Otherworld Nights (28 page)

“He was.”

Eaton shifted his weight. “Well … I’m not sure I’d pay much attention to that. They do get out. Yes, I know you think I’m going to say that since you suspect my brother or I did it, but I’d appreciate it if you’d take a hard look at Bobby’s dogs. Check the police reports and Woolcott’s report, maybe talk to the guys at the scene.”

“We will.”

“Okay. Thanks. I—”

“Doug?” The voice called out from behind us.

We turned to see Reese striding toward us with a pained look on his face. It wasn’t him who’d hailed Eaton, though. That would be the person who was likely the cause of Reese’s expression. Lori Romero, hurrying along beside him faster than her high-heeled boots should have allowed on the icy sidewalk.

“Did you get my message?” Lori said to Eaton as they reached us.

“Yeah, sorry, Lori. Things have just been busy. I’m sorry Mark isn’t calling you back, but …” He shrugged. “I’m just his brother.”

She nodded and seemed ready to hurry after her prey, only to realize Reese had stopped, too. Eaton and Reese hadn’t met yesterday at the chalet, so Eaton extended a hand. “Doug Eaton.” Then he turned back to Lori. “About Mark. I’m real sorry, hon, but if he’s not returning your calls, you might want to forget him. He’s got a girlfriend in North Bay. I know they’ve been having trouble, and he probably didn’t mention her, but I think they’re back together.”

“Oh.” Her eyes widened, gaze shooting to Reese, mortified. “Mark and I weren’t—We’re just friends. I was worried because he said he’d drive me to Toronto tomorrow for last-minute Christmas shopping.”

“Well, he must have forgotten, because he’s gone back to North Bay and—”

He was interrupted as a snow-covered minivan slowed beside us. A middle-aged woman in the passenger seat called out, “Lori?”

“Hey, Mom,” Lori said. “I’m sorry. I was just heading home. I got caught up talking to the girls at Tim’s.”

Her mother’s gaze shot to Reese, and she said dryly, “I see.”

“Mommy!” shouted a voice from the backseat. “I saw Santa, Mommy!”

The man in the driver’s seat put down the rear window, and I saw a little girl about Kate’s age bouncing in her booster seat, her lips cherry red from the candy cane clutched in her hand.

“I saw Santa, Mommy!”

I realized she was talking to Lori. The young woman stepped to the window and leaned in to kiss her, then pretended to bite the candy cane. The girl shrieked and pulled it back.

Lori turned to Reese. “This is my daughter, Patsy.”

There was a note of defiance in her voice.

I said hi, and asked the little girl about her Santa visit. After she’d chattered at me for a minute, her grandmother said, “We’d better let the nice people go, Patsy. Poor Mr. Eaton is freezing. Where’s your jacket, Doug?”

She chided him when he admitted he’d left it in the drugstore. The little girl waved at him and said something about candy canes. Eaton promised her one next time she came by, but he stayed on the sidewalk—he hadn’t joined us at the minivan window.

“Lori?” her dad said. “Can we give you a ride home? Your mom has her optometrist appointment at three and—”

“You need to drive her because of the eye drops. I know. Sorry.” She turned to Reese and whispered, “Text me,” then opened the minivan door and climbed in.

When they were gone, Eaton said, “I should leave, too. Just one more thing I meant to mention. I don’t know how far you guys run, but you should steer clear of the bog to the northeast. It looks frozen, but it’s not. Nearly fell in a sinkhole out there a week ago.”

“Steer clear of the bog,” I said.

“Right.”

He said his goodbyes and we parted. When we were back at the truck, I said, “If Eaton is hiding his brother, I think we have a pretty good idea where he is.”

“Northeast of our chalet,” Clay said, and climbed into the driver’s seat. “Near the bog.”

T
he events of the last couple of hours had only reinforced what I’d already suspected. Mark Eaton killed Dillon Mitchell. His brother knew. When we arrived in town, Eaton thought we’d come for Mark and squirreled him away. Now he was madly trying to cover his tracks. Convince us his brother had gone on a walkabout in the woods and couldn’t be reached. Blame local sled dogs for the scavenging. Suggest to his brother’s girlfriend that his lack of contact only meant he was no longer interested.

