Beast in Me (The Divination Falls Trilogy) (6 page)

Chapter Ten

‘Sorry about that,’ Sheriff Slaughter said. Eliot was in the car with him and she looked a bit flustered. Cameron had to wonder if the good sheriff had finally confessed his feelings or at least snagged a kiss.

‘How did it go with the Moore twins?’ Cameron asked, climbing in the back as Slaughter started the cruiser.

‘As good as it can go when two foxes get drunk and go at each other.’

‘Plus,’ Eliot said, laughing, ‘it’s hard enough to tell them apart when they’re men. When they’re red foxes it’s just fur and tails and yipping as they go at it.’

‘What did you do?’ Cameron asked, his mind fuzzing around the edges for a second as he remembered being crushed to Trace. The wolf’s hands on his cock. His mouth at the back of Cam’s neck.

‘I turned the hose on them.’ Slaughter rumbled with laughter.

‘It works wonders,’ Eliot said, and winked.

‘I bet.’

‘So, you look all rumpled, Cam. Did you take a nap?’ Slaughter asked, turning onto a wide, paved road. A lot of the roads in Divination Falls seemed to be dirt or gravel, so it was a nice change to drive on a smooth surface, Cameron thought.

He caught the smirk on Eliot’s face but knew she’d never say anything to embarrass him. He ran a hand over his face and tried not to smile. He was definitely giddy. Being intimate with someone twice in one day after what felt like eons alone was definitely something to smile about. ‘Something like that.’ He sighed.

‘Good for you.’ Slaughter slowed the car and finally parked in front of a small house painted barn red. ‘This is the second place a bleed-through happened. Molly was in the back yard when it happened.’

They climbed out and Cameron could hear the falls, a distinct background noise that soothed. ‘Same tentacle thing?’

Eliot shivered, and it made him nervous. As far as constitutions went, she seemed to have a rock solid one, so a shiver from her unnerved him. ‘Not so much.’

‘Not so much? Look, I have to ask before you take me in there to meet a very nice person, no doubt – what the hell do you think I can do to help this situation? What the hell is a weather worker going to do against creatures like this? Mostly I get shocked for a living. Not even for a living. I’m dependent on what people view as my worth and what they give me accordingly. Very old school a-chicken-for-curing-your-cough kind of thing.’

Eliot laughed briefly. She looked tired to him. She leant against the car. ‘I can’t say for certain, but I think you were prompted here –’

‘You mean electrocuted?’

‘That too.’ She smiled. ‘You’re here for a reason. My intuition tells me so. I just don’t have the particulars yet. You showing up and these things escalating can’t be coincidence. I don’t believe in coincidence.’

Cameron didn’t believe in it much either. ‘OK. We’ll trust that you’re right.’

Plus, he asked himself, would you really risk leaving now? Now that you’ve just connected with him?

When he looked her in the eyes, he knew she could feel it. This attraction-connection-need thing he had going with the wolf. He wasn’t ashamed of it and the look on Eliot’s face said she didn’t expect him to be.

‘So you trust her?’ Slaughter asked.

‘Yes.’

‘And you trust him?’ he asked Eliot.

She nodded. ‘Yes, sir, sheriff, I do.’

‘Great. Now can we go in and talk to Molly? Otherwise this is going to be one hell of a long day.’

They trudged up the driveway and Cameron found himself concentrating hard, on what he wasn’t sure. Some noise that lingered just under the sound of the falls. ‘What
is
that?’ he finally asked.

By then they’d reached the back gate to the property. A carved gate made of wood the colour of caramel. Flowers of all shapes and sizes burst from under the fence and tall ones hung over it. Sunflowers lolled on their skinny stalks and when the breeze blew the smell of honeysuckle was so overpowering Cameron felt his mouth water slightly from the memory of sucking the sweet nectar from the blooms.

‘You’ll see,’ Eliot said with a grin. ‘Hello?’ she called. ‘Molly?’

‘Come in! Come in!’ The voice trilled over the back gate. Had this been a cartoon, Cameron knew that big fat black music notes would be swirling through the air, the woman’s voice was that melodious. What was she? he wondered.

‘It’s us, Moll,’ Slaughter said, reaching over the gate to unlatch it. ‘Did you remember we were coming?’

‘Of course I did. And you were bringing that new fellow. The weather man.’

She swept around the corner and Cameron blinked. She was tall, much taller than him, and she wore a grey and white dress that was all plumes and twirls and ribbons of fabric. Her white hair stood up in tufts and her enormous eyes were seawater grey. She blinked at him and smiled. My God, she had a large mouth. ‘You must be him! The weather man!’

‘Weather worker, actually,’ he said, smiling. ‘And you are Molly. The – um.’

‘Molly Carlisle,’ she said and swept one long arm inward, greeting them, ushering them into her backyard sanctuary.

Cameron cocked his head. The unidentifiable noise had gotten louder.

‘Aren’t they rambunctious?’ Molly asked, leading the way.

‘Your – um – children?’ Cam asked, taking a stab in the dark. Eliot was pressing her lips together so tight they appeared to not exist. What the hell?

