I whispered, “Ben, I’m going to break left. Try to draw him off while you get to the car and call for help.”
“I was going to say the same thing, but with me drawing him off and you calling for help.”
“No, I can fight him if I have to. I can take him.”
“Just like you took Miriam?”
Details…
Both of us spoke quickly, breathily, on the verge of panic. I wondered how he was doing with his wolf. I still held his hand, which strained with tension. But no claws had started growing.
The mountain lion took another set of steps and opened its mouth to show thick, yellowed teeth, sharp as nails. It made a sound that was half growl, half purr, grating and skull rattling. Ben and I kept backing, until I slipped on the gravel. His grip on me kept me upright.
The monster crouched, its muscles bunching, gathering itself to jump at us.
“It jumps, we break,” I murmured. Ben nodded.
But instead of jumping, it paused, stared at us, blinking those red eyes. It bowed its head. Then, its whole body seemed to collapse. Like the air went out of it. The face crumpled, and the eyes went dead.
A human hand reached out from under the lion’s body and pulled off the tawny skin, revealing a naked man crouching in the dirt. A long gray braid draped over his shoulder.
Lawrence Wilson looked up at us and smiled.
“Louise got to you first. Lucky. Very lucky.”
I touched my chest, feeling the hard shape of the arrowhead under my shirt. It worked. The damn thing worked.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I muttered to Ben.
Carefully, cautiously, we circled around the old man. Watching us, he stood, but didn’t make another move toward us. Quickly we slipped into the car.
The tires kicked up a rain of gravel in my hurry to drive us out of there. Lawrence watched us go, standing at the side of the dirt road. He seemed to hold my gaze in the rearview mirror until we were out of sight. The mountain lion’s skin hung limp in his hand.
Around the hill and out of sight, I snuck a glance at Ben. He sat straight against the back of the seat, staring ahead, expressionless.
“You okay?”
After a pause he nodded. “Yeah. I think I am.”
We made it off the dirt road and onto pavement. “Good.”
Another dusk had fallen by the time we returned to the motel. The sky had turned deep blue, and a cold wind blew
across the parking lot. It smelled dry, desiccated, and wild. Wrong. Like something out there was looking for us, and meant us harm. It might have been paranoia. Or not.
We had police reports, death certificates, coroner’s reports. We had a couple of statements, a couple of newspaper articles. Tales of crimes that might have happened, of the bad reputation of a certain family, and people who wanted nothing more than the rumors and fear to go away. We didn’t have hard evidence that Miriam was anything other than a highly disturbed young woman, or that Cormac had had no choice but to kill her.
We got out of the car. Ben slammed shut the door, lingered, then leaned on the hood and kicked the tire. And kicked it again.
“Would you stop kicking my car?” I said.
Hands on the hood, he leaned over, breathing hard. His anger was getting the better of him, which meant his wolf was getting the better of him.
“Are you okay?”
If he started shifting, I didn’t know what I’d do. He didn’t have experience keeping it together, when everything around you poked the creature awake. When all you wanted to do was run.
“Ben?”