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At that instant, Caelan knocked me aside.
I caught my breath on the sidewalk as he flipped the monstrosity onto its stomach and cuffed it.
The garage across the street was closed. Three figures huddled against the pane of an upstairs window.
My gaze fell upon the slight, still figure of my cat. I started for him.
“We've gotta go.” Caelan was a hot hand on my waist, hauling me backward.
“Samson—” I fought against him for every inch of grass toward my pet.
“Marcy.” Bright amber eyes met mine. “He’s dead.”
A fact I refused to acknowledge even though I knew it, too.
“Igor may not be!” I insisted, but the sheriff’s grip was unrelenting. Frustrated, I pushed at his chest. “I don’t know where she is. She could be in the house, she could be hiding, she could be—”
He tugged me toward the street. “She’s a cat.”
“She’s family!” I hissed. “I’m not leaving without her.”
He cupped my cheek. “She’s a cat,” he repeated. “She can handle herself. We’ll come back for her; I promise.”
Branches shivered in my shadowed side yard. An enormous gray wolf emerged, gray, not for its fur, but rather, the lack of it. Bloat filled its hairless stomach and distorted its bulging face. A second animal broke through the brush line, this one thin with stiff muscles and taut skin, oozing a tarry liquid on one side, as if someone had shoveled roadkill from a sunbaked highway.
Laughter echoed in my ears.
We ran.
Not for my darkened house, where who knew what horrors awaited us, and not for Calico's, where she and the kids might still be escaping.
Caelan shoved me at the open driver's side door of his deputy's car and shut me inside. When I turned the key, he had jumped into the passenger seat and slammed he door, craning his neck around. “Gun it,” he said.
This time, I didn’t need telling twice.
The pair of wolves rushed after the car. One ranged up to the bumper, then speed was on our side. In the blood-splattered rearview mirror, beyond the charging wolves, a tall, emaciated human shape picked up Samson. I wasn’t sure, but its legs appeared to end in hooves.
“Eyes ahead.” Caelan squeezed my shoulder. “You've got to focus.”
He was right. My life was gone.
???
We’d been driving five minutes toward the Bayberry Town Center before Caelan's phone rang. He switched to speaker as soon as he recognized the alpha's voice. Calico had escaped with Evita, Aiden, Mila and the remaining pack members. They were headed to a safehouse for the remainder of the night.
Caelan dropped his phone into his lap and returned to communications with his team over the car radio. His shirt from his left shoulder to his elbow was soaked in darkness. I tried not to think about the wetness seeping into the back of my shirt or the tacky pull of the steering wheel. We were sitting in a crime scene. Evidence of who killed the unfortunate deputy was likely destroyed.
Sometime between the 84 on-ramp and deciding where we were escaping to, I pulled over on a quiet stretch of road and used the deputy's wolf kit to clear the blood off the interior windshield.
I tossed the bloody undershirt into the back seat. “Will you kill Devin?”
Caelan looked confused. “Who?”
A truck roared past. The car rattled.
“My neighbor’s kid. He saw—” The words stalled in my throat. I clenched the wheel tighter and pulled back onto the road. “Well, if he survived.”
“If your neighbors call the police, it'll get forwarded to my office. I'll have to investigate and report my findings.”
