House of Mercy (34 page)

“Where do you get your power?” Nova whispered.

“I don’t have any power.”

“Yes, you do. I can feel it.”

“Then it must be from God.”

She looked up into Beth’s face, and she smiled. The lamplight and tears made her eyes sparkle. “You can do anything. You could be rich and famous.”

“I don’t think that’s what he had in mind.”

“I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”

“Nova,” Beth finally said, as gently as she could. “I need to find Garner.”

“I know.” Nova reluctantly let go, looking at Beth’s hands rather than her face. “Find him. And look out for Catherine Ransom. She’s no doctor, I guarantee it.”

30

A
t the bottom of Nova’s stairs, the wolf was waiting for Beth with his nose pressed to the rear door like a dog who urgently needed to be let outside. Beth turned the knob and he sauntered out, heading at an easy pace straight for the unpaved road that ran up the hill behind the doctor’s offices and into the impenetrable night.

Using a flashlight Nova had loaned to her, Beth set out after Mercy. Nova had given her instructions to get to Garner’s shop and home. These would have been unnecessary if the wolf had waited for her, and the black margins that pressed in around her flashlight beam whispered anxious possibilities. A cloud of fatigue crowded Beth’s head. The crouching mountains and her foggy awareness conspired to make everything seem darker, thicker.

She walked one block along the unpaved road, then paused at a cross street. In the center of the intersection she turned in a circle and then back, trying to locate a signpost confirming that she’d found the Old Stage Road. There was none, and soon she realized she’d lost track of her original position. Which way was west? Without the sun or mountains in view, she had no idea. Her compass was back at Dr. Ransom’s apartment, in her pack.

She was considering how far she might go in any direction when Mercy’s heavy weight leaned up against her thigh, and Beth’s chilly fingers found the thick ruff of Mercy’s neck. The grogginess fell away from her mind. He turned to the left. She followed.

She began to shine her light across the fronts of buildings that might have been stores or might have been homes, or in Garner’s case, both. He wasn’t the only one who did business where he also slept, judging by the painted wooden signs swinging from chains above the porches. Her light passed over handmade furniture, with model pieces lined up on each side of someone’s door. One yard was home to a flock of swans made of old splayed tires that had been painted white. A plaque for Becky’s Quilts advertised “Affordable Tools of the Trade.”

It seemed everyone slept well under the security of moonbeams, with no need for streetlights or porch lights or any kind of illumination that would deter an intruder like Beth. Or Mercy. Garner’s Garden was the fourth house on the right, its front door overlooking the heart of town at the bottom of the hill. It was a gingerbread house with a tidy picket fence closed by a short gate. She could see no garden to speak of, only an attractive arrangement of white and pink granite rocks, a few evergreen shrubs that lay close to the earth, several of the white-tire swans, and a single spruce tree.

The windows were dark. In that moment, Nova’s claims about Dr. Ransom seemed both horrific and absurd. Who would rush to kill an old man because his granddaughter had come to visit him? And yet Beth had no trouble imagining that she might find the front door ajar and an old man dead on the floor of the living room, or the same old man not quite yet dead coming after her with an ax raised over his head because the doctor had told him Beth was coming to steal his soul.

Beth turned off the flashlight and let her eyes adjust to the night before letting herself in through the gate. The hinges were smoothly oiled and made no sound when she pushed it open, but the panel sprang out of her perspiring hands and closed with a rattling clack before she was ready. Mercy was already mounting the wood-plank steps at the end of the short pea-stone path. Beth followed quickly.

She didn’t know why she expected the wolf to go to the front door. Instead he followed the wraparound porch to the rear of the house and sat down to wait for her at what appeared to be an entrance into the kitchen. A window overlooking the porch had no curtains or coverings, and the stove light illuminated a small galley. The knob turned easily in Beth’s hands, and the door swung open.

Mercy rushed in and passed silently through the room and into a dark hall.

