Darknight(91)

But after that one long, hideous pause, the Damon-wolf let out a sound halfway between a bark and a snarl, and slunk away, a dark incongruous shape against the gleaming wood floors and expensive rugs. Broken glass crunched under its paws, and then it was gone.

Neither Connor nor I moved. We only stood there, huddled together, bodies tense, sure it would come back at any moment. Then, from far off, I heard a drawn-out baying that could only have come from the creature. Somehow it had gotten outside, had moved off.

And then, much closer, the rushing sound of tires in the driveway. The thunk of one car door shutting, then another, and a few seconds later Lucas Wilcox’s tall form filled the doorway. Behind him I could see Marie, expression impassive as always, although I caught the slightest widening of her eyes as she took in the destruction around us, the limp form of Jessica Lowe’s body on the floor.

Lucas, however, was not nearly as reserved. “Fucking hell!” he exclaimed almost the second he walked into the entryway. His gaze fell to Jessica, and I saw his mouth tighten, and the glitter of sorrow in his dark eyes. “Poor kid,” he added softly. To my surprise, he went and knelt next to her, laid a hand on her head, then seemed to murmur some words, although I couldn’t make out what they were. Then he pushed himself to his feet, expression grim. “What happened?”

I opened my mouth to reply, since Connor seemed more or less stunned, still grappling with the realization that his brother had succumbed to an evil he couldn’t begin to contemplate. However, Marie forestalled me, saying,

“Damon sought power where he should not. I warned him, told him not to stray down paths he couldn’t begin to comprehend. But he ignored me, and has become the yee naaldlooshii.”

“The what?” Connor demanded, seeming to come out of his stupor.

Her eyes were a warm brown, striking against her black hair. They appeared calm, seemingly untouched by the horrors around us. “A shapechanger — what some call a skin-walker.”

“Oh, come on,” Lucas said, shaking his head. “That’s just a legend. You’re not suggesting — ”

“She doesn’t have to suggest,” I broke in. “Connor and I both saw it. A huge gray wolf…but with Damon’s eyes.”

Beside me, Connor shuddered, but he didn’t say anything to contradict me. Somewhere inside, he might have wished he could deny what we had seen. Luckily, he was not the type to challenge the evidence of his own eyes.

“Yes,” Marie said. “It is usually the eyes that give it away.”

Lucas looked baffled, scared, and angry all at the same time. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation — ”

Marie turned her cool gaze on him. “There is one, and it is that our primus has given in to a great evil. His was always a questing soul, and this time it sought power in the very worst place it possibly could.”

“So what do we do?” Connor asked, voice tight. “How do we help him, make him get better?”

“You cannot help him.” Her tone was implacable, impersonal as a judge handing down a sentence. “Once a man has destroyed the humanity within himself in exchange for these powers, there is no redemption. All we can do is stop him before he takes any more innocent lives.” At last she glanced down at Jessica’s prone body, expelling the smallest of breaths as she did so. Even as Connor shook his head in denial, she went on, “Would you hesitate to kill a rabid dog? That is what your brother has become, Connor.

“The only thing we can do is put him out of his misery.”





16





Doppelgänger





I drove us back to town, since Connor was in no shape to get behind the wheel. Lucas and Marie stayed behind at Damon’s house, calling for reinforcements to get the place cleaned up by any means necessary, magical or otherwise. Apparently they planned to have Jessica’s body moved to a location near one of the previous wolf attacks, to leave her there and have the authorities think she was just another victim, one who hadn’t been discovered as quickly as the others. It wasn’t so very far from the truth.

As Connor and I prepared to leave, though, I saw a flicker out of the corner of my eye, and realized it was Jessica, standing in the middle of the hallway and watching as Lucas and Marie began tidying up as best they could. Well, the one thing most of the ghosts of my acquaintance had in common was sudden, violent death. It shouldn’t have surprised me that Jessica remained in Damon’s house, her soul shackled to this world by the very obsession that had led to her death.

I wished I could speak to her, but she disappeared the second I turned toward her and our eyes met. Time for that later, maybe, although the thought of having to return to that house anytime soon made my flesh crawl. And I said nothing to Connor as I took the FJ’s keys from him and got into the driver’s seat. He had enough to deal with right now without being informed that his brother’s house was now haunted.