Cry Baby Hollow (39 page)

She heard Drake yelp and whimper close behind her. He and Rose couldn’t hold the other one off for much longer and she could hear more approaching through the trees.

She felt a flood of relief as Katie’s hands released her neck and then agony as her claws dug deep into her belly, getting in one last hit before she changed. She felt Katie shifting and had a moment’s indecision. If Katie went to woman, Aubrey could finish her, even as injured as she was. But if she went to wolf, she would have a distinct upper hand. Aubrey could change herself, and heal, but she would probably lose her hold in the process, giving up the tiny advantage she had.

Aubrey felt a creepy, liquid sensation as the flesh reformed in her mouth. Her tongue tasted skin and she finally let herself shift as well. She felt Katie kick at her head, and pushed her away, jumping to her feet. She was gratified to see that holding on had done some good. Katie’s leg, reformed inside Aubrey’s teeth, was a ragged mess of blood. Aubrey kicked her hard in the wound, not letting her catch her breath. She reached down, groping for a rock, wishing her eyesight was as good when she was human as it was when she was a wolf, but not wanting to shift again and give Katie the chance to do the same.

Aubrey’s hand closed around something hard and smooth and she swung it at Katie’s damaged leg as Katie tried to crawl away. The stock of the Mossberg connected, and Katie let out a yowl of pain. Aubrey swung the gun around, bringing it down again and again, this time on the back of Katie’s skull until there was nothing left but an ever growing pool of blood.

She heard a howl behind her and turned. Behind her on the path, Drake lay in a crumpled heap and Rose was ducking and dodging, trying in vain to stay out of the other half’s reach, dragging her left leg behind her uselessly. Aubrey heard the other wolves, closing in quickly.

“Run,” she yelled to Rose and then shifted. She felt the now familiar rush of it take hold of her and pulled up, halting it, taking on the half form and holding it, feeling the two forms once again at war inside her, tearing and clawing to get free. She lunged at the other half as it turned to face her and sank her claws in deep, ripping it open from groin to chest.

Aubrey let out a howl of pain as one of the new wolves latched onto the back of her neck, she spun around, trying to shake it off, flailing her arms behind her. Another wolf snapped at her belly. Sparks of pain erupted in Aubrey’s brain and she felt herself losing control. She held on fiercely, knowing that if she lost the half form, she was doomed. There were seven of them on her, and they took her as a pack, forcing her off her feet. She fell in a heap of fur and jaws. She grabbed and tore at them, but she couldn’t get purchase, couldn’t focus on just one to fight. She felt hot blood flow down her neck and knew it was her own, knew she was going to die there. She wondered what they would tell people had happened to her, and realized that everyone who mattered to her would already know the truth.

She heard a howl and the wolves scattered, yelping in fear. Aubrey looked up from the ground and saw the half coming toward her slowly. It howled again, ordering the others away so it could have the kill. They slunk off into the woods, but Aubrey could feel them out there, watching and waiting. Aubrey willed it to change. She wanted to see who it was before it was over. She felt herself change instead, the half form slipping away and the woman taking over. She lay there, naked and alone, healed but helpless.

The half in front of her let out a bark of grotesque laughter and Aubrey’s breath caught in her throat. Behind it, she saw Drake stir and rise to his feet. Aubrey did a double take and felt a faint, stirring of hope. The large white dog she had taken for Drake in the dark and chaos of the fight was too lean, too narrow in the shoulders to be him. Aubrey remembered that Lilli’s stage name was Lilli White for a reason. Her hair was so light it looked like spun silver. As a wolf, she was just as pale. She stood up, rearing high, flowing into half form.

The only warning the beast approaching Aubrey had was a yelp from its fellows in the forest and then Lilli was on it. They tumbled for a moment and Aubrey shifted, coming up huge and terrible herself and diving into the fight. The creature knew it was beaten. It dropped into wolf form and dashed down the path. Lilli and Aubrey did the same, racing it down, harrying its retreat.

It followed the path up, deeper into the woods. Lilli lagged behind, unable to keep up, but Aubrey stayed hard on its heels until they came to the ridgeline and the cut off to three caves. It took the side trail and Aubrey lunged forward, snapping her jaws and almost catching its hind leg. She slowed a little as the slope steepened and tried to remember what lay ahead.

She had only been here once, with Joe, the day they found Noah’s body. She knew there was a cliff ahead and a trail that ran along it and then down. The trail circled back to the clearing that faced that same cliff, where the caves where etched into its face.

When the wolf in front of her turned right to follow the trail Aubrey went straight into the trees and stopped. She heard Lilli race past her, still in pursuit of the fleeing enemy, but she wanted to know what was waiting for them down there. She crept forward to the edge of the cliff and looked down.

