Kitty Takes a Holiday (Kitty Norville 3)

“It’s a deer,” I said stupidly.

“I still have to dress it and put the meat up. Is there room in the freezer?”

“You killed it?”

He gave me a frustrated glare. “Yeah.”

“Is it even hunting season?”

“Do you think I care?”

“You shot a deer and just… dragged it here? Carried it? Why?”

“I had to shoot something.”

I stared at him. That sounded like me. Rather it sounded like me once a month, on the night of the full moon. “You had to shoot something.”

“Yeah.” He said the word as a challenge.

So which of us was the monster? At least I had an excuse for my bloodlust.

“Ben’s awake,” I said. “Awake and lucid, I mean.”

In fact, Ben was standing in the doorway, holding a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His hair was ruffled, stubble covered his jawline, and he appeared wrung-out, but he didn’t seem likely to topple over. He and Cormac looked at each other for a moment, and the tension in the room spiked. I couldn’t read what passed between them. I had an urge to get out of there. I imagined calling in to my own radio show: Yeah hi, I’m a were-wolf, and I’m stuck in a cabin in the woods with another werewolf and a werewolf hunter…

“Hey,” Cormac said finally. “How are you feeling?”

“I don’t know,” Ben said.

“What’s the gun for?”

“Went hunting.”

“Any luck?”

“Yeah.”

My voice came out bright with false cheerfulness. “Maybe you could cut us up a couple of steaks right now and we could have some dinner.”

“That’s the plan. If you can stoop to eating meat that someone else picked out,” he said. “Oh, and I found another one of these.” He tossed something at me.

Startled, I reached for it—then thought better of it and stepped out of the way. Good thing, too, because a piece of barbed wire clattered on the floor. It was bent into the shape of a cross, like the other, which was still lying on the floor by the stove. I kicked the new one in that direction.

Ben moved toward the front door, stepping slowly like he was learning to walk again.

Cormac could change his mind, I thought absently. He gripped the rifle, all he had to do was raise it and fire, and he could kill Ben. Ben didn’t seem to notice this, or didn’t think it was a danger. Or just didn’t care. All his attention was on the front door, on the outside. Cormac let him pass, and Ben went out to the porch.

I went after him.

He stared at the deer. Just stared, clutching the blanket around him and shivering like he was cold, though I didn’t think the chill in the air was that sharp.

“I can smell it,” he said. “All the way in the bedroom, I could smell it. It smells good. It shouldn’t, but it does.”

Fresh blood spilled on the ground, hot and rich, seeping out of cooling meat and crunchy, marrow-filled bones—I knew exactly what he was talking about. My mouth would be watering, if I wasn’t so nervous.

“It’s because you’re hungry,” I said softly.

“I could eat it right now, couldn’t I? If I wanted, I could eat it raw, skin and all—”