Chapter
Twenty-three
“Quite a spread.” Tad Helfren left his van and
stood for a few moments with his hands on his hips, surveying the
scenery. The farm was the last one on a dead-end road, but it was
easily the largest. According to the district map, everything
Helfren looked at in every direction belonged to Connor Macleod.
Between the stands of trees, he could see far across the lush
fields to where the land dropped away steeply into the river
valley. Even with the sky dark and overcast, the scenery was
impressive.
He’d heard that the place had been a
fixer-upper. The sprawling house was certainly old, but there was a
new roof and fresh paint. It looked decent on the outside at least.
He couldn’t say as much for the rest of the farm. Obviously Macleod
hadn’t gotten around to fixing up the many barns and outbuildings,
or perhaps he just didn’t give a damn about them. The only thing
different between this and a hundred other tired old farms in the
area was the number of trees. Most farmyards were bare. This one
had tall stands of poplar between the buildings and in the corrals.
Was it a case of a werewolf preferring to have ample cover handy,
or was it simply nature reclaiming the neglected place? A thick
forest of poplars and spruce flanked the south side of the yard.
Beyond that, he knew from the map, the woods gave way to more
fields. Just wild grass, according to some other farmers, no crops
planted in years.
Of course, what use would a werewolf
have for wheat or soybeans? Behind the fences were a considerable
number of cows, horses, pigs and what-have-you. Maybe it was a
private buffet. Dinner on the goddamn hoof whenever
he wants it.
Helfren glanced to his right and
spotted a swatch of black and white beneath a thick patch of
blueberry bushes at the side of the house. Ever curious, he
wandered over, his camera at the ready. Looks like
fur . . .
Pushing a branch aside, he could see
that the fur belonged to a dog, a Border Collie. Its throat was
torn out and its blood was soaking into the grass. Helfren was
puzzled as he studied it for clues. Why would Connor Macleod kill a
dog? For fun? Sport? Maybe werewolves just plain didn’t like dogs.
Practice? That must be it, Helfren decided. The red-haired editor
was new to being a werewolf, so it stood to reason that Macleod
would make her practice her skills. Apparently she hadn’t killed
anything at Menzie’s farm. The police report had stated it was
probably the work of a single animal. So maybe she’d just watched.
And learned.
Helfren raised the digital camera and
snapped a couple of frames. Lowered it and considered the dog. The
kill was very recent. Too recent. He’d bet the dog had been dead an
hour, maybe two at the most. Yet he’d been keeping close tabs on
the editor, and checked her apartment building once more before he
left town. Her truck had been parked in front all day, and he’d
seen Connor Macleod pull up and head into the
building—alone.
As he straightened up, he spotted
another lump of fur amid the leaves. What the
hell? Parting the branches, he saw several more dogs, all
shapes and sizes and colors. All freshly dead. All deliberately
piled in the midst of the bushes, like broken toys. And in the
flower bed beyond that—he strained to see, unable to move closer
because his feet seemed rooted to the ground.
There was a body. A human
body.
Helfren’s mouth dried and he backed out
of the brush quickly, his gaze darting everywhere at once. Was
there another werewolf? The vet had brothers and a sister who lived
in the area. Shitfire, what if the entire frickin’ family could
shapeshift?
The man’s heart raced and he was having
trouble pulling in enough air. If he was dealing with a whole nest
of werewolves instead of just one or two, then he needed to regroup
and reconsider. Refine his strategy. And from a safe distance,
which meant getting the hell away from here now. Right now. Helfren made his way back to the driveway as
quickly as his shaky legs would take him. But as he rounded the van
to the driver’s side, he saw an old man half sitting, half lying,
on the porch steps leading up to the house.
“Gervais? What the hell are you doing
here?” His voice sounded strained even to himself as he gripped the
door handle of the van.
“Just waiting for Macleod and his bitch
to come home,” the man giggled, and slid down one stair. A large
empty vodka bottle rolled to the ground. “I’ve got a lil’ surprise
for ’em.”
Every one of Helfren’s survival
instincts was screaming at him to open the damn door and get in the
van. Instead, his reporter’s instincts considered Bernard Gervais.
The guy was drunk as a skunk—but maybe he hadn’t been in this
condition an hour or so ago. In fact, it was highly likely that
Gervais was the one who had killed the dogs. He was mean enough to
do it, and certainly pissed off at Macleod. But was he crazy enough
to kill the man in the flower bed too? And what the hell had he
used for a weapon? A hatchet?
