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I couldn’t guess what Hardin and her people would make of this. They’d find a lot of blood on the ground. A few shell casings. But no bodies. Nothing else to pursue. It ended here. Maybe, finally, it ended here.
Ben and I traveled to the street by the trailhead, and I walked him toward the BMW.
“Wow. You upgraded,” Ben said.
“It’s a loan.”
“I hate to get blood all over that nice leather seat.”
Too late. I’d already opened the door and lowered him into the passenger seat. “It’s Rick’s car. He’ll appreciate it.”
As we pulled out to the road and headed for home, Ben murmured, “The world looks better in the light, doesn’t it?”
Morning was progressing nicely. In the east, the sun had risen fully, and the sky had finally turned blue. I glanced at him—he’d closed his eyes, and his breathing had turned deep and regular. He’d fallen asleep.
I smiled. “Yeah, it does.”
Epilogue
About a week later, at twilight, I went to Carl and Meg’s house. The place had an empty, haunted air to it. I wasn’t sure what would happen to it. Ben said the bank would probably foreclose when the next couple of payments didn’t come in. They’d discover it was abandoned. Maybe Carl and Meg would be reported as missing, if they hadn’t already, and if they had a will or next of kin the house would go to them. If not, everything would go up for sale, and that would be that.
I had decided to move the pack to a different den. I wasn’t sure where, yet. A few days ago we’d spent the last full moon—our first under the new management—in national forest land due west of Denver, along I-70. New territory for us. Untainted, I thought of it. The night went smoothly. The pack fed well on deer, slept and woke calmly. I was still getting used to the way they all slouched and ducked their gazes around me.
I was relieved that I’d managed to keep everyone safe. That was my job now: keeping them safe, keeping the peace.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to do what Carl and Meg had—buy a house and make the place home for both halves of my being. Or if I wanted to find an even wilder place and save it for the wolves. For the pack. Maybe I’d put it to a vote.
In the meantime, I had to come here one last time. I’d picked up some flowers on the way over—a mixed bouquet, not too big. Lilies, daisies, baby’s breath. Happy, colorful flowers.
T. J. hadn’t had a funeral. He didn’t have a grave. But I remembered the spot where he’d died, thirty yards or so from the house, toward the hills, among the prairie grass and a smattering of pine trees. At least, I thought I remembered the exact spot. I wanted desperately to remember where that was, but I hadn’t been thinking clearly that evening.
Walking out, I found the place where the shape of the ground looked right, along with the placement of the trees, the distance from the house, and the line of the hills. T. J.’s blood and scent had been washed away by a winter full of snow and spring full of rain. I smelled the pack, all the other werewolves running and breathing. But not him.
I sat on the ground and lay the flowers on the spot.
“Hi, T. J.”
It hadn’t even been a year since he died, but sometimes it felt like forever. He felt like a distant memory. Then, suddenly, I’d feel a stab through my heart all over again. I’d hear a sad song, drink bad coffee in an all-night diner like T. J. and I used to do after I got off my shift at KNOB, and all over again I’d be so angry that he wasn’t still here.
It was a beautiful summer evening, the sky darkening to a deep shade of blue, a cool wind washing away the day’s heat. The scent of the hills swept over me.
I kept talking. Explaining. “Well. We got them for you. Revenge and all that. I feel bad because I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to shoot her, I—”
I stopped, swallowed, shut my eyes. I’d killed her. And those two vampires, couldn’t forget them, however easy it would be to call them monsters, inhuman, inconsequential. They’d been people, too. This wasn’t the first time I’d killed someone, but the first time it had been Wolf who did it, out of instinct and self-defense, and he’d been a wolf and deranged to boot. It had seemed like a dream. And Arturo’s two vampires had been to save myself and Hardin. It had happened so fast, it hardly seemed real. But Meg had been all me, wide awake, pulling the trigger. As much as I hated her, it still left a hollow spot inside me. I’d done something a normal, civilized person wasn’t supposed to be able to do. I could still see the look on her face.
I wondered if I was ever going to have to do this again. The thought left me drained.
I tried again. I had to talk to T. J. “I didn’t come back here wanting revenge. But maybe I should have. Maybe I should have been trying to get back at them all along, and—” I wiped my eyes. I’d never stop crying, would I? “So here I am. Back where I started. I just wish you were here, too. I don’t think I can do this. Even with Ben, I’m just not sure.”
Then, the wind stopped for a moment, and the world became very still. Quiet, like the pause before a sigh. A while back, a medium—a channeler, the real deal, not a fraud—told me that T. J. was looking out for me. That some part of him was watching—not a ghost, not an angel, nothing like that. Just . . . a presence. A voice. It sounded like my own conscience reminding me. Straightening out my path a little. I heard it now.
I’m proud of you, Kitty. You’ll do fine.
Or maybe I imagined it. Not that it mattered. It sounded like what he’d have said, if he’d been here.
I smiled. “Thanks.”
I returned to the street, to my car, and drove away.
