Low Midnight by Carrie Vaughn
She dropped her head, paced in a circle a couple of times, looking them all over as if trying to make a decision. Finally, she loped off, weaving between trees, down a rise, and out of sight, looking at home in the forest, as natural as breathing. He sighed, frustrated at how politeness always seemed to work on her, even in her wolf form, like she was some kind of schoolteacher.
Nolan let out a heavy breath he’d been holding. “Jesus Christ, I thought we were all dead.”
Which showed he didn’t know anything about werewolves. Her posture had been angry, but defensive. In the meantime, the other wolf seemed to hunch its shoulders, cocking its head, wriggling itself into a seated position, propped up on its hind legs. Then, a human hand reached out from under the mass of fur, grabbed hold of a now-lifeless tuft of skin near its neck, and pulled. Cormac had confronted skinwalkers before, but he’d never seen one shift back to human like this.
The skin came off, and a twenty-something man, naked, stood tall in the wolf’s place, holding the wolf hide in front of him to shield his privates. He had deeply tanned skin, short black hair, and a lopsided grin, like he was waiting for someone to laugh at his joke.
Nolan cleared this throat. “Uh, Bennett? This is Eddie. Eddie, Cormac Bennett.”
Cormac said, “You know, I don’t care who the hell you are or what the hell you’re getting up to out here. I’m gonna go after my friend, hike back to my Jeep, and leave you to it.”
He turned to march off, but Eddie moved to intercept him. Not saying a word, not caring that he was stark naked except for a mangy-looking, tattered wolf skin. He still had a predator’s look in his eye, like he was waiting for a chance to pounce.
So it was going to go like this, was it?
Nolan said, “First, you tell me when Layne’s planning on moving in. You say he didn’t send you, but why else would you be out here?”
“You’ll have to ask him,” Cormac said, again making to step around Eddie, who again moved to block. This was going to get old real quick. He looked the guy straight on, meeting his gaze. “Who’d you kill to get this power?”
The guy’s smile turned toothy. “Huh. Smart guy, are you?”
Cormac tugged at the arrowhead charm to make sure it showed over his T-shirt. “Move.”
Eddie didn’t move. But he wasn’t smiling anymore. Cormac’s awareness had gone sharp, his skin prickling and the air going still, the way it did before a fight or at the critical moment of a hunt, right before he fired a shot. Eddie was in front of him, unhappy but unable to do anything because the charm worked. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nolan moving up behind him, but his rifle was tucked under his arm, hanging at his side. He was complacent, because he had Eddie to do his dirty work.
At least they weren’t going after Kitty.
“Eddie, you going to lay this fucker out or what?” he said. Probably not as casually as he wanted. All he had to do was take another step closer …
“Can’t,” Eddie said. “He’s protected.”
“What?”
“Because I know what I’m doing,” Cormac said, and dropped his gear to swing back into Nolan with an elbow in the solar plexus. He followed with a right hook that made the guy stumble and drop the rifle entirely. Then Nolan surprised him by taking a swing back. He didn’t seem capable. Cormac dodged, but the blow caught him on the cheek, rattled his head. Didn’t matter, he ignored it and grabbed Nolan’s shirt, threw him to the ground, and kicked him in the gut, just to get it over with. The whole time, Eddie didn’t make a move. He frowned, though, shuddering in place like he desperately wanted to go for blood.
Nolan writhed a moment, letting loose a collection of the usual curses while pawing around for his dropped weapon. As tempting as it would be to also kick the man in the groin while he was down, Cormac resisted. He found the rifle, popped open the chamber and unloaded it, scattering the bullets into the underbrush and throwing away the weapon. He collected the blanket and canteen and set off. This time, Eddie didn’t move to block his way.
He was maybe thirty feet away when Nolan found the rifle, grabbed extra bullets from his pocket, loaded it, and collected himself enough to be able to aim, Cormac saw when he glanced over his shoulder. He kept walking. The shot never came.
