“You’ll have to ask him,” Cormac said, again making to step around Eddie, who again moved to block. This was going to get old real quick. He looked the guy straight on, meeting his gaze. “Who’d you kill to get this power?”
The guy’s smile turned toothy. “Huh. Smart guy, are you?”
Cormac tugged at the arrowhead charm to make sure it showed over his T-shirt. “Move.”
Eddie didn’t move. But he wasn’t smiling anymore. Cormac’s awareness had gone sharp, his skin prickling and the air going still, the way it did before a fight or at the critical moment of a hunt, right before he fired a shot. Eddie was in front of him, unhappy but unable to do anything because the charm worked. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nolan moving up behind him, but his rifle was tucked under his arm, hanging at his side. He was complacent, because he had Eddie to do his dirty work.
At least they weren’t going after Kitty.
“Eddie, you going to lay this fucker out or what?” he said. Probably not as casually as he wanted. All he had to do was take another step closer …
“Can’t,” Eddie said. “He’s protected.”
“What?”
“Because I know what I’m doing,” Cormac said, and dropped his gear to swing back into Nolan with an elbow in the solar plexus. He followed with a right hook that made the guy stumble and drop the rifle entirely. Then Nolan surprised him by taking a swing back. He didn’t seem capable. Cormac dodged, but the blow caught him on the cheek, rattled his head. Didn’t matter, he ignored it and grabbed Nolan’s shirt, threw him to the ground, and kicked him in the gut, just to get it over with. The whole time, Eddie didn’t make a move. He frowned, though, shuddering in place like he desperately wanted to go for blood.
Nolan writhed a moment, letting loose a collection of the usual curses while pawing around for his dropped weapon. As tempting as it would be to also kick the man in the groin while he was down, Cormac resisted. He found the rifle, popped open the chamber and unloaded it, scattering the bullets into the underbrush and throwing away the weapon. He collected the blanket and canteen and set off. This time, Eddie didn’t move to block his way.
He was maybe thirty feet away when Nolan found the rifle, grabbed extra bullets from his pocket, loaded it, and collected himself enough to be able to aim, Cormac saw when he glanced over his shoulder. He kept walking. The shot never came.
Cormac turned, walking back a few steps as he called, “What, you too chicken to shoot?”
Nolan snarled and called back, “You ain’t worth the bullet!”
Well, that was something.
After that, Eddie and Nolan had some kind of argument, Cormac couldn’t hear about what. They stalked off—and not in the direction of the shed. They must have had a car parked somewhere. A car and a mission. He wondered if he ought to call Layne, give him a heads-up.
You are going to have to watch your back.
Sure, but no more so than usual. The fact that Eddie couldn’t touch him had freaked Nolan out—the guy didn’t know what else Cormac could do and wasn’t going to take a chance on provoking him. If he tried to retaliate by, say, slashing the Jeep’s tires, Cormac might come back and magically blow up the whole site. Never mind whether or not he actually could.
Why do people make things so difficult?
The thing was, you just had to make sure you had a way to carve a path right through other people’s difficulties.
So glad we’re having success with that lately.
Ghosts—or disembodied spirits—shouldn’t be allowed to use sarcasm.
Chapter 14
WALKING AWAY, Cormac’s cheek started to hurt. Probably meant that Nolan’s hand hurt worse, so that was all right.
Kitty’s wolf barely left a trail when she wasn’t racing. The creature stepped lightly, displacing only a paw-print’s worth of dirt every now and then. But he had a good idea what direction she’d gone, and she seemed to keep a straight path. He searched for an hour, which was fine because that gave her enough time to find a place to bed down and fall asleep in order to make the shift back to human.
He found her, a lean stretch of pale skin in contrast to the surrounding brown underbrush. She was curled up in fetal position, knees pulled to her chest and arms bent close to her body, head tucked in. He could see the shape of the wolf that had fallen asleep like that, limbs pulled in tight, tail tucked across nose. Now, she was human, naked, her blond hair a tangle blending into the strewn leaves around her. She was tense, her brow furrowed, as if she was caught in a bad dream.
He’d intended to sit back and wait for her to wake up in her own time. Picking a spot a little ways off, he sat on the ground against a tree trunk. That only lasted a minute. It was voyeuristic, kinky almost, him watching her sleep. Obviously, she’d had enough time to shift back, whether or not she was fully rested. They ought to get a move on.
“Hey. Kitty.”
She jerked, coming to awareness and instantly propping herself up to look around with wide, startled eyes.
“Whoa.” She slumped over, shook her head, stretched. He looked away. “Fucking skinwalker, who’d have thunk? Who was that guy?”
He sidled over, holding out the blanket as he continued to look off in the distance, though he could see her in the corner of his vision. He tried not to.