Kitty’s Greatest Hits (20 page)

The rifle thundered in the closed space of the Jeep, rattling Cormac’s ears to numbness. The glass of the driver’s side window frosted with a million cracks radiating from a quarter-sized hole in the middle. The wolf had vanished.

He couldn’t hear a damn thing, and he wasn’t willing to bet he’d blown the thing’s head off that easy; he couldn’t spot any blood. He looked around, but couldn’t see much, lying back across the front seats, peering out the remaining windows, mostly into sky.

Struggling to his knees, he broke out the driver’s side window with the muzzle of his rifle, dropping a rain of glass outside, and looked out. Shards of glass glittered across the asphalt. He didn’t see the wolf. Definitely didn’t see blood. Which meant it had ducked and run. Making his life harder.

He made a quick three sixty, looking out every window, hoping to see where it had fled. Werewolves were fast, but he should have seen something, a flash of movement, the lupine form dashing madly to safety. Otherwise, it was still here, hiding low and out of sight next to the Jeep. He wasn’t going to go outside until he knew.

Even if he did manage to kill the thing in a head-to-head fight, facing it down meant risking getting bitten or scratched, which was as good as dead as far as Cormac was concerned. No sense in taking stupid risks, that was the trick.

He started the engine and backed away. Right away he heard a
thunk
against the side, and saw what he was hoping for—the wolf scrambling away from the vehicle, turning tail and running away across the parking lot.

The other trick was realizing werewolves didn’t generally take stupid risks, either. Instinct told them to run when a hunt stopped being easy.

Cormac shoved open the door, stepped out, took aim with the rifle, and fired. The wolf disappeared around the side of the building.

“Damn,” he murmured. He’d have known right away if he’d even clipped the wolf. All he had to do was clip it. The silver in the bullet only had to touch the monster’s blood to poison it, killing it in a matter of moments. That wolf hadn’t slowed down. Cormac had just plain missed. He could kick himself. He didn’t miss very often, even when his target was running.

But he’d flushed the thing into the open. That was something. The game wasn’t over yet.

The engine in the Jeep was still running, and Cormac got in and headed back toward the Catholic school. Maybe he could run the thing down. Not to mention, he didn’t want to be around when the cops arrived to investigate the gunfire. Assuming they did. He glanced in the rearview mirror; the motel was still dark. No lights had turned on. He had to smile—small town on the plains, random gunfire in the middle of the night, and nobody bats an eye. They probably thought it was some kid out shooting street signs. Good enough.

*   *   *

He couldn’t hope to follow the wolf in the Jeep—the beast traveled overland, in a straight line. Cormac had to stick to streets. But that was okay. The sun had started rising. Monday morning, the school would be busy, just starting its day. Good. Easy for Cormac to tell who was missing, then.

He was too close to identifying the wolf to worry too much about his low profile. Parked in his Jeep, he watched the campus come to life, girls in their uniforms spilling from the dorms in clumps—packs, almost—hanging around on the lawns, filing into the classrooms.

Then came his turn. He kept the rifle under the seat, automatically felt for the handgun under his jacket, and headed toward the newer school building, where most of the activity was. He scanned the faces quickly, efficiently, recognizing many of them from the church service yesterday. His wolf was around a hundred and seventy pounds, and he searched his mental catalog for anyone he’d seen who fit that description. That ruled out most of the students. But a number of the adults were that size. It would all depend on who was missing, who was away, sleeping it off.

He entered the school and made his way down the main corridor, knowing he was out of place here; his skin crawled as people looked at him, stared at him, identified him as a stranger. Wasn’t anything he could do about that, so he concentrated on the job at hand. He walked up and down the hallway once, glancing through the windows in classroom doors, marking faces, noting rooms that didn’t have a teacher in them, making a mental checklist of other staff members he ought to be looking for—administrators, even janitors. He hadn’t seen anything definitive, nothing that worked on his gut feeling. In a sense, he was trying to prove a negative here, trying to prove an identity by its absence. He had to make sure. He couldn’t be wrong when he pulled the trigger.

