There were a lot of physical traces of me lying around the house. The principle of transference would make sure of that. Whenever someone enters a crime scene, they leave something of themselves—hair, skin cells, lint from their clothes—something. And they pick up and take something away as well. It doesn’t matter how careful you are; with today’s high-tech forensics there’s always some trace to be found.
But that wouldn’t be a problem for me. Morgan was a friend; I’d been there with Victor and Eli, and any traces of my presence in the house would be entirely natural. But if some of my DNA, or Lou’s for that matter, ended up mixed in with her blood, that would put an entirely different slant on things.
In the far corner an armchair was pushed against the wall, clothes strewn carelessly over it. And something behind it, barely visible. My heart stopped. It was long and thin, furry and black and tan in color and red at one end. It took me a moment to make sense of what I was seeing, then all at once I saw what it was. It was a leg, but not a human leg. The leg of a dog, separated from the rest of its body. A black-and-tan leg, like that of a Rottweiler. Poor Beulah. All her fears had come true at last.
But wait, Beulah was downstairs. It took the clicking sound of dog nails on hardwood coming up the stairs to jolt me out of my confusion. Lou got it about the same time I did and took up his guard position directly behind my knees. A shape-shifting creature doesn’t have to take on human form. An animal form could be a very useful change of pace.
The Rottweiler’s head appeared, peeking over the landing. Its head looked heavier than I’d remembered, and the teeth looked stronger and larger. It wasn’t as impressive as the shape-shifter in Glen Park had been, but a giant Rottweiler with human intelligence is frightening enough. I took a step back, almost tripping over Lou, and let loose my talent, reaching into the room behind me. This one was easy. That room was full of death, and death was what I gathered. I used poor Beulah’s leg to direct it specifically toward the Rottweiler. There was an ironic sense of justice in using it to strike down its killer.
I focused and let loose a burst of deadly energy, striking the shape-shifter square in the chest just as it leapt toward my throat. It collapsed in midflight, but as soon as it hit the floor it was up again. That blast should have killed anything, but as I’d feared all along, this thing was immune to magical energy. Or if not immune, highly resistant, like the fake Ifrit. The staff I’d constructed when I met it in Glen Park, using a water stream, had been far more effective; this shape-shifter was something that needed to be fought on a physical level. But it had teeth and I didn’t. I’d put everything I had into the strike, and now it was shaking off the effects as if it had been merely hit in the nose with a sharp blow. Painful and surprising, but not lethal, and not even that effective.
I vaulted over it before it could get its bearings and tore down the stairs toward the back door. Lou was well in front of me and was already at the back door by the time I had reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Yeah, but you can’t open the door, can you, now?” I said, sprinting over and throwing it wide. I heard the shape-shifter barreling down the stairs after us. It seemed to have recovered completely. We made it through the door, but we were never going to make it down the back steps or out of the backyard in time.
I looked around for something to use as a weapon as I reached ground level at the garden. There was a shovel leaning against the back wall, but I wasn’t going to be able to reach it quickly enough. But next to the shovel a small bit of ivy, glowing brightly in the psychic realm, clung to the back fence. That was where I’d wrapped up the energy of the wards, compacting it into that one little space. The energy I’d locked up there was concentrated, containing all the effort I’d expended in the half hour it had taken to set up the wards. As a result there was four times as much power waiting there as I could have summoned up on the spot. I reached out and unlocked the energy, and as it flowed out I redirected it toward the Rottweiler on my tail.
It sprayed out like a fire hose, and this time it had a sizable effect on the shape-shifter. Resistant is not invincible. It stumbled and went glassy-eyed, as I sprinted over to the back wall and grabbed the shovel that was leaning there. Before it could recover, I was at it, swinging the shovel like a baseball bat, hitting its skull with the sharp edge. It staggered to its feet and snarled. I hit it again. It was tough, but it was still shaken.
Lou, seeing how unsteady on its legs the shape-shifter was, took heart and darted in, trying for a hamstring. Lou’s not very big, but his jaws are twice as strong as an ordinary dog his size, and if he got in there, he could easily cripple a leg. The Rottweiler whipped around to get him, and when it did, I hit it yet again. It turned to face me and Lou was at its back legs again. Tag team.
Not surprisingly it was still confused from the effects of the two previous energy blasts. It should have been dead. Unexpectedly, it decided it had had enough for the day, turned, and bounded off toward the side fence. The fence there was a good six feet high and I didn’t think it could make it over, but as it sprang upward its body elongated and its front legs became rudimentary arms and its paws almost hands. It grabbed the top of the fence, pulled itself over, and dropped to the other side.
I waited ten minutes to make sure it was gone, peering cautiously through the gate every couple of minutes. The adrenaline surge was fading rapidly, leaving me exhausted with a headache and a dead feeling in my legs. I went back inside and sat down heavily at the table in the kitchen. I was so burned out that when I heard a noise from the front of the house, I reacted in slow motion. Fortunately, it didn’t cost me.
The front door opened, and there stood Morgan. She looked at me in puzzlement, and I looked back at her in some surprise.
“When did you get here?” she said. “Where’s Molly?”
“Molly?”
“My friend Molly. She must have let you in. I just had to run out for cigarettes.”
I hadn’t known she smoked. I didn’t know anyone smoked anymore. That explained why she was still alive—cigarettes had saved her life. How ironic. That also explained how the shape-shifter had got in. Molly, a trusted friend. No reason not to invite her in. Except, it hadn’t been Molly at all, of course. Morgan noticed my disheveled appearance.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“I’m afraid so. That wasn’t Molly who came over to visit you.”
“Of course it was. I’ve known her for years.”
