Winter Howl (Sanctuary) (38 page)

Those sharp teeth locked in a glinting smile. “The fool who wanted to be a hero? He tried to kill me with his bare human hands. I let him off easy. I liked the man.”

Renee struggled to stand up again, although Britt kept her hand curled on Renee’s arm to keep holding her back, keep protecting her. She fought against Britt, her stomach sinking with each inch she put between her and her lover. She set the rifle again, held it between herself and Grant almost like a spear. The cold was beginning to get to her. Her knuckles were white, and while she knew her fingers were moving and clenching, she could barely feel them.

“Think you can shoot to kill, love?” he growled, breathing heavily. Black blood dripped from the wound in his shoulder and gleamed wetly.

“Kill him,” Jake hissed. “You’ve got the time.”

The gun was ready, her finger trembling on the trigger. She would have hit his head if she had taken the shot, and that might have been enough. But her trigger finger would not press down. His eyes glowed red, and her stomach dropped to her feet. His teeth clicked into a wide smile as he began to bear down on her.

In his half-wolf form, he towered over her. She knew now why he had never taken his lower than average human height to heart. Down the dark grey fur of his stomach, she could see his cock, dark red and rising as he reached for her. It pressed into her stomach when he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into him. The gun was forced upward and to the side, the knife pointing past his neck and into the air.

His heat kept her from the frigid weather, but she still trembled as though it was thirty below. And heat dipped between her legs. She was terrified out of her mind, and still her body reacted to Grant, wanting him to take her and free her. She wanted out of her body and mind. She had denied him because she knew that she would be going from one complicated life to another, from one unacceptable extreme to another. But with him covering her, swallowing his scent, it was hard to remember the reasons she wanted to stay herself when he could make her feel like this. She loosened her hands on the gun to feel the broadness of his furred chest, and she could not stop her hips from canting towards him, wanting him.

“You need me.” His voice rumbled through her like the vibration of an old train. “They can’t give you what you need. I will free you.”

Her head tilted back as she struggled with each wave of feeling that he always brought to her. She was going to give in to him, not because she wanted to, but because he was all there was, and she couldn’t think at all. That was bliss—not to think, just to feel him, to touch him, to want him to fill her.

“Renee, please,” Britt cried from behind her. It was as if Renee heard her from a mile away.

“I heard what she asked you to do to her when this is over,” he whispered in her ear. His breath was hot and wet, and her fingers clenched again. “I have no objection. I could use another bitch in the pack.”

His teeth were on her shoulder now, massaging the skin under her shirt, getting ready to clamp down. She thought of the woman behind her, afraid for her and afraid for herself. That woman was willing to become a wolf if she did.

She still wasn’t thinking clearly, but her hands found the gun. Her finger found the trigger again and pulled. The bullet went into the air, but she was not expecting to shoot him. She had taken a gamble that at the deafening noise, he would either clamp down his teeth and bite her by reflex, or jerk back.

Grant jerked back.

And when he did, Renee thrust the rifle forward as hard as she could before she could stop herself. If she had hesitated, she might not have made it through the mat of fur and the skin beneath. But she did not hesitate, and she felt a spurt of almost boiling blood on her face from the force of the blow, and she stumbled back. She had caught him under his rib, possibly puncturing a lung. But it would not have mattered if she had just grazed bone or scratched him. The silver had made it in.

Grant opened his mouth to scream at her, but somehow it was like the jaw didn’t stop, gaping wide as though the bone was unhinged. The entire face became like a wolf, then tried to transform back, then tried to transform again. He was a mass of change and creaking bone and sinew, but no matter which way he turned, he could not escape the trace of silver sweeping through his bloodstream, subject to each contraction of his heart. His mouth foamed and snapped, but he was in too much pain to walk the three steps to bite her—not that biting her was a priority to him now.

He stared at her with glowing eyes, seeming blankly stunned that she had actually poisoned him. In spite of the crimson glow behind the blue, those eyes looked terribly human, terribly taken aback.

Renee could lower her arms now. She was shaking and cold, but that wasn’t what was important. She couldn’t believe that she had done it, either. She couldn’t believe that he was falling to the ground in a growing pool as the stab wound and gunshot wounds continued to pour blood. While he was writhing, the human side of him finally started to emerge, the wolf slowly being eradicated from his system. Finally, he was simply a man—naked, screaming as if acid was moving through him. But his eyes never left hers.

Not even when he finally stopped moving and his gaze became marble.

The rifle fell from her hands, and the bloody knife stained the snow. After that, it was a blur. Jake went back into the barn to tell everyone what had happened. Britt took her to the log home—there was no reason to fear now—digging her way while Renee tried to figure out whether anything was real.

The log home was still warm, since the heater had been working steadily while they’d been gone. Britt tried to get her to the upstairs bathroom to wash, but Renee, her thinking mind finally surfacing, told Britt that she shouldn’t wash yet. She went back out and stopped the shapeshifters from moving the bodies of Grant and Josh, which the snow had already started to cover. She might have been sleepwalking. Her voice was even and monotone, and she thought her demeanour scared them enough that they listened when she told them to cover the bodies with a blanket so that the scene could be preserved. Then she went back to the log home and found Detective Ebon’s card in the computer room.

“Hello, I’m calling for Detective Ebon,” she said.

“That’d be me. Who’s calling?”

“Renee Chambers, from the dog sanctuary. I know who was mutilating the animals. He killed a man. Josh Beall.”

“You mean Josh Beall killed the animals and murdered a man?” Detective Ebon asked. He sounded distracted, and Renee could imagine him scrambling for a pen and paper to write things down.

“No. Grant killed Josh Beall. Grant’s dead. I shot him when he was coming at me, and my knife got him when the gun didn’t work. He’s dead.”

