Lone Star 04 (9 page)

He turned suddenly, and caught her watching him. He gave her a broad grin, and Jessie didn't turn away. “What are you thinking?” he asked.

“You sure you want to hear?”

“Yes. I am certain I do.”

“I was thinking,” Jessie said, “that going back out there after that cane was either a very brave or a very foolhardy thing to do.”

Feodor closed one eye, the coffee cup halfway to his mouth. “I would think I am closer to a fool than a hero. If you want to know the truth, I was guided more by guilt than anything else.” A shadow crossed his face. “I should not have let him go out there alone. That was wrong.”

“Why? Because of the wolf—or the man-wolf?”

Feodor's mouth tightened into a firm and thoughtful line. “You ask an honest question. I will give you the best answer I can. I went to the university in Vienna. It was very hard for my family to send me there. I tried to become an attorney. Yet I am not an attorney. I am a farmer. See?” He smiled slightly and held out his open palms.

Jessie reached out and touched them, felt the callused texture of his skin, and the strength in the tendons beneath. “Not a lawyer's hands, that's for sure.”

Feodor shrugged. “I have answered your question, yes? I am caught between the new and the old. I do not believe in werewolves, Jessica Starbuck, but I understand the fears of my people. They have a new land now, but it is hard for them to let go of the one they left behind.”

“May I see that thing?” asked Jessica. She nodded toward the cane, and Feodor handed it to her.

“Sort of—beautiful and awful at the same time, isn't it?”

“Yes. I would say that is so.”

The can was not painted black, as she had first supposed. It was simply darkened and stained with age. It was the silver head, though, that intrigued her. It was fashioned roughly in the shape of an L—part of the angle made to fit the hand, the other part curved to clamp tightly over the cane. The silver head formed the muzzle, eyes and long ears of a wolf. The lower angle curled down over the cane in the thick fur of the creature's neck and shoulders. Jessie pressed her hand tightly around the head, then jerked it quickly away.

“It‘s—cold,” she said, widening her eyes in surprise. “Why would it be that cold?”

“I suppose because it is silver,” he said. A slight smile touched the corner of his mouth, and Jessie caught it.

“All right,” she said wearily, “let's not get dark and mysterious.”

“I didn't say a thing,” Feodor said blandly.

“Good. Just don't. Feodor, that is a real wolf out there. Ki says he's nearly certain he hit it at least once. He's a good shot, too.”

“Good shots miss.”

“I know they do. Maybe Ki
did
miss. Or maybe he didn't. Maybe the wolf went off and died somewhere.”

Feodor gave her a look. “No one in this village is going to believe that, Jessica.”

“No, I don't suppose they will.” Jessica paused a moment. “Feodor, how long has the settlement been here?”

“A year and a half. No, closer to two.”

“And when did you start having ... wolf trouble?”

“Two months ago. A young girl was attacked and killed. Only eight years old.”

“What?” Jessie sat up straight. “I didn't know about that.”

Feodor let out a breath, searched through his pockets, and began thumbing tobacco into a heavy briar pipe. “She was bringing up stock. Down by the creek, just after sun-down. We—many of us—heard her scream. The thing nearly tore her in half... dragged her a good hundred yards before he ... left her alone.”

Jessie read the hard lines of pain in his face. “And you hadn't seen any wolves before that? Not any?”

“Never.” He looked squarely at Jessie. “The girl was killed under a full moon. You can imagine what my people thought of that.”

“But it's not a full moon now, is it? Sonia said it won't be for another three days. How do they explain that?”

“Explain?” Feodor's calm features suddenly exploded in anger. “My God, a man is dead, and you talk of explanations! I—” He let out a breath and ran a hand through his hair. “Forgive me. I had no cause for that.”

“Forget it. Maybe I was asking too many questions.”

“I would not be much of a lawyer,” Feodor said, smiling, “if I can be injured by a few questions. The learned masters at the university were tyrants. We were taught to ask questions—
and
answer them—in our sleep.”

“Do you think you'll ever go back to that?”

“I don't know.” He looked down at his hands. “What I told you a moment ago was the truth, Jessica. I am not yet sure which Feodor I really am.”

“Well, anyway,” she said gently, “whichever you turn out to be, I know you'll be the best.”

Feodor caught the tone of her voice. He looked up quickly, and his dark eyes flashed a message Jessie had no trouble at all understanding. She met his gaze boldly and returned it.

Feodor started to speak, then thought better of it. He started for the door and stopped to face her. “You and Ki will stay here in the village tonight, of course. I'll arrange for it with some of our people.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that.”

“Well, then...” Feodor looked at her. “Well, good night, Jessica.” He turned quickly and left the cottage.

 

 

Jessie wasn't sure what woke her.

She sat up straight and cocked her head to listen. When her eyes got used to the dark, she slipped out of bed and walked quietly across the unfamiliar room to the window. The near-full moon was hidden behind pale, fast-moving clouds. Jessie could just make out the dim shapes of the cottages nearby, and the dark, flat horizon farther away.

Maybe it was nothing at all, she decided. Part of a dream that had brought her up out of sleep.
That
would certainly be no surprise, she told herself wearily. After the day's bizarre events, sleep hadn't come easily at all, and when it did—

Jessie's heart leaped up in her throat. She pressed her hands against the sill and peered out into the night. There was something ... something ...