It was thirty
feet down to the clearing and from her vantage point, Aubrey could see the entire area. She shook her head, baffled at the bizarre scene below. A bonfire raged in front of the caves and people and wolves stood around it. She did a head count. There were six wolves, and over twenty people, all women, ranging in age from very old to hardly in their teens. The women were all naked and painted with dark swirls that seemed to move in the flickering light from the fire. Aubrey saw more wolves come sprinting up from the trailhead and then she saw something that chilled her blood. Beside the cave entrance directly below her sat Joe, still tied to one of Vina’s kitchen chairs. With so many of them guarding him, Aubrey didn’t wonder that the others had decided to come and get her before making a rescue attempt.

Aubrey ran back through the trees and down the trail the way they had come. She came around in a tight arc and poured on speed. Her legs pumped, her heart raced, she felt as though she were flying and then, when she reached the edge of the cliff and launched herself over, she was.

She shifted into half in midair, and landed in a crouch, feeling the bones of her legs crack from the impact. She shifted to wolf and then back to half again so quickly that even she wouldn’t have been sure she’d done it if her legs weren’t healed. Chaos erupted around her. The humans scattered, screaming. They rushed toward the path out, only to find their escape blocked as Lilli came down the trail toward them, still chasing her quarry.

A few of the women shifted to wolves and joined those already there, but some of the younger wolves ran off into the trees, disappearing into the night. It was one thing to join a crazy witch and wolf cult with your cousins, it was quite another when your prey decided to fight back.

Aubrey spun around and looked at Joe. He was alive and awake, his eyes huge with fright. They had shoved something in his mouth to keep him from screaming, and he had shallow cuts along his face and arms, but he looked all right. Aubrey took a step forward to free him and got knocked off her feet as two of the wolves attacked. She batted one aside and grabbed the other by the tail, swinging it around and hurling it into the fire. She watched, transfixed, as it shifted from wolf to woman and back again, trying to claw its way out of the coals.

Another wolf latched onto her leg and she reached down and grabbed it, snapping it over her knee like kindling. She threw that one into the fire as well. She turned around, searching for another opponent, and saw Lilli, her huge silvery gray half form standing tall amid a dozen wolves, fighting them off as they came at her in twos and threes.

Aubrey leapt into their midst and put her back to Lilli’s, circling as she did. One of the wolves shifted into half and stared at her, its eyes filled with malevolence. It raised its muzzle to the air and howled, a long and tortured call. The wolves pulled back around it, yipping and snarling their frustration, but when the half turned and stalked off into the woods, they followed.

Aubrey took a step to follow them but Lilli reached out and put a clawed hand on her arm, shaking her head. She shifted back to woman.

“Let them go,” she told Aubrey, her voice soft and tired.

Aubrey shifted back as well and felt the strain of the past few days finally leak away.

“We could have finished them,” she told Lilli.

“That isn’t why we came,” Lillie reminded her. “Besides, that isn’t how it’s done. If we killed all of them, what would their daughters become when the change came? Who would teach them the rules? Who would make them respect the truce?”

“This is a really ineffectual truce,” Aubrey pointed out.

In answer, Lilli pointed to the trees. A young girl stood there, just on the edge of the firelight. She seemed impossibly thin and fragile. Had she been one of the wolves they had just fought? If there was a way to tell, Aubrey didn’t know what it was.

“Truce,” the girl said, her voice barely audible above the crackling flames. “You’uns don’t cross the ridge again, and we won’t neither. If’n ya do, or he says nothin,” she pointed to Joe, “It’ll be blood.”

“Why do you think you get to name terms?” Aubrey asked indignantly. “Last time I checked the score board, it was Cry Baby Hollow six, Mosleys zip.”

The girl looked confused.

“Tell them we agree,” Lilli told her, motioning for Aubrey to shut up. “But only if they don’t harm anyone else, even their own. The police are looking for a killer now, and that puts us all at risk.”

The girl nodded and stepped back into the trees.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

Drake gave Aubrey
a look
of deep dissatisfaction as she fastened the harness on him.

“I told you he wasn’t gonna like that thing,” Joe told her from the sofa, reaching forward to stoke the fire.

“Well, I’m sorry,” she told Drake. “If I had any pockets, I wouldn’t make you wear it.” She scratched him behind the ears and he licked her face, forgiving her instantly. She walked over to Joe and gave him a kiss good-bye.

“I was there, you know,” Joe told her darkly. “I heard the terms of the truce. You keep goin’ over that ridge, somebody’s gonna catch you.”

Aubrey sighed. They’d been having essentially the same argument every night that week.

“I won’t stir anything up,” she promised. “But I have to do this. Besides, the hard part is over.”

The hard part had been lurking outside Wayne Mosley’s house for three nights, waiting for him to leave so she could rifle through his things. The fertility drugs John had used to jump start her that first night had worn off by morning, and she’d had to wait nearly a month before she could change again. By then, she was nearly frantic from waiting and the extra few nights had driven her mad.