You sick old
bastard. Yet the bastard seemed to be in a good mood and
maybe the vodka had made him talkative. There didn’t seem to be any
weapon other than the empty bottle, and it had rolled out of reach.
Helfren took a deep breath, then another. Reminded himself that he
was no mere reporter—he was a paranormal investigator, a
professional. And a professional would damn well investigate. He
forced away his fear and slid his hands into his pockets to control
their shaking. A moment later he was the picture of casual
friendliness. “Hey, nice job with the dogs.” He considered himself
a good actor, but still he had to force out every word. “That
oughta burn Macleod’s ass. Perfect way to get even with a
veterinarian in my books.”
“Hell, yeah.”
“And that guy back there, he musta
tried to stop you. Guess you fixed his wagon.”
Gervais grinned. “Not done yet either.”
He made a sweeping gesture at the paddocks and
corrals.
Helfren struggled to hide his
revulsion. He wasn’t much for law enforcement as a rule, but he’d
call in an anonymous tip to the cops the minute he was on the road
and headed for town. “I’ve really been depending on your expertise,
Mr. Gervais. Thanks to you, I’ve got great footage of some wolves
running through the golf course and some wolf prints near Menzie’s
body. My readers are going to like that, but I need more. I didn’t
get a damn thing from the vet clinic. No footage of anyone turning
into a werewolf yet. I’m hoping you might know a little more than
you’ve been telling.”
“ ’Course I do.”
“Is it a question of more money? ’Cause
I thought I was paying you pretty well.”
“Don’t need your damn
money.”
“What do you want then? I’m willing to
negotiate but I need to know about the Macleod family. Are they all
werewolves?”
“Every goddamn one of ’em. Think
they’re safe here, think they’re protected. Wouldn’t feel so
fuckin’ secure if there wasn’t a cop on their side.”
“A cop? One of the RCMP? What about
him?” Helfren had drawn his pocket recorder and clicked it on,
without even being aware he had done so. “Does he know about the
werewolves?” Hell, maybe the guy was on the take. Maybe he was
being paid to ignore evidence or something. According to his
sources in town, the Macleods were far from poor.
“The sergeant’s one of them.” The old man spread his arms wide. He burped
loudly, then followed it up with a long, drawn-out fart. “Too damn
fuckin’ many of ’em now. Hate ’em all.”
“There are more
werewolves?” Helfren didn’t have to fake his
amazement.
“Shit, yeah.” Gervais spread his hand,
counted awkwardly on his fingers. Wrapped his mouth around the
names even more awkwardly. “LaLonde. McIntyre. Beauchamp. Lassiter.
Rousseau. You see those names around here, there’s bound to be
Changelings nearby. Then there’s Ghostkeeper—”
“What?”
“That’s a Métis name, city boy. Look it
up in a fuckin’ history book.” Gervais’s expression hardened, his
eyes narrowed. “And don’t forget those goddamn Watsons, too. That
little bitch thinks she should lead the Pack, but she’s
wrong.”
Helfren’s mind was whirling, and the
dead dogs, even the dead man, faded in importance. This was beyond
anything he’d ever dreamed of. He was in goddamn Werewolf Central.
He could almost taste the books, the interviews. Hell, just think
of the documentaries . . . He swallowed hard
and found his voice at last. “So, these werewolves—are they working
together?”
“Not all of ’em.”
Maybe there were different factions.
Perhaps each family was a separate pack or clan or something.
Helfren’s head was swimming as he continued questioning the old
man. “But the wolf that did the killing over at Menzie’s. That was
Macleod, right?”
“Ha. Not him. He doesn’t have the
stomach for it.”
Helfren frowned. “But I thought you
said—” he began and then corrected himself. No point in
antagonizing his source. At least until he got all the information
he could from the guy. He tried another tactic. “I guess I was
mistaken, Mr. Gervais. I thought you knew who the killer werewolf
was.”
“Haven’t figured it out, have you?”
sniggered the old man.
The reporter drew on his patience,
found the reservoir a little low. But he could act patient, by God. And humble. It always paid to act
humble in an interview. You always learned more by appealing to
someone’s sense of importance. “Mr. Gervais, you’re the only one
who can help me. You’re the only one who knows the truth, who knows
what’s really going on around here.”
