Chapter Fourteen – Ryder

 

I could hear the yowls coming from across town as one destruction fought another over some perceived scrap of territory. I wasn’t sure of the exact number of man-cats that had descended on the town. But, unless my ears deceived me, it was close to at least fifty. Or more.

What’s worse than fifty feral cats running loose on the streets of a small town? Fifty man-sized feral cats running loose on the streets of a small town.

Stephanie and I pressed ourselves against the front of Stan & Sons as we edged down the street in a crouch. I’d loaded up my pockets with spare rock salt shotgun shells, and stuffed two spare magazines for my sidearm in my hip pocket. My Glock was at my side in my concealed carry holster.

“Don’t I get a gun?” Stephanie whispered.

I glanced back at her as we approached the alley we’d tried to go down less than an hour before. “Do you know how to use one?”

Lips pursed tightly together, she shook her head.

“Then, no.”

Stephanie sighed as I brought up the shotgun and sliced the pie, edging around the corner with the barrel raised. When you cleared a building, or were in urban combat situations like this, it was the safest way to investigate around corners. You kept your firearm up, stepped back from the corner, and gradually checked around the corner at a distance. First one quarter, then another, then another. Until, finally, you were able to check the last bit and keep moving.

“Clear,” I whispered, forcing myself to not use the barking tone I’d been trained to utilize in combat. There wasn’t a firefight right now. There were no explosions, no grenades. This wasn’t a shock and awe tactic. This was stealth, first and foremost.

And I could do stealth.

We headed down the alley, my gait changing. Heel-toe, heel-toe, heel-toe as I advanced down the alley, my barrel barely moving a fraction of an inch up or down.

Silence reigned in our immediate area.

My mouth felt like the Sahara, and my tongue could feel every ridge of my slightly chapped lips. Blood rushed through my temples like a muddy-brown river heading out to the sea. An alleyway, or hall, is never longer than when you’re worried about making contact with the enemy. Never longer than when the adrenaline is throbbing in your body like a molten-hot knife made of pure ice, a paradox of agony as it twists your guts.

And to think, I had more than just myself or my team to worry about. Much more. A whole town was struggling, and all the visitors to it.

And behind me was a woman I’d just met. A woman who was looking to me for protection from God only knew what this was.

A woman I cared about.

“Clear,” I said in a low voice as we got to the other side, lowering my shotgun.

The trees were heavy with fresh leaves, and the floor of the woods was carpeted in underbrush and deadfall branches and trunks. A small trail disappeared into the foliage, twisting off and down into the darkness. Even my low light vision wasn’t much help through the thickness of the thicket as the land undulated, rising and falling in spots across the side of the small mountain.

“Nothing back here, either,” she said as she stepped up next to me, following my gaze into the woods. It was probably even more frightening for her, with the moon down, and just the stars overhead. At least I could almost see what we were heading into. She definitely had no such gift.

“I know,” I replied.

“Oh yeah?” she whispered, a little smile on her lips. “Ears that good?”

I hesitated, almost told her the truth right then. About what I was. About what I could become. About how good my ears really were.

That, yeah, I would’ve been able to hear them coming. That I could hear them right now, but that they were fighting it out somewhere on the other side of town.

But, I knew she’d already had the rug pulled out from beneath her too many times tonight. Her world had been flipped upside down, shaken like it was the kid that had never fit into class. Like me, when the bullying had started in elementary school.

I didn’t want to pick on her worldview any more than I had to.

So I forced a smile, and just lied.

“No. It’s because you were watching my back. Now where to?”

She pointed. “Down that trail. It meanders a little bit, but it’ll take us right by her back door.” As she finished speaking, though, something rustled off in the woods.

Maybe an early morning bird? Or was it something else? I cocked my head to the side, narrowed my eyes as I tried to listen more intently. Nothing this time around. Maybe it had just been some normal wildlife?

“Ryder?” she asked, her voice still quiet in the early morning darkness. “What’s wrong?”

Still nothing. “Let’s go, then.”

I went first, the barrel of my shotgun pointed at the forest floor as I trekked into the woods. She drew closer to me as we neared the tree line, her body nearly pressed against mine. Leaves and branches and acorns crackled and snapped under our boots and shoes. To my sensitive ears, we sounded like two platoons of drunk Marines coming back from leave as we tramped down the slope and into the small forest.

To those things scouring the town, though, I wasn’t sure. They’d been able to smell us just fine when the wind had blown down Main, but that didn’t mean their ears were as well-tuned. After all, they’d barely been formed when I saw them last, with their human parts barely melted away.

A chill went down my spine as I thought of them again. Of the way their bodies had looked, like half-burned men and women with cat fur stuck to their skin with industrial adhesive. I wasn’t sure what had happened to them, but I was damn sure I wasn’t going to let it happen to either me, or Stephanie.

