I went outside, smelling the air, staring at the ground, looking for footprints, for anything that showed someone had been here, how this had happened. But the blood and guts might have appeared out of thin air, for all the evidence I saw. I stood on the porch, circling, studying the clearing, the house, everything, which even in the morning light had taken on a sinister cast. The place didn’t feel cozy anymore.
“I wanted Walden and got Evil Dead,” I grumbled. I faced Cormac. “This is the second one. You have any idea what it means?”
The scene seemed to pull him out of his recent trauma. He sounded genuinely fascinated when he said, “I don’t know. If I had to guess I’d say you’ve been cursed.”
In more ways than I cared to count. I went back inside. “I’m going to call the sheriff.”
He moved out to the porch, stepping carefully around the rabbit corpse, and said, “Let me hide my guns someplace first.”
Cursed. Right. Cursed didn’t begin to describe my life at the moment.
I had to explain Cormac to Sheriff Marks. “He’s a friend. Just visiting,” I said. Marks gave me that look, the judgmental none of my business what folks do in the privacy of their own homes look that left no doubt as to what he thought was going on in the privacy of my own home. For his part, Cormac stood on the porch, leaning against the wall of the house, watching the proceedings with an air of detached curiosity. He’d hidden his arsenal—three rifles, four handguns of various shapes and sizes, and a suitcase-sized lock box that held who knew what—under the bed. My bed.
Marks and Deputy Ted repeated their search and found just as little as they had the first time.
“Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll post a deputy out here for a couple nights,” Marks said, after he’d wrapped up. “I’ll also put a call in to somebody I know in the Colorado Springs PD. He’s a specialist in satanism and cult behavior. Maybe he’ll know if any groups operate in this area.”
“If it were satanists, wouldn’t the cross be upside down or something?”
His expression of frowning disapproval turned even more disapproving.
“Sheriff, don’t you think I’m being targeted because of who I am?” What I am, I should have said.
“That’s a possibility. We’ll have to take all the facts into account.”
Suddenly I felt like the bad guy. It was that part of being a victim that made a person ask, what did I do to bring this on myself?
“We’ll start our stakeout tonight. Have a better morning, ma’am.” Marks and Ted headed back to their car and drove away, leaving me with another mess on my porch.
Cormac nodded toward the departing car. “Small-town cop like him don’t know anything about this.”
“Do you?”
“It’s blood magic.”
“Well, yeah. What kind? Who’s doing it?”
“Who’ve you pissed off lately?” He had the gall to smile at me.
I leaned on the porch railing and sighed. “I have no idea.”
“We’ll figure it out. You got a shovel and garden hose? I’ll take care of this.”
That was something, anyway. “Thanks.”
When I looked in on Ben again, he’d rolled to his side and curled up, pulling the blankets tightly over his shoulder. Color was coming back into his skin, and the scabs on his wounds were healing. I touched his forehead; he still had a fever. He was still shivering.
; The room smelled strange. It was filled with the scents of sweat and illness, with Ben’s own particular smell that included hints of the clothes he wore, his aftershave and toothpaste. And something else. His smell was changing, something wild and musky creeping into the mundane smells of civilization. I’d always thought of it as fur under the skin—the scent of another lycanthrope. Right here in the room with me. My lycanthropic self, my own Wolf, perked up, shifted within my senses, curious. She wanted the measure of him: friend, rival, enemy, alpha, same pack, different pack, who?
Friend. I hoped he was still a friend when he woke up.
I made him drink some water. With Cormac’s help I lifted his shoulders, held his head up, and tipped a glass to his mouth. As much spilled out as went in, but his throat moved, and he drank a little. He didn’t wake up, but he stirred, squeezing his eyes shut and groaning a little. I shushed him, hoping he stayed asleep. He needed to rest while his body sorted itself out.
Then I made Cormac eat something. He wouldn’t tell me when he’d last eaten, when he’d last slept. It might have been days. I made bacon and eggs. I hadn’t yet met a meat eater who could resist bacon and eggs. Whatever else he was, Cormac was a meat eater.
After breakfast, he spread his sleeping bag on the sofa and lay down. Broad daylight outside, and he rolled over on his side and fell asleep instantly, his breathing turning deep and regular. I envied that ability to sleep anywhere, anytime.