Prowlers: Wild Things (19 page)

But it could be bad. It could mean the worst. At the moment Courtney had no way to track her brother, but Winter could find Bill. She had to pray that Jack and Molly were just out of reach at the moment. But if they weren't, once she found Bill, he would be able to track them.

She didn't know what else to do.

"How did you know who I was? Why I was here?" she asked, much of the fire gone from her tone.

Winter still did not look at her. "The one I sent with Guillaume, Lao, has disappeared. None of my contacts know what has happened to them, but I suspect that some know and will not say because they fear Jasmine."

"She's the same, you know? She'll be the death of all of you eventually."

"Perhaps," he replied thoughtfully. Then he glanced at her as though he had forgotten she was there. "I will find him. Not because you love him, or because you have come here, but out of respect for a friend long dead. Yves Navarre was the finest student I ever had."

"You were a teacher?" Courtney asked, eyebrows raised.

Winter seemed almost hurt. "Why should that surprise you?"

She said nothing. Anything reply she might have given would only have alienated him further. Winter seemed not to notice.

"It isn't only Guillaume. Jasmine likely has Olivia as well. After what he did, the underground might have stood by and let Guillaume be killed, no matter how much respect his father's memory holds, but the girl has done nothing. Once word gets out what Jasmine's done, things are going to get bloody. It's going to cost me a lot. I can't be neutral anymore. But if they're still alive, I will find Guillaume and his niece."

Winter chuckled as though the idea of the chaos he referred to amused him.

Courtney hesitated a moment before going on. "I can't reach my brother, either."

The Prowler stared at her, brow knitted in consternation. "What a pity. But what's that to do with me? Either he's all right, or he isn't? Maybe he's tracked the wrong prey, that brother of yours. You see us as killers. You want to stop the ones who still hunt humans. But that's what we are, Miss Dwyer. We're predators. And so, by the way, are you. That's why I have no feelings about your brother one way or the other. I understand what he and that redheaded girl hope to accomplish. Good for them. Hunting the hunters.

"May the best monster win."

He tilted his glass back, polished off the rest of the whiskey, and stood, unfolding his long, thin frame from the booth.

"I'm coming with you," Courtney said.

Winter smiled, offered a curt little bow. "I had no doubt that you would."

"You're not going to try to stop me?"

The beast feigned a hurt expression. "Who am I to stand in the way of love?"

He turned and walked off, and Courtney had to hurry to keep up, unmindful now of relying on her cane. Winter paused and looked back at her, eyes glancing from her face to her walking stick, then roving over her body, the stylish clothing she had worn.

"We'll stop so you can pack a bag and change into something more suitable for travel," he said, a grave expression on his face. Then he spun and marched off again. When he spoke to her with his back turned like that, she could only just make out the words over the blaring techno beat.

"Come on," Winter said. "Let's go start a war."

Eden nearly always knew when she was dreaming. Aware of that, she could often change the course of a dream, guide it and shape it so that it became a kind of exploration. Often she dreamed of days gone by, lives lived, passions and fears that had once lived in her heart. Sometimes these journeys were nightmares, but as visits to the past they held no lasting terror for her. In dreams she might choose to face them, or turn away. Wake up.

But not always.

On the battlefield with a rifle in her hands. Smoke from cannon fire swirls in the air and night is coming on. Caleb is her name here, but still she wears her own face, her current face. Her uniform was gray once, but it has become so matted with dirt and blood that it is nearly black.

From across the field the blue coats advance, the Union soldiers with rifle and cannon, tired horses carrying men with swords drawn. The Union flag flies and it strikes her that the flag looks clean and new, and how can that be?

Now she is retreating, Caleb's legs moving beneath her, Caleb's hands raising the rifle to her shoulders and firing; reloading as she walks backward, raising the gun and firing again. The constant barrage has deafened her. Backward and backward and further still, long strides and careful steps and the gap between North and South, between Union and Confederate soldiers, is closing tighter.

One glance back, only one, and she sees that they are near the trees, and she knows that they have lost this bit of ground, that she has bled for it, that all around her friends are dying for it. Elijah Samuels goes down with a scream and a spurt of blood from his chest. Will Kent is erased in a cannonade and his leg lands nearby, foot still in its boot. There is a small hole worn through the sole of the boot.

Backward, backward, tears streaming down her face, she raises the rifle and fires, steps back and reloads and retreats some more. Trees, where are the trees? Her heel catches on something and Caleb falls, Eden falls, and the rifle flies from her grasp. As she scrambles to rise she realizes that she has fallen over the broken remains of a gray-uniformed soldier, a member of her battalion, but she cannot tell whose corpse it is because there is no face. Only shattered skull and bits of gelatinous brain and a flap of blond-haired scalp. There is no cap over it, but they all have lost their caps by now.

She cries out and pulls away and only then does she glance around to see that the retreat is over. The battle is over. She is the last. And the Yanks march toward her, one last rebel on a field of blood, and they are still firing.

And she wakes.

Breathing hard, eyes wild as she peers around her room. Voices in the hall and how can that be? Eden rises from bed, heart still beating too fast, relieved, oh so relieved to be awake, away from the nightmare. But whose voices are these? Wary but also angry at the intrusion she throws open the door.

The hall is full of Prowlers. They crouch on the banister at the top of the steps and lounge on the grand staircase. One of them, a male whose golden fur reminds her of the one that had tried to kill her, pisses on the carpet and the stink is acrid and nauseating.

It looks up at her. "Our territory now. There's no waking up."

Short of breath, pulse racing enough to nurture a blossom of pain in her chest, she slams the door, puts her back against it. And she knows she is still asleep. She raises her hands and stares at them, remembering that you're not supposed to be able to see your hands in a dream. That's how you know you're dreaming.

