then sat back on the rug and watched the flames through the tiny grill in front.

I hadn't moved, and he hadn't noticed that I was awake, watching him. Shadows still darkened his eyes, and his hair had dried ruffled. He'd taken off his jacket and boots—and the gun belt. He wore a black T-shirt and jeans. His arms were pale, muscular.

Suddenly he looked over and caught my gaze staring back.

I stilled the fluttering in my stomach and tried not to react. Just stay cool.

'Is 'Rosco' still out there?' I said.

'Yeah. He fell asleep around two a.m. I expect he'll wake up soon and get out of here.'

'And no dead animal on my porch?'

'None.'

I turned my face into the pillow and giggled, 'If it weren't happening to me, this would be downright hilarious.'

'I did find this.' He held out his hand.

I looked at it first, then gingerly opened my hand to accept it. It was a cross made of barbed wire, a single strand twisted back on itself, about the length of my fin­ger. The steel was smooth, the barbs sharp. Not worn or rusted, which meant this hadn't been sitting outside for very long.

'You think this is from my sacrificial fan club?'

'Could be. If so, the question is Did they leave it on purpose, or did they just drop it? If it's on purpose, then it means something. It's supposed to do something.'

'What?'

'I don't know.'

I could almost feel malevolence seeping out of the thing. Or maybe the barbs just looked scary. 'What am I supposed to do with it?'

'I recommend finding somebody with a forge and have them melt the thing into slag. Just in case.'

He thought it was cursed, and he brought the thing into my house? I groaned with frustration. I wanted to throw it, but I set it on the floor instead.

'Why a cross?'

'There's a dozen magic systems that borrow from Christianity. This part of the country, it might be an evan­gelical sect, or maybe some kind of curandero.'

'Curandero. Mexican folk healer, right?'

'They do all kinds of stuff. Sometimes, they go bad.'

'You know a lot about this sort of thing.'

'It helps, knowing as much as I can. The people who hire me—they're believers. They have to believe in were­wolves and magic to call me in the first place. The sym­bols may be different, the rituals are different, but they all have one thing in common: they believe in the unbeliev­able. You know what I'm talking about. You're one of them. One of the believers.'

'I only believe because of what I am. I don't know anything about any of it.'

'Hell, I don't know anything. This is just scratching the surface. There's a whole world of freaky shit out there.'

He was being uncharacteristically chatty. I didn't know if it was stress or sleeplessness. Maybe something about sitting in a tiny cabin in front of a wood-burning stove on a cold morning made people personable.

'How did you find out about the freaky shit? I found out the morning after I was attacked—the whole pack stood there telling me, 'Welcome to the family, have fun.' But who told you?'

He smiled, but the expression was thin and cold. 'I don't remember anyone telling me werewolves are real. I've always known. My family—we've been hunting lycan­thropes for over a hundred years. My dad taught me.'

'How old were you when he died?'

He looked sharply at me. 'Who told you he died?'

'Ben.'

'Bastard,' Cormac muttered.

'That was all he said,' I said quickly. 'I asked how you two met and if you'd always been so humorless, and he said you had a right to be humorless. I asked why and he told me.'

He was staring at me, and 1 didn't like it. Among wolves, a stare was a challenge. The thought of a challenge from Cormac made the wolf inside me cringe in terror. 1 couldn't fight Cormac. 1 looked away, hugging the blanket tightly around me.

'You still talk too much, you know that?' Cormac said.

'I know.'

Finally, he said, 'I was sixteen. I moved in with Ben and his folks after my dad died. His mother was my dad's sister.'

'Then Ben knew, too. He was part of the family history.'

'Hard to say. I think Aunt Ellen was just as happy to leave it all behind. Jesus, what am I going to tell her?'

'Nothing,' I said wryly. 'At least not until the full moon falls on Christmas and Ben has to explain why he's not coming home for the holidays.'

'Spoken with the voice of experience.'