Suddenly the low clouds scudded aside and the moon flooded the earth with cold white light. The thing was a good twenty yards from Jessie's window, just past the last cabin in the village. At first it was no more than the night itself, another part of the dark. Then, as the clouds rushed by, it seemed to draw strength and body from the moon, changing before her eyes from shadow to wispy gray. It stood there a long moment, silent and unmoving. Then, sweeping its head around, it turned and walked away into the fields.

Jessie reached blindly for a straight-back chair and eased herself down. She tried to keep from shaking, but couldn't. It was easy to tell herself the thing she'd seen wasn't there—that it was a trick of the light and her own imagination. She knew, though, that wasn't so.

Chapter 7

Jessie hadn't been asleep again for more than an hour when the settlement began to stir. Like any farming community, the day's work began before sunrise. A milk cow bawled, and chickens began clucking about outside the window. Cookpans rattled on the stove, and one enterprising farmer started nailing a broken fence when there was scarcely light to see it.

Jessie moaned and gave up, stumbled out of bed, and searched out her clothes in the half dark. The family who'd put her up invited her to breakfast in broken English, and Jessie accepted.

She found Ki waiting across the common, and strolled down to meet him. Like Jessie, he was wearing the same clothes he'd put on the day before, since neither had anticipated spending the night outside of Roster. His well-worn denims were faded nearly white, and the loose-fitting cotton twill shirt had been washed so often it had no color at all. A battered Stetson and an old leather jacket completed his outfit. She saw he had thrust a pair of the wicked, two-pronged
sai
under his belt, weapons he could use in a dozen different ways.

“I will not ask if you rested well,” said Ki. “I'm sure you slept no better than I did.”

“Good,” Jessie said dully. “I'm glad you're not asking. Because I certainly don't care to talk about it. Three hours in two nights just isn't very satisfying.” She looked past Ki to the sod-roofed cottage at the end of the common. “Have you seen anyone yet? I was wondering how the old man is doing.”

“I saw him,” said Ki. “Physically, he is doing well. The wounds are not infected. It is his mind that has been poisoned, Jessie. He's convinced the creature's blood now flows in his veins. That he will become a man-wolf when the moon is full. I cannot—” Ki stopped and gave her a puzzled frown. “Jessie, what's wrong?”

“Uh, nothing, I guess.” Jessie shrugged, but Ki's eyes wouldn't leave her. She shot him a weak little grin. “Can't keep any secrets from you, can I? Ki, something happened last night. I'm not at all sure what. I saw something. Out there, in the middle of the night.” She told him, then, about waking and watching the spectral shape appear in the moonlight, then move off into the darkness. She told it exactly as she'd seen it, leaving nothing out.

Ki put a hand to his face and studied her thoughtfully. “No wonder you didn't get any sleep.”

“It's crazy, isn't it? Ki, I could have seen something and let my imagaination take it from there, I guess, but—”

“But you didn‘t, did you?”

“No. I didn't. It was there. I did see something.” She bit her lip nervously. “What do you figure it was? I mean, besides a werewolf? I don't care
what
it looked like, I am not ready for that.”

“I'm not either. And that tells us something, doesn't it? You either saw a real werewolf, or something that looked like one. If we cannot accept the first, that leaves us with an interesting question. What looks like a man-wolf and isn't?”

“Someone who
wants
to look like one?”

Ki nodded. “A most intriguing possibility.”

Jessie took a few steps, toeing her boots into the ground. “I don't know,” she said hesitantly. “Whatever that thing was doing out there, it wasn't for my benefit. It didn't know I was going to be watching.”

“No,” Ki agreed, “it had some other purpose for prowling around the village.”

Jessie let her eyes sweep the horizon, past the dark fields of wheat to the somber line of trees by the creek. The sky was pale blue in the east, but the sod-roofed cottages and the people moving about were still gray and indistinct. “All right.” Jessie let out a breath. “Wolves and other spooks aren't all we've got to worry about, Ki. I'm determined to find out who's after these folks' land, and I think the answer's out here. We won't learn much back in Roster.”

Ki thought a minute. “While you're pursuing that, maybe I can learn something about things that prowl around in the night.”

“Oh?” Jessie gave him a skeptical frown. “How do you figure on doing this?”

“By using mysterious Oriental methods,” Ki grinned. “Lying a little, looking in the wrong direction, and appearing to do something else entirely.”

Jessie made a noise in her throat. “Nothing real Oriental about that, friend. Sounds to me like a couple of St. Louis bankers making a deal.”

 

 

The funeral of Michael Antonescu took place on a barren hilltop just east of the settlement. It was nearly ten in the morning, and Ki was already gone. Jessie stood apart, watching two of the young man's broad-shouldered relatives carry the greenwood coffin slowly past the common and up the hill. Gustolf led the widow carrying her son, and the rest of the villagers followed. Jessie fell in behind, keeping the respectful distance of an outsider. The ceremony was short. In less than half an hour, the settlers were back at work under the broiling summer sun. Except for the fresh dirt of a new grave, it was hard to tell that anything unusual had happened.

Jessie knew she ought to be asking questions, but decided this particular morning wasn't the right time for it. She had no desire to talk to Gustolf, and a quick look from Sonia at the funeral did nothing to change her mind. Instead, she found her Colt in her saddlebag and stuck it out of sight under her jacket, then wandered out of the settlement to the dark line of trees that masked the creek.

The creek seemed a world away from the hot plains of Kansas. The waterway had clearly been there a long time, for the years had cut through hard stone banks a good ten feet down to the creek itself. Jessie was surprised to find nearly three feet of water coursing by in places. In this part of the country in midsummer, it could easily have been bone dry.