Cormac turned, walking back a few steps as he called, “What, you too chicken to shoot?”
Nolan snarled and called back, “You ain’t worth the bullet!”
Well, that was something.
After that, Eddie and Nolan had some kind of argument, Cormac couldn’t hear about what. They stalked off—and not in the direction of the shed. They must have had a car parked somewhere. A car and a mission. He wondered if he ought to call Layne, give him a heads-up.
You are going to have to watch your back.
Sure, but no more so than usual. The fact that Eddie couldn’t touch him had freaked Nolan out—the guy didn’t know what else Cormac could do and wasn’t going to take a chance on provoking him. If he tried to retaliate by, say, slashing the Jeep’s tires, Cormac might come back and magically blow up the whole site. Never mind whether or not he actually could.
Why do people make things so difficult?
The thing was, you just had to make sure you had a way to carve a path right through other people’s difficulties.
So glad we’re having success with that lately.
Ghosts—or disembodied spirits—shouldn’t be allowed to use sarcasm.
Chapter 14
WALKING AWAY, Cormac’s cheek started to hurt. Probably meant that Nolan’s hand hurt worse, so that was all right.
Kitty’s wolf barely left a trail when she wasn’t racing. The creature stepped lightly, displacing only a paw-print’s worth of dirt every now and then. But he had a good idea what direction she’d gone, and she seemed to keep a straight path. He searched for an hour, which was fine because that gave her enough time to find a place to bed down and fall asleep in order to make the shift back to human.
He found her, a lean stretch of pale skin in contrast to the surrounding brown underbrush. She was curled up in fetal position, knees pulled to her chest and arms bent close to her body, head tucked in. He could see the shape of the wolf that had fallen asleep like that, limbs pulled in tight, tail tucked across nose. Now, she was human, naked, her blond hair a tangle blending into the strewn leaves around her. She was tense, her brow furrowed, as if she was caught in a bad dream.
He’d intended to sit back and wait for her to wake up in her own time. Picking a spot a little ways off, he sat on the ground against a tree trunk. That only lasted a minute. It was voyeuristic, kinky almost, him watching her sleep. Obviously, she’d had enough time to shift back, whether or not she was fully rested. They ought to get a move on.
“Hey. Kitty.”
She jerked, coming to awareness and instantly propping herself up to look around with wide, startled eyes.
“Whoa.” She slumped over, shook her head, stretched. He looked away. “Fucking skinwalker, who’d have thunk? Who was that guy?”
He sidled over, holding out the blanket as he continued to look off in the distance, though he could see her in the corner of his vision. He tried not to.
“Backwoods yahoo. Hired muscle. He won’t bother us again.” She seemed totally unselfconscious. Why should she be, she was a werewolf.
“Thanks,” she murmured, taking the blanket and wrapping it around herself. “Sorry about that. I probably shouldn’t have run off, but it was the only way we were going to track him.”
“Let’s just get the hell out of here.”
“But he’s dangerous—what if he comes after us?”
“We had a talk. He’s one of Nolan’s guys. Their whole operation up here is high school shit, not worth messing with.” Maybe he did kill Roy’s brother in some scuffle, or maybe that was all just a story. One way or the other, Cormac wasn’t about to get wrapped up in this mess.
“If you say so. Thanks for the blanket.” She climbed to her feet and rearran
She peered at him. “You know you have the start of a really pretty black eye?” She started to reach out to touch it, but winced and pulled away.
“It’s just a bruise. Zigged when I should have zagged.”
“Should we be grateful you weren’t shot?”
“Probably.” He walked on, and she followed.
“This may all be high school shit to you, but they’ve got guns and bad intentions and you’re getting involved.” She waited; he didn’t say anything, because what was there to say? “Just promise me you’re not getting sucked into anything that’s going to get you in trouble. I never want to have to make that drive to Cañon City again.”
