After some long minutes of driving, Ben said, “I could hear her heartbeat. Smell her blood. It’s strange.”
I wet my lips, because my mouth had gone dry. Even smelling him, smelling him change into something not quite human, even seeing the bite wounds and knowing intellectually what was happening to him, it didn’t really hit me until that moment. Ben was a werewolf. He may not have shape-shifted yet, he may have been infected for less than a week. But there it was.
“It makes them seem like prey,” I said, aware that I was talking about people, normal people like Alice, in the third person. Like they were something different than Ben and
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I. “Like you could hunt them.” Like you could almost taste the blood. “Does that happen every time you meet somebody?” he said. “Most of the time, yeah,” I said softly. He didn’t say a word for the rest of the trip home.
When we entered the house, Cormac was awake, sitting at the kitchen table, cleaning a gun or three. As soon as the front door opened, he stood and turned to us. I’d have said he was in a panic, if I didn’t know him better.
“Where’d you go?” he said.
“Shopping?” I said, uncertain. Both Ben and I hefted filled plastic grocery bags, which we brought to the kitchen. “You want to help unpack?”
He just stood there. “You couldn’t have left a note?”
“I didn’t think you’d wake up before we got back.”
“Don’t worry,” Ben said. “She looked out for me.”
“Should you even be out?” Cormac said accusingly, almost motherly.
I nearly snapped at him, something juvenile like what’s your problem? Then I realized—I’d never seen Cormac worried before. At least, worried and actually showing it. He was downright stressed out. It was almost chilling.
Ben slumped into the other chair at the kitchen table. “I survived, didn’t I?” Cormac scowled and looked away, which prompted Ben to add, “I’m okay, Cormac.”
“At least for another three days,” I muttered as I shoved food into the fridge. I put the groceries away loudly and angrily, as if that would make me feel better. The guys ignored me.
“You need help with that?” Ben indicated the spread of gun oil and gun parts on the kitchen table. Cormac had put paper towels down first, so I couldn’t even get mad at him for messing up the table.
“I’m done.” Cormac began cleaning up the mess, packing everything away into a metal toolbox.
Ben watched for a minute, then said, “If you’d just shot me, you wouldn’t have to deal with this crap now.”
“You are never going to let me live that down, are you?”
“We had a deal—”
Cormac slammed the toolbox on the table, making a wrenching crash. “We were sixteen years old when we made that deal! We were just kids! We didn’t have a clue!”
Ben dropped his gaze.
I left the room.
Couldn’t go far, of course. A whole five feet to the so-called living room. Still, the space made ignoring them marginally easier. The whole cabin became entrenched in a thick, obvious silence. A moment later, Cormac left out the front door, toolbox and rifles in hand. Then I heard him repacking his Jeep. I half expected the engine to start up, to hear him drive away forever, leaving me to deal with Ben all by myself. But he didn’t. Maybe he planned on sleeping out there to avoid any more arguments, but he didn’t drive away. Ben went to the bedroom. I sat at my desk, at my computer, pretending to write, and wanted to pull out my hair.
I’d spent a year on the radio telling people how to fix their supernaturally complicated relationship problems. And now I couldn’t deal with the one right in front of me.
Ben emerged long enough for supper. More venison steaks. After, he pulled a chair into the living room and sat in front of the stove, just watching the embers burning through the grate, slipping into some kind of fugue state. I couldn’t really argue. I’d done the same thing when this had happened to me. As the body changed, perceptions changed, and the world seemed to slow down. You blinked and a whole afternoon went by. The sense of disconnection had lasted for weeks. I’d almost flunked out that semester. If I hadn’t been just a year away from finishing, I might have given into that urge to drop out and walk away. Walk into the woods, never to return.
Cormac stayed in the kitchen. They still weren’t speaking.
Later, at the appropriate hour, I turned on the radio. Yes, it was that time of the week again. I curled up on the sofa, cell phone in hand.
Ben looked at the radio, brow furrowed. Then, he narrowed his eyes—an expression of dawning comprehension. “What day is it?”
“Saturday,” I said.