There was silence on the other end. Then, “So there are two dead bodies at the sanctuary, Josh Beall and Grant…?”

“Grant Heath. He’s been staying at the sanctuary to help out. But…”

“You were hiding him,” Detective Ebon said. He didn’t sound accusatory. Instead, his voice was just as flat as hers.

“No,” Renee said, and she did not think she was lying. “I didn’t know it was him, not until a few days ago. He started stalking me. I kicked him out of the sanctuary, but I knew he hadn’t gone far. I couldn’t call you before. We ran to protect the dogs, and we don’t have cell phones.”

“You don’t have cell phones.”

“We don’t
need
cell phones. At least we didn’t, until… I kept my people from cleaning up, but the cold will freeze everything by the time you get here.”

“That’s very considerate of you.”

“I got his blood on me. Should I wait to wash it off?”

Another pause. “On your clothes, or on your skin?”

“Both.”

“I’ll requisition a helicopter. This needs to be done now. Don’t wash off.”

“Okay.”

“You’re not alone?” Detective Ebon asked.

“No. I have my people with me. There were witnesses.”

“Good. Try and hold it together until we get there. I know how awful this kind of thing can be. And Ms Chambers?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry this had to happen to you.”

She hung up.

Britt tried to get her into the shower, but she shook her head. “Not yet,” she told Britt. “They’re coming for the bodies. They need pictures.”

Britt looked at Renee with more than a little concern in her eyes, but she stayed at Renee’s side while they waited for the sound of a helicopter. All Renee did was sit on one of the dining room benches and stare at the darkness on the other side of the window.

Her shapeshifter pack slowly filed in. Max and Leslie were helping Malcolm because he couldn’t quite put his weight on his bitten leg. Malcolm looked just as empty as Renee, and the room was almost completely silent while they waited. Britt explained what was going to happen, and Renee asked whether someone was watching over the bodies, but other than that, there was not much more than the snapping of the fire that Jake had built in the living room hearth.

It was three o’clock in the morning when they finally heard the muffled thump-thump-thump of the helicopter. There was enough open space on the top of the hill for it to land with safety, if a little precariously. Jake got the door when Detective Ebon knocked.

Detective Ebon shuffled in, brushing snow from his shoulders. He looked even more awkward and bumbling than when he first came, but he was all business.

“If you could direct my partner to the bodies, that would be a great first start. Ms Chambers, if you could follow this young woman, we can get some pictures of your…clothing, and talk.” Behind Detective Ebon came an officer with a camera, followed by an ME.

Detective Benoit poked her head in, and Jake and Max led her back out towards the bodies. The ME was taking a look at Malcolm’s leg as Renee and Britt followed Detective Ebon and the officer into the kitchen—a neutral, out-of-the-way room for their purposes.

“This would be better if we could talk to Ms Chambers alone,” Detective Ebon said pointedly.

Britt knew that the pleasantries were laced with an order, but she stood her ground, and at an inch taller than Detective Ebon, she managed to stare him down.

“All right, then,” Ebon muttered.

The officer, a young woman named Laura, asked Renee to stand still as she took pictures of blood spatter and new wounds, scratches on her arms and bruises on her shoulder where his teeth had pressed until the flash of the camera illuminated them to her.

The officer stepped to the side when she was done, another silent advocate for Renee in her trauma. Renee supposed it was procedure when dealing with women. It did not annoy her.

“If you’re ready, Ms Chambers, we can get this over quickly so that Laura can take your clothes and you can clean up,” Ebon said.

Renee nodded.

“Please take me through the events of the night.”

Renee explained, in vaguer terms than she would have liked, how they had been in the barn keeping the dogs and her friends safe from Grant. She had kicked him off the sanctuary when she had learned what he had done to the animals, but had fully expected him to come back for some kind of revenge, since he had developed an obsession with her.

“Did you return any of his advances?” Detective Ebon asked. He looked straight at her, peering at her face, and she knew that if she lied on this matter, he would know.

“At the beginning,” she answered.

She went on to say that they had been alerted to his presence when he’d thrown the body of Josh Beall against the door of the dog barn. Three of her people had gone out to confront him, as was their right to protect the property, which had led to Malcolm’s leg wound. She, of course, did not explain that the wound was a bite.

Renee continued by saying that she and some of her people had gone out to confront him head-on, since Renee had known he would not stop until he encountered her. She was honest when she said she had gone out with the knife on the gun, just in case she had not been able to manage what she needed with a gunshot, and in case she used up her ammunition. She gave the bare minimum of details of the attack, saying that Grant had come at her, and while she had hesitated to begin with, she’d shot him in the chest when he’d grabbed her. Unfortunately, he had kept coming and hurt her even more, so she had stabbed him in the belly with the knife, and that had finally seemed to stop him.

“So you’re saying it was self-defence,” Detective Ebon clarified.

“What would you say it is?” Renee said. She was tired, and she did not want his games. “He stalked me, murdered Josh, hurt a friend, threatened more of them, and then came after me. In what universe is that not self-defence?”

“Witnesses?” Ebon asked, evading the question.

“Me,” Britt said. “And Jake. Jake, Malcolm, and Leslie were witness to the first attack. And Grant admitted to killing the animals and the man.”

Detective Ebon gave Britt another look. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“No, we haven’t.” Britt didn’t continue.

Ebon kept an eye on her for a minute, then flipped his notebook closed. “Well, I need to go out and look at the crime scene. If you could remove your clothing and give it to Laura before you take a shower, we would appreciate it. Laura, if you could follow Ms Chambers to her shower and make sure she doesn’t walk into it with her clothes on. She’s looking a little out of it. Thank you. I’ll speak to you again after you’re finished.”