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“What are we going to do, Jase?”
“Stay inside tonight. I’ll jog into town after sunrise tomorrow.”
“On that ankle?”
“Someone’s gotta.”
“Not you.” In fact, not anyone. That idea had trap written all over it. She had the feeling the Nahual was just waiting for someone to get too far away from a silver bullet–filled gun.
“Besides,” she said. “Edward is coming.”
“That old friend of Granddad’s from the war?” Jase snorted. “So what?”
“He’s some sort of monster hunter.”
“Really?” Jase glanced at Isaac, who still stood on the porch with his gun. “Interesting.”
* * *
With a little help from Jack Daniel’s, Matt managed to calm down Melda. The old woman fell asleep on the couch holding the bottle.
Now that the As were—Matt glanced at the smoldering pile of ashes in the hall—gone, the hysteria, as well as the noise, level had taken a good-sized hit.
Fanny moved about the house, checking for wolfsbane at every entrance with an attention to detail that Matt would have found reassuring if he didn’t suspect that the biggest, baddest monster of all had the ability to slip through anyway.
Derek stood at the window staring at the place where the werewolves had been, murmuring, “Worgens need to be skinned.”
When Matt lifted his brows in Tim’s direction, the man said, “Cataclysm.”
“I’d say so,” Matt agreed.
“World of Warcraft,” Tim clarified. “Video game.”
“The Worgens are human and wolf,” Derek explained. “They were cursed to shape-shift by night elves. But becoming horrible humanoid wolves destroyed their minds. They ran mad and were confined to prison in another dimension. But they were released.”
“How?” Matt asked, intrigued.
“No one’s really sure. I heard that in the newest version of WOW they show some of the background of the Worgens. They can be trapped by a circle of blood. Since those things fight to the death and they’re pretty hard to kill—you gotta skin them—being able to trap them would be nice.” Derek frowned. “Of course you’re gonna have to collect enough blood to make that circle. Which means—”
Matt held up a hand. He didn’t want to know how the kid, even in a game, would gather sufficient blood to encircle a Worgen.
“Nice game,” Matt said.
“You should see some of the other ones,” Tim muttered, earning a dirty look from his son.
Isaac turned up with a shovel and began to scoop Amberleigh into a big black garbage bag. It wasn’t easy, considering the goopy texture of what was left.
Though Matt would have preferred to do pretty much anything else—well not anything; he didn’t ever want to see Gina falling down the steps with a werewolf on her heels, and he could probably live without seeing a skinned Worgen—Matt left Melda on the couch and went to help.
Night fell. The wolves came back. There were a lot more of them now.
“Go to bed.” Isaac stood in the doorway of the living room, where Jase, Gina, and Matt stared out at the werewolves that stared in. Isaac had been napping most of the afternoon and appeared as fresh and rested as an eighty-year-old man who’d spent a lifetime in the sun and wind could. He reached for the gun, and Jase handed it over. “No reason more than one of us should have to watch that all night.”
“I’ll stay,” Matt said.
Isaac waved him off. “I’ve never slept more than four hours at a stretch in my life. Now that I’ve wasted the afternoon, I’m gonna be wide-eyed until tomorrow.”
Matt glanced at Gina and saw that she was as uneasy about this as he was.