“Damn right. Damn fuckin’ right I do.”
The drunk giggled hysterically and slid down to the last step.
Closed his eyes.
Helfren took a deep breath. “Please
tell me who the killer is, sir. Where is he?”
Gervais said nothing, only chuckled
deep in his throat. Helfren waited in the maddening silence, but
the drunk was either playing him or he didn’t know as much as he’d
said he did. Or maybe the vodka had finally knocked him out. Hell,
if he’d consumed the entire bottle in one sitting, it was amazing
he wasn’t dead. Disgusted, the reporter turned to
leave.
And found himself face
to face with the old man.
“How—how the hell did you do that?”
Unnerved, the reporter backed up a step. Then a few more. Gervais
followed, his gait steady, his eyes clear and focused. On
Helfren.
“You really don’t know much of
anything, do you Mr. Bigshot Reporter?”
The man’s voice had changed, dropped a
couple of octaves and was suddenly free of its drunken slur. But it
was the gleam of insanity in his eyes that made all the hair on
Helfren’s body stand up. He continued backing away from Gervais,
who was now between him and the van. The old man’s hands held no
weapons, but Helfren was far from reassured. He struggled to find
his voice, regain control of the situation. “Come now, Mr. Gervais,
we had a business arrangement. You called me, remember? You called
me to come up here and write a story. You wanted somebody to tell
the truth about the werewolves.”
The old man seemed to consider that for
a moment. “Of course,” he agreed. “That’s what this is all about.
You want to know where the killer is, don’t you?”
Helfren nodded because he was expected
to, not because he wanted the answer.
Slowly, Gervais’s lips drew back in a
crazed and distorted grin. His teeth were long and pointed. “He’s
right here.”
Hide. Gotta
hide. Tad Helfren didn’t think for an instant that there was
any place on Earth he could go where the monster couldn’t sniff him
out. But there was a slim chance he could get off the creature’s
radar if he wasn’t in plain sight. After all, what had once been
Bernard Gervais was now preoccupied with chasing down and
slaughtering every single animal on the Macleod farm, and, lucky
for Helfren, Connor Macleod had kept a lot of
livestock.
He couldn’t drag himself very far. He’d
awakened in the flower bed by the front porch amid a tangle of
crushed irises and lilies. The big purple and white flowers looked
funereal to him and that had been enough to jolt the cloud from his
brain and get him moving. Slowly, anyway. The taste of copper was
in his mouth, and he was bleeding badly from dozens of bites and
slices. For some insane reason he thought of an old
phrase—Nature, red in tooth and claw. Insane
because nature had nothing to do with the thing Gervais had
become.
Helfren nearly blacked out a couple of
times as he pulled himself by inches toward the porch. If he could
just get underneath it . . . Blood ran into
his eyes, half-blinding him. He could hear bone-chilling howls from
elsewhere on the farm and animal screams that made him want to
scream himself. His head spun as he finally got a hand on the
lattice work, almost wept when a loose panel gave him
access.
Once beneath the porch, he pressed the
corner of the panel back into place and crawled farther into the
sun-dappled dark. The earth felt cool and refreshing at first, then
seemed to draw all the heat from his body. As he shivered, he drew
the cell phone from his pocket. Sheer reporter’s instinct—or
fucking insanity—had possessed him to snap a photo of his attacker,
somewhere between having his leg broken and his scalp nearly
sheared off. Sick but slick. It was that
gutsy quality that made him the best damn investigator in the
entire paranormal business.
He fumbled with the phone, squinted to
see and swore at the signal bars. Only one out of three.
Nevertheless, the web came up on command and he readied an e-mail
to OtherWorld News. It would be the best
damn front-page photo in the paper’s thirty-three year
history.
And his last. He knew he was dying, but
at least he’d finally be fucking famous. This once-in-a-lifetime
photo might even get him nominated for a Pulitzer—posthumously of
course. He grinned as he clumsily tapped out his message on the
keypad with fingers he could no longer feel.
The cell phone went dark just as he was
about to press send.
“No, no baby, don’t do this to me.”
Helfren scrabbled at the keypad but the screen remained dark. “No,
no, nooo,” he moaned. As he clutched the
phone to his chest, frustrated tears joined the blood on his face.
