Kitty’s Greatest Hits (3 page)

Thinking like a hunter, a wolf—he shook his head to clear his vision of the haze that covered it for a moment. Couldn’t let the wolf take over. Had to stay human. What had Kitty said?
Keep it together.

His breathing slowed. He straightened his back and felt a little more human.

The lot behind the restaurant was lit by a single, fuzzy orange lamp. Only one car was parked here. Snow coated it, so it had been here a while.

Beyond that lay an interstate wasteland: scrub-covered verges, cracked parking lots and frontage road, ancient gas stations. Cars hummed on the distant freeway, even on Christmas.

A set of flashing lights traveled along the frontage road. David took off at a run after the police car.

In less than half an hour, he reached one of the murder scenes.

He caught a scent—blood, thick on the ground. A hint of rot, meaning guts had been spilled. Not fresh, the slaughter had lain open to air for a while.

Human blood. Somehow, he recognized it.

But did he recognize this place, this situation? Or was it a false memory? Did he recognize the scene from the newscast?

Moving low, almost on all fours, touching the ground with his hands every now and then to keep his balance as he ran, he approached the site. He kept out of sight, hiding among the dried vegetation, banked with crusted snow.
This would be easier on four legs. As a wolf.
He fought to ignore the voice whispering at him, clawing at him. He wanted to keep his awareness.

Police cars blocked off a place where a pickup truck had pulled over along the road. Yellow tape fluttered, marking off almost an acre of land within it. A half dozen people moved around the space, bent over, examining the ground.

David stopped and lay close to the ground, hidden, and studied the area as well as he could. Three body bags on stretchers lay by an ambulance. The pickup truck’s doors were open, lights shining around it. Its interior was covered in blood.

Did he even know what he was looking for here? What he hoped to find? He had to admit, he didn’t know. He just wanted to see the bodies. See that it had been guns or knives that had done this, spattered all that blood over the truck. Not teeth and claws.

But he could imagine a scenario: driving along the road, this family, or maybe group of friends, saw a huge wolf loping alongside them. Curious, they stopped to watch, because wild wolves weren’t found here. Maybe they stepped out to take a picture. And it wasn’t a wolf, and he was drawn by the promise of easy prey, of slaughter—

He buried his face in his arm to stop the vision. He choked on a sob, because his mouth was watering. At the same time, he wanted to vomit.

That wasn’t a memory. Just an overactive imagination. He couldn’t remember.
Couldn’t.

He imagined Kitty’s voice telling him to slow his breathing, to hold the panic at bay. To keep it together.

Crawling on his belly, infantry-like, he inched forward to get a better look.

*   *   *

Kitty expected David to follow her back to the booth after he had settled down. They’d wait for news, hope for the best.

Surely he’d remember
something
if he’d killed someone. Surely. But who could say? For all her bluster, she knew so little about it.

Minutes passed, and he didn’t return. Not that she could blame him if he’d decided to avoid her. Maybe stay in the bathroom, hiding from everyone. This whole spending the holidays with people thing left something to be desired.

Finally, she went back to the bathrooms to check. He wasn’t in the women’s anymore. For the best, probably. She knocked on the door to the men’s. “David?” she called, and got no answer. She opened the door a crack, peered in. Empty. So where had he gone?

From the back hallway, the kitchen was visible, all stainless-steel surfaces and stove tops. The single cook on duty leaned on a counter, looking out at the TV. And on the other side of the room was a door to the outside.

Her heart thudded, contemplating what he was doing. She’d been stupid, confronting him like that. Now she’d driven him off. Who knew what he would do, an out-of-control werewolf roaming the countryside?

Of course, now it was up to her to clean up the mess. Or at least keep it from getting worse.

Crouching to avoid drawing the cook’s attention, she dashed across the kitchen and went through the door, which was already unlocked. As if someone had been this way already. Outside was freezing. But her blood was warm, Wolf running through her, firing her senses. Scent, sound, feel—she searched for his trail by the way the hairs on the back of her neck tingled. She felt the heat of his footsteps on the ground.