Beth left the door open. She was undecided on whether to call out for Garner or sneak up on Dr. Ransom, so she made the most easily reversed choice to stay silent. She stayed close to the kitchen counter, hoping that Mercy might return to her quickly. She wasn’t prepared to follow him into the house just yet.

She stood in an eat-in kitchen with the galley and walk-in pantry to her left, the dining table in front of her, and a refrigerator behind the open door to her right. There was an exit into a room on the other side of the fridge, opposite the way Mercy had gone. It seemed she could go to the right and pass through what was probably a living area and make a full circle back. If she went this way, she could keep a wall at her back at all times. She started past the fridge.

The utility carpet silenced her boots but not the old floorboards underneath it. On her third step the entire house seemed to squeal and then burst into a primal scream, and the force of its energy knocked her to the ground.

Someone had come at her, his head to her rib cage like a linebacker. He took her backward a few feet before his gangly legs tangled with hers and they both tumbled down. Her head nicked the refrigerator handle as she tipped, and her back hit the floor before her hands could escape the tackle and brace her fall. Her rattled brain seemed to push against her eyes, and her mouth gaped for long seconds. By the stove’s hood light, she made out a long arm coming down on her face like a hammer, the head of which was a spider-like fist clutching . . . a glass jar?

Mercy caught the hammer-arm in his teeth before it reached Beth and wrenched it away, rotated the shoulder so the man had to follow or lose a limb. And though Beth couldn’t see what happened, she heard the wolf’s warning growl and the jar breaking against the wall. She felt the man’s sock-clad feet thrash out and kick her knees, and the floor vibrated as a dining chair fell sideways.

Then the room stilled and a warm dog tongue was lapping her face, and the only thing that Beth could think was that Mercy had just killed a man. She took a shuddering breath, and her black-speckled vision slowly cleared.

“Herriot,” she said.

Her dog barked a happy greeting. Somewhere else in the kitchen, Mercy remained silent.

Beth rolled over and pushed herself onto her bruised knees. Just a few feet away, pinned between the wall and a cheap table by a wolf standing over him, the man who’d attacked her was facing her direction, eyes closed. Glittery glass sparkled on the floor, but no blood.

His voice startled her. “Haven’t seen one of these guys around here in a while,” he said to her in a calm, low voice.

Herriot’s happiness was uncontainable. She approached Mercy and nuzzled him under his jaw, then sat beside him. Her tail thumped the carpet hard enough to make a glass shard bounce.

“Where’s Garner?” Beth asked.

“I was wondering the same thing.”

“You’re talking like a ventriloquist.”

“I have a wolf on my chest.” The man opened one eye. “Call him off ?”

“He’s not mine,” Beth said.

“Coulda fooled me.”

“Mercy does what he wants.”

“If you named him, he’s yours.”

Beth didn’t feel the need to explain anything to this man. His mass of loosely curly hair seemed to need a drum set or bass guitar to go with it. Mercy stepped off of his chest, but the man stayed pressed into the joint where wall and floor met.

“You don’t seem afraid of him,” she observed.

He opened both eyes but kept them on Beth. “I’m terrified. If you’re not, you’re a fool. But if you show it, you’re dead.”

She smiled at that.

“Tell me when he stops staring at me,” he instructed.

“Okay.”

“So . . . are you afraid of him?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

“Good. I wouldn’t want to have to explain to Garner how a wolf got into his kitchen and killed you.”

“He’s already passed up plenty of opportunities.”

“Even better. He done staring at me?”

Beth checked. “Seems that way.”

Even so, he avoided eye contact with the dog. He moved slowly, folding his body into a sitting position that matched Beth’s, and Mercy stood aside. Beth heard the man exhale.

The wolf quickly jabbed his nose into the man’s face and licked his cheek, which earned a surprised laugh.

“He says I can stay in your pack,” the man said.

