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I hadn’t seen this much blood since the cabin. In the mirror, my reflection besides his paled. I backed away. “No, no, I can’t.”
Meeting my eyes, he took my shaking hand with a firm squeeze. “You can do this, Marcy. I ain’t saying you have to do it well; you’ve just gotta do it.”
“Okay,” I said, rocking on my heels. “Give me a moment, alright? Ten seconds to regroup.”
He nodded.
Closing my eyes, I focused on the patter of blood hitting the tile, the sheriff’s uneven breath and Samson’s angry cries as he struggled in vain to escape. My little cat would try to protect me, I thought, as he had so many years ago. But tonight, it was my turn.
With a washcloth I wiped Caelan’s wound, braced my palm against his back and paused. “Before we begin, you should know I have never in my life won a game of Operation.”
His laughter came in a short bark.
We were lucky the bullet hadn’t fragmented, he told me as I dug, or else he might have required medical assistance. Werewolves could tolerate trace amounts of silver; it was in their chemical composition same as any human’s, but a certain grade of the metal was known to halt their abilities of rapid cellular growth and regeneration. Without healing, there was no way to survive the destructive transformation, effectively locking a werewolf in their current state until the silver was removed.
It took some inelegant mining in the distorted mess of fur and flesh, but the bullet finally pinged onto the tile. Caelan’s body tensed into mine. The handsome face in the mirror twisted. Bones shifted and broke. Flesh re-knit over a lengthening snout. Steam poured from his open wound and clouded my view.
“Caelan?” I reached through the red. In the swirl of bloody smoke my palm pressed flat to a thickening darkness.
Fangs snapped inches from my hand. In a blind panic, I fell backwards into the tub. The shower curtain and rod toppled over me. By the time I'd kicked free, there were nothing but bloody paw prints on the floor.
chapter 6
VERITAS MORTIS
Ignoring the angry cats in the cabinet, I felt along the counter for the gun, then the ventilation fan switch.
Steam filtered through the bathroom doorway, drifted around my soft footsteps into the bedroom. At the first warm squelch, I kept my eyes focused ahead, lest I look down and lose it. Flesh squished between the toes was as unpleasant on the first step as it was on the fifteenth. Kicking off the last bit of sheriff, I eased around the bed, listened for trouble, then checked the revolver. Three bullets had taken their pound of Were-flesh. One remained.
I entered the hall. Insects swarmed the chandelier above the entry. Accompanied by their spastic shadows, I descended a staircase flecked with bloody prints and gouges, moved past the broken pottery and upended table, and headed toward my porch and the nocturnal landscape beyond the light’s reach.
The night sounded calm as any other on our cul-de-sac, filled with the chorus of frogs, crickets, and the dragging whirr of skateboard wheels on uneven pavement…Shit.
I rushed to the edge of the porch.
Wearing a neon helmet, my neighbor’s son rolled past the sheriff’s truck (no flashing lights, I noted) and up along the parked motorcade spilling from the Vilkas drive.
“Devin!” I called, voice caught in the hoarse realm between a whisper and a shout.
The kid ghosted through streetlight after streetlight.
Cursing, I hurried off the porch, shoulders tensed for the explosion of leaves that would precede a snarling shadow. No werewolf appeared, but left along the side of the house toward the woods, I spotted a pair of legs protruding from the weeds.
Devin took a second pass around. With a final, nervous glance at the prone deputy, I sprinted across the lawn.
“Devin! Hey, Devin!”
“Marcy! What’s up?” He kicked closer.
“There’s, there’s…” The words stalled. “You’ve gotta get inside.”
“Uh, yeah, sure.”
He didn’t move. In fact, he hadn’t seemed to notice the gun, my panicked expression or the body that may or may not have been visible from the street. His attention had landed square on my thigh.
I became aware of a sticky pull, then the memory of the chaotic fight hit me fangs-bared. The shot, the lunge, the pressure of a madly scrabbling werewolf. I examined my thigh. Four gashes split the skin wide. A fifth hadn’t fully shredded through my yoga pants.
Blood oozed over my knee.
