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He slid open the back door and waved me through. Soon as we got inside, he headed to the hall table for the tray holding my car keys. He tossed them to me. “You have to understand, Marcy, any arguments in your favor, especially now that the Otherworld is coming to light, hold no water with that thing tied to you. You have to run. Mrs. Finn has a job lined up for you. I don’t know the location. You get clear of me and call her.”
Keys in hand, I looked up the staircase Marcy Davins had spent her entire existence running up and down. The entry had cooled to somber shadows, evoking a stillness the house never had with Samson and Igor in it.
“You’d be letting the monster go, Caelan.” He’d be leaving me alone with Zakar. I thought about how the thing had massaged my pulse, the way he'd reached inside and manipulated my heart. Doll, he’d called me. What else was possible? What else was planned?
“You’ll be running into a nightmare,” he agreed, looking down. “I’ve seen the other brides. Only your sister’s alive. Heartless, but alive. There’s a slim chance, but that’s more than August will offer.”
“What happens to you if you let me go?”
“I’ll receive the same retirement package as Gannon for causing a lot of deaths in the present instead of letting the future die. I acknowledge that choosing you will get some folks alive today needlessly killed.” He rubbed the serpentine tattoo on his forearm. “Mrs. Finn is wise to sheriffs. I'm not a good person. I won't ever be a good person.”
“You serve the community current,” I told him. “You protect the werewolves of today. Maybe I am one, maybe not, but I do know you could spare me from Zakar and August both.” I traced his ink. “You’re the only one who would.”
He closed his eyes at my touch, then, when my fingers wound into his, pushed me gently away.
“I want it to be you,” I said, running through possible scenarios in my head, seeking one solution that could keep us both safe and on the same side. I did not want to be alone again. I did not want to be a werewolf. I did not want to be made into something worse. I did not want to be a reaper’s plaything. I did not want Caelan to die for letting me go.
A chill passed through the entry. The shadow of a cat darkened the bottom of one sidelight. Then there was nothing but Caelan, searching my eyes for a different answer. The warmth of his gaze, tentative and worried though it was, washed away the cold.
“I can’t outrun my fate, Caelan, but the small mercy I was given is being able to choose the when, where and who. I choose you.” I pressed against him, the beginnings of an idea in mind. “Tonight, we’ll become a pack of two. Run wild with me through the woods of my true home until our fairytale ends at midnight.”
He tipped my chin, all the better to judge whether or not my words were genuine. “That’s what you want?”
He killed monsters. I was now a monster. One or both of us could be lying, one or both of us could be telling the truth. Knowing the game was on, I took a deep breath. “It's in my best interest,” I said, speaking clear and honest. I moved past him and onto the porch.
A long, feline shadow ducked into the hydrangeas. Thin clouds dotted the sky, a sky that had a few hours left of rich blue before night took hold. Low on the horizon, nearly obscured by thick leaves, hung a thin, waxing crescent.
Caelan was a quiet presence at my back, wrapping his arms around me. “Moon's on the rise. Somebody ought to howl at it, don't you think?”
I asked for five minutes alone to write a message for Lisa. I didn’t have family, but after the werewolf incident, I’d drawn up a brief will online leaving the house and its contents to her.
He kissed me just below my ear and told me to meet him by the truck. Once the front door closed, I ran to my bedroom.
Calico's words echoed through my mind as I fished out the box. Sheriffs were smart. They tricked their victims, lured them into a false sense of security. August may not have been a sheep, but from all I’d learned he was a creature of despicable habits.
I checked Gram’s gun in my concealed holster, then triple-checked the silvered knife’s position in my sling, wondering whether or not Caelan could have spotted the blade this afternoon.
Back downstairs, I moved an edge of the dining room curtain and glanced outside at the strange cars lined up in my neighbors' driveways in the dying afternoon, and wondered if Augustin La Motte had already arrived.
chapter 32
JOIN OR DIE
The sun dropped below distant mountains, ushering in a silky twilight that draped the forest in mauve reticence. Those vibrant colors deepened to hazy blues as night thickened on the dark side of the valley. The truck's headlights bounced off the winding road, searching the twists for the obscured trailhead.
“Here,” I said, pointing to a widened road shoulder. “Pull over.”
A doe grazed at the cusp of the forest. Her slender neck turned at the rumble of tires on gravel. She tensed.
Caelan put the vehicle in park. The headlights winked out. I watched her leap across the road in the rearview mirror, waiting for the gleam of light from another truck, waiting for August to catch us.
Caelan set his hand on my lap. “He's not here.” He offered a weak, reassuring smile to the question I must've asked a dozen times on the way here. Jorge had given him a GPS signal jammer in case I’d needed a head start; August would get through it quick enough, but we’d have some time.
Opening the door, I wished we could've staged a crash further up the inky road, but a wreck wouldn’t do me any favors if I planned on leaving alive.
The night fantastic roared with warbling insects and the rustled awakening of nocturnal creatures. Among the trees, the upcoming twilight faded trunks into dim silhouettes. Something low slung and green-eyed crossed the path in a quake of leaves.
Run. The icy bite of Zakar's voice made me shiver. For there will be no afterlife but mine.
