Ghosts & Echoes (22 page)

“And men don’t make good company,” Marisol said.

Tatya sighed, but her expression asked Sylvie’s patience.

Sylvie turned, told Wright, “Why don’t you go sit in the truck. Get some AC going. And hey, there’s a first-aid kit under the passenger’s seat.” She tossed him the keys.

He fielded them awkwardly between his damaged hand and the other, and paused. “You’ll be okay—”

“I’m not the one bleeding,” she said. “Go on. I’ll be just a minute.”

Once he had gone, his retreating footsteps loud in the fraught silence, she said, “Mari, I get that you’re a man-eater, but keep it up, and you’ll be courting Animal Control.”

“He’s a
wolf
,” Marisol said, stuck on repeat. “You brought a breeding
dog
to our doorstep. He’ll let the others know.”

“He’s not a werewolf,” Sylvie said.

“He . . . has two souls,” Tatya said. Her eyes were focused on the dark shape of Sylvie’s distant truck; she raised her head and scented the air, nostrils flaring. “He smells like cat.”

That made a certain sense, considering Demalion’s non-human lineage. “Cat’s not a wolf,” she said.

Tatya shrugged, liquid and graceful, rather than concede the point.

Mari shivered in her skin, tugged at Tatya’s restraining hand until she was released. “Why bring him here?”

“The better to keep an eye on him,” Sylvie said. “C’mon, I helped you
escape
your pack, remember? Had sympathy for the girls who didn’t want to be bred? I wouldn’t jeopardize that. I don’t like wasting effort.”

Marisol growled again, and Sylvie said, “Either use the vocal cords or lose ’em, Mari. Actually, either get dressed or go fur. You’re making me itch just watching the mosquitoes going for you.”

Marisol let out a breath, and fur rippled over her flesh again, so easy at the full moon. She ghosted into the night, only the faintest of clicks as her claws touched gravel and bark. Tatya’s skin went fluid for a moment in sympathy.

“Hey,” Sylvie said, “she all right?”

“She feels stronger in fur,” Tatya said. “As do I.”

“Just be careful. Feral dogs get euthanized. Feral wolves? Get shot.”

“Worry about yourself,” Tatya snapped.

Whoops,
Sylvie thought. Implied the alpha of this tiny pack wasn’t doing her job. “No offense meant, Tatya. Just concern. You have a name for me?”

“One name—that’s all you want?” she said, with unappealing skepticism. “No little
since I’m here
or
by the way, Tatya
. . .”

“Well, since you ask . . .” She and Tatya traded quick, tight grins. Sylvie unfolded the picture of the missing woman. “She disappeared north of here in the ’Glades. You seen her?”

“Pictures,” Tatya said. She shrugged. “I do best with scent.”

“Yeah, I know. Just take a look. If you find any dead women, let me know, and if you find one, don’t . . . go to town on it.” She tried not to think about it often, but Tatya and Marisol were as much a part of the food chain in the Everglades as the alligators and the raccoons. Without Sylvie asking for the information, Tatya would be inclined to eat a body she found. As long as it wasn’t
too
old. Half her digestion was human, after all.

“No snacking. But that’ll cost you.”

“You find her, I’ll pay.”

Tatya sniffed the air again.

“Something interesting?” Sylvie asked, a little wary. The night was warm; there was an alligator hole nearby—she had never had a run-in with one, didn’t want to start now.

“I thought your client made the stink, but it’s . . .” Tatya sniffed again, raised her upper lip, and sneezed. “What’s in the briefcase, Shadows?”

Sylvie glanced at the briefcase, a dark shadow on the gravel walk, dropped when Wright had been bitten. “I’ve gotten hold of some nasty stuff and need to dispose of it, hence the witch.”

Tatya showed all her teeth. “How nasty? Perhaps I could take it off your hands. If it’s sufficiently nasty, I know a pack leader that deserves it.”

“Sorry. This stays with me.”

