Clearer in the Night (41 page)

“No,” I whispered. “No, please.” She growled inside my head, snarling at my begging. We could shred him if we wanted to, it would be simple as anything.

His arm was shaking slightly, but at this distance, I doubted it would matter. “I promised you, Cait. I promised you I wouldn’t let you hurt anyone.” His face twisted as his eyes flicked to the bodies at my feet, but he kept me in his peripheral vision. “It looks like the best I can do is not let you hurt anyone else.” A slight pause, his jaw clenching and releasing. “I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t do this,” I said, totally on reflex. He wouldn’t believe me. I almost didn’t believe me. The corner of his mouth quirked up, but his eyes were cold and humorless.

“No,” he said. “You didn’t. The wolf did.”

I closed my eyes, and she surged for a moment in the darkness. The fight knocked me to my knees, clutching and clawing at my own guts, to tear them apart or hold them together. “Do it,” I growled through teeth that didn’t fit. “Do it fast. There’s no one to tell, no one who will care. Just do it. Do it do it do—”

I heard his finger tightening on the trigger, waited for the relief from pain—but it didn’t come. My eyes opened. His head hung down, the gun at his side.

No. No, he couldn’t do this to me. He couldn’t abandon me like this. “There’s no one else, Eli—please…”

He looked up, his shattered eyes locking on mine, his broken vows heavy on his face. “I can’t. I should have stayed away from you. I—”

He saw the wolf a moment before I did. Emotions washed across his face—surprise at how quickly it was coming at him, complete fury that he had let it get the drop on him, panic that he was staring down the barrel of his own oncoming death. He raised the gun, faster than any human should have been able to, but still not fast enough. The wolf came in from the left, slamming into Eli with a thud that drove the air out of him, buckling his body and carrying them both over into the mud. The wolf was faster, almost infinitely faster than Eli, and before he’d even drawn a breath, the wolf’s jaw clamped down on his right wrist, the hand that held the gun. I heard the crunch, saw the blood fly, the flesh split. The gun dropped, falling away from them. The wolf snarled, shaking its head, and Eli made a sound that was less than a scream, but only just. His left hand came over and down, clubbing the wolf on top of the head with a thump that rattled the trees in the ground, and the wolf was stunned for a moment, loosening its grip on Eli’s wrist for long enough that Eli scurried backwards, his ruined hand clutched to his chest.

The wolf let him go, snarling, watching carefully as Eli struggled to his feet one-handed. The wolf—Wes—stalked slowly around, placing himself between Eli and the gun, the only chance Eli had ever had in this fight. It was close to me. Two steps and I could have had it in my hands. I could toss it to Eli, or shoot Wes myself. I tried to move, but the wolf held me in place.
No
, she said, simply.
Hold. See which one is more. See which one deserves us.
I railed against her, trying to say that this wasn’t how humans did it, it wasn’t just about who was most alpha, but she didn’t care. Her attention was entirely focused on the two forms before her. She was impressed that Eli was on his feet now, his back straight and his head up. But Wes was pack. He had brought her out, saved her and soothed her. She wanted to see who would win, and she would not allow me to interfere.

The wolf snarled, and Eli’s bad hand dropped, slowly, to rest at his side. With his good hand, he gestured, just once. Hand outreached, fingers curling up and towards him. Come get some. Wes obliged, leaping silently, with speed that even a true wolf would envy. Eli’s hands came up to try and guard, but he knew he was done for before Wes took him over, before that massive head slammed into his chest and carried him down. Something crunched and broke inside him as they crashed to the ground again, and this time Eli did scream, once, before his eyes shut in grateful unconsciousness. God, please let that be all it was.

The Wes-wolf snarled again, his jaws closing over Eli’s throat, ready to tear him up and move on, when those cold, flat eyes flashed up to me. There was a moment of decision that I didn’t understand, and then the wolf released Eli, stepping back. His body blurred, turned inside out in a way that made me nauseated, and then Wes was standing over Eli, completely naked and matted with mud and blood. He took a moment to wipe off the blood from his mouth, and then walked slowly towards me. He picked up the gun as he walked to me, holding it out. “You do it,” he said.

The wolf and I both balked. “Wes—I don’t want to kill an innocent man.”

“He’s not innocent. He has the blood of dozens of wolves on his hands. Some of them were even humans, plain old humans, did he tell you that while he was working his way into your pants?”

“I’m not a killer,” I said.

Wes shook his head, surprise on his features. “Neither am I, Caitie. I’m a survivor. It’s a very big difference. I want to survive. I want to live, to love, to have children, to see those children grow up in a world that’s safe for them. Is that so different from what you want?”

“I don’t kill to get what I need.”

“Every creature in this world kills to survive. It’s just that humans lie to themselves about it.” He smiled, that strong, dazzling smile that had caught my attention on a darkened dance floor. “I didn’t think you were the sort to lie to yourself.”

I laughed openly. My throat was full of fur, and my body was twisting in on itself. “You don’t know me very well at all.”

“I know you better than you think. Finish him, and then I’ll take you somewhere safe, somewhere you can learn to control yourself. I don’t just want some piece of flotsam to use and destroy, Caitie. I’m looking for a mate. For forever. You’re strong, and you’ll be stronger. And we’ll be unstoppable, together.” He pressed the butt of the pistol into my hand, and I let my fingers tighten around the grip. I looked from the cold metal to Eli’s crumped form. From him to Wes. I was frozen. So cold.

“I love you,” Wes said. “No one will ever love you as much as I do.”