‘Haha!’ crowed Molly. ‘I guess you could sort of say that. But more my boarders? Tenants? My guests!’

They turned the corner past a small man-made pond, full of koi from what he could see, and there it was. A huge, screened-in aviary. It was as big as the house to his right. Maybe even bigger. Birds of all kinds swirled and dipped and flew. They shrieked and crowed and sang. Tiny little wild canaries all the way up to crows as big as cats. How were they not all fighting? He knew some birds could be territorial.

Eliot must have plucked it out of his head because she said, ‘Molly has rules. If you need a home to recuperate, you have one, but no fighting and no monkey business.’

‘That is right!’ Molly practically sang. ‘No. Monkey. Business! I have tea. Do you all want some tea?’

‘No thanks, Moll. We’re all tea-ed out for the day,’ Slaughter answered for them all. ‘But if you wouldn’t mind telling Cameron about your experience with the … thinned veil, as you put it.’

‘Oh, my, yes.’ She sighed, shaking her head. ‘It was all I could do not to shove my head in the sand if you must know.’ She laughed.

Cameron felt his eyebrows go up and tried to stop his automatic reaction. His eyes darted to Eliot who grinned at him. ‘Ostrich?’ he mouthed when their hostess looked down to pour herself tea.

Eliot winked and returned her attention to Molly.

‘When was this? Cam asked, trying to focus. What a strange place he was living in. And how much he loved it. He wasn’t even keeping it a secret from himself – his real affection for Divination Falls and all the odd characters it housed.

‘Oooooh, several weeks ago at least. It was after the second little tremor we felt.’

‘Four weeks,’ Slaughter said.

‘And you saw what?’ Cam asked, not wanting to lead her.

‘I went to the aviary to check on the babies,’ she said, eyeing up her feathered friends.

Cameron had a brief vision of all the birds in the enclosure shifting into humans at the same time. What was plenty of space would probably go to a packed house immediately.

Molly sipped her tea and shook her head as if she still couldn’t believe it. ‘And there was this
thing
in there.’

‘Did it have tentacles?’ he asked, dying for her to tell him something. Anything.

‘Well, yes, there were tentacles. But also … wings!’ Her grey eyes bulged and he half expected her to bob her neck at him the way he’d seen ostriches do. A very small hysterical bubble of laughter popped out of him before he could help himself and he heard Eliot snort.

‘Are you OK, dear?’ Molly asked, frowning.

‘I am. Sorry. I just can’t imagine tentacles
and
wings,’ he said, trying to cover for his rudeness.

‘I know. It was most unsavoury. Bouncing about in there with all my lovelies too. They were very upset for days. Except for Mathilda.’ She shocked him by letting out a small sob.

‘Mathilda?’

‘It ate her.’

‘Ate her?’

‘Yes, it had a beak and it ate Mathilda.’

‘And she was a –?’

‘A chicken!’ Molly squawked.

Cameron fought the urge to tap his heels together and wish to go home. Not because he didn’t love this place, not because he had a home to go to, but because he thought at any moment he was going to be overcome with a serious case of inappropriate laughter.

‘I’m very sorry for your loss,’ he said.

‘Thank you.’ Molly nodded and then actually beamed at him.

‘But that concerns me more than anything,’ he said to Slaughter and Eliot. The heels of his feet tingled and his lips too. A wind tossed up and thunder rumbled. He was right; his Brother Lightning was telling him so.

‘What?’

‘If this thing ate her bird, then it’s more than just a thinning in the veil where they’re on one side and we’re on the other. It means there are actual cracks. If my understanding of this stuff is in any way on the money, then there’s probably one big one – crack, I mean – and that weakens surrounding areas. Don’t quote me on that. This is some serious B-movie shit we’re dealing with. Pardon my French,’ he said to Molly.

She waved his indiscretion off. ‘I just want you to stop the bastards. Whatever they are,’ she said and poured more tea.

Chapter Eleven

‘It ate a chicken,’ Cameron said. He watched the sky darken just enough. In fact, he often thought he was the only one who noticed the little nuances, so programmed was he to pick up on the slightest shift in the atmosphere. He had to be aware.

‘We eat chicken all the time,’ Slaughter said. He laughed, but the worry in his voice was audible. He’d tried to cover it with humour and had failed.

‘You eat multiple chickens. At once,’ Eliot piped in, also trying to sound amused. She failed too.

‘Look, we’re all scared, let’s just say that.’ Cameron felt annoyed and agitated. That often meant a storm was coming. Which often meant a problem.

‘OK.’ Eliot sighed. ‘I admit it.’

‘Me too,’ Slaughter said. ‘I’m not at all keen on creepy things that would fit right into a sci-fi novel wandering around my town, eating chickens and terrorising people.’

‘From the size of what she described, we’re lucky it didn’t eat Molly,’ Eliot said.

Slaughter grunted and then said to Cam, ‘You up for one more stop?’

‘Sure,’ Cameron said. What he really wanted, deep down, was a hot shower and to try and figure a way to entice a certain lavender-eyed wolf to curl up in his bed with him. He refused to question the attraction – physical and mental – but chose to embrace it. Sometimes you just had to say “fuck it”.

