"I'm glad y'all are catching up on old times, but I'm afraid I'm gonna have to ask you to leave," Cade said from the doorway that led to the cells. "I've got a few questions I need to ask your friend— Sonja, is it?"
Cissy glanced at Sonja, nodded her head and quickly left, leaving her alone with Cade.
Sonja turned her mirrored gaze on the sheriff and smiled crookedly. "You know my name—but I don't know yours."
"True enough," he replied with a nod. "The name's Cade. Skinner Cade. I'm the sheriff around here. But you knew that already. You also know I am what's commonly known as a werewolf. Well, that's not one hundred percent correct; I'm also half were-coyote, but that's beside the point. Now, if you don't mind me asking, ma'am—what exactly are
you
and what is your business in Nonesuch?"
"Is that what this place is called?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"How apropos," she chuckled. "To answer your question, or at least part of it, I am an oddling, if you will. By all rights, I should be just another undead chippie. I was taken to the hospital after being attacked by a vampire, where I died on the operating table. The doctors pumped me full of new blood and got my heart going again, trapping the vampire's seed within a living host. As such I am both human and vampire. I must feed on human blood in order to live, and I have all their strengths and none of their weaknesses—at least, not yet."
"So what is it that you do, Miz, uh—?"
"Blue. I hunt and kill vampires."
"Isn't that a rather
odd
occupation, given your condition?"
"Who better to kill monsters than another monster?" she replied with a shrug.
"You got a point," he conceded. "So what're you doing in our neck of the woods?"
"I was tracking down a vampire who goes by the name of Vasek. He fled Santa Fe after I killed his minion—a ghoul."
"Ghoul?" Cade grimaced at the thought. "I've heard about such things, but I've never seen one."
"You haven't missed much. This Lord Vasek character creates them to cover his tracks.
The ghoul abducts victims and brings them back to his lair. Once they have been drained, Vasek allows the ghoul to eat its fill and dispose of the leftovers elsewhere. The abductions and deaths are usually blamed on random serial killers."
"The Santa Fe Slasher!" Cade gasped, his eyes widening as he made the connection.
"Give the man a Kewpie doll!" Sonja drawled, doing her best W.C. Fields imitation.
"Vasek fled the city when he realized I was on to him. He ended up here by accident, I suppose—although its not impossible that he somehow learned of this place and thought he could trick you into providing shelter to a fellow Pretender."
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"It's your opinion, then, that he didn't come here out of a genuine desire to give up his existence as a predator?"
"Are you kidding? Vasek knows he's being hunted. The first thing he is going to do is make another ghoul to replace the one I killed, then he's going to set about building a brood as fast as he can. In Santa Fe he was allowing his ghoul to devour the bodies of his victims before they could resurrect. After all, he didn't need the competition. But the situation's different now. He needs others of his own kind to help protect him from his enemy. Vasek will immediately start remaking every human he can get his hands on into his own image. And with each conversion, his contagion spreads exponentially. In less than a week he could have every human in the vicinity transformed into vampires."
Cade stared at the leather-clad stranger for a long moment, then unlocked the cell, swinging the door open. "If what you say is true, I need your help, and I suspect you just might need mine as well."
Sonja followed Cade from the cell into the front office. He reached inside his desk and removed the evidence folder, upending it so that the knife slid out onto the desktop. She snatched it up so quickly he did not see her move: one moment her hand was empty, the next it held the switchblade.
"That's a real, um, interesting weapon you got there, ma'am. Care to tell me how you came into possession of it?"
"It was a present from a friend," she said as she slid the switchblade up the right sleeve of her leather jacket. "I have no idea where he originally got it from. All I remember him telling me was that it was very, very old and that it was supposed to be foolproof defense against monsters."
"Do tell. You and I need to talk in greater detail—we can do that far more comfortably at my house. Besides, my wife should have dinner waiting, and I'm hungry enough to eat the tail off a hobby horse."
