“Guess cops really do like doughnuts,” I said as Jake packed away his third jelly doughnut in a row. “Where the hell do you put it all? One more of these and I’ll have to go jog a mile to keep it off.”

“I’m a growing boy,” he said, just after sucking a bit of a glaze from his thumb.

Cop or not, shifter or not, veteran or not, the man could kiss. I’d never felt anything so intense as when I was with him. Sure, I’d had boyfriends in the past. Not in the recent past, of course. But, God, the way his hands had felt on me, or how his lips had been so soft, but so insistent. If it hadn’t been for our need to find Eve, or my concern about bed bugs in the Sage and Sun Motel, I would have pulled him right back onto the queen sized mattress and not come back up until we needed lunch.

He glanced over at me, a little smile dancing at the corner of his lips. It was like the smile he’d had this whole trip, this knowing quirk just at the edge. Now, though, it was more pronounced, like Jake had been hiding it under a bushel this whole time.

“That our turn off?” I asked as we approached a Wyoming highway sign.

“I think so,” he said, veering east off the interstate and taking the state highway. The Lupo Congregation was somewhere around here, about forty or fifty miles outside of town.

The landscape was such a change of pace from the mountains of Enchanted Rock and Yellow Rose. It reminded me of home. All the yellow of the stunted badland grass, the vaulted pale blue of the morning sky.

“Remind you of LA?” I asked.

“Nah. Deserts east of LA are more like actual deserts. A lot of sand, flatter. Closer than Colorado, though.”

“Reminds me a little of New Mexico,” I said. “Certain parts, at least.”

As we headed for the congregation’s church, or whatever was out there, to continue our search for Eve, I couldn’t help but think about that kiss back at the motel room. I was actually kind of glad I’d shut Jake down in his cabin. This way I could go into everything, eyes completely open. No surprises. Or, if there were any surprises, no surprises that could outstrip the fact that he could turn into a fucking wolf. And, at the end of the day, wasn’t that what mattered? That your partner couldn’t hide anything bigger than being a shifter from you?

Oh, God, there I was already, thinking of him as my partner. How had that happened?

“That it out there?” Jake asked out of nowhere.

“Huh?”

“That,” he said, pointing across my line of sight to a little community of buildings off the side of the road. Out here in the middle of nowhere, just like the commune my parents had dreamed of having. A place they could raise their children away from the outside world. Before, of course, everything had fallen apart. “How far back is that?”

“A mile I think. Is that the turnoff coming up?”

He was already pushing the brakes and downshifting the pickup as we approached the dirt road. He turned off onto it, the tires crunching over the gravel and rocks, kicking up a plume of dust behind us as we bounced over the ruts and dips.

“Think we’re going to have a warm welcome when we arrive?” he asked.

“Want me to be honest or optimistic?”

“Follow your bliss.”

“I don’t think they’re going to like us coming in to pick up Eve. I’ve watched the documentaries, places like this don’t want people to leave.”

“That’s what I was worried you were going to say.”

We trekked down the long road, never taking a twist or turn as we headed through the grasslands that flanked us on either side. In the distance, a barbed wire fence appeared. The gate that would have normally blocked it was open, though, and the road led straight through, taking its first turn as it headed off in the direction of the set of buildings we’d seen from the highway.

Jake slowed the truck as he approached, his eyes peering out as he took in the scene. “Looks clear to me.”

“Expecting them to have assault rifles, or something? Guarding it against infidels?”

“Know those documentaries you’ve seen? I’ve seen ‘em, too.”

He drove in, taking the cattle guard that was right across the open gate slowly. We took the turn ahead and followed it up over a small hill.

“Is that a fucking town?” he asked, a note of awe in his voice.

“I don’t know what the hell it is,” I admitted. “Is that what a compound looks like?”

Below us stretched a complex of maybe fifteen or twenty buildings, all centered in a grid formation around a three-story, white ranch house with baby-blue trim. The buildings were a mishmash of construction, ranging from log in one case, to corrugated iron in another, to cinder block in yet another case. Chimneys or furnace stacks had been built into most of them, and little wisps of white and black smoke seemed to cover the Wyoming sky. All between the buildings, people moved beneath the early morning sun like ants. Even from this distance, though, I noticed one peculiar thing: everyone was wearing white robes.

“Look at those buildings,” Jake said. “Like they were just checking for clearance sales at the Home Depot.”

I laughed despite the seriousness of the situation and what we might be stepping into. “Think they found a sales at Linens n’ Things for the sheets?”

He laughed, the truck swerving a little as his hand shook on the wheel.

Up ahead, down at the end of the road, was what looked like a little gatehouse to the side. There wasn’t a bar dropped across the road, or anything, but it still seemed out of place.

Jake slowed the pickup as we approached and pulled to a halt next to a little sliding window set into the side.

A younger woman, probably about my age, with frizzy, bright red hair pulled aside the window as Jake rolled down his driver’s side window.

“Greetings,” she said in a slightly vapid, vocally fried voice. “Welcome to Lupo Congregation. May Reverend Fenris' blessings be on you.”

Jake glanced back at me, as if to ask if I was seeing this too.

I gave him a quick nod before he turned back around, a big grin on his bearded face. “Greetings, ma’am. My friend and I, we’ve heard and read a lot about you guys since we found one of your flyers in our motel room. We were wondering if we could come in and poke around, see what’s going on.”

“Oh?” she asked, brightening up considerably. “How fortuitous that the universe sent you one of our pamphlets, brother and sister!” Her voice was still a little airy and vague, though, in that “I’m stoned and do Yoga, here have a shot of wheat grass” kind of way.

“The first thing to know about our congregation, is that no vehicles are allowed beyond the point just ahead. We are to walk on our own two feet, just as our patron animal walks on his four. This is one of our primary teachings.”

“So, uh, park the truck, then?”

“Yes, just ahead. To the right.”

“Got it.”

He turned back to me as he rolled up the window. “Guess they ain’t got a cycling club, huh?”

I stifled a giggle as he put the truck in first and pulled up to the parking lot ahead. As we drove the little ways to where we were told to leave the pickup, I looked past Jake and out to our left, to the little haphazard-looking village. I was partially checking to count people, and to see how many even noticed we in a heretical vehicle.

No one seemed to turn, though. They just seemed to continue about their day like nothing was happening. No visitors, no strangers. Just baskets on top of their head, garden tools in their hands, small children running back and forth in dirt-spattered white smocks and tunics.

“Ready for this shit?” Jake mumbled as he slipped his gun from his holster and went to stuff it in the glove box.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I replied at the same volume as I opened the door and hopped out.

I gasped, and Jake swore loud enough for me to hear on my side of the pickup.

The frizzy haired redhead from the gatehouse was somehow right behind the truck already, her hands folded primly and properly at the front of her white robe. “For the time being,” she said, “you won’t be permitted to walk unmonitored amongst the faithful. You may call me Sister Veronica.”

Jake and I both flashed each other a look as we approached from either side of the pickup. “Uh, sure, Sister Veronica. I’m Jake and this is Elise,” Jake said, turning back to the gatehouse girl. “And, you know, whatever makes you guys feel most comfortable, I guess. Don’t want to step on any toes while we’re here looking the place over.”

The only thing I was wondering, though, was how the hell they were staying warm. That Westerly wind was coming in with a bite.

“Then follow me, Jake and Elise,” she said, before turning and leading the way on bare feet into the compound.