“Mr. Hunt?” The figure across the street came closer.
He knew that voice. Knew that figure. Miss Rose Small.
But how did she know it was him? Maybe she was teched in the head, and thought all wild animals were people from the town. Even if that were so, what would be the chance that she would call him by name? What was the chance she would know he was behind the wolf’s eyes?
Rose had a handful of bolts and wires and washers. As she stepped into a pool of moonlight, the hunger pushed over him again, dragging against his reasonable mind.
Kill.
She sucked in a quick breath, her hand flying up to touch the locket around her neck, the cogs and gears and wires chiming to the ground. “Are you quite well?”
Sweet blood, sweet bones, flesh to tear, heart to pierce.
Cedar pulled against the beast’s need, struggling to keep control.
Rose Small did not look like Rose Small.
To his man’s eyes, she was the woman he had seen just yesterday. But through the wolf’s eyes and the veil of the curse that brought both minds together, Miss Small was a woman filled with a glim light. It was as if she contained sunshine and summer, and all the stars glinting in the sky.
There was something of the Strange about her. Even the tuning fork hummed softly, not the sour song of the Strange in the windowsill, but a song much like he had heard back in the Madders’ mine.
Miss Rose Small was not wholly human, a condition he reckoned she had not yet discovered.
She stepped out of the moonlight, and took to looking like herself again. She was bundled up in a long coat, but her bonnet was pushed back off her head. She’d obviously been out in the night, strolling the streets, ducking beneath limbs and crevasses to collect up nails and bits of wire. He wondered what she did with those bits and bobs, wondered if she devised matic and tickers and other such trinkets.
“Do you need assistance, Mr. Hunt? A doctor, perhaps?” She didn’t come any closer, though she wasn’t far enough away to be safe from him.
He inhaled the scent of her. His hold slipped slightly, and the beast within him whispered, Kill.
Cedar pushed against the beast.
She did not smell like the Holder the Madders wanted him to find. She did not smell like the Strange who had taken the boy, and she did not smell like the boy. Standing here was doing nothing more than wasting moonlight.
Find the boy. Cedar took a step backward, two. Three.
Miss Small nodded, just that easily accepting him as a wolf. “I see that you have things to do and a need to be doing them. I don’t want to keep you, Mr. Hunt. Good night to you.”
Kill, the beast in him whispered again.
Cedar silenced the voice with one word: Hunt. Before the moon set and dawn burned the beast out of his bones.
He ran, out into the fields. Not following the boy’s trail yet, looking instead for blood and meat to sate the beast’s hunger and give him back his reasoning mind. And he found it, in a calf who had staggered away from its mother, too frightened to cry out before Cedar lost control over the beast, and tore out the animal’s heart.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Mae Lindson heard a child sobbing outside her door, but did not want to unlock the shutter to see if her ears were telling her true. There was as much of a chance the Strange was outside her door, tricking her to think a child was outside. And equal odds that the Strange wanted to lure her into the night away from the protections of her cottage.
The door latch shook, rattled by feeble hands. The crying was right on the other side of her door, close as lips to the keyhole.
No words. Just sobbing.
Mae hesitated. She had spent the last few hours working spells on the bullets and shells, working protections on the Colt and the shotgun. She didn’t know if a magic blessing would do any good on bullets. Didn’t know if it would work against the Strange.
She held the Colt in one hand, the shotgun—not yet charged—in the other, one more precious shell set in its chamber. She fingered the switch on the stock of the shotgun, and the weapon hummed. When the humming reached the inaudible tone, and the needle on the gauge pressed tight to the right, indicating the weapon was fully charged, she unlatched the door. She did not break the threshold, but stood there, shotgun at her shoulder, ready to fire.
On her doorstep stood a child, dirty, bloody, and bruised. His nightshirt was torn, and his feet were bare. But his hair was wild and red—just like his father’s—and he had brown eyes wide with tears that tracked a line through the dirt and welts on his cheeks.
The wooden trinkets and toys along the walls stirred. The breeze brushed through them, their song soft and uncertain.
“Elbert?” she said.
The boy swayed on his feet, obviously exhausted. He held out his hands like a baby reaching up for his mama.
Mae looked out past him. Nothing moved in the night. No sign of the man, or anything else chasing the child.
She quickly bent and picked up the poor little thing and brought him safely into her home, closing the door behind them and setting the lock.
Elbert clung to her like a burr, his head on her shoulder, arms wrapped tightly around her neck. He took a shaking, sniffling breath. He was cold as the night itself. Too cold. She needed to get him wrapped and warm, before he took to his death from exposure.
Mae rested the gun against her table, releasing the lever and stopping the motion of the gears. The hard green light in the vials drained away. She carried Elbert over to the hearth and eased him down into a chair.
“There, now,” she said, working to get his arms off from around her neck. “You’re going to be just fine now. Where have you been, little one? Your mama and pa have been looking high and low for you.”
He let go of her neck, but didn’t speak, just shivered and shook as he tried to wipe away his tears with the back of his dirty hand.
She pulled a thick, soft blanket out of the basket at the foot of her loom and wrapped it around his slight shoulders, tucking it tight beneath his chin.
“Do you want some water? Some milk?”
He sniffed and nodded.
Mae walked over to the cupboard, and drew out a jug of milk. She poured half the jug into a cup.
“Some nice milk will make you feel better,” she said. “Drink it up and then we’ll see if we can clean some of the grime off you so you can sleep. When morning comes round, I’ll take you home to your folks.”
She handed him the cup of milk, which he took in both hands and drank greedily. He licked his lips, and held the cup out for more.
She poured more milk, and again, until the jug was empty.
“Are you still hungry?”
The boy nodded.
Mae fetched him some bread and the last of the cheese. He ate both down quick as if he’d never eaten in all his days.
He held out his palms, fingers clutching air, begging for more food. Poor thing had been frightened dumb. She’d heard of children who never regained their voice after a hard scare. She hoped the boy was young enough to forget all this, and to grow up strong.
Mae dug through the cupboards, pulling out two apples. She gave one to the boy. He gnawed on it from the top down, core and all.
“Your mama and daddy will be so happy to see you in the morning. Let’s wash your face and get you in a clean shirt.” She walked off to the bedroom—really not much more than a bed tucked behind the privacy of the wall. The bed she had shared with Jeb. The bed that would always be too cold now.
She took a breath to steel herself. One of Jeb’s shirts would be a good bit cleaner and warmer than that tattered thing Elbert was wearing. She opened the chest of drawers, and drew out a cotton shirt. She’d not cry. She’d not let her thoughts linger on her sorrow, on her heart keening with the knowledge that she’d never touch her husband again, never kiss him again, never say good-bye.