Hot snuffling behind Sylvie heralded Mari’s return. She crooned gently, a windup to a moon greeting. The hairs on Sylvie’s neck rose in pure physical response, atavistic response to a predator’s presence. She shifted her weight, made it casual, a normal fidgety movement that just happened to allow her to keep both of them, woman and wolf, in plain sight.

“How ’bout a name, and I’ll get out of your fur.”

“It’s worth something to you. Make it worth something to us.”

Sylvie said, “What’s the going rate for a piece of info I could find out myself if I had more time?”

“For the info, call it a hundred bucks. For the rush? Call it five hundred.”

“Robbery,” Sylvie said. “What do you need cash for anyway? You eat what you catch; there’s no power here for cable TV. . . .” She reached in her pocket even as she griped. She knew what it was for. Their nest egg, should the northern pack decide the truce was over. The Ocala pack was rough-and-tumble, uncivilized, and tied to their territory. Tatya and Marisol preferred the wilds as their home, but push come to shove, they would take a condo in downtown Miami and be grateful for it. And civilization cost money.

Tatya took the folded bills without comment, tucked them under a flat, heavy stone. “Odalys,” she said. “She has a new-age shop down at the edge of Calle Ocho. She’s supposed to be good at dealing with bad, dead things. Sort of like you.”

She shucked out of her loose tunic dress, giving Sylvie a view of tight muscles flexing, before a second wolf rubbed her muzzle against Mari’s. Then with a quick, sharp howl, they trotted off into the dark. Drug runners, small alligators, rapists—a bad night to be out and about when the wolves were on the prowl.

WHEN SHE RETURNED TO THE TRUCK, ITS FINISH REFLECTING THE moonlight in white glosses, she found Wright, first-aid kit unopened in his lap, watching the bite on his hand and wrist bleed. His jeans were wet with it, black in the low illumination of the moon, scarlet beneath the hood light when she opened the door. She swore, reached for his pulse, even though she knew—had
seen
, dammit—that the wound was relatively minor.

His pulse thrummed beneath her fingers, his skin cool and damp in the swamp air. His blood was sticky under her nails. “Hey!” she snapped, jerking her hand back, rubbing it against her own jeans.

Wright twitched, turned his hand over, and let a rivulet run down his fingers to spatter all over the seat.
Great,
she thought, just the thing she needed in her cab the next time the police came to harass her: bloodstains.

“I’m bleeding,” he said. Amazement, surprise . . .
pleasure
.

Her anger vanished, dwindling as quickly as a body falling from a rooftop.
Two souls,
Tatya had said, and she’d mistaken him for a beast. Two souls in possession of a single scrap of flesh. This was Demalion talking.

“I would have thought you’d had enough of seeing your blood spilled.”

He turned his head to look at her, drawn finally from his exploration of mortality. She fumbled for the first-aid kit, propping it open against his hip, and reached blindly for the roll of gauze, the jumbo tube of antibiotics, the antiseptic wash and pads.

“It hurts,” he said. “Deep down, deeper than the nerves admit. Blood makes the bones ache. Makes them remember what all flesh is born knowing. We will die. We must die. It is our destiny.”

“Not on my watch,” she said.

He laughed, a rich bubble of sound made scratchy by Wright’s throat. Sylvie, heart pounding at the familiarity of it, poured antiseptic on his wounds with a callous lack of concern.

The wild laughter gave way to a yelp; the crazy talk changed to a muttered oath.

“Hurts, does it,” Sylvie said. “
You
can pull back from it, the blood, the pain. Let Wright own it. It’s his body.” She sponged the dried and seeping blood away, preparing for the bandages. The punctures were many—werewolf teeth were sharp—but they weren’t deep. Marisol really had been holding back.

“That an order, Shadows, or a question?” he asked. His breath stirred her hair, moist warmth touching her skin, warmer than the swamp about them. Another sigh. “He let go, you know. Ceded the body to me. He got too scared, sitting in the dark, alone and bleeding in this strange new world, with a wolf standing on the hood of the truck, watching him with burning eyes. He wanted to not see any of it. I spared him that.”

“We need to talk,” she said. “But not here, not now.”

“Wolves are hunting,” he said, in agreement. The night felt charged about them, quivering as the predators passed through it. “Wright’s twitchy anyway.”