As the trees closed around us, Stephanie softly cleared her throat. “Ryder, can I ask you something?”

“Yeah,” I said, my eyes scanning the trees around us.

She took a moment before she continued, but I could tell there was some trepidation in her voice when she spoke. “Are you really prepared to kill one of those cat-things? I mean, you have your guns and all. But, they’re like people, aren’t they? Still?”

“The shotgun, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t worry, the shells are just loaded with rock salt.”

“Salt?”

“In the supernatural world, salt is one of the best defenses you have. You can draw a line of it, and a spirit can’t cross. You can use it protect yourself against spells. It’ll stop or slow down all sorts of things. So, yeah, rock salt.”

She nodded, seemed to take me at my word. “Used to play in these woods all the time when I was a kid,” Stephanie whispered from beside me, her head up and her eyes darting around in the darkness as we continued our march down the slim trail. “Never thought I’d be using it for this.”

“How far away is your friend’s place?” I asked, scanning the backs of the houses.

A few of them were completely dark, but most had at least a light on in them, or one over what looked like their back door.

Immediately, I thought of what they must be going through. Living their whole life, thinking they were good people, raising their families. Then, one day, through no fault of their own, it all quite literally begins to disappear in front of their eyes. Evaporating, because of the sins of their ancestors. And then there was the question of whether they’d even committed a sin. After all, curses didn’t generally kick in for burning non-witches.

“Fourth one down,” Stephanie said, her hand coming up. I tracked where her finger was pointing, to a house up on the ridge with two of its second floor windows lit. “Right there.”

Together, we moved down the trail, through the light brush.

“I think,” she added as we got closer to the house.

“You think?” I hissed as I turned abruptly to face her.

“It’s fucking dark, okay?” Then, almost as if she were trying to illustrate her point, she tripped over a rock in the path. Her arms opened wide, and her eyes grew in surprise as she was flung forward.

I stepped in, caught her with one arm around her waist, scooped her up, and pulled her to me before she could hit the ground.

Her body was both firm and soft beneath my encircling arm, her hands more than welcome on my chest. She looked up at me, her lips inches from mine, her breath smelling of long-ago coffee and light mint. Her hair had that vanilla scent as one lock, now traveling footloose and fancy-free, drifted beneath my nose.

She smiled a little as I squeezed her waist. “You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said, her voice husky as her eyes darted down to my lips.

The smile faded from my lips as my eyes traveled down to hers.

She bit down gently on one corner of her lower lip. A fraction of ivory white against the soft pink of her lips. Considering if she should make the first move. Daring me to make it, instead.

I swallowed hard as heat rushed through my body, urging me to take her up on that dare. Take her, claim her. Crush her lips with mine.

I stopped myself, though, before I could. This was not the time. Nor was it the place. Nor was I the man. I was more trouble than I was worth to her. “We should probably get going,” I whispered, instead straightening her out and letting her go.

She frowned, stepping back a little after her feet had found their footing in the soft soil. “Right. Yeah. Sorry, clumsy me.”

I cleared my throat a little, and turned back to the supposed house of Christina, which she’d picked out just a second earlier. “Let’s go.”

I still hadn’t heard a repeat of the sound in the woods from earlier, when we’d been standing behind Stan & Sons, and the man-cats on the other side of town were still squabbling over territory. Whichever side was winning, the fight was clearly more important than the hunt.

We approached the wooden back fence of the property, which demarcated the difference between wild and domestic. A rickety gate had been installed, and Stephanie was opening it up and letting us inside before I could even voice a word of caution.

“Dammit,” I muttered as we stepped into the back and, with a clang as loud to me as one of the hourly tolls of Big Ben, gently put the gate back on its latch.

Christina’s house was a big, red brickwork thing that crouched nearly a hundred feet away on the other side of the backyard. The well-manicured lawn, with its small patch of garden in one corner, and an above-ground pool in the other, gently swept up to the house in a gradual incline. Two stories tall from the back, with the front entrance to the top floor even with the ridge that the town road ran along.

“How many kids they got?” I asked as I looked at it. The house had to have at least four bedrooms.

“None,” Christina whispered back. “She inherited the house when her grandmother passed away, and she and her boyfriend have been living there ever since.”

“And we’re sure she’s from here, right? And not just actually sick?”

“Both,” Stephanie said with a nod. “Getting second thoughts?”

I shook my head. “Just wanting to make sure. Going into a house like this is dangerous. What if the guy’s actually fine, and he’s got protection? You’re at risk, if that happens.”

“Well, so are you.”

I didn’t say anything, even though I wanted to say: “Not unless he’s got silver.”