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Jazeel studied Caelan's face, then the distant slider beyond the flames where his pack stood distracted. He nodded at the massive shed near the orchard’s boundaries. “Let me poke my head in first. She was hurt bad.”
With Caelan bringing up the rear, I trailed after my sister's husband. My in-law, I realized, and all I knew about him was his name. Rhetta, the common ground between us, appeared to hate my guts. His opinion could not have been much higher, considering Caelan had just shredded his wife.
“Why'd you kidnap Zakar?” I asked.
“He’s the only one who knows how to handle Rhetta’s unique condition,” he said. “He called us in a panic this evening, told us the King of Graves had come for him and he feared the worst.”
“Rightly so,” Caelan added, but as we approached the shed’s double doors, he pulled me aside and in a low voice, whispered, “He wanted to be got, Marcy.”
With that, the sheriff uncuffed Jaz, who slid the key into the lock and twisted.
What Calico deemed a shed was positively palatial compared to the ones our neighbors parked their lawn mowers in. The double doors were large enough to allow a werewolf the size of Caelan easy access. A slobbered rag was knotted around one of the handles.
“We change in here,” Jazeel said. “Makes cleanup safer. Wouldn't want the neighbor's kids losing a ball over the fence and sneaking over to find piles of fly-covered flesh strewn across the patio.” He pounded the door and called out for Rhetta. When she didn't answer, he pulled the handle.
On the concrete floor, a miniature camping lantern illuminated a man tied to a dining room chair. His wrists and ankles were bound with garden twine; the same of which had been used to secure his waist to the chair. A dirty cloth filled his mouth, appearing the twin of the rag on the shed door. Zakar’s head turned as we entered. The bright green of his eyes had dulled.
A snarl reverberated through the shed. The pale form of a werewolf crouched, one hand on the lantern, the other on the shaman’s knee, back arched and tail lashing.
Jaz stepped forward. “Rhetta?” he called, then, turning his head. “They were drinking tea and chatting when I left…Rhetta, babe, what’s going on?”
The wolf's ears flicked forward. Her snout lifted, crossing into the light in a silvery flash. She made for an ugly beast, too human for the elegance of canine features to prevail, and too canine for her beautiful human features, with patchy hair around her distorted nose and jaws crowded with poorly angled teeth. The fur of her neck was stained and thick with old blood. She rose onto her hind legs, pressing one paw to her hanging belly.
Blue eyes found mine in the doorway. Her ears flattened.
In a swift motion she thrust her claws into Zakar’s neck.
Caelan fired two shots. Rhetta fell to the side, taking the convulsing shaman with her. With a cry, Jazeel rushed to her, slipped in the spray of blood and inadvertently kicked the light. The lantern rocked back and forth, lengthening and shortening the agonized grimace on Zakar's face as his body stilled.
The sheriff holstered his weapon. While he didn't have to lay two fingers near the gaping wound to confirm Zakar's death, he did so anyway. Pulling on a pair of gloves, he removed the gag from the shaman's mouth and lifted Zakar’s lip. Ordinary human teeth. No patch.
Rhetta moaned on the floor as her mate examined the shoulder Caelan had sank two bullets into.
A tawny she-wolf filled the shed entrance, observing us through big brown eyes. Where wolves like Caelan inspired a sense of the untamed wild, the giant she-wolf was elegance defined. A narrow muzzle, white throat and small paws added to her lean luxury. She was a racehorse, a prize, the dog favored to take home top honors at a show. I knew, as she padded forward and rubbed her face against Rhetta's, this could be no other than Calico.
I elbowed Caelan. “The wolf in you doesn't want her?”
“I am the wolf.” He reached into the deceased man’s pockets. “She’s ambition coiled beneath silk petals," he murmured, removing a handful of black zip ties. He glanced from them to the twine wrapped several times around the shaman’s hands and legs. “She’d make me a worse man than I am.”
Returning the contents, Caelan set Zakar and his chair upright and whistled to the alpha and the sister I didn’t dare approach until she was human. Both heads turned. “I need the body, but you are free to purge the scene of evidence. Can't charge someone for this mess if there's no evidence for who did it.”
His answer surprised me. “You won't arrest Rhetta?”
“The duty of a sheriff is to resolve matters in-house where possible. Seeing as y’all belong to the same pack, we'll keep this contained. Mrs. Finn can handle a slap on the wrist and a fine for interference. If I bring Rhetta in, August will kill her for taking down the possible host of the supposed wendigo, at which point they will learn she don’t die easy and start asking questions. If I tell them not to dispose of her, I have to tell them why. And when I tell them the necromancer is after her as well, they'll have no use for you. Step a few feet further to the door now, will you? Jaz, pull your wife well back.”
He set the lantern straight and turned the brightness to its maximum. All it did was increase the contrast between Zakar's skin and the blood. Suspicious, I moved against the door. Calico came beside me. Jaz attempted to take his wife the same path, but she hissed and crowded against the far corner. Unable to transform, he moved in front of her.
“August and I believe you're the target,” he continued, giving the chair a shake. Zakar’s head lolled to one side. “As long as we have you, we have a chance at nabbing the Second and First Heads. Soon as I inform them an alternate’s in play, the Otherworld will declare your presence a failure and August will come knocking. …C’mon, big fella, that’s enough opossuming around.”
Blood eked from the open gash Rhetta’s claws had left.
“Alright,” he said, “Make it fun.” He punched Zakar.
The shaman’s head snapped back. A moment later, gasping, the dead man’s head rolled around with a wide smile. His once stunning emerald eyes had misted over into cloudy, opalescent greens. His eyes darted left and right, finally landing on me.
“There you are,” it rasped, foamed lips shaking through a dusky chuckle. “Warms my heart, seeing you chase after me. Can’t same the same for that brute, but the rose worth picking comes at the risk of thorns.”
The hair from his beard fell onto his shirt with every word; the fat of his cheeks thinned and the space below his sour eyes was fast becoming hollowed. He angled his head back toward Rhetta.