He was well and truly fucked. Visions of his name living on faded
even as his breathing slowed but his mind continued to race. There
would be no legacy, no final discovery to rock the scientific world
and immortalize him. Sure, someone might find the damn phone when
they found his body, but who would bother to charge it up, look at
what was on it? It wasn’t like there’d be cops looking for
clues—he’d be all too obviously dead of an animal attack. Case
closed. Shit. Helfren couldn’t feel his
body, couldn’t feel the cold anymore. Couldn’t see much of anything
either. He was going to die alone under a dark porch like a damn
rat.
I brought it on
myself. The thought came out of nowhere, but it rang true
and a few more tears leaked out. He might have been a great
reporter but he hadn’t exactly been a stellar human being. It
hadn’t always been that way, but somewhere along the line his
ethics had disappeared. The story became everything. And he’d
done just about everything to get his
stories. Assumed identities, stolen artifacts and evidence, paid
off authorities. Befriended others in his field only to rip off
their leads and their contacts. Hell, he wasn’t James fucking Bond,
he was just a jerk and an asshole.
What a crappy legacy. I
wish . . .
His world went dark and
still.
“Okay, you have to tell me what happens
to your clothes. Every werewolf movie I’ve ever seen has the guy’s
clothing in shreds, but I saw you. Your
clothes were not only still on, but in perfect condition when you
turned from wolf to human. So what’s the secret?” Zoey nestled her
back against Connor, basking in his heat. She felt totally relaxed,
thoroughly adored. And certain that the satisfied grin on her face
was never going to come off.
Connor brought her hand to his mouth
and kissed her fingertips one by one. “That’s a good question. I’m
not sure how well I can explain it—Devlin’s the quantum physics
expert in the family. He says the clothes go into some little
pocket or compartment in another dimension.”
“What, like a parallel universe or
something?”
He laughed. “This isn’t science
fiction, honey.”
“Spoken like someone who is just
way too used to being a werewolf!” She
rubbed her forehead, thinking. “I know that according to Einstein,
there are actually four dimensions, not three. Some scientists are
now saying there are more, maybe even ten. I suppose there’d be
room in one of those for an interdimensional clothes closet for
werewolves.”
“You’re going to get along great with
my brother. And it’s Changeling, not
werewolf.”
“Semantics. So you send your stuff off
to this other dimension, and then what?”
“You don’t send them. The clothes
automatically go there when you become the wolf. But they don’t
come back on their own. That’s where the skill comes in—you have to
learn to bring your clothes back with you
when you Change.”
“Bet you could lose a lot of clothes
practicing. So is it difficult to learn?”
“No.” He ran a gentle hand along the
side of her face, trailed fingers down her throat. “It’s not a
step-by-step procedure like programming the TiVo—which I still rely
on Culley to do, by the way. It’s more a case of getting the right
feeling, of pulling your clothes to you with
your mind. You get pretty good at it after a while, enough that all
the things in your pockets come along too, whatever you had with
you, whatever was touching you or your clothing. Books, tools, ID,
and so forth.” Connor laughed suddenly.
“What’s funny?”
“Devlin took that to new heights once.
Our mother wanted her piano moved upstairs, so Devlin figured if he
was holding on to it while he Changed, then he could just run
upstairs as a wolf and then Change back. Voilà, the piano would be
moved.”
Zoey rolled her eyes. “Oh come on,
Connor, there’s no way that would work. It’s not fair for you to
try to put stuff like that over on me just because I’m new to all
this.”
“Actually, it worked just fine. He
Changed and the piano reappeared. But he hadn’t anticipated how
much energy it would draw from him. He was so exhausted, he was
bedridden for more than a week. According to my folks, Devlin would
have been far better off to have stayed in human form and
single-handedly carried the piano upstairs.”
She just shook her head, her mind
boggling.“I still think you’re pulling my leg. It all sounds like
magic.”
“Maybe that’s what magic really is.
Using natural principles, even ones we don’t understand, to
accomplish things.”
“Now it sounds dangerous,” she
snorted.
“Not really. People do it all the time.
Do you understand how your truck works? Yet you’re not afraid to
drive it. And then there are computers. Most of us haven’t a clue
how they work either, but we use them. Or we try to,” he said with
a laugh. “The bottom line is, I don’t know how my clothes disappear
and reappear, I only know that they do. And lucky thing too,
because I’d hate to turn up bare-assed naked in the middle of the
woods some night.”