He glanced at her and had to smile because she looked ridiculous, her hair hanging in tangles around her face, the gray blanket slipping off her shoulders as she clung to it. He had that wrenching feeling again, a flashback to when he’d intended to kill her, when she was just another job. And then—that endearing look that she was turning to him right now. The optimism. She trusted him, and that seemed the weirdest part of all. Any other ache he felt was superfluous. Old news.
“I promise,” he said.
“Good.”
* * *
WHEN THEY got back to the shed, Nolan and Eddie were both gone, which was good. It saved Cormac from having to do any more posturing. Who knew how much kerosene he’d already poured on the whole mess just by coming down here and mentioning Layne to Nolan. The war between them might have all been in Layne’s head—was it still?
He ought to just walk away.
Back at the Jeep, Kitty dressed as best she could, scowled at her torn shirt but managed to fit it on anyway, but held on to the blanket. Cormac kept busy retrieving the burnt-out flares and checking over the Jeep. The tires were intact, and it hadn’t acquired any new dents or scratches.
Nolan probably had a single-wide or some cabin out here or at the edge of town. Scraping by at the edges. Eddie might have been crashing at his place, might have had a dump of his own. Cormac didn’t much care. They’d be back here soon—he wouldn’t have scared them off entirely and probably didn’t have more than ten or fifteen minutes to check out the shed. But he wanted to check it out. He retrieved his gloves and flashlight out of the front of the Jeep.
“Wait here a second,” he said to Kitty.
“What? What are you doing?” she asked as he walked off.
“Just wait.”
She growled, slumping against the Jeep’s hood and crossing her arms to keep her shirt on.
What are you planning? Amelia, also checking up on him. He was getting it from both sides now. Typical.
“Those two’ll be back after us if I don’t take care of them,” Cormac said.
That doesn’t answer my question.
“You’ll see.”
Of course I will. Bloody hell.
Flashlight in hand, he went through the shed and into the mouth of the tunnel, a symmetrical opening of granite, roughhewn with nineteenth-century tools and smelling of chalk. The place hadn’t changed much. The same chain-link gate was bolted across the tunnel a few feet in. The metal NO TRESPASSING sign had been replaced with a plastic one at some point. So had the padlock, a straightforward commercial one with a key, which Cormac set about picking and had open in under a minute.
The tunnel on the other side of the door didn’t go too far back; the rest of the place had collapsed and filled in with debris years ago. It wasn’t below the water table, which meant the extant cave stayed cool and dry—not a bad place to store a weapons cache. And there it was, crates stacked up, metal gun lockers shoved against stone walls, cheap metal shelving holding boxes of ammunition. Further back he found some other survivalist gear—boxes of canned and dried food, army surplus MREs, blankets, bottled water, batteries, radios. A nice little setup. All on federal land, which was a problem if Nolan didn’t have someone in the Forest Service covering for him, the way Uncle David had back in the day. He wondered.
Part of him had an urge to strike up his lighter in here. Find a fuse, light it all up, watch it go boom. That’d piss more than a few people off.
But he didn’t see much sense in setting the whole valley on fire. He ignored the itching in his hand and walked back out. After replacing the lock on the gate, he emerged into warm sunshine.
“Well?” Kitty asked when he got back to the Jeep.
“Well what?”
“I figured you went off to blow something up,” she said.
Was he really that predictable? “I have a better idea,” he said. “You’ll like this one.”
She seemed skeptical, studying him with a raised brow. He wrote down the GPS coordinates of the spot, then they drove down the mountain for better cell reception.
Guys like Nolan and Layne would call what he was about to do ratting out. They’d call him a snitch and a bastard with as much contempt as they knew how to muster. What Cormac figured: wasn’t much point holding to some kind of honor system where folk like Nolan and Layne were concerned. Cormac had a goal, and that was to get Nolan and his crew out of the way so he didn’t have to worry about them. If he had an easy way to do it without implicating himself in anything that might get him thrown back in prison? All the better.
Pulling over, he called information and got the number for the San Isabel National Forest district office. As he was hoping, he got a menu that let him leave a message rather than talking to someone. They’d see his phone number, but he wouldn’t have to talk to them if he didn’t want to.