The building had a lobby, and he waited there while the last of the morning crowd came in and made their way to their classes. A few of the nuns were also teachers—he noted them. He also noted that he didn’t see the nun who’d spoken to him yesterday. But maybe she wasn’t a teacher. He also hadn’t seen the priest. At least, not until he went back outside, where the man was waiting for him on the sidewalk out front.

Out of his cassock now, the man wore plain black trousers and a black shirt with a clerical collar. As Cormac left the building, the priest caught his gaze and started toward him. Cormac could have avoided him, but he’d just as soon hear what the guy had to say. He looked to weigh about a hundred and seventy.

Cormac waited, and the priest stopped in front of him. “You must be the visitor Sister Hilda told me about. I’m Father Patrick.” He didn’t offer his hand. Neither did Cormac, who only nodded a greeting. The priest didn’t seem to mind that Cormac didn’t say his name. “You seem to be looking for something,” he said.

Cormac kept it straightforward. “There’s a wild animal been killing cattle out east of here. I tracked it here. You see anything? Hear anything?”

“And here I was, hoping you were looking for redemption.”

In spite of himself, Cormac chuckled. “No. Not yet, anyway.”

“Maybe someday, then.”

In fact, Cormac was pretty sure he wouldn’t make it that far. It didn’t bear thinking on. “So I take it you haven’t seen anything? If the thing’s bedding down around here, you ought to be worried. All these kids around.”

Father Patrick gave him a quizzical look. “It’s that dangerous?”

“Yeah, it is. I think it’ll kill anything in front of it.”

“You make it sound like a monster,” Father Patrick said.

“Yeah, that’s about right.”

“And why is it up to you to hunt it? You aren’t with the Department of Wildlife, I suspect.”

“No, sir. Look, I won’t take up any more of your time—”

“Not at all.” The priest made a calming gesture with a hand. Like a saint in a religious painting. “But I would ask you to consider letting this go. I’d hate to have to call the police about a trespassing violation.”

Cormac just smiled. He’d heard shit like this a hundred times before. “I’ll get out of your hair, then.” He started to turn away.

“Also consider, that even a monster is a creature of God, and God does take care of His own,” the priest said.

Cormac looked at him. “You believe in a God that creates monsters? Monsters who murder?”

“We don’t get to choose God. We don’t get to make God. God makes us.”

He knows,
Cormac thought. Or maybe—but he couldn’t have been the werewolf, the timing was off. He wouldn’t have had enough time to shift back to human, dress, and appear so calm and put together. At least, Cormac was pretty sure he wouldn’t have had enough time.

“You know who it is,” Cormac said. “You know
what
it is. Then you know it’s a devil, a demon—”

“And we’re all God’s children,” Father Patrick said firmly. “I’m going to make that phone call now.”

Cormac walked away.

It could be the priest. If he’d been a werewolf a long time, if he had the experience, maybe he could shape-shift that quickly and appear so calm just an hour after attacking Cormac, after getting shot at. But Cormac wasn’t sure that made any sense.

Something screwy was going on here. Cormac didn’t care what the old man said, he had to take care of it. He had to make the kill soon, because the full moon was still a couple days away and he had a feeling that would be too late. That monster this morning wasn’t a creature of God; it was a pure cold killer. A child of Satan. Didn’t matter what kind of fancy theology you dressed it up in.

Someone was lounging on the hood of his Jeep. One of the students—an honest-to-God Catholic schoolgirl in a knee-length plaid skirt, cardigan, crisp shirt, and maroon tie, the knot hanging loose, about halfway down her chest. Her black hair—dyed, probably—was in a ponytail, with loose wisps hanging around her face. She was looking away at something and seemed to be chewing gum.

This place was too damn crowded, and too many people had seen him already.

Cormac was practically in front of her when she decided to look at him.

He made the automatic assessment: she was older, maybe seventeen, and full grown. “Big boned” was the polite way of describing her sturdy frame. Not quite big enough to be the wolf from last night. But he had to acknowledge the rather predatory look to her. She definitely didn’t seem afraid of him.

“What’s your story?” he said, resting his hands on his hips.

“I was framed,” she said. “They weren’t my drugs.”

Chuckling, he looked away. “You out here scuffing up my Jeep for a reason?”