Mark Eaton
had
been at the party. When Reese was talking to the girls, he’d mentioned the tragedy and Lori’s friends had filled him in. Lori had tried to convince Reese she was not a grief-stricken girlfriend by admitting she and Dillon had already broken up and she’d been at the party with a “male friend” to convince Dillon that the relationship was over. The friend, Reese confirmed, was Mark Eaton.

Lori’s friends thought Reese looked like a sweet hookup, too, and the bonds of friendship only stretch so far. So they’d hinted Mark was more than a friend and mentioned a fight between the two guys.

As for what happened after that, the general consensus seemed to be that Mark and Lori had taken off and spent the night at his brother’s place. Lori hotly denied it. She said they’d stayed at the party after Dillon left and then Mark drove her home.

Did Mark follow Dillon out and kill him? Did he drive Lori home and come back to hide his crime by scavenging the remains?
Or did Lori
and
Mark follow Dillon out? Did he die accidentally, and Mark returned to cover it up?

I wasn’t happy with any of those scenarios. There was a piece missing here, but we weren’t finding it until we found Mark Eaton.

Locating the bog took some effort. After consulting maps and the Internet and finding nothing conclusive, I had Clay ask at a gas station. Turned out the kid manning the pumps was an avid snow-mobiler. He knew exactly what we were looking for. When we said we’d been warned to avoid it, he seemed perplexed.

“It’s frozen,” he said. “If I can ride my sled there, it’s safe for you guys to walk on, and it’s a great place if you’re looking for wildlife. Some folks around here get funny about visitors. Act like the forest belongs to them. It’s public land. You want to hike, go ahead. Just be careful. Cell phones don’t work out there. You get lost, you’ll be walking awhile before you pick up a signal.”

“When did you last Change?” I asked Reese as we tramped into the woods.

“Three nights ago.” He kicked aside a length of vine before we tripped over it. “You’re going to Change to track this guy, right?”

“We are.”

“So will I, if you need me—”

“If Elena needs you to Change, you will,” Clay cut in. “Doesn’t matter if you did it a week ago or ten minutes ago.”

“I know that. I just meant …” He caught Clay’s look and gave a soft growl of frustration. They held each other’s gazes until Reese dropped his first.

It probably seemed like a small thing to Reese. A matter of semantics. But when the Pack is so small and so tight-knit, it’s easy to let lines blur in the field.

“Let me rephrase that,” Reese finally said. “If you were going to give me the option of a pass, Elena, I don’t need it.”

“Maybe, but if you aren’t due for a Change, it’ll take you longer. You can follow on foot. We’ll howl when we find Mark Eaton. You can make sure he doesn’t bolt while we’re Changing back.”

“And you can carry our clothing,” Clay added.

Clay found us thick pockets of bush that allowed privacy. Werewolves rarely Change communally. It’s like going to the bathroom: you don’t want anyone watching you do it. Clay, of course, doesn’t see the hang-up, but this is one case where Jeremy has insisted he learn to respect our idiosyncrasies. A werewolf that’s uncomfortable is a werewolf that can’t Change.

Speaking of uncomfortable …

At Stonehaven, we have a special spot for winter Changes, sheltered from the wind, with a raised platform and cubbies for our clothing. No such luxury here. My clothing hung from bushes, rings and watch zipped in a coat pocket, as I knelt naked in the snow and tried to convince my body, once again, that it’s possible to completely change its structure. Even after twenty years, my body declares that skepticism with a kind of pain not known to anyone who hasn’t given drug-free birth to twins.

As usual, Clay was finished first. My excuse is that he has an extra twenty years’ experience. I tell myself that means it hurts him less, meaning it’ll hurt less for me one day, too, but I suspect that’s not true. He’s just less of a wuss about the “Oh God, kill me now” agony.

He was out and circling my thicket while I still lay, belly down in the snow, panting. Once he was sure I was at the recovery stage—and therefore unlikely to add to his scar tissue if he interrupted—he stuck his muzzle in and prodded my flank. I growled, fangs bared, a warning against impatience. When I found the energy, I opened my eyes.

He stood in front of me, a huge golden wolf with bright blue eyes. Our hair color translates into fur color and our eyes stay the same, as does our mass. Otherwise, we’re all wolf.

Clay lowered his nose and touched it to mine. A gentle, loving gesture to his exhausted mate. Promptly followed by chomping the nape of my neck and swinging me out of the thicket into a snowdrift, then dancing away before I could retaliate.