‘Good, just up the road a bit is Scoot’s place,’ the sheriff said.

‘Is he a bird too?’

Eliot laughed and shook her head. ‘Nope. But I can see why you might think that.’

‘Owl, ostrich, I just figured, who knows …? Snowy egret?’

‘Nah, don’t even think it for a minute. Scoot is not a bird.’ The sheriff reached out to pat Eliot on the arm but caught himself. Cameron watched her cheeks flush red and noticed her look of disappointment when the bear looked away.

‘Bear like you?’

‘Nope.’

‘Seer like you?’ he asked Eliot.

‘No.’ She grinned.

Cameron held up his fingers. The game was calming him down. He didn’t feel so anxious about what felt to be an encroaching storm. ‘Let’s see, I’ve met a jackal, a wolf, a bear, a lion, two seers, an owl, an ostrich, and now a …?’

‘You –’

He cut the sheriff off. ‘Do not say you’ll see! That’s fun at the weather worker’s expense.’

‘Weather man,’ Eliot corrected him good-naturedly, bringing back what Molly had called him.

‘Whatever,’ he sighed. ‘Tell me.’

‘He’s a deer. See, no big deal.’

‘Ah, I can live with that. And he’s a … taxi driver?’ he asked, as they pulled up next to a blaring yellow cab parked out in front of the tiny house.

‘Yes, sir, he is. The town’s one and only.’

‘How many people need a taxi here? I imagine most days you can walk anywhere you need to go. ‘

‘Usually people hire him to go into town or to go out to other areas. Places too far to walk.’

‘I see. Makes sense. So … He had an experience too.’ Cameron cocked his head when he heard the roar-hiss-rush of the falls. The falls …

‘He did. And it almost made him turn tail and run,’ Slaughter said, winking. ‘Sorry. I couldn’t resist.’

Cam snorted. ‘Does he think that’s funny?’

‘I would never say it to him,’ Slaughter said, his boots crunching up the gravel drive as they made their way to the door. ‘You ever seen a pissed-off buck?’

‘Buck? You said deer.’ Cam studied the tiny house. It appeared to be redwood and had black shutters and a pointed roof. It was very much a house from an illustrated book of children’s stories. He was briefly envious of the life the residents of Divination Falls had created for themselves.

‘What do you think a male deer is? It’s a buck. What do you say he is in form?’ Slaughter asked Eliot.

She shrugged. ‘Twelve point?’

‘There you go,’ Slaughter said. He smiled at Cameron. ‘Big-ass deer. Not Bambi.’

‘So him wanting to run meant …’

‘Whatever he saw was worth running from,’ the sheriff said and knocked on the red front door.

Scoot Davenport did not disappoint. He was a very tall man with broad shoulders, light brown hair, and eyes so dark they were almost black. He carried himself in a way that said he was always aware of his surroundings. It made Cameron feel a bit tense, but a lot safe. Considering the circumstances.

‘It was the damnedest thing. I mean, I live in a community where it’s not unusual to get a pick-up call and turn around to see an alligator in the backseat after a man’s what got in my cab but –’

‘Alligator!’ Cam said before he could stop himself.

Eliot waved a hand at him. ‘Later,’ she said, and winked.

‘But when you go out to take the trash out and see that – thing – looking at you … Twice! Well –’ He took a seat on an old wooden bench. The sheriff leant against the post and waited him out. ‘It makes you think you’ve gone off your rocker,’ Scoot finished.

‘This man is from out of town,’ Slaughter said. ‘Eliot here thinks he might be able to help us. Can you tell him what it was you saw, Scoot?’

The man nodded once and picked at a hole in the knee of his jeans. He glanced up at Cameron and smiled, though under it all he looked worried. ‘I’m going to sound full-on nutters,’ he said.

Cameron shrugged. ‘Try me.’

Scoot ran his fingernail up his jean leg and back down. Clearly just talking about what he’d seen disturbed him. ‘It was bigger than me. Bigger than the roof of the house. At first I thought someone was playing a practical joke and it was one of those inflatable things. You know –’ he turned his eyes to Eliot ‘– Marie Clark has one for every holiday. A turkey, a Santa Claus, a pink bunny for Easter. I thought someone had come and inflated themselves a monster right on the border of my property.’

‘That’s where it was?’ Cameron said, glancing at the woods.

‘Yes, sir, it was right there as big as life and it had two heads.’

Cam waited. He wanted to let Scoot get it out because he could see the man talking himself out of what he was saying even as he said it.

‘Two heads, wings, tentacles. It looked like someone took a few animals and sort of mixed them all together.’

‘Did you have any contact with it?’ Slaughter asked, leading Scoot along.

‘You mean besides screaming blue murder and almost crapping my pants?’

Slaughter chuckled. ‘Yeah, besides that.’

‘No. I stood there staring at it for a moment. I mean, I was sort of paralysed.’

Like a deer in headlights. Cameron shook his head to shut the stupid thought off.

‘And then, as I watched, it sort of flapped its wings for a few feet and poof! Gone!’

‘I just have one question,’ Cameron said.

All eyes turned to him. ‘Shoot,’ Scoot said.

‘How close are you to the falls?’