Breaking into a jog, she followed his trail, the faint touch of his scent, like a taste in the back of her throat. She let a bit of Wolf bleed into her consciousness. A bit of the hunter, tracking one of her own.

She shouldn’t have been surprised to find the trail leading straight toward what was clearly a crime scene of epic proportions. Flashing blue and red flared out over the countryside, turning the darkness into a surreal disco parody. The snow fell heavier now, large flakes burning on her skin. They glittered in the lights. She’d forgotten her coat, but hardly noticed; she was sweating from the exertion.

Not wanting to get caught, and certainly not wanting to answer questions about why she was out here, she dropped to the ground. She assumed David had done the same, since she couldn’t see him silhouetted against the lights. Instead, she saw what must have been dozens of cops milling inside a taped-off area.

And she smelled blood. Great quantities of reeking, rotten blood and bile. People hadn’t just died; they’d been shredded. Her human sensibilities gagged. The Wolf merely cataloged the information: several bodies, human, gutted, and they’d been out awhile. Carrion, Wolf thought. Kitty shook the thought away.

Had they been dead long enough for David to be the culprit? Almost, she turned around and went back, because she didn’t want to know.

Just a little bit farther, though. If she could smell the bodies, she ought to be able to catch a scent of what had done this to them. Since she couldn’t get close, she concentrated on the land around them. If something had killed them here, then that same something had to have fled. The trail might be covered with snow now, but she might find a trace of it.

She smelled David.

Pausing a moment, she tasted it, fearing what it meant. But no, this was fresh. Still warm. The touch of him on the air was more human than wolf. He was in human form. His trail didn’t have the reek of a predator who’d just devoured prey.

Ahead, she saw him, a dark figure stretched out on the ground, collecting bits of snow in the wrinkles of his clothes. She was in the perfect position to sneak up on him and pounce. In fact, her hands itched, the claws wanting to come out, Wolf wanting to grab this opportunity.

And wouldn’t that be a complete and utter disaster? She refrained, not wanting to give him a heart attack—or a good excuse to turn wolf at this particular moment.

“David,” she called in the loudest whisper she could manage, creeping up until she was beside him.

Despite her caution, he flinched and twisted back to look at her. Then he sagged with relief.

“What are you doing here?” he hissed back.

“Following you. Have you found out anything?”

He took a deep breath. “I don’t think a werewolf did it. There’d be some trace of it, wouldn’t there?”

There would. She’d smelled the aftermath of a werewolf-killed body before, and he was right—if David had done it, they’d be smelling blood, bodies, and
wolf.

“Yeah, there would,” she said.

He slumped and made a sound that was almost a sob. He’d come out here for no other reason than to reassure himself.

Tentative, she touched his shoulder. Leaned close to him in a wolfish gesture of companionship. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. Let’s go back now.” Back to the warmth, light, virgin eggnog, Jimmy Stewart, and a wonderful life.

“If I didn’t do this,” David said, “who did?
What
did?”

“That’s for the police to find out.”

Something seemed to have taken hold of him. Some newfound determination. Like the evidence had given him confidence—proof that he wasn’t an out-of-control ravening monster.

“We ought to be able to find something out,” he said. “We can smell the trail. The police can’t do that. If we can, shouldn’t we help—”

“‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ Is that what you’re thinking?” she said with a smirk.

Looking away, he frowned. “It can’t hurt to try.”

She wanted to apologize. She shouldn’t tease him.

“So,” she said. “You feel like a hunt?”

He stared out at the murder scene. He might have had a human form, but crouched there, his gaze focused, body tense, ready to leap forward in an instant, his body language was all wolf. She felt the same stance in her own body.

“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

Together, they took off at a jog, keeping clear of the cordoned-off area and the circle of lights that marked it.

Prowling out of sight of the police, they found a trail, the barest scent of blood on the air. Probably not so much as a drop was left on the ground for the police to find. But it was there, lingering, fading rapidly because of the falling snow. If they were going to do this, they needed to hurry.