I did retaliate, of course. I just had to catch him first. We play-wrestled for a few minutes. My last two Changes had been alone at Stonehaven while Clay was gone. Changing alone is like dining out alone: it satisfies the physical hunger, but it’s awkward and lonely and otherwise completely unsatisfying. Clay and I had reunited as humans two days ago. This was our wolf reunion, and it was just as important.

It was only when we finished that Reese came to collect our clothing. He’d been less than fifty feet away, sitting on a log, guarding us. I’m sure he’d seen us goofing around, but he stayed where he was until Clay ran over. I hung back. There’s something uncomfortable about being in wolf form around a Pack mate who’s still human. I’m fine if it’s Clay, but even that took years. My issue. I’ll get over it someday. Or I won’t.

I’d told Reese he could follow us, but the key word there was “could.” He could attempt it and he had my permission to do so. Physically being able to follow, though, was an impossibility. We took off, loping over the snow, moving fast enough that our paws didn’t break the crust, leaving him to trudge along, falling farther behind.

As we ran, Clay kept his nose up, sampling the air, searching for human scents. We’d Changed south of the bog and the wind was coming from the north, which put us in perfect position to catch a scent. But we had a better plan than that. If Doug Eaton was keeping Mark out here, he had to visit him. That meant driving, parking, and walking. There might be a road to the north of the bog,
but that would be a longer drive along difficult roads. If he parked, it made sense he’d do it on the road we’d come in on, so we were running roughly parallel to that road as I kept my nose down and searched the ground for Eaton’s trail. I could pick up hints of scent, but they were old hiker and hunter trails buried by snow.

We were all the way to the other side of the bog before I finally hit Doug Eaton’s scent. He was right on top of the snow—big boot marks where he’d tramped through in the past day.

After that, following him was easy. He made no attempt to cover his tracks. Probably figured, in all these miles of wilderness, we’d never find his path. Besides, he’d warned us away from the bog.

Yet the fact that he’d warned us off meant we
didn’t
race pell-mell down the trail. In fact, we slowed so much that Reese caught up. I motioned for him to scan the surrounding woods as we walked. Why? Because we could be stepping into a trap.

Still, I doubted it. He and his brother would be facing at least three Pack wolves. That was exactly the kind of arrogant, macho, brain-dead move I’d expect from a lot of mutts, but Eaton did not seem arrogant or macho or brain-dead. What he did seem to be was naive. Living up here, away from other werewolves, he had no experience covering crimes. He’d come up with what probably seemed a perfectly plausible excuse to keep us away from the bog.

As I expected, no one leapt out at us. Eventually, we found the cabin. More of a shack, really—a weathered wood building meant for shelter and nothing more.

There were no windows on this side and the wind was coming toward us, but we still kept our distance as we scouted in a wide semicircle. Turned out there were no windows at all. When the wind hit, though, it went right through the old shack and carried a fresh scent out to us. One scent. Mark Eaton.

Reese motioned that he’d circle again. I nodded, then nudged Clay toward a patch of brush to begin his Change. Less than ten minutes passed. Then he stepped, naked, from the thicket.

“Any sign of—?” he began.

A blast of bitter subzero wind whipped past.

“Holy shit! Okay,
that’s
cold.”

I gave a growling chuckle and nudged him back into the thicket. He grabbed handfuls of my fur, yanked me close, and huddled against me.

When I grumbled, he said, “You make me Change, you gotta keep me warm.”

I chuffed and gave him a look.

“Yeah, you’re Alpha-elect, so you’re the one giving the orders, but as the commander, it’s your job to keep the lowly foot soldiers from freezing to death.”

He pulled me onto his lap, then buried his face in the fur around my neck. For Clay, there is no disparity between forms. Two halves of the whole. He could huddle here with me and talk to me as if I were in human form. It’s me, either way. Of course, there is one area of our lives where he does mark a distinction between the wolf me and the human me, and never the twain shall be confused, for which I am very grateful. I can adjust to a lot, but that would take unification of form a step—hell, a few miles—too far.

Moments later, I caught Reese’s scent. He should be able to smell us downwind when he got closer, but with a young werewolf it’s never a guarantee. When I tried leaving the thicket to guide him, Clay tightened his grip and kept me firmly on his lap.

Reese stopped outside the brush and tried blindly pushing clothing in.