“What if you were holding someone’s
hand? Or accidentally brushed against someone when you
Changed?”
“First of all, no one ever Changes
close enough to a human to hurt or endanger them. It’s a cardinal
rule. It’s drilled into all of us as children.”
“But what if another werewolf touched
you? Would it hurt them?”
“Remember when you touched me right
after I Changed? Multiply that to the power of a hundred or so if
you’d touched me while I Changed.” Connor
chuckled and lay back with his hands behind his head. “My oldest
brother James and I got into a helluva fight when we were kids.
We—”
“Wait a minute. James? There’s more of
you?”
“I guess I forgot to tell you. There’s
six altogether. You’ve already met Culley and Devlin, and you’ll
meet Kenzie when she gets back. Carly lives in Wyoming right
now.”
She waited a beat, then two, but Connor
offered nothing more. The laughter in his eyes had been replaced
with a faraway look, however. “Is James still living?” she asked
carefully.
“Yes.” He blew out a breath. “And no.
James lost his wife some years ago. Grief makes people do things,
whatever they have to do I suppose, in order to survive the pain.
He turned into a wolf and as far as I know, has never Changed
back.”
“As far as you know. You mean, you
don’t know where he is?”
Connor shook his head. “Nobody does.
He’s been spotted once in a while near here, like he’s checking up
on us or something, and then he’s gone again.”
“I’m sorry. That must be pretty rough
on you, on the whole family.”
“Yeah. I miss him all the
time.”
Zoey slipped her hand into Connor’s.
“Finish the story you started. About when you and James were
kids.”
“It’s not a very long story. We were
fighting again, something we did a lot because he was a year older
and figured he should get to tell me what to do. We were pretty
much the same size, but I was losing as usual. Finally, when he was
holding me down and punching me, I Changed. James got a shock much
bigger than you did, enough to throw him clear across the room and
stun him. He wasn’t injured but he had a headache for a
week.”
“So Changelings fight dirty, do
they?”
He laughed a little then. “I’ve heard
it said that if something’s important enough to fight about, then
there’s nothing unfair about using whatever you have to in order to
win.”
“I’ll just remember that.”
Connor leaned over and lightly swatted
her butt. “Lucky for you, I have a code of honor. Let’s get going.
I’ve got animals to feed, and I’d like to get it done before it
rains. Then maybe we can find something to eat for ourselves. I’m
starving.”
She pulled her clothes on and headed
into the bathroom to adjust her makeup, brush her hair. When she
emerged, Connor was sitting motionless on the edge of the bed,
staring at the cell phone in his hand.
“Is it the clinic? Do you have a call
to go to?”
He turned to her and she was shocked to
see his eyes filled with fury and grief. “No. It was Jessie,
calling from the farm. Seems Bernie’s been there ahead of us.” He
took a deep breath as if it were difficult to push out the words.
“Jim Neely’s dead.”
The laneway was jammed with vehicles.
Three police cruisers, an ambulance, a fire truck, the coroner’s
van, the pickups of several curious neighbors and a Fish and
Wildlife jeep. Connor parked his truck along the road. When he got
out, however, he leaned back against the vehicle for support,
blinking as if trying to clear his vision.
“Are you all right? What is it?” asked
Zoey, taking his hand.
“Death. Good Christ, it’s everywhere. I
can feel it, smell it, taste it.” He made a sweeping motion with
his hand. “They’re all dead, Jim and all the animals too.
Everything. Every damn living thing that was here.” He shook
himself and straightened, but it was as if he was lifting an
incredible weight on his shoulders. His eyes hardened until he
looked at her. “I shouldn’t have brought you here. I don’t want you
to have to see this. Or feel it either. Your psychic senses are
already showing you this shit, aren’t they?”
There was no denying that she’d felt
the discordant energies coming from the farm long before the truck
stopped. Now she was picking up flashes of images in her mind of
what had happened here, things that turned her insides to water.
But she wasn’t about to give in. Not this time. “I can see it, yes.
But I’m staying.”
“The Pack is here. Let me call Culley
or Devlin to take you home. They’ll stay with you, watch over you
until I can get back.”
She shook her head, resolute. “You said
we’re a team, remember? Wherever you’re going, I’m going too, so
get used to it, Connor Macleod.”
