Kitty Takes a Holiday

As far as I knew, Cormac's guns were still under the bed. This bed. Ben didn't have to know that. What if Cormac was wrong, what if Ben did have the guts to shoot himself? What would I have to do to stop him? I couldn't let Ben die. I wouldn't let him—or Cormac—give up.

I spoke quietly, stiff with frustration. "You'll have to ask him."

"Where is he?"

"I don't know. He went out."

His gaze focused on me again, finally. A glimmer of the old Ben showed through. "How long have I been out of it?"

"A couple of days."

"And you two have been stuck here together the whole time?" His face pursed with thoughtfulness. "How's that working out?"

"He hasn't killed me yet."

"He's not going to kill you, Kitty. On the contrary, I think he'd rather—"

I stood suddenly. "Are you hungry? Of course you're hungry, you haven't eaten in two days."

Footsteps pounded up the porch then. Ben looked over to the next room at the same time I did, and his hand clenched on the blanket. Slowly, I went to the front room.

The door slammed open, and Cormac stood there. He carried a rifle.

"You have a freezer, right?" he said.

"Huh?" I blinked, trying to put his question into con­text. I failed. "Yeah. Why?"

He pointed his thumb over his shoulder to the outside. I went to the door and looked out. There, in the middle of the clearing in front of the cabin, lay a dead deer. Just flopped there, legs stiff and neck arced back. No antlers. I couldn't see blood, but I could smell it. Still cooling. Freshly killed. My stomach rumbled, and I fiercely ignored it.

"It's a deer," I said stupidly.

"I still have to dress it and put the meat up. Is there room in the freezer?"

"You killed it?"

He gave me a frustrated glare. "Yeah."

"Is it even hunting season?"

"Do you think I care?"

"You shot a deer and just… dragged it here? Carried it? Why?"

"I had to shoot something."

I stared at him. That sounded like me. Rather it sounded like me once a month, on the night of the full moon. "You had to shoot something."

"Yeah." He said the word as a challenge.

So which of us was the monster? At least I had an excuse for my bloodlust.

"Ben's awake," I said. "Awake and lucid, I mean."

In fact, Ben was standing in the doorway, holding a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His hair was ruffled, stubble covered his jawline, and he appeared wrung-out, but he didn't seem likely to topple over. He and Cormac looked at each other for a moment, and the tension in the room spiked. I couldn't read what passed between them. I had an urge to get out of there. I imag­ined calling in to my own radio show: Yeah hi, I'm a were­wolf, and I'm stuck in a cabin in the woods with another werewolf and a werewolf hunter…

"Hey," Cormac said finally. "How are you feeling?"

"I don't know," Ben said. "What's the gun for?"

"Went hunting."

"Any luck?"

"Yeah."

My voice came out bright with false cheerfulness. "Maybe you could cut us up a couple of steaks right now and we could have some di

"That's the plan. If you can stoop to eating meat that someone else picked out," he said. "Oh, and I found another one of these." He tossed something at me.

Startled, I reached for it—then thought better of it and stepped out of the way. Good thing, too, because a piece of barbed wire clattered on the floor. It was bent into the shape of a cross, like the other, which was still lying on the floor by the stove. I kicked the new one in that direction.

Ben moved toward the front door, stepping slowly like he was learning to walk again.

Cormac could change his mind, I thought absently. He gripped the rifle, all he had to do was raise it and fire, and he could kill Ben. Ben didn't seem to notice this, or didn't think it was a danger. Or just didn't care. All his atten­tion was on the front door, on the outside. Cormac let him pass, and Ben went out to the porch.

I went after him.

He stared at the deer. Just stared, clutching the blanket around him and shivering like he was cold, though I didn't think the chill in the air was that sharp.

"I can smell it," he said. "All the way in the bedroom, I could smell it. It smells good. It shouldn't, but it does."

Fresh blood spilled on the ground, hot and rich, seeping out of cooling meat and crunchy, marrow-filled bones—I knew exactly what he was talking about. My mouth would be watering, if I wasn't so nervous.

"It's because you're hungry," I said softly. "I could eat it right now, couldn't I? If I wanted, I could eat it raw, skin and all—"

"Come inside, Ben. Please. Cormac'll take care of it." Ben stood so tautly, his whole body rigid, I was afraid that if I touched him he'd snap at me, and I didn't know if his snapping would be figurative or literal. Something ani­mal was waking in him; it lurked just under the surface. Very gently, I touched his arm. "Come on." Finally, he looked away from the deer. He turned, and let me guide him inside.

Hours later, Cormac stacked cuts of wrapped venison in the freezer, while I pulled steaks out of the broiler. Turned out everyone here liked them rare. Go figure.

Cormac came in from cleaning up outside and went to the kitchen sink to wash his hands. "Tomorrow I'll find someone to take care of the hide. The rest of it I buried—"

"I don't want to know what you did with the rest of it," I said, giving him a "stop" gesture while I took plates out of the cupboard.

"Come on, it's not like you haven't seen any of it before. In fact, you might have offered some help."

"I don't know anything about dressing a deer for real. I usually just rip into it with my teeth."

Ben sat at the kitchen table, staring blankly at the table­top. Cormac had given him a change of clothes, but he still wrapped himself with the blanket. I tried not to be worried. He needed time to adjust. That was all. Not having him take part in the banter was weird, though.

The table, an antique made of varnished wood with a couple of matching straight-backed chairs, was small, barely big enough for two people, totally inadequate for three. After I arranged the steaks on plates, Cormac picked up his and stayed put, eating while standing by the counter. I brought the other two plates to the table. I set one, along with a set of utensils, in front of Ben. His gaze shifted, startled out of whatever reverie he'd been in, and tracked the food.

Determined not to hover, I sat down with my own meal. I couldn't help it, though; I watched him closely.

Meat looks different to a werewolf. I didn't used to be much of a meat eater at all. I used to be the kind of per­son who went to a steakhouse and ordered a salad. But after I was attacked, and I woke up and had a look at my first steak, so rare that it was bleeding all the way through—I could have swallowed the thing whole. I'd wanted to, and the thought had made me ill. It had been so strange, being hungry and nauseous at the same time. I'd almost burst into tears, because I'd realized that I was different, right through to the bones, and that my life would never be the same.

What would Ben do?

After a moment, he picked up the fork and knife and calmly sliced into the meat, and calmly put the bite into his mouth, and calmly chewed and swallowed. Like noth­ing was wrong.

We might have been having a calm, normal meal. Three normal people eating their normal food—except for the spine-freezing tension that made the silence painful. The scraping of knives on plates made my nerves twinge.

Ben had eaten half his steak when he stopped, resting the fork and knife at the edge of the plate. He remained staring down when he asked, "How long?"

"How long until what?" I said, being willfully stupid. I knew exactly what he was talking about.

He spoke in almost a whisper. "How long until the full moon?"