Bitten (Otherworld 1)

"Are you sure?" he asked, twisting to face me. "You don't need to come along."

"Yes, I do. Don't try to stop me or I'll tell Jeremy that you've gone. I'll make him forbid you to do this. If you're already gone, I'll lead him to you."

Clay reached to touch me, but I turned to look out the window. After a moment of silence, the automatic garage door squealed open and the car's engine roared to life. He backed down the driveway at neck-snapping speed and we were off to Bear Valley.

On the road to Bear Valley, the fog of grief and anger whirling through my brain parted with the prospect of action--clear, definitive action. I focused on that instead. Any impulse to fly into Bear Valley and madly search for Logan's killer dissipated under the cold weight of reality. If I wanted revenge, we needed a plan.

As we entered Bear Valley, we got caught in rush hour traffic and had to wait through an entire light change before making a left turn from Main onto Elm. As the second light turned red, Clay tore through anyway, ignoring the horn blasts around him.

"Do you know where you're going?" I asked.

"To park."

"And then ...?"

"To find the bastard who killed Logan."

"Great idea. Precision planning." I grabbed the door handle as Clay spun into the downtown core's only public parking lot. "We can't hunt for him now. It's still daytime. Even if we found the mutt, we couldn't do anything."

"So what do you suggest? Enjoy a leisurely dinner while Logan's killer runs free?"

Although I hadn't eaten since the previous evening, my stomach lurched at the thought of food. I wanted to start hunting Logan's killer as much as Clay did, but reason dictated caution. No matter how I hated the thought of anything distracting us from avenging Logan, we had to do exactly that. Distract ourselves for a few hours.

"We should find out what happened last night."

Clay slammed into a parking space. "What?"

"Find out how the town is reacting to what happened at the rave last night. Assess the damage. Are they looking for more wild dogs? Are they doing anything with Brandon's body? Did anyone see you jumping through a second-story window? Did anyone see me leading the mutt away?"

"For Christ's sake, who gives a damn what they saw or what they think?"

"You don't? If they decide to submit what's left of Scott Brandon for testing and they find something a wee bit strange, you aren't concerned? This is your backyard, Clay. Your home. You can't afford not to care."

Clay made a noise between a sigh and a frustrated snarl. "Fine. What do you suggest?"

I paused, not having thought this far ahead yet. Thoughts of Logan still filled my numbed mind. I forced them aside and concentrated on our next steps. After a fe

w minutes, I said, "We buy the paper, go to the coffee shop, and read it while we listen to what people are talking about. Then we plan how we'll stalk this mutt. After dark, we do it."

"Reading a damn paper isn't going to help us find Logan's killer. We'd be better off having dinner."

"Are you hungry?"

He turned off the ignition and was quiet. "No, I'm not."

"Then unless you have a more productive way to kill a couple of hours, that's the plan."

CHAPTER 12

TRAIL

After buying a paper, I stopped at a pay phone to call Jeremy. Peter answered, so I didn't need to actually speak to Jeremy. I asked Peter to tell Jeremy that I was with Clay and I'd convinced him that now wasn't the time to go after Logan's killer. Instead, we were taking inventory of the damage from the night before. Of course, I didn't mention that we'd be tracking down Logan's killer later. It was all a matter of interpretation. I wasn't actually lying. Really.

Bear Valley had three coffee shops, but The Donut Hole was the only one that counted. The other two were reserved for out-of-towners, truckers, and anyone else pulling off the highway for a caffeine-and-sugar jolt. As we walked into the Hole, the cowbell over the door jangled. Everyone turned. A few people at the counter smiled, one lifted a hand in greeting. I may have looked vaguely familiar, but it was Clay they recognized. In a town of eight thousand, a guy who looked like Clay stood as much chance of going unnoticed as his Porsche Boxster did in the local parking lot. Clay hated the attention. To him, his curse was his face, not his werewolf blood. Clay wanted nothing more than to fade into the background of human life. I think he would even have gotten rid of the Boxster if he could, but like my bedroom, it was a gift from Jeremy, the latest in a string of sports cars bought to indulge Clay's love of fast driving and sharp curves.

Still, Clay was lucky in Bear Valley. Even if his sports car and good looks turned heads, no one bothered him as they would have in the city. He was exempted from undue female attention by the gold band he wore on the fourth finger of his left hand, Bear Valley being the kind of place where a wedding ring still meant you were off-limits to the opposite sex. The ring wasn't a ruse, either. Clay wouldn't lower himself to such a petty deception. His ring was one of a matching pair we'd bought ten years ago, before the small matter of a bite on my hand kiboshed the whole wedding bliss and happily ever after thing. The fact that no marriage took place didn't matter to Clay. The ceremony itself was irrelevant, a meaningless human ritual he'd been willing to undergo for my sake. The underlying commitment was what mattered to him--the idea of a life partner, something the wolf in him recognized, call it marriage or mating or what you will. So he wore the ring. That I could live with, dismissing it as another fantasy of his delusion-plagued brain. It was when he'd introduce me as his wife that things could get a bit ugly.

The Donut Hole was a typical, one-on-every-corner coffee shop, down to the cracked red vinyl booth seats and the lingering smell of burnt chicory. The smoking section was inescapable--even if you managed to find a booth without an ashtray, the smoke from nearby booths found you within seconds, ignoring the upward path to the undersized ventilation system. The staff were all middle-aged women who'd raised a family, decided to spend their empty-nest years earning some cash, and discovered this was the only job for which the world considered them qualified. At this time of day, most of the patrons were working people, grabbing a last cup of coffee before heading home or lingering here to avoid going home sooner than necessary.