He was quiet for a moment, then nodded
and took her hand. Together, they walked up the long, long drive
beneath the somber sky.
Sergeant Fitzpatrick met them near the
house. Other officers were keeping the little knot of neighbors
back. “I’m sorry, Connor.”
“Not as sorry as I am.” Jessie appeared
at the vet’s elbow, with Bill behind her. “Devlin figured out there
was a danger, and I brought the Pack on the double.” Her face
looked stricken. “We weren’t in time.”
“Bernie’s going to pay, Jess.” Connor’s
voice was steel. Zoey shivered at the force of the emotions
radiating from him. The hot fury had returned to balance the icy
current of grief deep within. Even more intense was the guilt that
ripped at him—guilt for having drawn such danger to the old man.
Jessie had said that even a Changeling would have had little chance
against what Bernard Gervais had become. A human would have no
chance at all. And Neely had been very much human. Of course Connor
would blame himself for his death. But she couldn’t tell him it
wasn’t his fault, not yet. His heart wouldn’t be able to hear
it.
“Bernie’s going to die,” said Jess.
“And it still won’t be enough to balance this.”
Fitz put his hands up. “Stop right
there. Do not say things like that,” he
ordered. “Not now, not here, do you understand?”
“You’re addressing the Pack leader,”
reminded Bill, and although his voice was quiet, Zoey could see the
tensing of his muscles. Jessie herself looked
irritated.
The sergeant glanced around, then
lowered his voice to a fierce whisper. “Look, Lowen’s here and he
says Jim Neely died from an animal attack, just like Al Menzie. But
I’ve got officers all over the place here, human officers. You can’t walk around mentioning
Bernie’s name in connection with Neely’s death unless you want even
more werewolf rumors flying around this town.
“I’ve got guys asking questions already
because we’ve found dead animals piled in the bushes, stacked in
the barn. Deliberately thrown in the pond. What wolf does that? On
top of that, there’s almost no blood left in or around the human
body.” He yanked off his hat and ran a hand through his hair, then
jammed the hat back on. “And you sure as hell cannot be talking about someone having to pay. This is a small town and, believe me, someone will
hear it and that someone will remember you said it. And in the
human world, a court will treat those words as an uttered threat if
Bernie winds up dead or missing. So I’ve got plenty of reasons for
telling you—even you, Jessie—to keep a lid on it.”
No one spoke for a long tense moment.
Then Jessie put a hand on his arm. “Of course, Sergeant. Emotions
are running high right now. Thank you for reminding us that we
cannot let our guard down,” she said graciously. “We rely on you to
keep the peace between our two worlds, and our trust is
well-founded.”
Two worlds. Human and Changeling. Until
very recently, Zoey had known of only one. Funny how fast things
could change. . . .
“I’ve got the Pack divided into groups,
searching for Bernie,” Jessie said to Connor. “Right now we’re
going to join them, but we’ll be back later to help you bury your
animals. Take care of Zoey.”
“Thanks, Jess. I will.”
Bill put a huge tattooed arm around
Connor’s shoulders. “Jim Neely was a good man, but no one knew it
till you came along. You made his last years some of the best,
mate.”
Connor couldn’t say anything to that,
only nodded.
Zoey watched Bill and Jessie walk away.
“How many Pack members are out there?” She squeezed Connor’s hand,
seeking to distract him from his sadness.
He blinked like a man waking up.
“Twenty now. Jessie and Bill will make twenty out
there.”
“They’ll have to work fast,” said
Fitzpatrick. “I can’t keep the Fish and Game guys busy forever.
Luckily their helicopter is over in the next district doing a moose
count today, but they booked it for daybreak tomorrow if the rain
holds off. I figure we have till then to find Bernie, before it’s
too dangerous for us to be in wolfen form out there.” He nodded
toward the open land. “They’ll be shooting every wolf they spot,
just to be sure.”
“Can’t we stop them?” asked
Zoey.
Connor shook his head. “They have no
choice, not with two men dead. It’s a matter of public safety now.
Not only will it be hell on the wolf population, but it’s going to
make it difficult to be a Changeling in this region for a long time
to come. Maybe years.”
“Right now, we’ve got other things to
take care of. Did Neely have any family?” asked
Fitzpatrick.