They ranged back and forth along the same half-mile stretch of prairie leading away from the frontage road, looking for the sign they’d discovered: blood on the air, and oil, like the person they were looking for worked in a garage. There was something indefinable—something she as a human being couldn’t describe. But the Wolf inside her knew the flavor of the smell. This was a predator they were looking for. A taste of aggression rather than fear, like there’d be with prey. The feeling put her on edge. She was sure, though: The murderer was human.

A few miles from the interstate, another set of police cars gathered around a house at what looked like a junkyard. Acres of wrecked and rusting cars lined up on the land around it, roped in by strings of barbed-wire fencing. The familiar ring of lights and yellow tape bound the house. And the tang of blood and slaughter drenched the air. This scene was more recent than the other.

“What is this?” Kitty whispered. “Is some guy roaming the countryside murdering people he just happens across?”

The thought of a crazed murderer running around out here didn’t frighten her; she was a werewolf. Unless his weapons were silver, he couldn’t hurt her without really working at it. Even so, this was turning into one of her more harebrained adventures.

“What are we going to do if we find the killer?” David said.

“Call 911?” Then she grumbled, “Ignoring for a moment the fact that I didn’t bring my cell phone and I’m betting you don’t have one … we tell the police what?”

“I don’t know. I thought you were the one with all the answers.”

Ha. Why did everyone think that again? Just because she ran her mouth more often than not was no reason to actually put any
faith
in her.

She had no desire to get closer to this murder scene, and the killer’s trail was fading.

“Let’s go,” she said, and took off at a jog. After a moment’s hesitation, David followed her.

It made her wonder, just for a moment, what it would be like to have a pack again. The thought made her lonely, so she shook it away. The thing now was to find this killer. Figure out a way to throw him at the cops. Or to stop him, if it came to that.

The guy was on foot. If he had left footprints, the falling snow covered them. They tracked by scent alone, but the smell of human blood was strong. Not exactly subtle. Nothing about these murders was subtle. Kitty could tell that much by the police response, without even seeing the bodies. She didn’t have to be a trained profiler to tell these were unplanned. He was lashing out, haphazard.

David must have been thinking along the same lines. Briskly, they walked side by side, following the trail that the police hadn’t found yet. “He’s racking up a body count, isn’t he? That’s what this is about. Whoever he is, he’s gone postal.”

“Looks that way,” Kitty said.

“We’re going to have to kill him if we find him, aren’t we?” David said.

“No.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to get in the habit of killing people. Even if they are bad guys. I don’t think you want to get into that habit either.”

He pursed his lips and nodded.

When they spotted another house up ahead, lit by the yellow circle of a lamp by the door, Kitty’s stomach sank. They’d found his next target.

It wasn’t really a house, but a weather-beaten single-wide mobile home, white aluminum siding rusting at the edges, sitting by itself at the end of a long dirt road. The minimum of what could be called a homestead. But it had a fenced-in yard with spinning plastic sunflowers sticking out of the snow, and a satellite dish attached to the roof, which was outlined in colored holiday lights. Somebody loved this place and called it home, and the killer had headed right for it.

She tugged on David’s arm and broke into a run. Dodging the fence, they went to the front door. The place seemed peaceful. Soft, shaded light shone through the fogged windows. Faintly, the sound of Christmas carols played on a radio, muted. Maybe nothing was wrong. Maybe they’d made a mistake.

They hesitated at the base of a trio of steps leading to the front door. Their breaths, coming fast after the effort of running, steamed in the chill air. David glanced at her.

“What do we do?” he whispered.

“We knock on the front door,” she said, shrugging. “If nothing’s wrong, we can sing ‘Jingle Bells.’”

He actually chuckled. The boy was coming around.

She mounted the steps first, raised a fist to knock on the door—and saw that it already stood open a crack.
Shit.

Then she thought,
What the hell,
and pushed open the door all the way.