“Kitty.” Low and strained, Ben’s voice grated like sandpaper.
He stared at the scene with unmistakable hunger. And revulsion, the two sides of him, wolf and human, battling over what emotion he should feel. His wolf might very well look on this as a feast and claw its way to the surface. The smell of blood—so thick on the air—was like an invitation, and he wasn’t used to dealing with it. He clenched his hands. Sweat had broken out on his hairline. He was losing it.
I grabbed his arm and turned him away.
He squeezed his eyes shut, and his breaths came quick. I whispered, “Keep it together, okay? Don’t think of the blood, think about something else. Keep it locked up inside, all curled up and harmless.”
He started to turn around, to look back over his shoulder at the slaughter. Hand on his cheek, I made him look back at me. I held his face and pulled his head down closer to me. We touched foreheads, and I kept talking until I felt him nod, until I knew he heard me.
His breathing slowed, and some of the tension sagged out of him. Only then did I let go. “Take a walk if you need to,” I said. “Walk back to the car and don’t think about it, okay?”
“Okay,” he said. Without looking up, he started back for the car, hunched in and unhappy looking.
“Weak stomach?” Baker asked.
“Something like that,” I said. “Is there anything else I need to see here, or can we go back to the cars?”
We climbed back over the fence, and Baker replaced the top strand of wire. Ben was leaning on the hood of my car, arms crossed and head bowed. I wished Marks had given me some kind of warning, so I wouldn’t have had to bring Ben into that. He wasn’t ready to deal with that.
“We’re having a hard time explaining what happened out there, Ms. Norville. Werewolves, though. That’s a pretty interesting explanation,” Marks said.
“Yeah, but it’s wrong,” I said. “I didn’t do it. I don’t know what did.” I didn’t tell him about the thing I saw outside my cabin. That thing I thought I saw. If I couldn’t describe it, what was the point?
Marks clearly didn’t believe me. He might as well have been holding a pair of handcuffs. Baker’s expression was maddeningly neutral. Like he was happy to put it all in Marks’s hands and get back to the business of ranching. Western reserve to the extreme.
“Look,” I started, growing flustered. “It’s easy enough to prove I didn’t do it. Get somebody out here to take some samples, find the bite marks and get some saliva, test it. I’ll give you a sample to compare—”
“You don’t have to do that,” Ben said, looking up. “Let him get a warrant first.”
Marks glanced at him. “Who did you say you were?”
“Benjamin O’Farrell. Attorney-at-law.”
The sheriff didn’t like that answer. He frowned. “Well ain’t that something.”
Ben sticking up for me settled me down. He was right; I didn’t have to defend myself here. They had no proof. I said, “You think about trying the UFO people? I hear they have a bead on this sort of thing.” Anything could have done this.
“This isn’t a joke. This is a man’s livelihood.” Marks gave Baker a nod.
“I’m not joking. Can we go now?”
Scowling, he went to the door of his car. “Don’t think about leaving town. Either one of you.”
Whatever. I opened my own car door and started to climb in.
Baker called out, “If you come up with any ideas about what happened here, you’ll let me know?”
I nodded. My only idea at the moment was that this whole town was cursed.
As soon as I left the driveway leading out of Baker’s ranch, Ben said, “Do you have your phone?”
“It’s in my bag.” I gestured to the floor of the backseat.
Ben found it, then dialed a number.
He must have gotten voice mail. “Cormac, it’s me. There’s been some cattle killed up here. Matches the MO of those flocks killed at Shiprock. Your rogue wolf may have found its way out here. I don’t know where you’ve gone, but you might want to get back.”
He lowered the phone and switched it off.