She hadn’t found anything terribly helpful, but she had memorized his scent. In wolf or half form, Aubrey’s heightened sense of smell made once common aromas into a complex tapestry more closely akin to a symphony than a scent. She could pick a smell apart now, like listening to Mozart and focusing only on the flutes.

She hadn’t needed Joe to go to Knoxville and get his backup files to tell her that Germaine’s obnoxious son Gerald was her father. She could smell traces of Germaine in her own fur. Lilli, adopted by Gerald when she was a child but still Germaine’s granddaughter, smelled like Aubrey’s harmony. Aubrey hadn’t discussed the realization with anyone. It seemed rather pointless. Her mother had obviously hid the fact because Gerald was married, and Aubrey was content to let the matter rest.

Aubrey took the Beretta, two extra clips, and her cell phone, and stuffed them into the pouch on Drake’s harness.

“If you aren’t gonna stir things up, how come you’re takin’ a gun?” Joe asked archly.

“I promise I won’t start any trouble,” Aubrey told him, “but I’d like to be prepared if
they
do.”

Joe walked over to the bookshelves and pulled out an accordion file. He went to the dining room table and spilled the contents across it. Aubrey wanted desperately to leave. Although the desire to shift was easily controllable, it was like a mosquito bite: it irritated you until you scratched it.

“What is all this?” Aubrey asked, rifling through the papers. There were hand written notes on lined yellow paper and photocopies of legal papers.

“I been down at the courthouse, goin’ through county records. This, near as I can tell, is the details on every female descendant of Celestine Wynn. There are one hundred and thirty-eight. If you’re out lookin’ for the other half, you might as well be systematic about it.”

Aubrey’s mind reeled. One hundred and thirty-eight potential werewolves? She reminded herself that it didn’t matter.

“I’m not looking for the other half,” she told him.

“Katie’s dead,” he told her for the dozenth time.

“You don’t know that,” she shot back automatically. “All we know is that the body was gone. They may have taken it, or she may have shifted and run off.”

“Nobody’s seen her since that night,” Joe persisted doggedly.

Aubrey shrugged.

“I know you don’t believe me,” she told him quietly, “But this isn’t about Katie or the other half. Tonight I’m going to finish this, and then I won’t cross the ridge again unless they do.”

“You could at least wait for Rose,” he protested feebly, walking over to her.

Aubrey gave him a look. “We have no idea if she’ll ever change again,” Aubrey pointed out. “Let alone when it will be.”

“What about Lilli?” Joe asked, even though he knew as well as she did that Lilli was in Italy filming until Christmas.

“We made a deal,” Aubrey told him. “I’ll look out for Germaine, and she won’t take her clothes off within fifty miles of you.”

“We could get her a doggy sweater,” Joe suggested with a grin. “Okay, okay,” he pouted. “You go make the world a safer place. I’ll just sit here and worry.”

“Take up knitting,” she suggested.

He rolled his eyes.

“Or you could spend your time more productively,” she said, taking pity on him and sidling over. “By taking the cover off the hot tub and making us some drinks. I swear I won’t be more than an hour.”

“You know you’ll be out all night,” he sulked. “I’m startin’ to get jealous of the damn dog.”

“He’s fixed, remember? Our relationship is strictly platonic. Besides, I won’t stay out late if I know you’re in the hot tub waiting for me,” she assured him, slipping out of her jeans and t-shirt and giving him a much more thorough good-bye kiss.

Joe looked slightly mollified.

“Deal,” he told her.

Aubrey walked over to the back door and slipped it open, whistling for Drake. She waited until she was out of the range of the lights before she shifted. Joe said it was neat, but it still made her feel self-conscious to know he was watching.

She and Drake cut into the woods across from Joe’s, but she resisted the urge to go straight up and over the ridge. Instead, she led Drake down Murder Creek and out of the hollow, along Dixie Highway to the entrance to the Mosley’s cove, and then in. The actual wording of the agreement had been “Don’t cross the ridge,” and Aubrey wasn’t. Nobody had said anything about her taking the road. She and Drake ranged up and down the Mosley’s cove, checking every house. They had traveled all the way down one side of the road and were working their way back when they hit pay dirt.

At a small, ranch house Aubrey caught a hint of a familiar scent and shifted into half. She poked her head above the sill and looking in the window. Inside, a night light made the room a soft, pale gold. A baby dozed peacefully in a crib beneath a grotesque mobile. Aubrey took a long, deep breath, tasting the scent of the infant. She backed away and crept into the bushes where Drake was waiting, shifting back to human as soon as she was well hidden. Naked and shivering, she reached into the pack on Drake’s harness and dialed Matt.

“Heck,” he answered.

“How the heck are ya?” She asked.

“Aubrey! I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to hear from you again. How are things in the sticks?”

“Cold,” Aubrey told him. “How’s the hunt for Emma Mosley going?” she asked.

“No leads,” Matt said with a sigh. “I’m afraid she died with her mother and we’ll just never find her.”

“What would happen if you did? To her, I mean? Would Wayne get custody?”