He could sound like an upstanding citizen when he needed to, pitching his voice just a little higher and sounding a little bit confused. “Hi, yeah, I was hiking up south of Cotopaxi on one of the service roads and I found something weird. Didn’t look right, and I don’t know who to tell, but I figured you all would want to know. Looks like someone’s got a storage locker or something in one of the old caves up there. It’s locked up. A lot of bullet casings on the ground, stuff like that. I thought maybe it might be drugs or something; I didn’t really want to stick around, just in case. But I thought you guys would want to know. I had my GPS with me.” He listed off the coordinates and ended the call without giving his name.
Now he just had to wait and see what happened.
Kitty was staring at him. Ignoring her, he pulled back onto the road, heading for the highway and the long drive home.
“The indirect approach? You?” she said finally.
“I might as well let someone else do the work for me.”
Shaking her head, she giggled. “I am constantly in awe of how sneaky you can be.”
Wasn’t trying to be sneaky. He just had a job and wanted to get it done with as little fuss as possible.
She slept on the drive back to Denver, which told him he hadn’t let her sleep long enough back in the woods and she was still recovering from shifting. Weird, to feel so protective. Of a werewolf. He’d never get over the disconnect.
Could have been so much different if he’d been able to, when he first met her. Years ago now, but he still thought of it. Maybe it should have been different.
Amelia sounded put out when she muttered at him. I know what happened. You showed me what happened, letting it seep out of your memories whether you liked it or not. You had your chance with her. She gave you a chance, and you walked away. Can you imagine what that does to a woman? She’s told all her life that what men want is carnal knowledge of her, she offers herself, her body to you—and you refuse her? All she can think is, My God, what is wrong with me?
“She’s a werewolf.” That was his excuse. He’d gotten close—sometimes he imagined he could still taste her lips, feel her eager hands gripping him. Then some kind of flight instinct kicked in. Self-preservation, and suddenly he could only see that he was feeding himself to the wolf. He’d gotten scared. Him, scared.
He still saw the wolf in her. He just didn’t mind i
At least you have the sense to accept her friendship.
Glad you approve, he muttered back.
I’m only trying to be helpful.
* * *
KITTY’S PHONE—sitting on the edge of the seat, tucked against her leg where she’d set it before she fell asleep—rang a couple of times before Cormac took the liberty of shutting it off. Ben, both times. Cormac didn’t want to talk to Ben. He probably should have woken her up so she could deal with it, but he didn’t. Dodging. He shut the thing off so she wouldn’t hear the ringing.
Dusk had fallen when they finally pulled into the driveway of her house. Ben kept odd hours and was often out, meeting with clients, springing them from jail, or jumping through hoops at court. Cormac was hoping that Ben would be out when he dropped Kitty off.
She was awake by then, wrapped up in the blanket. The slashes on her arms from the skinwalker had healed, but he was pretty sure traces of blood still lingered in her clothing and that Ben would smell it. Not to mention the lopsided shiner he’d developed, a purplish half moon sloping under his left eye. He kept poking at the puffy skin, and yeah, it hurt. He ought to get some ice on it. He didn’t want to have to explain any of it to his cousin. His plan was to let her out without him ever getting out of the car. She could do all the talking. She was good at it.
But Ben was waiting in the driveway. He must have heard the Jeep’s engine and come out to meet them. He was barefoot, in his casual/sloppy mode, wearing jeans and an untucked T-shirt, and his arms were crossed.
Kitty scrambled for her phone. “Why is it off? Did you turn it off?” She fiddled with it a few seconds and groaned. “He’s been trying to call for an hour. Did you turn your phone off, too?”
“Yup.”
She let out a growl and stormed out of the car, slamming the door behind her.
He still might have had a chance to escape, but Ben came over and put a hand on the roof over the driver’s-side door. Cormac had spent all day going face-to-face with blowhards, and found he couldn’t stand up to Ben. He rolled down the window.