“Just knew it.” Really, half of the trick to seeming omniscient was paying attention.
“So are you back in the business? You disappeared for a while there—a couple of the guys thought you were dead, you know? But if somebody really was having a werewolf problem—”
“No,” he said. “I’m not back in the business.”
He heard something up ahead and held out his arm to get Nolan to stop and be quiet. It was snarling, the tearing of underbrush in a scuffle. He crept forward as if he were hunting, watching for that flash of movement.
With her supernatural strength and animal instincts, Kitty had overtaken the skinwalker, forcing him to engage her in a crowded stand of pines. The two animals circled, taking swipes at each other and dodging. Kitty was easy to spot—pure wolf, her muzzle wrinkled back to show a snout full of teeth, ears flat to her head, hackles making her appear twice as large. The other one—he snarled, snapped, growled, showed teeth, and sprang out of reach of Kitty’s claws easy enough. But he wasn’t a wolf. His tail was loose, its position undetermined, his ears were up like radar dish
es, and he bounced like a dog. His red eyes were visible as glowing points.
The skinwalker had managed to keep out of her way this long, but unless he got lucky, she’d eventually pin him. Cormac had no idea if the guy’s magic would protect him from the bite of a werewolf, but he was pretty sure Kitty wouldn’t want to find out. She’d feel responsible for the guy if she infected him. Cormac would just as soon she killed the bastard.
“Kitty!” he called.
Nolan stared at him. “Its name is Kitty?”
Cormac just glared. Her ears came up for a split second, but she never let her attention waver from her enemy. “Kitty, we got this, back the hell off!”
Nolan took the cue. “Eddie! Get out of there! Just leave it!”
The growling dropped off; the two creatures put a fraction more space between them. But they continued circling, heads down and muscles tensed.
“I’m not breaking up that fight,” Nolan declared.
Cormac’s hand itched for a gun. He could fire it into the woods to get their attention. Kitty wasn’t going to break off until the other wolf showed some sign of submission. But he wasn’t really a wolf, and so it wasn’t likely to happen.
“Nolan, tell him to drop his gaze and his tail.”
“What?”
“He needs to break eye contact, get his tail down so she’ll leave him alone. Do it!”
“Eddie! You heard him. He knows what he’s talking about, do what he says, okay?”
The scraggly wolf turned and looked at Nolan, and Cormac swore he could read the animal’s expression: What, seriously? Disbelief and frustration. But he gave a shake, dropped his gaze, and let his tail fall. If not a show of submission, it at least said that he wasn’t going to put up any more fight.
In response, Kitty backed up a step. Her gaze fell, her tail relaxed. Her fur was still sticking straight up—she wasn’t going to trust the guy if she could help it. The standoff continued, since neither one of them was going to walk away.
“Kitty, it’s okay. I got this.” Her ear flicked, but otherwise she didn’t move. “Go sleep it off. Please,” he said.
She dropped her head, paced in a circle a couple of times, looking them all over as if trying to make a decision. Finally, she loped off, weaving between trees, down a rise, and out of sight, looking at home in the forest, as natural as breathing. He sighed, frustrated at how politeness always seemed to work on her, even in her wolf form, like she was some kind of schoolteacher.
Nolan let out a heavy breath he’d been holding. “Jesus Christ, I thought we were all dead.”
Which showed he didn’t know anything about werewolves. Her posture had been angry, but defensive. In the meantime, the other wolf seemed to hunch its shoulders, cocking its head, wriggling itself into a seated position, propped up on its hind legs. Then, a human hand reached out from under the mass of fur, grabbed hold of a now-lifeless tuft of skin near its neck, and pulled. Cormac had confronted skinwalkers before, but he’d never seen one shift back to human like this.
The skin came off, and a twenty-something man, naked, stood tall in the wolf’s place, holding the wolf hide in front of him to shield his privates. He had deeply tanned skin, short black hair, and a lopsided grin, like he was waiting for someone to laugh at his joke.
Nolan cleared this throat. “Uh, Bennett? This is Eddie. Eddie, Cormac Bennett.”
Cormac said, “You know, I don’t care who the hell you are or what the hell you’re getting up to out here. I’m gonna go after my friend, hike back to my Jeep, and leave you to it.”
He turned to march off, but Eddie moved to intercept him. Not saying a word, not caring that he was stark naked except for a mangy-looking, tattered wolf skin. He still had a predator’s look in his eye, like he was waiting for a chance to pounce.
So it was going to go like this, was it?
Nolan said, “First, you tell me when Layne’s planning on moving in. You say he didn’t send you, but why else would you be out here?”