Kelley Armstrong - Bitten

Downtown Bear Valley closed at five, allowing employees to make it home for dinner and ignoring the fact that the average person worked until five and needed to shop afterward. This oversight may have explained the vacancy rate that had spread through the core like a cancer, affecting one shop, then its neighbors, and their neighbors, until the block looked like a massive advertisement for Bear Valley Realty. By the time we got back downtown, it was past seven and even the most dedicated shelf stockers had left for the evening. The streets were bare. The town seemed to have shut down for a collective dinner hour. I was able to be less cautious with my sniffing and we covered the next half mile in twenty minutes. The trail stopped at a Burger King that had been ostracized from its fast-food buddies on the other side of town. Here the mutt had presumably stopped to refuel. After another twenty minutes of circling and retracing my steps, I picked up the trail again. Ten minutes later we were standing in the parking lot of the Big Bear Motor Lodge.

"Well, this was a no-brainer," I muttered as we looked out over the collection of pickup trucks and ten-year-old sedans. "Two hotels in town. He's staying at one. Duh."

"Hey, you're the one who insisted we start from the grocery store."

"I didn't hear you suggesting anything else."

"It's called survival, darling. I know when to keep my mouth shut."

"Since when have-" I stopped, noticing a woman standing in her hotel room doorway, making no effort to hide her eavesdropping. It's always nice to know you can provide entertainment when the afternoon soaps are over.

I walked behind a pickup truck and squinted up at the two-story building. "How many rooms by your count?"

"Thirty-eight," Clay said without missing a beat. "Nineteen each up and down. A main-floor entry for the bottom. A lobby entrance and emergency exit for the second floor."

"If it were me, I'd take a room on the first floor," I said. "Direct room access. Easier to come and go at all hours."

"But the second floor has balconies, darling. And a hell of a view."

I looked across the road into a vacant lot filled with overgrown weeds, crumbling concrete blocks, and enough litter to keep a Scout troop busy for an entire Earth Day.

"First floor," I said. "I'll start. Go hide somewhere."

"Uh-uh. We've played this game before. I hide. You never seek. I'm a bit slow on the uptake, but I'm beginning to sense a pattern."

"Go."

Clay grinned, grabbed me around the waist and kissed me, then ducked out of the way before I could retaliate. While it was nice to see his mood had improved, it would be even nicer if it didn't take the prospect of murder and mayhem to improve it. Over the past couple hours of tracking, the old resentment that had resurfaced in the coffee shop had faded into my subconscious, where it would wait, like a wound that never healed over, only needing a bump or prod to reignite the pain. We had work to do and I had to deal with Clay to do it. For Logan's sake, I couldn't afford to be distracted by my own problems. If I dwelled on my anger with Clay every second I was forced to spend in his company, I'd have turned into a bitter, waspish harpy long ago. Of course, some might argue that I'd crossed that threshold years ago, but that wasn't the point.

While Clay went off to find a suitable waiting place, I scanned the area for props. Near a corrosion-encrusted Chevy Impala I spotted a sheet of paper. It was a receipt for a new car stereo, which I hoped hadn't gone into the Impala, or the owner had spent more money on the sound system than on the car. I brushed a wet leaf from the corner of the sheet, flattened it, then folded it in half and headed for the sidewalk connecting the doors of the main-floor rooms. Starting by the emergency exit, I walked slowly down the sidewalk, pretending to study the sheet of paper and allowing for generous sniffing pauses in front of each door. The eavesdropping woman had gone back into her room. Two people came out of a room near the end, but they ignored the young woman having such difficulty finding the room number written on her scrap of paper. People make special allowances for the mental capacity of blondes.

When I got to the end, I picked up the scent of the werewolf, heading not into a room, but into the lobby. The trail was thick here, indicating he'd gone this way several times. A second-floor room, accessible only through the lobby. Maybe he liked waking up to the sunrise over a vacant lot. I looped back through the parking lot. Clay came out from behind the building before I could look for him.

"Upstairs," I said.

"See, darling? No one ever claimed mutts have brains."

I tossed the stereo receipt into the bushes and we headed for the front door. As we went into the lobby, Clay put his arm around my waist and started complaining about an imaginary dinner at a local restaurant. As he prattled, I saw the stairs to the left of the check-in desk and steered us there, nodding as he bitched about waiting twenty minutes for the dinner check. The show wasn't necessary. The desk clerk didn't even look up as we went by.

Upstairs, the trail stopped at the third door on the left. Clay grabbed the handle, twisted, and broke it with a muffled snap. As I kept an eye out for other motel guests, Clay waited to see if anyone inside the room responded to the sound of the lock breaking. When he heard nothing, he eased the door open. The curtains were drawn and the room was dark. A door down the hall opened. I pushed Clay forward and we slipped inside.

Clay checked the bathroom to make sure the mutt was gone, then pulled a quarter from his pocket. "Heads we lie in wait, tails we give chase."

"We should stay here," I said. "Check the place out, search for clues while we wait."

Clay rolled his eyes.

"Oh fine," I said. "Just flip the damned thing."

When it came up heads, I stuck my tongue out at him. His hand darted out to grab it, but I pulled it back in time.

"Next time you won't be so fast," he said, then looked around the room. "So what do you hope to find?"

"Anything to explain why we had two mutts in Bear Valley within a week. Aren't you the least bit concerned about that?"

"'Course I am, darling. But I'm sticking concern and curiosity on the back burner. Plenty of time to examine them both when the mutt's dead. I'm not waiting around for this bastard to go after you or the others while I try to find out what he's doing here."

"You think I'm stalling?"

"No, I think you're trying to make efficient use of time. That's fine. I'm just saying don't expect me to be too eager to riffle through dresser drawers while that mutt's roaming our streets."

"Then go watch out the balcony or something while I search."

Clay didn't do this, of course. He helped me look, having simply made it clear that his heart wasn't in it. Mine wasn't either, but I know better than to pass up an opportunity. Besides, looking through this mutt's junk kept my hands and mind busy, leaving me little time to dwell on why we were tracking him.

Clay started in the bathroom. He was gone maybe ten minutes before he called out, "Here's the scoop. The guy uses hotel shampoo and hotel soap. He hasn't broken the seal on the conditioner. There's a Bic razor and no sign of a toothbrush, toothpaste, or mouthwash. So we're looking for a guy with split ends and a serious breath problem. Any of this helping, darling?"

I gritted my teeth against a reply. The walls were too thin for arguing. Besides, my own search of the main room hadn't turned up much more. I'd found two pairs of jeans, three shirts, and assorted socks and underwear, all of it previously worn and dumped on a chair for reuse. The Gideon Bible in the nightstand had been defaced with pentagrams and inverted crosses. Lovely. Also terribly unoriginal. I mean, if you feel compelled to scribble Satanic symbols on a Bible, the least you can do is draw stuff not found in every edition of Weekly World News. A very uncreative and obviously uninformed werewolf. He'd be in for a disappointment when he discovered werewolves were more likely to know a good recipe for beef Wellington than the recipe for a Satanic rite. In ten years, the devil had never contacted me with special instructions or even to say hello. Then again, neither had God. Maybe that meant they didn't exist. More likely, it meant neither was willing to take responsibility for me.