She gave the Jeep a long, pointed look. Pale mud caked the wheel wells, the paint job had gone from olive green to pale green over the years, and rust spots had broken out across the hood, where the paint had been dinged by rocks and hail. Not to mention the shot-out window.

“I heard you talking to Father Patrick. And … I don’t know. I shouldn’t even be here.” She slumped away from the Jeep and started to walk away.

“Hold on there,” Cormac said. “What have you seen?”

She glanced nervously toward the school and bit her lip—a physical expression of the tension he’d been feeling since he arrived. So it wasn’t just him. “The other kids tell ghost stories. They talk about hearing noises—howling, banging on the windows. When I first got here, I thought it was just the usual thing; they’re always trying to scare the new girl. But they don’t go out at night. This is my third boarding school and I’ve never been to one where kids didn’t break curfew. But here, they don’t. They’re scared.”

“You know that for sure?”

“Yeah. And it’s not just them. No one goes out at night. It’s the kids who double-check the locks on the doors and windows. We’ve all heard the noises. The sisters say it’s bears or coyotes. But I don’t think that’s what it is.”

“And what do you think it is?”

She ducked her gaze. “It’s crazy.”

Cormac gave a wry smile. “People always say that to me. Listen, something killed some cattle on a ranch ten miles or so out, and it wasn’t coyote or bear. I tracked the thing back here. I think it may be living around here, and I think it’s not going to stay happy just killing livestock.”

The fearful look in her eyes showed shock, but not surprise. He had a feeling he could have said the word “werewolf,” and she wouldn’t have been surprised.

“I’ll get it,” Cormac said. “Whatever it is.”

“Okay. Good,” she said. Her smile was nervous. “I should get back—”

“Hey,” he said, before she could scurry away. He had a bad idea and hated himself for even thinking it. “Would you mind doing something for me?”

*   *   *

He asked the girl to walk across the campus at midnight. That was all. Back and forth between the dormitory and the old school building, across the longest stretch of lawn, slowly and leisurely. She’d looked at him like he was crazy, and Cormac hadn’t wanted to defend himself. He wasn’t crazy, just driven. And he lived in a different world than most folks, a world where monsters like vampires and werewolves existed.

Which was, in fact, one definition of crazy.

Cormac had promised he would be there, that he wouldn’t let anything happen to her. And that he would fix whatever the trouble was. He tried to tell himself that even if something did happen to her, it was a small price for getting rid of the werewolf. He didn’t ask for her name on purpose.

He was nervous. He’d never worked with live bait before. Not intentionally.

He left the Jeep, plastic sheeting taped over the driver’s side window, at the motel. It would be too hard to hide, and the werewolf would recognize it right off. Easier to sneak around on his own. But without the Jeep he didn’t have an escape route.

It was all in the setup. No reason he’d need an escape route, unless this went south. Really far south.

The open lawn separated the campus’s buildings from the street. A few trees, towering cottonwoods for the most part, with some maples scattered around and a few clumps of shrubs made up the landscaping. Not a lot of cover available. A long sidewalk led from the street to the church doors, and a couple of tall, well-trimmed shrubs served as a sort of gate at the end of the sidewalk. Cormac settled here with his rifle. The spot offered a view of the lawn, and was downwind from most of the campus. The werewolf wouldn’t be able to smell him.

He arrived early and waited there for more than an hour. All the lights in all the buildings went off at 10:00
P.M.
, except for a porch light over the door of the church. A faint light was visible within as well, over the altar, filtered through stained glass. Cormac supposed the door to the church was unlocked, if tradition held. Maybe that would be his escape route. Ironic.

Midnight came, and he didn’t see anything. The girl might have decided not to help him after all. He couldn’t blame her. He’d give it another half hour, then go looking for the monster himself. He had to be able to flush the werewolf out somehow. Quietly, he flexed his legs and arms, stretching in place to keep the blood flowing, to keep warm.

There she was. He recognized the dark figure by the shape of her ponytail. Out of the uniform, she wore torn jeans and hugged a short leather coat around herself, hunched over, as if cold or fearful. She stomped down the walk aggressively, like she had something to prove. Cormac might have wished for her to be more skittish—to move like a prey animal. But she was alone, obviously nervous. That would have to do to attract the wolf.