“This dog’s in my pack too.” Beth reached down and scratched Herriot between the ears. “Herriot’s mine.”

“That’s too bad. I was thinking of keeping her.”

“I wasn’t thinking of giving her away.”

“But she followed me home.”

“Are you a friend of Garner’s?” she asked.

“Trey Bateman, houseguest and generally pesky acquaintance. And you?”

“Beth Borzoi. I’m his granddaughter.”

“Borzoi,” Trey said. “A Russian wolfhound.”

“We’re cattle ranchers, actually. Fifth generation.”

“Cattle ranchers, wolfhounds—they all feel the same way about wolves. Hunt them down, keep them off the land. It’s not a stretch to say your forefathers did their part to drive these guys out of the state.”

“You shouldn’t assume. My dad, my grandfathers—they tried not to interfere too much with the natural order of things.”

“Huh. Well, maybe that’s why this guy attached himself to you. Animals have a sixth sense about people, you know. Maybe he sensed you’re a champion for the underdog.”

Trey had no idea. Levi and his developer friend Sam Johnson weren’t exactly planning to develop a wildlife refuge on the Blazing B.

“I need to talk to Garner,” she said.

“I don’t know where he is,” Trey said. Now he stared at the wolf without fear. “I can’t believe I’m seeing a gray wolf in Colorado. In someone’s
kitchen
. This is amazing. Just amazing.”

The wolf lay in the pass-through as if he were Herriot’s domesticated buddy. Trey got off the floor and indicated that Beth should move away from the fridge.

“Do you live here?” she asked as he retrieved a carton of eggs and a pitcher of something that looked like tea. He poured a cup for her and set it on the table, constantly glancing at Mercy.

“No, just visiting. I was spending a few days gathering mountain-lion data and wasn’t planning to be back until tomorrow. But something got my food. A black bear, I think. Did you know that black bears come in four colors?”

“Uh, no.”

“Do you want some breakfast?” he asked.

“It’s not even four o’clock.”

“All my stomach knows is that I just woke up for the day. Gotta eat. Bighorn sheep were expatriated from these parts for a long time too, like your friend here.” Trey nodded at the wolf. “But not because of the bears. The sheep were reintroduced to the area by train about twenty-five years ago. Maybe I should consider a thesis paper on the return of
Canis lupis
. What insane timing! I love it when God does that—it is so cool.”

Beth’s eyes widened a bit. His energy was a little overwhelming.

“Although your friend’s behavior doesn’t seem very wild,” he continued. “It might ruin things if he’s actually domesticated. Have you seen him with a pack? Or even one or two others?”

She shook her head.

Trey put a small frying pan on the stove and started cracking eggs into a bowl.

“Look,” Beth said. “About Garner. Just a couple of hours ago someone told me he’s been dead for two years.”

An eggshell burst in Trey’s fingers as he looked up at her. “Dead? Who told you he was dead?”

“The doctor. Dr. Ransom.”

“Oh. Well. She’s a bit strange. It isn’t Christian to say so, but I actually don’t even like her. What she said probably isn’t true.”

Probably?
“Nova told me it wasn’t true. That Garner
isn’t
dead.”

“The bookseller. Nice lady. I buy books from her all the time. She’s quiet, but very intelligent. A true seeker.”

“Trey: Garner, Garner, Garner.”

“He wasn’t dead Sunday morning. That’s all I know. Why do you call your grandfather by name?”

“Because I’ve never met him! So Nova’s telling me the truth?”

“Yes. Garner made that tea you’re drinking, and I guarantee you it’s not two years old. You’ve never met your grandfather? I’d like to hear this story.”

“Not now. Why would Dr. Ransom lie to me?”

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t take it personally, though. She doesn’t like me either. And she’s protective of him.”

“Why would she need to protect him from his granddaughter?”

“Why not, if he doesn’t know you and you don’t even call him Grandpa or Pops, and you break into his house at four in the morning and sic wolves on people you don’t know?”