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Devin’s face blanched. He stumbled off his board.
“Go home,” I panted, semi-covering the wound with my free hand.
A yelp split the air. Snarls piled onto it.
As I whirled toward my driveway Devin bolted for his. The sheriff’s truck blocked my car, but I could stomach mowing down a few emergent hostas to save my skin. I wasn’t equipped for werewolves. I would be safer leaving, as I should have already done. The sheriff would be safer, too.
The beginnings of a plan in mind, I ran through the entry. Violence echoed through the walls from somewhere in the backyard.
Stop the bleed. Find the keys. Get the cats. Go.
After a fast search through the medical kit for some steri-strips and a shoddy repair attempt on my thigh, I couldn’t find my keys hanging on the hook near the garage, didn’t see them in the pockets of my coats, and couldn’t find them on the counter.
I moved into the living room; I’d brought my purse into the kitchen to organize right before Lisa had called. I was a chronic fiddler of stuff when on the phone, remembered jiggling my keys for Samson’s amusement when I’d roamed around double-checking locks in the waning sunlight. Could’ve set them anywhere. He or Igor could’ve pawed them under a piece of furniture before heading to my room for their nap.
Screw it, I thought. I knew where the sheriff’s keys were. I’d grab Samson and Igor, fling them into the cat carriers and get the hell away.
Turning, I caught my reflection in the living room slider—smock knotted around my leg; shirt, face and arms spattered with the sheriff’s blood . . .
An enormous black wolf skirted the edge of the birdfeeder.
I froze, must’ve spent five anxious minutes peering into the darkness beyond, when a hand latched onto the metal pole. The sheriff, naked, tarred in gore and fur, leaned against the feeder to catch his breath.
Revolver in hand, I unlocked the slider and stepped underneath the floodlights into the ruins of my patio set.
Caelan’s eyes, wild, amber, but lacking a certain tapetum lucidum flare; met mine.
He limped closer. Took my brain a couple seconds to realize I was witnessing not a man stumbling forward on a horrific leg injury, but rather a wolf walking upright through the last moments of transition as tibia and fibula bowed into humanity. His toes cramped and flexed, painfully, I imagined, from the grimace darkening his blood-streaked face. On closer inspection, he was covered more in mud than blood, but there were yet raw veins of crimson glistening in the filth of his chest.
“Good?” he asked, one mere syllable difficult to produce. He swallowed, winced, then tried again with enunciation that’d taken a slow roll through gravel. “How badly are you hurt?”
“Stitch-worthy, but under control.” I glanced down. “Mostly.”
“You want to help or rest?”
“I have a choice?”
“Always do.”
“Tell me what you need,” I decided, checking the safety on the gun and then awkwardly juggling it between my hands because with the way the night had thus far unfolded I suspected I'd shoot a hole through my heel if I shoved it into my waistband.
His hand dropped to my wrist, a gentle request for the weapon which I surrendered with hesitation and relief. “Always know what’s behind your target before you pull the trigger.”
“No excuses, I’m sorry.”
He checked the cylinder. “Wasn’t thinking a nervous, panicky idiot would send me to an early grave tonight—and you haven’t.”
“What’s the penalty for shooting a sheriff?”
“There’s no law against it.” His expression was calm, placid, curious. “All things considered, you handled yourself well. Have you danced with a devil before, Miss Davins?”
“Only those in the shape of men.” With him watchful in a way that elevated my heart rate; I focused on the woods leading to the iron gates of the Vilkas orchard. “The werewolf, you killed it?”
“I didn't send him to bed with a glass of warm milk.” The sheriff headed toward the side of the house. Clumped fur and swamp slime coated his back, but I couldn’t make out any visible trauma from my errant shot. “In my line of work, if you want to make sure something won't come back to bite you in the ass, you've gotta make sure it can't come back at all.”
“How do you kill something undead?”
“Sometimes I trap ‘em, but, short of complete destruction, best I can do is tear it into less harmful pieces.”