'Yup. If Ben wasn't in on the werewolf hunting from the start, how did you drag him into it?'

'I didn't drag him—'

'Okay, how did you get him started in it?'

'Why do you want to know all this stuff about me?'

'You're interesting.'

Cormac didn't say anything to that, just went back to staring at me with a little too much focus.

I said, 'Could you not look at me like that? It's making me nervous.'

'But you're interesting.'

Oh, my. That clenching feeling in my gut wasn't fear— not this time.

I'd kissed Cormac once. It had been another situation like this. We were sitting and talking, and I let the urge overcome my better judgment. And he kissed back, for about a second, before he marched out of the room, call­ing me a monster.

Too many incidents like that could give a girl a complex.

He wasn't running away this time.

I swung my legs over the edge of the couch and slipped to the floor. I ended up kneeling in front of him, where he was sitting, close enough to grab. And he still didn't run. In fact, he didn't move at all, like he was waiting for me to come to him. How did wolves do this? Weren't the boys supposed to chase the girls? He wasn't a wolf, though. He wouldn't understand the signals.

Wolf was uncurling, overcoming her anxiety. Yeah, he was scary. Yeah, he was tough. That meant he could protect us. That was enough for her. That, and he smelled like he wanted me. He radiated warmth, and had a tang of sweat that wasn't even visible. A tension held him still as stone. All I had to do was touch him and break him out of his immobility. I raised my hand.

'I—I can smell you.' The voice was low and painfully hoarse.

I must have jumped a foot. My heart raced like a jack­hammer and I got ready to run.

Ben stood in the doorway to the bedroom, leaning against the wall. Still shirtless, his skin was pale, damp with sweat, and his hair was tangled. He only half opened his eyes, and he winced with what looked like confusion, like he didn't know where he was.

'I can smell everything,' he said, sounding like he had bronchitis. He touched his forehead; his hand was shaking.

'Ben.' I rushed to him, intending to take his arm and steer him back to bed. He wasn't well, he shouldn't have been up.

As soon as I touched him, though, he flinched back. He crashed against the wall, his face stiff with terror. 'No, you smell—you smell wrong—'

His new instincts identified me as another werewolf— a potential threat.

I turned to call Cormac, but he was already beside Ben, holding his arm, trying to keep him still.

'No, Ben. I'm safe. It's all right. Take a deep breath. Everything's okay.' I tried to hold his face still, to make him smell me, to make him recognize that scent as friendly, but he lurched away. He would have fallen if Cormac hadn't been holding him.

I put myself next to him again, intending to help drag him to the bed. This time, Ben leaned closer to me, squint­ing as if trying to focus. His eyesight was changing, too.

'Kitty?'

'Yeah, it's me,' I said, relieved that he'd recognized me.

He slumped against me, resting his head on my shoul­der, like he wanted to hug me. He found my hand and squeezed it tightly. 'I don't remember what happened. I don't remember any of it,' he murmured into my shirt.

Except that he remembered that something had hap­pened, and that he should have remembered. A lot of his agitation was probably stress—the anxiety that came from blocking out the trauma.

I held him still for a moment, whispering nonsense comforts at his ear until he stopped shaking. Cormac, look­ing stiff and awkward, was still propping him upright.

'Come on, Ben. Back to bed.' He nodded, and I pulled his arm over my shoulder. Between us, Cormac and I walked him back to the bed. He sank onto it and fell back to sleep almost immediately. He kept hold of my hand. I waited until I was sure he was asleep, his breathing deep and regular, before I coaxed back his fingers and extricated myself from his grip.

Cormac stood at the end of the bed, ran his hands through his hair, and blew out a frustrated sigh. 'Is this normal?'

I smoothed back the damp hair from Ben's face. 'I don't know, I only know what I went through. I slept through the whole thing. At least, I only remember sleeping through the whole thing. I was hurt a lot worse than he is, though.' I'd had my hip mauled and half my leg flayed. Not that I had any scars to prove it.