“No, there was no one. He’s—he was—a
widower, no children. No siblings living,” said Connor. “We were
his family, these last few years. Do you need me to identify
him?”
“No, that’s not necessary. He’d been in
enough scrapes back in his drinking days that we can officially
identify him with fingerprints.”
“I’d like to see him just the
same.”
The sergeant nodded. “You’ll get a
chance to do that after he’s been taken to the
morgue.”
“I’m his friend. I’ll do it now,” said
Connor.
“Procedure—“ Fitz began, then stopped.
“Hang procedure. Over here.” He led the way around the side of the
house.
The group passed the blueberry bushes.
RCMP officers with latex gloves were pulling the limp bodies of
dead dogs from the patch and laying them out on the grass, where
two Fish and Wildlife officers were examining them.
Connor looked over at Zoey. “You
okay?”
She nodded and ran a nervous hand
through her hair, wondering if any of them would ever be all right
again. “I’ve already seen this.” And she had. But despite the ugly
previews her psychic abilities gave her, the real thing was always
worse.
A pair of officers was standing with
Dr. Lowen Miller beside a bed of purple monkshood. Through her
research of werewolves, Zoey had learned that these flowers were
also known as wolfsbane because they were supposed to repel
shapeshifters. It certainly hadn’t worked here. Most of the flowers
had been crushed and in the center of the plants was a glaring
yellow tarp. It seemed far too bright for the tragedy it
covered.
To her surprise, the gruff doctor
walked to Connor at once and put a hand on his shoulder, patting
him like a child. Lowen guided him over to the flower bed and
dismissed the officers.
“But sir—” began one.
The doctor glared. “Take a hike,
son.”
The officers left.
Lowen knelt at one end of the tarp,
holding a corner, watching for Connor’s nod that he was ready. The
tarp was peeled back. Zoey didn’t look at what lay beneath it. What
she did see was Connor’s face, stricken suddenly as if by a
physical blow. Then his eyes closed in pain and grief.
“Goddammit, Jim,” he said quietly to
the dead man. “This shouldn’t have happened to you.”
Lowen straightened the tarp and stood
up. “I have some tests to do, but I think he had a heart attack. He
may have been gone before the first blow landed,
Connor.”
Zoey stared at the tarp and nodded. She
could see it in her head, just as the doctor described. “He saw the
wolf, and he died. He didn’t even have time to be scared. The wolf
was surprised and—and disappointed.” Suddenly she was aware of both
Connor and Lowen staring at her. Unbidden, she heard words from her
past, the names that had both labeled and dismissed her.
The Weird Kid. Creepy Girl. Freakazoid. Felt
the sting of them again, even as she shoved them back into whatever
mental closet they’d fallen out of.
She turned and walked off, heading for
the front of the house, wanting to get away from the death and
destruction. But there was no escape. Many of the vehicles had
gone, most of the people associated with them as well, giving her a
clear view of the entire farmyard. Hapless creatures large and
small lay scattered as far as the eye could see. From here, she
could identify the largest shapes by their color—the great shaggy
heap that was certainly the Highland bull, the dappled gray hide of
one of the horses, a pair of big pink sows. Her heart bled at the
immense sadness of the scene, but she knew it must be worse for
Connor.
“Thanks for that.” His voice behind her
made her jump. Before she could recover, his powerful arms simply
slid around her and gathered her back against him.
“Thanks for what?”
“It helps, knowing that Jim didn’t feel
what that bastard did to him, that he was already gone. Bernie’s
still responsible but at least Jim didn’t suffer.”
Connor took a great shuddering breath
and Zoey squirmed, wanting to hold him but his grip was so tight
that she couldn’t turn around. She had to settle for nuzzling and
kissing the arm closest to her, placing her hands over
his.
“I wish I’d been able to do more, see
more,” she said, her voice tight with tears. “I wish I’d seen this
in advance so we could have stopped it.”
He turned her around then, cupped her
face in his huge hands. “Don’t do that to yourself. It’s bad enough
that I feel that way, don’t you go there too.”
“I’m already there, dammit!” She burst
into hot, angry tears then. “I’ve been there for years now. Always
too late, too damn late to do any good at all. You and Jessie keep
saying this ability is a gift, but I don’t see it that way. It’s a
horrible thing to have, and I wish it didn’t exist. All it does is
leave me standing over the dead. Helpless.”