A sharp rap on the door. "Little pigs, little pigs . . ." a voice begins.

She snaps awake in her bed. It is still night outside and the window is open, a soft breeze flowing in. "Oh, my God," she whispers in the dark, and she wants to cry. A shiver goes through her as she begins to calm. Eden rises from bed, unnerved by her dreams, and goes to peek into the hallway.

When she opens the door, it is empty.

As she turns, she hears the rustle of bedclothes behind her. In her bed is a sleek female monster, a Prowler with jaws open, slavering, its copper fur shedding on the bedclothes and beginning to reveal a face underneath.

"The better to eat you with," it says.

Eden closes her eyes, yearning to wake up, pleading in silence to all the ghosts of those she has loved in her brief eternity in the flesh world. It isn't supposed to be like this, and she wonders, with mounting terror, what will happen if she can never wake up.

Again she wakes. Cautious now, she slips from bed, afraid that this is still not real, trying to feel the floor beneath her bare feet, the cool breeze through her cotton nightshirt. She manages to hope.

She opens her bedroom door. A dark silhouette blocks the light in the hall and she screams.

Artie looks at her with heartbreakingly blue eyes and reaches out to take her hands. She feels the rough texture of his hands, warm in hers, and Eden pushes herself into his embrace, muttering words she cannot remember even as she speaks them. His arms slip behind her and he hushes her.

"It's all right now. It's only a nightmare."

"I can't wake up," she says, the horror of those four words making her chest tight, the panic in her growing despite his comforting presence.

"You can. You will in a moment. You'll have to. We need you."

And he whispers to her, and slowly, she wakes.

But the memory of her nightmare stays, and his words only heighten the awful dread that still grows and lingers within her.

Eden was curled in a tight ball when she awoke. Her eyes flickered open and she stared into the darkness of her bedroom. The texture of the sheets beneath her, the caress of cool air from the partially open window, the tick of the clock on the wall, all of it seemed a temptation, a seduction, meant to convince her that she was awake now. That the world had returned. That the nightmare was over.

Her eyes burned and felt heavy with the burden of sleep, its allure almost too powerful. Fear forced her eyes open again and again and she knew she ought to throw her legs out of bed, to sit up, to take time before going back to sleep, for fear the nightmare would be there waiting to claim her.

At last her mind began to clear and her body to obey her commands. The surreal quality of the air changed, no longer made malleable by the remnants of her dreaming mind, her altered perceptions.

Awake. She had escaped the nightmare, a dream unlike any she recalled having ever had, in all her lives.

Then she remembered. Artie's embrace, his comforting voice. His words. "
We need you."
And she remembered too what he had told her. With a whispered curse, Eden sat up from bed and clicked on the light on her nightstand and stared at the clock. 11:37. She had been asleep for less than half an hour.

The phone was a white cheap plastic thing that had cost her fourteen dollars. When she picked it up, the keypad glowed a dull green. From memory she dialed the phone number for the apartment above Bridget's Irish Rose Pub, but after half a dozen rings the answering machine picked up. Eden swore softly, urgency drumming in her chest.

"Courtney, hi, it's Eden Hirsch. When you get this message call me back. It's . . . it's hard to explain on a machine, but it's important."

She rattled off her number and hung up, then quickly dialed the number for the pub itself. It was answered on the second ring, but the girl who picked up said that Courtney was out of town for a couple of days. Questions burned through Eden's mind; where had Courtney gone? Did she already know that Jack and Molly were in trouble? She left a message with the woman at the pub and hung up, then sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the hard, gleaming plastic surface of the phone. The remnants of her nightmare, that seemingly inescapable dark dream, lingered like cobwebs not only in her mind, but in her vision, like mirages lurking in the shadows of the room.

Her gaze went back to the phone. Artie had given her the impression that the situation was dire. If so, Jack and Molly didn't have time to wait for Courtney to call in for messages. Eden mentally calculated how long it would take her to drive to upstate New York by herself, but even if she went, what could she possibly do for them on her own? What they needed was a cadre of armed warriors on horseback, Attila and his Huns, the proverbial cavalry. Though she had been a soldier more than once in her eternal life, she was not capable of that now.

Silent, the drumming in her chest increasing in tempo and urgency, she sat on the edge of her bed and grew angry with herself. Artie had come to her because she was the only person he could communicate with. But what could she do?

The phone was so still it was almost an insult.

Cavalry. The cavalry.

Eden's eyebrows shot up. Hope rising in her, she picked up the phone.

Jace Castillo hated domestic abuse cases. In the time he had spent as a detective with the homicide division of the Boston Police Department he had seen far too many women end up dead at the hands of boyfriends or husbands. There were more horrifying murders, bloodier and more savage killings. Certainly the domestic cases were usually a lot simpler to solve. Half the time they had the perp in custody within forty-eight hours, often far less. But inevitably, while putting together the paperwork on a case, he would have to wade through the history of a relationship, the times the victim had been abused, maybe even pressed charges. A lot of them had those worthless pieces of paper called restraining orders that were supposed to keep the abuser away.

It twisted him up inside to read those sad, pitiful histories, to see how lost people could become within their own lives. It was going on midnight now and he rubbed tiredly at the corners of his eyes and typed the last bit of his report before saving it and shutting down the computer.

The circumstances of his current case were so familiar, there was no secret to it, no mystery. It depressed him to know that in a situation like this there was nothing he could do to make it better. He had put the abuser in jail, but the deed was done. All Castillo could do now was add his victim to the catalog of those who stood as a horrid warning to others, a warning that seemed universally ignored.

With a sigh he slipped on his leather jacket, slid the chair in tight against his desk, then gave a half-hearted wave to Detective Pepper on the other side of the room and wished her good night. Castillo started for the door.

On his desk, the phone rang.