Skinner Cade's home was a two-story adobe located near the Coyotero Tribal Center. A bedraggled chicken with feathers the color of dirty laundry strutted about the front yard, clucking to itself. The otherwise rustic appearance of the building was offset by the solar panels affixed to its flat roof.
"Kuchma?
Cade called out. "Penny's loose again!"
The front door banged open and Kachina shot past her father and his guest, her ears back against her head.
"Sorry, Daddy! I'll get her!"
The chicken took off in a dead run, but was quickly snatched up by its owner.
"Henny-Penny is my daughter's pet," Cade explained. "But she hates being cooped up, so to speak. She's always escaping and getting into the garden." He motioned to the neatly arranged rows of squash, corn, and other vegetables that occupied the back yard. "If my kids weren't so attached to the damned thing—and if she wasn't such a good layer—Penny would have ended up in the stew pot awhile back."
"How many children do you have?"
"A boy and a girl. Twins, actually." He looked around, sniffing the air. "Speaking of which—Kachina, where's your brother?"
"He's playing over at Tommy Spotted Pony's."
"You go on over to Tommy's house and fetch him. I want both you young'uns close to
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) home tonight."
"Yes, Daddy!" Kachina dashed off on her errand, clearing the low adobe fence in a single bound.
"Lord, that child loves to run," Cade chuckled, shaking his head in paternal admiration.
"You'd think she was part greyhound!" He held the front door open, ushering Sonja ahead of him. "Come on in. I'll introduce you to my better half."
The interior of the Cade home was cool and shady, organized around a wide hallway that ran in a straight line down the middle of the house, from front door to back. The fifteen-inch thick adobe walls were coated in softly hand-troweled stucco the color of buttercups.
Thick wooden vigas dominated the twenty-foot high ceiling of the central great room, which served as the Cade family's combination living and dining area. A fire was already crackling in the kiva fireplace in the corner, providing protection against the cold of the coming high desert night.
"Skin? That you? We're having chili
con came
tonight." An attractive young woman with butternut skin and ebony black hair stepped out of the kitchen, followed by the warm, welcoming smell of simmering spices and corn bread.
"Yep. And I've brought company."
Rosie froze, staring at the stranger at her house like a coyote bitch blocking the entrance of her den. "Is that her? The one you found in the barn?"
"Yes and no. She's the one I found in the barn—but she's not the vampire Changing Woman caught scent of."
Sonja stepped forward, smiling without showing her teeth. "My name is Sonja Blue. I'm pleased to meet you, Mrs. Cade. Lovely home you have here."
Rosie's gaze traveled up and down Sonja's person, from her mirrored sunglasses to her scuffed boots and back again before she spoke. "Yes, well, it's Skin's design. It's all part of his master plan for Nonesuch. Please excuse me," she said, with a smile that was more a show of teeth. "I have to get back to my cooking.
"Don't worry about setting a place for me, Mrs. Cade. I don't eat...chili." Sonja turned to Cade and stage-whispered to him. "I'm afraid your wife isn't quite sure whether or not she likes the idea of having me in her den."
"Please don't mind Rosie, Miz Blue," Cade said as he unbuckled his gun belt, placing the holster inside the roll-top desk near the fireplace. "I don't think you were quite what she was expecting."
"Believe me, it cuts both ways!" Sonja chuckled. "You're not exactly what I was expecting, either. A werewolf lawman with a wife and kids? I can honestly say I have never run across anything even vaguely resembling you and your family, Sheriff Cade.
What, exactly, did your wife mean when she said this house was all part of your master plan?"
Cade laughed. "Nonesuch is designed to stay below radar. That means remaining independent of the public utility companies. Doing without electricity, public sewers and natural gas is easy enough for us weres. However, the same can't be said for our human friends. And, to be frank, many of us in the were-community have become accustomed to the niceties of modern technology as well. There is no electricity outside of the general store, and what few appliances we have are gas-powered, including the refrigerators. As you may have noticed on our walk over here, most of the homes in Nonesuch are
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) equipped with solar panels, which are used to heat our water.
