“Yeah. Maybe he’s just trying to get back at me for all those times I called him about the dead rabbits. Maybe this is some practical joke. I’ll end up on the first werewolf reality TV show. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?” I muttered.
After a few miles we turned off the highway onto a wide dirt road, then after several more miles made another turn onto a narrow dirt road, then onto a driveway. A carved wood sign posted in front of a barbed-wire fence announced the Baker Ranch. A quarter of a mile along, Marks pulled off onto the verge behind a pickup truck, and I pulled in behind him. Dry, yellowed grass cracked under the tires.
An older man wearing a denim jacket, jeans, and cowboy boots leaned against a weathered fence post. Marks went to him, and they shook hands. The man looked over at us, still in the car. I expected to see the determined suspicion in him that I saw on Marks’s face. But he looked at us with curiosity.
I got out of the car and went to join them. Ben followed.
Marks made introductions. “Ms. Norville, this is Chad Baker. Chad, Kitty Norville.”
“Miss Norville.” Baker offered his hand, and we shook.
“Call me Kitty. This is Ben O’Farrell.” More handshaking all around. I looked at Marks and waited for him to tell me why we were all here.
“Why don’t we all go take a look at the problem, shall we?” Marks said, smiling, and gestured across the field on the other side of the fence.
Baker slipped a loop of wire off the top of the nearest fence post, pulling back the top strand of barbed wire. The tension made it coil back on itself. We could all climb over the bottom part of the fence without too much effort.
We walked across the field, up a rise that overlooked a depression that was hidden from the road. Marks and Baker stood aside and let us look.
Six dead cows lay sprawled before me. They weren’t just dead. They’d been gutted, torn to pieces, throats ripped out, guts spilled, tongues lolling. The grass and dirt around them had turned to sticky mud, so much blood had poured out of them. They hadn’t even had time to run, it looked like. They’d all dropped where they stood. The air smelled of rotten meat, of blood and waste.
One werewolf couldn’t have done this. It would have taken a whole pack.
Or something lurking in the dark, gazing out with red eyes.
“You want to tell me what happened here?” Marks said in a tone that suggested he already knew exactly what had happened.
I swallowed. What could I say? What did he want me to say? “Ah… it looks like some cows were killed.”
“Massacred, more like,” Marks said. Chad Baker’s expression didn’t change. I assumed they were his cows. He was taking this very calmly.
“What do you want me to tell you, Sheriff? What do you think I know?” I spoke softly, unable to muster any more righteous sarcasm.
“I think you know exactly what I think.”
“What, you think I can read minds?” I was just being cagey. He was right, I knew: I was Kitty, the famous werewolf, who moved into his jurisdiction and then this happened. I told him, “You think I did this.”
“Well?” he said.
“I assure you, I’m not in any way, shape, or form capable of this. No single wolf, lycanthropic or otherwise, is capable of this.”
“That’s what I told him,” Baker said, flickering a smile. My heart instantly went out to him.
“Thank you,” I said. “I don’t think I could bring down one cow on my own, much less a whole herd.”
“Something did this,” Marks said unhelpfully.
“
We couldn’t find any prints,” Baker said. “My dogs didn’t hear a thing, and they’ll set up a racket at the drop of a hat. It’s like something dropped on them out of the sky.”
“A werewolf isn’t a normal wolf,” Marks said, unable to let it go. “God knows what the hell you’re capable of.”
I took a deep breath, quelling the nausea brought on by the stench of death—not even Wolf could stomach this mess. I filtered out the smells I knew, looking for the one I was afraid I’d find: the musky human/lupine mix that meant werewolves had been here.
I didn’t smell it.
“This wasn’t werewolves,” I murmured. What was weird, though: I didn’t smell anything outside of what I expected. No predator, no intruder. Nothing that wasn’t already here; no hint of what had been here. Just like around my cabin, when I chased after that intruder. Like Baker said, it was as if something dropped on them out of the sky.