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CHAPTER3
Icouldn’t calm myracing pulse or my ragged breathing as I burst through the door. The stench of death overwhelmed me for a second. It was sweet, I noted, almost gamey, like the way rabbit meat smelled.
Billy Bob stepped out of the surgical room. I must have been a hot mess because his eyes widened with alarm. “What’s happened? Is someone in the house? You’re bleeding.” He stripped the surgical gloves from his hands and rushed to me, his speed dizzyingly fast. He grasped my upper arms, his face a mixture of panic and rage. His voice grew unnaturally low. “Who hurt you? I will kill him!”
His aura, which is the only way I could think to describe what I felt, surrounded me, heady and heavy, until I thought I would pass out. “I’m…No one,” I finally said. “The body. I just…Is it…” When he wrapped me in his arms again. I didn’t fight him. I let the heat of his comfort seep into my skin.
“No, Chavvah,” he murmured softly. “No. It’s not Babe. It’s not your brother.”
I let the tears fall as relief flooded me. Still, I was sickened. This was someone’s brother, husband, son… someone loved the person on the table as much as I loved Babe, and they would soon grieve in a way that no one ever expects when the life of a loved one is ripped away from them under such violent and evil circumstances.
When I finally calmed myself enough to speak, and sadly, had smeared my snot across Billy Bob’s chest, I asked, “Do you know who it is?”
My stomach dropped at his solemn expression. “No,” he said, his voice so quiet I could barely hear him. “But it might be Ed.”
“What?” I shook my head. “Ed Thompson?” He’d just been in for lunch today. He was fine. Right as rain. I couldn’t be Ed. Not Ed.
Billy Bob nodded.
“Oh.” My hand went to my mouth. “Ruth. Oh no. Who is going to tell Ruth?”
* * *
I sneezed.Twice. The feather top guest bed was comfortable, but my allergies to goose down along with my fears for Ed, knowing he was killed just outside the back door, and I hadn’t even noticed. I’d been in my own bubble for what? Forty minutes? That wasn’t enough time to remove the skin from a fresh corpse. No. He had most likely been skinned somewhere else and brought to the dump site.
My skin itched and my fingers lingered over a deeper more substantial scar on my forearm. I recalled the injury with terrible clarity…
“Stubborn bitch,” one of my captors said. He had brown hair and blue eyes, and he smelled like wintergreen chewing tobacco. I pulled against the restraints, but three days without water had left me dehydrated and weak. “All you have to do is change into the animal you are, and this will end.”
The other man, a middle-aged blond, held his phone up and recorded us.
Wintergreen waved a chisel, one used for woodwork, in front of my face. He held the angled tip against my forearm. “Last chance,” he said.
I closed my eyes.
The sharp sound of the hammer as it struck the metal chisel rang out against the aluminum walls of the Morton building.
Noise, small and pathetic, snapped me from the memory. I realized it had come from me. A whimper. Better than the screams I could still hear when I thought of that torturous night. That’s when I noticed the tall shadow inside the room by the closed door.
I scrambled to sit up, rolling off the bed on the far side to put distance between the intruder and me. I summoned my animal, using my coyote eyes to scan the room and get a better look. I saw the painting of the rolling Ozark hills, the eight-drawer dresser, a tall bookshelf, a closed closet door, and the very bright moonlight streaming in from the window.
No intruder.
I scented the air, but I couldn’t detect anything foreign. Besides, what kind of idiot would intrude on a werewolf’s territory? Billy Bob wouldn’t allow it.
“You’ve suffered much, little wolf,” a familiar voice said. My friendly neighborhood imaginary buddy … except he was more like an actual presence than a pesky voice in my head.
“I’m losing my mind,” I muttered.
“I would not choose someone feeble-minded,” said an offended male voice.
Not in my head.
In the room.
Movement near the door startled me. I crouched low, my hands up, ready to attack. “Who are you?” A gravelly rumble built in my chest. No way I’d be taken again. Not this time. Not ever again.
“I am known by many names, sister.Pia’isa,kweo kachina, andmai-cohto name a few.”
