Kitty Takes a Holiday

Restlessness translated to need. Wolf was awake and wouldn't settle down. Let's go, let's go —

No.

This was what happened: I couldn't sleep, and the night forest beckoned. Ru

I slept in sweatpants and a tank top. The air was dry with the heat and smell of ashes from the stove. I wasn't cold, but I huddled inside my blankets, pulling them firmly over my shoulders. I pulled a pillow over my head. I had to get to sleep.

I might even have managed it for a minute or two. I might have dreamed, but I couldn't remember about what. I did remember moving through cotton, trying to claw my way out of a maze of fibers, because something was wrong, a smell in the air, a noise that shouldn't have been there. When I should have only heard wind in the trees and an occasional snap of dry wood in the stove, I heard something else… rus­tling leaves, footsteps.

I dreamed of a wolf's footsteps as she trots through dead leaves on the forest floor. She is hunting, and she is very good. She is almost on top of the rabbit before it bolts. It only runs a stride before she pounces on it, bites it, and it screams in death—

The rabbit's scream was a horrible, high-pitched, gut-wrenching, teakettle whistlelike screech that should never come out of such an adorable fuzzy creature.

I jerked upright, my heart thudding fast, every nerve searing.

The noise had lasted only a second, then silence. It had come from right outside my door. I gasped for breath and listened: wind in the trees, a hiss of embers from the stove.

I pushed back the covers and stood from the bed.

Moving softly, barefoot on the wood floor, I went to the front room. My heartbeat wouldn't slow. We may haveto run, we may have to fight. I curled my fingers, feel­ing the ghosts of claws. If I had to, I could shift to Wolf. I could fight.

I watched the window for movement outside, for shad­ows. I only saw the trees across the clearing, dark shapes edged with silver moonlight. I took a slow breath, hoping to smell danger, but the scent from the stove overpowered everything.

I touched the handle of the front door. I ought to wait until morning. I should wait until sunlight and safety. But something had screamed on my front porch. Maybe I'd dreamed it.

I opened the door.

There it was, lying stretched out in front of me. The scent of blood and bile hit me. The thing smelled like it had been gutted. The rabbit was stretched out, head thrown back, the fur of its throat and belly dark, matted, and ripped. The way it smelled, it ought to have been sit­ting in a pool of blood. It didn't even smell like rabbit—just guts and death.

My nose itched, nostrils quivering. I—the Wolf—could smell blood, the thick stuff from an animal that had died of deep wounds. I knew what that smelled like because I'd inflicted that kind of damage on rabbits. The blood was here, just not with the rabbit.

I opened the door a little wider and looked over.

Someone had painted a cross in blood on the outside of my front door.

Chapter 3

I didn't go back to bed. Instead, I put a couple of new logs in the stove, poked at the fire until it blazed hot, wrapped myself in a blanket, and curled up on the sofa. I didn't know what bothered me more: that someone had painted a cross in blood on my door, or that I had no clue who had done it. I hadn't seen anything, heard anything after the rabbit's death cry, or smelled so much as a whiff of a breath mint. What was more, I didn't remember if I had only dreamed the rabbit's scream, or if I had really heard it. If it had been real, and crossed into my dream, or if my subconscious had made it up. Either way, it was like someone killed the rabbit, smeared blood on the door, and then vanished.

At first light, I called the police.

Two hours later, I sat cross-legged on the porch—on the far side, as far away from the rabbit as I could get—and watched the county sheriff and one of his deputies exam­ine the door, the porch, the dead rabbit, and the clearing. Sheriff Avery Marks was a tired-looking middle-aged man, with thi

"You didn't hear anything?" Marks asked for the third time.

"I thought I heard the rabbit scream," I said. "But I was still asleep. Or half asleep. I don't really remember."

"You're saying you don't remember if you heard any­thing?" He sounded frustrated at my answers, and I couldn't blame him.

"I thought I heard something."

"About what time was that?"

"I don't know. I didn't look at the clock."

He nodded sagely. I had no idea what that information could have told him.

"I'm thinking this looks like some kind of practical joke," he said.

A joke? It wasn't fu

"Ms. Norville, I hate to say it, but you're well known enough that you may be a target for this sort of thing."

You think? "So what are you going to do about it?"

"Keep an eye out. You see anything suspicious, you see anyone walking around here, let me know."

"Are you going to do anything?"

He eyed me and gave the condescending frown that experts reserved for the unenlightened. "I'll ask around, do some checking. This is a small community. Something'll turn up." He turned to the earnest deputy. "Hey, Ted, make sure you get pictures of those tire tracks." He was point­ing at the ones leading away from my car.

This man had not inspired my faith.

"How—how am I supposed to clean all this up?" I asked. I was grateful for winter. The smell hadn't become too over­powering, and there were no flies.

He shrugged. "Hose it down? Bury the thing?"

This was like talking to a brick wall.

My cell phone rang inside the house; I could hear it from the porch. "I'm sorry, I should pick that up."

"You do that. I'll let you know when I find something." Marks and his deputy moved toward their car, leaving me alone with the slaughter. I felt oddly relieved by their imminent departure.

I dodged the rabbit, made it through the door without touching blood, and grabbed the phone. Caller ID said Mom. Her weekly call. She could have picked a better time. Strangely, though, I realized I needed to hear her voice.

"Hi," I said, answering the phone. I sounded plaintive. Mom would know something was wrong.

"Hi, Kitty. It's your mother. How are you?"

If I told her exactly what had happened, she'd be appalled. Then she'd demand that I come stay with her and Dad, where it was safe, even though I couldn't. I'd had to explain it a million times when I told her last month that I wasn't coming home for Christmas. I didn't have a choice: the Denver pack had exiled me. If I came back and they found out about it, they might not let me leave again. Not without a fight. A big fight. Mom still gave me endless grief. "We're in Aurora," she'd said. "Aurora isn't Denver, surely they'd understand." Technically she was right, Aurora was a suburb, but as far as the pack was concerned, Denver was everything within a hundred-mile radius.