“Come in the kitchen,” I said. “This is going to take a while to explain.”
IT TOOK MORE THAN A WHILE. I TOLD HER about the shape-shifter, but I’m not sure she really believed me until she saw Beulah. That was the worst part. She cried, and I didn’t know her well enough to comfort her.
We buried what was left of Beulah in the back garden. Then she took a wire scrub brush, some Ajax, and bleach, and cleaned up the blood that stained her bedroom floor, as much as was possible. While she worked, her mouth was set in a thin line and her face was pale and drawn, but she was now dry-eyed.
“I don’t know if I can stay here tonight,” she said.
I’d been thinking the same thing myself. I wasn’t sure how safe it would be for her, even with the wards up and her forewarned.
“Maybe you should stay at my place for the night,” I said.
She looked at me dubiously, not comfortable with that idea. But even less comfortable about spending the rest of the night alone in that house.
“I have friends I can stay with,” she said.
“You’d have no protection at all somewhere else. At my place, at least you’ll be safe.” If the shape-shifter tracked her down to a friend’s house, she might not be the only one in danger.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said. “I’ll get a plane ticket tomorrow. I can get out of state, go home, visit with my parents.” She thought a moment longer, then nodded her head. “Let me get a few things.”
I’d assumed she would ride over with me, but she followed me home in her own car. She might be willing to spend the night, but not without an escape option. Wise beyond her years. I called Victor as soon as I got home.
“We’ve got more trouble,” I said. “It went after Morgan. Killed her dog, and she escaped through sheer luck.”
“What happened?” Victor said.
I told him. Things were getting out of hand, I was one step behind again, and I had no idea what the next step should be. As I talked on the phone, Morgan wandered around my small space, idly picking up things and putting them down again.
“I’d better call Ruby,” Victor finally said. “Like Morgan, and yourself for that matter, she’s also walking around with a bull’s-eye painted on her back right about now.”
“Ruby at least can take care of herself.”
“Yes, she can. But both of you need to be extremely careful.”
“We need to kill this thing, and quickly.”
“Yes, we do.”
“Any ideas? It can look like anyone, according to Richard Cory, and as I just found out, any
thing
as well.”
“Yes, Sherwood told me. Not offhand, no. Maybe Eli has some thoughts. Its ability to imitate people must have some kind of limit—some flaw. Nothing’s perfect.”
I nodded to myself, half listening. All I wanted to do right now was to fall into bed. Tomorrow I could start thinking again, but for now all I could think of was sleep. When I hung up, Morgan came over and stood next to me.
“One bed?” she said.
“Sorry. Forgot to mention that. You can have it—I’ll sleep on the couch in the back room.”
“No need. I don’t want to kick you out of your own bed.” She smiled. “A warm body nearby would be some comfort anyway. Beulah used to sleep on the bed.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
We were both tired and emotionally spent. A quick trip to the bathroom, and when I crawled into bed I could hardly keep my eyes open. Morgan joined me five minutes later, wearing some loose pajama-type bottoms and a tee. She grabbed my wrist and examined my forearm, where my own tattoo of intertwined wreaths showed.
“Secret society?” she asked.
“I can’t say. It’s a secret.”
“Huh.”
She turned on her side, back toward me, and I could see half of her own tattoo, spreading down from her neck in a complex pattern of reds and greens.
“And yours?” I asked.
“No secret there. But a long story.”
I turned out the light and closed my eyes. For once, Lou wasn’t wedging himself between us, or trying to worm his way under the covers. He lay sedately at the end of the bed, on the very edge, as if keeping guard. Maybe he expected the shape-shifter to come bursting through the door at any minute.
It was nice having a woman lying next to me in bed, even if it was under less-than-ideal circumstances. I slipped into a reverie about having a real girlfriend, a partner, someone to comfort and be comforted by. It felt nice, in a dreamy way, but I knew from experience that in the harsh light of morning it would seem very different.
I dropped off almost immediately, but I didn’t sleep well, plagued by dreams that were not quite nightmares. Images of Morgan and Beulah ran through my head as I ran through clichéd dream corridors, being chased by something I could never quite see. Sometime in the middle of the night I was awakened by the feel of a warm body and a head pressed against my chest. I made an inquiring sound, and Morgan whispered, “I’m scared.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said and pulled her closer to comfort her. We lay without moving for a while until a subtle shift in her breathing told me that comfort was changing into something else. My own breathing changed, and I slowly stroked her back. Her hand eased up to the back of my neck as she gently pulled me down until we faced each other in the dark.
Not a word was spoken. Morgan was reaching out to me for comfort, and maybe a way of forgetting, or a desire born from fear, a reassurance that she was still safe, still alive. And that was strange—it’s not uncommon for men to react that way in times of stress or danger, but not women, not so much. Men can use sex as a means of connecting, of achieving an intimacy that’s otherwise difficult for them to acknowledge. Sex for women tends to be just the opposite, to grow out of intimacy, not as a search to achieve it.
Maybe that’s just stereotyping, though. Not all women are like that, nor all men. But it’s certainly not common for a woman to jump into bed as a reaction to trauma, at least not from what I’ve seen.
But whatever the reason, there was no frantic need involved. It was slow, and sweet, and sad and nostalgic all at once, like making love to someone you care about but you know you will never see again. Even when she finally came, it wasn’t frenzied or desperate, with groans and screams and thrashing. Which was a considerable relief, considering how my last romantic encounter had gone.
Instead, she was still for a moment, and then moved with a quiet intensity. At the last moment, she made a sound in the back of her throat I’d never heard before, a trilling sound almost like a hummingbird, surprisingly loud and oddly erotic, enough so that it swept me along with her.