He was right. He always had been. He loved me so utterly, so thoroughly, but his idea of love was a twisted and ugly thing. “Kiss me,” I said. He smiled, and stepped in close. He covered my lips with his. I could read his thoughts now, clear as crystal, and he wanted to kiss me until the wolf took control and turned me into a monster, just like him. I’d go mad with the change. I’d destroy Eli, and then I’d be his forever.

I kissed him back, feeling the wolf struggling to reshape my body. She was winning, now, and I had only one more moment to act. I let his tongue slip into my mouth as I pressed the gun into his chest and pulled the trigger.

AFTER

I stay in the woods for a long time. Past dawn. Until Eli comes to. He stares at me, at Wes, and then back again. He sees me, crouched in the mud, and he sees all the bodies, and somehow he knows that it’s just me in my head—I can still hear him, clearly, but my head is so empty that it echoes—and for a moment, just a moment, I think he might kiss me. But, no. He remembers—and I remember—what he couldn’t do. His hands ball up into fists whenever he looks at me. “I’ll take care of this,” he says, his glance taking in the entire clearing. “Go home, shower. If Wes broke anything, knocked anything over, clean it up. Burn the clothes.” He takes two steps away, then pauses.

I force myself to smile, as if he isn’t holding my heart in his teeth. “Get gone if you’re going,” I say. “Don’t be a tease.” He chooses now, of all times, to listen to me.

I go home, and I clean myself up, and I pick up the things that must have been knocked over when he fought my mother and my sister. And then the police are at the door, telling me about a tragedy, and awkwardly patting me while I cry. They offer to call someone, and I tell them that there is no one to call. They determine, in time, that Wes and Sophie killed themselves in some kind of strange suicide pact, and Mom had gotten caught in the crossfire somehow. With no witnesses, it was impossible to know what happened. Eli kept his word. There was never any hint that I’d been in the woods that night.

When my mother and sister were buried—in the plot that she’d been meant to occupy for a decade, and the one next to my dad’s empty spot—I walk back to the dead house and try to be still. I had tried to reach out to Shan already. What she did made sense in a certain way, and there were too many years of friendship between us to just give up. Or so I thought. But she isn’t returning my calls. So I rattle around for a few weeks, trying to clean up, throw out trash, and figure out exactly how bad Mom’s finances are. It’s looking like the life insurance will get me caught up on the house payments, so I might actually be able to sell it, instead of having it repossessed. The idea of finding a new place to live leaves me nauseated.

I’m stronger. I’m faster. I’m more graceful that I was, before. I don’t trip over my feet or knock things over with my elbows. I still pick up stray thoughts from people, but I don’t get buried under mental noise anymore. I’ve never in my life felt emptier. I want to go dancing. I want to go dancing like I imagine that Mom used to want a drink. I want it with every shard of me, but I know now. What I get from those nights doesn’t make me human.

The night of the full moon, a month after I lost everything, the craving is so bad that I think I might claw my skin off just to get at the itch. I fade around the house, not settling, not pausing. I get in the car—Mom’s, now, what’s the point in driving my old beater?—and I pretend I’m just going to the store for coffee and cookies, even though I’ve done my hair, put on makeup, found my heels.

But instead of turning towards downtown, I turn left and drive away from my life. I could go to the waterfall, but there was never anything there for me except for escape and illusion. Every other sanctuary I’ve had has been burned to the ground. And then I think of one place where I might get some rest.

Driving in the dark, it’s easy to find my way back. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Sophie used to say that, when we were kids. All the time, when we were kids. I was sure of it.

I park the car, throw my heels in the back seat, spend a moment being grateful that I squeezed myself into jeans, not a miniskirt, and I start walking through the rows of corn, my toes digging into the soft, rich earth. It was the last gasp of summer, and comfortably cool was about to fade to bitterly cold. Maybe I’d be gone by then. There wasn’t anything left for me here.

The little cottage still squats on the shore of the lake, and the door swings open at my touch. I squint in the moonlight; I can see that the layout has changed from when I was last here, but—wait, is that a lamp? I run my hand up the wall by the doorway and flip a light switch. With the easy reliability of modern electricity, the light bulb flickers on. The antique appliances are gone, replaced by an oven and a range and a regular fridge. “No electricity my ass,” I whisper, the sound loud in the silence. There’s a desk in the corner, set up and just waiting for a computer. On it, dead center, is my eBook. Like someone had very carefully left it where I’d find it. Like they’d known I was coming. I picked it up and powered it on. For a moment, I fantasize that he would have loaded some sort of message or letter for me onto it, but no. It’s still on the same book he’d been reading to me a lifetime ago.

I push open the door to the bedroom. This room hasn’t changed; the same low bed, the same soft flannel sheets. I crawl between the sheets and pull the blankets over my head. He’s been here recently. I can still smell him on the pillow. I close my eyes. Maybe I’ll wake up and see him above me. Maybe I’ll have a night without dreams.

It isn’t Eli standing over me when I wake. His once-upon-a-time grandmother stands there, hands on her hips. I jump, shoving myself out of the tangle of blankets. “I’m sorry,” I say. “He’s not—I didn’t—”

She smirks. “He’s been gone for a week. On to his next assignment. I’ve been getting this place ready for the next person who might need it. Hadn’t gotten to the bedroom yet, lucky for you. Now, come on, I have a job for you.”

How can I feel so naked when I’m wearing all my clothes? I follow Mrs. Dennis out into the kitchen. She points at a small table, where a mound of potatoes are staring at me. She hands me a peeler, and I get to work while she busies herself at the range. I smell cooking meat.