"Every home is also outfitted with a rainwater harvesting system, which is used for bathing, cooking, and irrigation of private gardens. Most of the homesteads, such as ours, also have freshwater wells. Because of the critical importance of well water in such an arid climate, there are no septic tanks in Nonesuch. The majority of the homes within the town itself have been retrofitted with greywater systems, which recycle the wastewater generated by each household. By utilizing aerobic micro-organisms to biologically convert solid waste into fertilizer, each family is able to provide much of its own compost for their garden over the course of a year."
"You sound more like an architect than a law man," Sonja said, shaking her head in admiration.
"Well, I
was
thinking about majoring in city-planning back in college," Cade admitted bashfully. "But I never
dreamed
I would be attempting to build a community from the ground up—especially not one like this!"
The front door banged open and Kachina and her twin brother, Wyler, thundered into the house. Both children were grinning ear-to-ear; their eyes glowing like freshly minted gold coins.
"Mama! Daddy!" the twins chimed. "Fella's back!"
A shaggy, four-legged shape the size of a young adult bear stood framed in the doorway behind them. The beast lifted its massive head and thumped its tail in greeting, a red tongue lolling from the corner of its mouth like a velvet sash.
Cade knelt on bended knee before the creature sandwiched between his children. "You old bastard!" he grinned, taking Fella's head between his hands and scratched it behind the ears. "Where you been, boy? Were you out huntin' for antelope and bighorn in the high country again?"
As Sonja stepped forward to join Cade, the great beast's hackles came up and a low, throaty growl rumbled in its chest.
"She's okay, Fella!" Cade said, taking a double handful of the animal's nape so that they were locked eye-to-eye. "She's a
friend"
he said slowly and distinctly, stressing the last word. He motioned for Sonja to draw closer. "Ms. Blue, I'd like you to meet Fella. He's one of my closest and most trusted friends. Fella, say hello to the nice lady."
Fella looked at Cade, then back at Sonja, before offering his right front paw. Her eyebrows lifted at the sight of the opposable thumb.
"You didn't mention there was a half-wolf amongst your number. Your friend is
very
rare, indeed."
"Yes, I'm aware of the
vargr
eugenics council's stand on half-wolves," Cade said with a weary sigh. "They don't want them polluting their precious pedigrees. For some reason they consider werewolves mating with true wolves bestiality."
"And
vargr
raping humans is normal?" she shot back.
"I don't
agree
with their policies, I only know of them. I'd appreciate it if you could remember that."
"You're right, sheriff. Please forgive me."
Rosie stuck her head out of the kitchen. "Kachina! Wyler! Go wash your hands. You too, Fella! Dinner's ready!"
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) Nate Ferguson was awakened from his bed by the sound of horses screaming. He looked to where Little Bird normally would have been before remembering she had taken their son to stay with her relatives on the reservation earlier that day. The incident with the stranger had spooked his wife in a way nothing else in this strange land ever had before.
Nine years ago, while on a rare trip down to Albuquerque, Skinner Cade had spotted a band of young toughs in a culvert, kicking around what looked like a scarecrow. The scarecrow just happened to be Nate. Skinner scared off the punks and offered to drop Nate off at a hospital. Nate had begged him not to do so — there was a bench warrant out on him for drunk and disorderly.
So instead of leaving him to die in the ditch from internal injuries, Skinner took Nate back to Nonesuch, where he was nursed back to health by a collection of Native Americans, social rejects, and werewolves. Nate had yet to set foot outside Nonesuch, save for a brief foray into the Navajo Nation to find a wife.
In the years since Skinner had dragged him out of the culvert, he had achieved more than he had ever dreamed possible. He had a home, a wife, a son, friends, neighbors, along with enough livestock and food to provide for his family and their simple needs. He wasn't living the life of a Rajah, but it was pretty damn good for a Sterno swilling bum who used to live under an overpass. And he would be damned if some kind of living dead woman was going to scare him off his land.