Kitty Takes a Holiday

"I—I can smell you." The voice was low and painfully hoarse.

I must have jumped a foot. My heart raced like a jack­hammer and I got ready to run.

Ben stood in the doorway to the bedroom, leaning against the wall. Still shirtless, his skin was pale, damp with sweat, and his hair was tangled. He only half opened his eyes, and he winced with what looked like confusion, like he didn't know where he was.

"I can smell everything," he said, sounding like he had bronchitis. He touched his forehead; his hand was shaking.

"Ben." I rushed to him, intending to take his arm and steer him back to bed. He wasn't well, he shouldn't have been up.

As soon as I touched him, though, he flinched back. He crashed against the wall, his face stiff with terror. "No, you smell—you smell wrong—"

His new instincts identified me as another werewolf—a potential threat.

I turned to call Cormac, but he was already beside Ben, holding his arm, trying to keep him still.

"No, Ben. I'm safe. It's all right. Take a deep breath. Everything's okay." I tried to hold his face still, to make him smell me, to make him recognize that scent as friendly, but he lurched away. He would have fallen if Cormac hadn't been holding him.

I put myself next to him again, intending to help drag him to the bed. This time, Ben leaned closer to me, squint­ing as if trying to focus. His eyesight was changing, too.

"Kitty?"

"Yeah, it's me," I said, relieved that he'd recognized me.

He slumped against me, resting his head on my shoul­der, like he wanted to hug me. He found my hand and squeezed it tightly. "I don't remember what happened. I don't remember any of it," he murmured into my shirt.

Except that he remembered that something had hap­pened, and that he should have remembered. A lot of his agitation was probably stress—the anxiety that came from blocking out the trauma.

I held him still for a moment, whispering nonsense comforts at his ear until he stopped shaking. Cormac, look­ing stiff and awkward, was still propping him upright.

"Come on, Ben. Back to bed." He nodded, and I pulled his arm over my shoulder. Between us, Cormac and I walked him back to the bed. He sank onto it and fell back to sleep almost immediately. He kept hold of my hand. I waited until I was sure he was asleep, his breathing deep and regular, before I coaxed back his fingers and extricated myself from his grip.

Cormac stood at the end of the bed, ran his hands through his hair, and blew out a frustrated sigh. "Is this normal?'

I smoothed back the damp hair from Ben's face. "I don't know, I only know what I went through. I slept through the whole thing. At least, I only remember sleeping through the whole thing. I was hurt a lot worse than he is, though." I'd had my hip mauled and half my leg flayed. Not that I had any scars to prove it.

"Don't lie to me. Is he going to be okay?"

He kept asking me that. "What do I look like, some; kind of fortune-teller? I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?"

I glared at him, and part of the Wolf stared out of my eyes. I made the challenge and I didn't care if he could read it or not. "His body will be fine. Physically, he's heal­ing. Mentally—that's up to him. We won't know until he wakes up if this is going to drive him crazy or not."

Cormac scrubbed a hand down his face and started pacing. Tension quivered along his whole body; sheer willpower was keeping him from breaking something.

"Ben's tough," he said finally. "This won't drive him crazy. He'll be okay. He'll be fine." He said the words like they were a mantra. Like if he said them enough they'd have to be true.

My glare melted into a look of pity. I wished I could find the right thing to say to calm him down. To convince him that yes, he'd done all he could. Cormac had never been weak. He'd never been this helpless, I'd bet. I won­dered if I'd have to worry about him going crazy, too.

Crazier than he already was.

Cormac left the room, and a moment later I heard the front door open and slam shut. I didn't run after him—I didn't dare leave Ben alone. I listened for the Jeep starting up, but it didn't. Cormac wasn't abandoning me to this mess. Maybe he just needed to take a walk.

I brought the laptop into the bedroom, pulled a chair next to the bed, kept watch over Ben, and wrote.

I wouldn't have wished lycanthropy on anyone, much less a friend. Life was hard enough without having some­thing like this to deal with. I'd seen the whole range of how people handled it. In some people, the strength and near-invulnerability went to their heads. They became bullies, reveling in the violence they were capable of. People who were already close to psychosis tumbled over the edge. One more mental handicap to deal with was too much. Some people became passive, letting it swallow them. And some people adapted. They made adjustments, and they stayed themselves.

I regretted that I didn't know enough about Ben to guess which way he'd go.

My cell phone rang, and I fielded the call from Sheriff Marks.

"The deputy I had on the stakeout didn't see any sign of your perpetrator," he informed me.

"You know he had the interior light on in his car half the time he was out here?" I replied.

Marks was silent for a long time, and picturing the look on his face made me grin. "I'll have a talk with him," he said finally. "I'll try to have someone out there tonight, too. You let me know if you see anything."

"Absolutely, Sheriff," I said.

Hours passed, dusk fell, and Cormac still hadn't returned. I decided not to worry. He was a big boy, he could take care of himself. I certainly wasn't capable of babysitting both him and Ben.

Ben hadn't stirred since the last time he passed out. I had no idea how long he had to stay like this before I had to start worrying. When I did start worrying, who was I supposed to call for help? The werewolf pack that had kicked me out of Denver? The Center for the Study of Paranatural Biol­ogy, the government research office that was undergoing reorganization after its former director disappeared—not that I knew anything about that.

I stared at the laptop screen for so long I started to doze off. The words blurred, and even though the straight-backed kitchen chair I sat in wasn't particularly comfortable, I managed to curl up and let my head nod forward.

That was when Ben spoke. "Hi."

He didn't sound delirious or desperate. A little hoarse still, but it was the scratchy voice of someone getting over a cold. He lay on the bed and looked at me. One of his arms rested over the blanket that covered him, his fingers gripping the edge.

I slid out of the chair, set the laptop aside, and moved to the edge of the bed.

"Hey," I said. "How do you feel?"

"Like crap."

I smiled a little. "You should. You've had a crappy week."

He chuckled, then coughed. I almost jumped up and down and started dancing. It was Ben. Ben was back, he hadn't gone crazy.

"You seem awfully happy about my crappy week."

"I'm happy to see you awake. You've been out of it."

"Yeah." He looked away, studying the walls, the ceiling, the blanket covering him. Looking everywhere but at me.

"How much do you remember?" I asked.

He shook his head, meaning that he either didn't remem­ber anything or he wasn't going to tell me. I watched him, feeling anxious and motherly, wanting simultaneously to luck the blankets in tighter, pat his head, bring him a glass of water, and feed him. I wanted him to relax. I wanted to make everything better, and I didn't have the faintest idea how to do that. So I hovered, perched next to him, on the verge of wringing my hands.

Then he said, his voice flat, "Why did Cormac bring me here?"

"He thought I could help."

"Why didn't he just shoot me?"