“His body,” she murmured.

He let out a long sigh, and Wright jerked, swore, and said, “God, where’d you come from?”

“Been here,” she said. She made layers of antibiotic cream and gauze, wound it about the long bones in his palm, covering up the blood.

“Ghost time, huh,” he said.

“Yup,” Sylvie said. Down to monosyllables. “Hand. Here. All done.”

“Thanks,” he said.

His courtesy, ingrained, was a weight on her. Thanking her, when she’d been the one to lead him into the wolves’ den.

She slapped the first-aid kit back together, pushed it beneath the seat. “Passenger’s seat for you,” she said.

“And the briefcase?”

Sylvie paused in climbing into her seat, unrolled another couple of hundred in fifties, held it out toward him. “They’re coming home with me. You don’t have to. This’ll get you a hotel room. Even with a witch’s name, we won’t manage to see her tonight. And I can’t just leave them lying around.”

It was a con of sorts. A gamble that Wright’s mingled trust-distrust issues would keep him close. Keep Demalion close.

Her fingers trembled. She didn’t want to make the offer, but she thought if she clutched as tight as she wanted, he’d pull away. She wanted to drag him and Demalion home and keep him. She wanted her second chance. Wanted to keep him safe.

Too late for that,
her little dark voice growled.

Wright said, “That’s blood money, Sylvie. You might be able to call it a client fee, but I know where it came from.”

“Then you know more than I do,” she said, but tucked the money away.

At his disapproving expression, she said, “Enough attitude. You may doubt my morals; god knows you wouldn’t be the first, but I’m honest enough.”

“Still not going to a hotel,” he said. “You’ve got me on your couch until I’m better.” She turned her face toward the windshield, hid her relieved smile with a sweep of hair, and relaxed. She had him. She had both of them.

He settled back into the seat with the awkwardness of a man who had just insulted his host. Given that, she wasn’t surprised when he cast about for a subject, any subject, and landed on the most obvious.

“They’re bigger than I thought, not that I ever thought about ’em. Outside of movies anyway. Werewolves, I mean.”

She started the engine, bumped them back onto the main road, and said, “Dire wolves, actually. The wolf half.” Relief made her expansive—it always did—and these were answers she could give without watching her words.

“Dire wolves are extinct.”

“Oh, someone spent time in museums,” she teased.

He smiled, the first easy and uncomplicated expression she’d seen on him, born of a happy memory. “Jamie’s crazy ’bout the Natural History Museum. He outgrew dinosaurs, but doesn’t care for live animals yet. It’s all mammoth, sabertooth, dire wolf, and a weird obsession with some giant shrew thing that bites.”

“Dire wolves didn’t go extinct. They just learned to spend more time on two legs than four.”

“You’re telling me that dire wolves were werewolves.”

“What, you’d feel better if werewolves were a purely modern phenomenon? Symptom of some strange corruption happening to the world? Sorry. The
Magicus Mundi
’s been around longer than we have.” She flicked her brights at an approaching car, got the bastards to turn their own down. The scrub brush along the narrow road caught the warring headlights and sparked luminous eyes. “Werewolves have been around for ages. They used to harass mankind a lot. Until mankind harassed back.”

“You’re making it up.”

“Am not. Just ’cause you didn’t know doesn’t mean someone else doesn’t. Detect for a moment. Why do you think there were so many in the tar pits? What predatory animal blindly follows another into death? You listen to Tatya tell it, the humans rounded them up and drove them into the pits. Ushered in a whole new era of peace founded on mass slaughter.”

“You know a lot about them.”

“Occupational hazard,” she said.

Her mood swung to a grimness she fought to hide. What would he have thought if she’d told him the truth? That she shared an ancestor with the werewolves? That Lilith, mother to vampires, succubi, werewolves, had deigned to have a human child that might carry just as much monster in her blood as the rest? Sylvie had never confessed her ancestry to Demalion, who had iffy ancestry of his own—thanks to his mother the sphinx—she sure as hell wasn’t sharing it with Wright.