Eileen Wilks - Mortal Sins

CHARLESArthur Kessenblaum had died on the day of the Turning. He’d been driving his car when the power wind hit and, like every lupus on the planet, the enormous surge of power had forced him to Change. The car had been traveling at highway speed. He’d been killed almost instantly, with no time to heal the wounds.

His mother’s name was Mandy Ann. Mandy Ann Kessenblaum. If her daughter was, as Lily had said, a hippie wannabe, Mandy Ann was the real thing—a flower child who dropped out and never came back. Though she’d had two children, she’d never married. She lived alone in a one-room log cabin on a few acres and sold some of the organic vegetables she grew at a roadside stand, augmenting that income by cleaning houses and selling handmade quilts.

She didn’t sound evil.

The information about the cabin and Mandy Ann came from Alex and Marcia Farquhar, who’d called Rule and Lily back within minutes of Talia’s delivery of the Baron’s message.

Sheriff Deacon had delivered his message in person. One of his cruisers had found Alicia, unconscious and bloodied, next to her car. It looked like she’d put up a fight, he said. She was being rushed to the hospital.

They’d left Louise to go to the hospital alone—and wait. She had the hardest job, Rule thought.

MANDYAnn’s cabin lay a short distance from the place Rule had found the first bodies—less than three miles, but on the other side of the highway. It was roughly the same distance from the wraith’s grave.

No, from Charley’s grave. He had a name, Rule reminded himself. Whatever he was now, he’d once been lupus and young. So very young. He’d died before being acknowledged as an adult of the clan, before being entered into the mantle.

It took fifteen minutes to reach the spot where they left their cars. An ambulance was following and would park out of sight of the cabin.

Rule was careful not to think about the ambulance.

There was a long dirt road that led to the cabin, but of course they couldn’t take that. So the sheriff led them a roundabout way from the highway.

It was small team Lily had assembled. Most of them were, in Rule’s opinion, superfluous. Deacon was there to get them to the cabin. Brown had tagged along when Deacon came to deliver the news about Alicia, so Lily brought him, too. But they’d stay behind. Getting into the cabin fell to Rule and Cullen.

Since Rule would have gone regardless of what Lily decided, it was fortunate she agreed with him. He could move faster than any human and absorb more damage without being stopped. Marcia Farquhar said Mandy Ann had a shotgun, so that was a factor. And he was trained in stealth by his brother Benedict. He’d be quick and he’d be quiet.

Cullen wasn’t trained, but he was even faster than Rule and almost as quiet. He was also the only one who might be able to deal with whatever spell Mandy Ann was casting or planning to cast.

The others would wait for Rule to give the signal to come in. Lily had wanted to wire him for sound, but it would have taken too long.

He used the short walk from the cars to ready himself. He sank into the physical, aware of his breathing, of the clever flex and shove of his muscles and the strength they held, waiting for the moment he would draw upon them. His heartbeat slowed. Neither fear nor anxiety was real now—only this, the sunshine and heat, the motion, Lily beside him. Though he still used only two feet, he now walked like the wolf.

They stopped in a woody area. He could just glimpse the cabin through the trees. A small field separated the woods from the cabin.

“Be careful,” Lily told him tersely. “Grabbing Toby may be a way of drawing you to her. The wraith seems to have an interest in you.”

That seemed obvious now. “He’s drawn to the mantles.”

“There’s power in them, if he can get it,” she agreed. “Remember that Mandy Ann has at least one gun, and she may have help—or an additional hostage. Crystal hasn’t been seen for days.”

He nodded, collected Cullen with a glance, and set off.

His planned approach was simple enough. There were windows on three of the cabin’s walls; none on the north, where a large stone chimney was the only break in the log wall. On the west side was a chicken coop. They would avoid that. Chickens made a fuss if you came close. Though he couldn’t see it from here, he’d been told there was a diesel-powered generator, the only source of electricity for the cabin.

He and Cullen circled slightly to approach from the north.

Rule paused at the edge of the woods. The field here was grass for about twenty yards, and cultivated closer to the house. The furrows would slow them down, but the soft earth would be quiet beneath their feet if they avoided the plants.

They didn’t know if Mandy Ann had a dog. She used to, according to Marcia Farquhar, but that old hound had died a couple years ago. She might have gotten another one. Dogs were noisy and hard to sneak up on.

Rule inhaled deeply. There was very little breeze, and it blew from the east—little help.

He smelled chickens. Something with tomatoes and spices was cooking nearby. Compost . . . yes, there was her compost pile, neatly penned. And the faint, pervasive scent of human. Someone human walked these woods often. “No dogs,” he murmured to Cullen.

Cullen gave a single nod, a sharp-edged smile.

“You remember the signals?” Rule subvocalized this time.

Cullen nodded.

“Follow at whatever pace is quietest.” And he set off.

The grass was knee-high. No way to move through it in complete silence, but Rule trusted in the poor hearing of humans and eased through it slowly.

Luck smiled on him. Halfway through the grassy area, the diesel generator kicked in, making enough racket to drown out a dozen men rushing the cabin. He broke into a lope.

He’d reached the furrows when the smell hit him. Corruption, faint but unmistakable. His calm faltered—but no, it could not be Toby. Toby had been alive only hours ago.

He was still alive. He had to be.

Then Cullen’s whistle—a single high note—brought his head around. That was the signal for abandoning caution and charging. Rule didn’t know the reason, but he didn’t hesitate. He covered the last twenty feet in an all-out run, racing around the corner of the cabin, where the door—good gods—stood open.

Without hesitation or caution, he dashed inside.

“Stop!”

He did. Partly blinded by the change in light, he still saw enough to freeze.

The woman had long hair worn in braids that reached to her waist. She was short, muscular, chubby. There was a raw scrape or scratch along one of her plump cheeks. She wore a man’s blue work shirt tied at the waist with the sleeves rolled up, and a full skirt in faded tie-dye swirls.

The skirt was spread out around her on a big, pillowy bed covered in a lovely old-fashioned quilt. She held Toby’s limp body propped up against her with one sun-browned arm.

Her other hand held a knife to Toby’s throat. A butcher knife, large and efficient.

But he breathed. After a few seconds, Rule’s eyes adjusted enough to be sure of that. His son’s chest rose and fell steadily.

“Come in,” Mandy Ann said in a high, chirpy voice. “Oh, you already did!” She giggled. “But don’t come any closer. I don’t want to damage my boy’s new body.”

Cullen skidded to a stop beside Rule. “A ward,” he whispered. “There was a damned ward laid right into the earth. I didn’t see it until you crossed it and it flared, and too late then. She’d been warned.”

“Oh, aren’t you the pretty one. Pity I can’t use you.” Mandy Ann shook her head. “But Charley wants the boy. He told me so.”