Nobody seemed to want to talk about them in detail. Knowing too much about them drew suspicion onto oneself. In some places, a person could be excused for killing someone who was suspected of being a skinwalker. Like lycanthropes, again.
Again I avoided knee-jerk skepticism. In my experience, accusations of evilness often stemmed from the fears of the accuser rather than the real nature of the accused.
What attacked Ben in New Mexico was a werewolf, plain and simple. We had the proof of that in Ben himself. But there’d been two of them.
I grilled Ben about what he knew.
“Not much,” he said. “Cormac picked up this contract for the werewolf, but he got down there and found signs that there were two of them. So he called me. I saw some of the sheep they’d killed. Completely ripped open, like the cattle today.” He paused, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. The memory had triggered a reaction, caused his wolf to prick his ears. Ben collected himself and continued. “I only caught a glimpse of it, right before I was attacked. It was a wolf, it looked like a wolf. Something was wrong, Cormac was letting it walk right up to him. He could have shot the thing from ten paces off. I started to shout, then…” He shook his head. Then he was attacked, and that was that. He’d been watching Cormac, and not what came after him.
“Cormac said you saved him. You got a shot off and that broke some kind of spell.”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember it too clearly. Anything could have happened, I suppose. I do know there was something messed up going on.”
“And now it’s moved here. I really hate my life right now.”
“Join the club,” he said. Then, more thoughtfully, “I grew up on a cattle ranch. Dead cattle—it’s serious. Every one of them is a piece of the rancher’s income. It’s a big business. Marks will go after it until he figures it out.”
“Well, as long as he’s after me, he isn’t going to figure it out.” Marks didn’t know about Ben; I figured we’d keep it that way. Nobody had to know about Ben.
“You suppose there’s a connection with what’s been going on here, with your dead rabbits and dogs?”
I shook my head. “Those were organized. Ritual killings. That today—was just slaughter.” Like we needed another curse around here.
I almost wished they were connected, so we’d only have one problem to solve.
That night, we lay sprawled in bed, like a couple of dogs in front of the fireplace. He pillowed his head on my stomach, nestling in the space formed by my bent legs. I held one of his hands, while resting the other on his increasingly shaggy head of hair. We didn’t look at each other, but stared into space, not ready for sleep.
He was still shaken by the day’s adventure. Not quite comfortable in his skin. I knew the feeling. I let him talk as much as he wanted.
He said, “It feels like a parasite. Like there’s this thing inside me and all it wants to do is suck the life out of me then crawl out of my empty skin.”
Now there was a lovely image. “I never looked at it that way. To me it’s always kind of felt like this voice, it’s looking at everything over my shoulder and it always has an opinion. It’s like an evil Jiminy Cricket.”
He chuckled. “Jiminy Cricket with claws. I like it.”
“It digs into your skin like a kitten with those needley little things.” I giggled. Silly was better than scary.
Ben winced. “Ugh, those things are evil. You ever want to see something fun, throw a kitten down somebody’s shirt. Watch them squirm trying to avoid getting clawed while not hurting the kitten.”
Now I winced. I could almost feel those little claws scratching on my stomach. “You sound like you’ve done it before.”
“Or had it done.”
I couldn’t help it. I giggled again, because I could see it: him and Cormac as kids, cousins fooling around at the family reunion, and I just knew who would have thrown a kitten down whose shirt. Oh, the humanity.
Wearing a wry smile, he looked at me. His voice turned thoughtful. “I don’t think I’d have made it this far without you. Cormac did the right thing, bringing me here.”
“That’s nice of you to finally admit it.”
“When this happened to you, did you get through it alone or did someone help you?”
“Hmm, I had a whole pack. A dozen or so other werewolves, and half of them wanted to help and half of them were worried I’d be competition. But there was someone in the middle of all that. T.J. looked out for me. The first time I Changed, he held me. I tried to be there for you the same way. But T.J.—he was special. He was very Zen about the whole thing most of the time. He used to tell me not to look at the Wolf as the enemy, but to learn to use it as a strength. You take those strengths into yourself and become more than the sum of the parts.” Always, this was easier said than done. But I could still hear T.J.’s voice telling me these things. Reminding me.
“Where is he now?”
To think, I had just been about to congratulate myself that I’d spent a whole minute talking about T.J. without crying. I spoke softly, to keep my voice from cracking, because I was supposed to be the strong one. “Dead. I called out the alpha male of our pack, and T.J. swooped in to back me up. We lost. He died protecting me. That’s why I had to leave Denver.”
“I hear that happens a lot, in werewolf packs.”