Erin forgot about the dog tag for a while, what between explaining what had happened with Annie to the others the first time and discussing it in greater detail on the way back to the cave. Once they got there, they picnicked on the ledge outside around a small fire. Carli had news about the insurance policy settlement; it looked like they were going to be able to start building a new Women’s Club as soon as they hired contractors. Adelía and Carla wanted to talk about that, and then speculate about what Annie would do next, and Molly looked like she just needed a nap.
Finally, Erin raised her hand for silence. “I think we’ve been over this enough for today and I know I’m getting really tired. Who’s babysitting me tonight? And who’s reporting in to Shelly?”
Carli nodded. “I’ll head home and talk to Shelly on the way. I need to tell her about the insurance settlement too.”
Adelía stood up and started cleaning up. “The kids will be driving Pedro nuts by now so I’ll head back. Molly, you’re staying tonight, right?”
Carla looked like she wanted to say something, but whatever it was, she swallowed it back down and started helping with the cleanup as Molly nodded. Erin gave her a minute to share whatever was on her mind, then went to help Molly get set up for the night when she didn’t say anything. She suspected that Carla wanted to stay at the cave overnight again, but she could tell them as much in her own time.
Besides, she wanted to think about what Annie might be up to as much as any of them and she needed some quiet to do that. That way, they wouldn’t get to see her desperate hope that Annie had killed Leroy and framed her and that it would be easy to prove and this would all be over with. And it was going to be hard to think her way through that much hope. Just because she wanted it to be true didn’t make it so. She was still trying to come up with a motive, not to mention the details on how all that could have happened, when she finally fell asleep.
Maybe that hoping and thinking was what called the dream later that night. Certainly something did. In her sleeping mind, Erin could feel the paintings on the walls moving slowly around the cave, and she got up to follow them. Were their ancestor wolves disturbed because they were sleeping in the cave or was it something else? She could feel their agitation as she walked, fingers trailing slowly over the stone.
Part of her got lost in the memory of the ritual that she and Shelly and Becca had done to call the painted wolves to life to fight Annie and her men. What had the paintings done with Anderson and the others who had disappeared that night? Why change Annie, but not them? The paintings weren’t telling.
As she walked, she could almost see something moving in the back of the cave, beyond where the Pack usually met, buried in the shadows. Because it was a dream and she was conscious of that, she walked further into the cave instead of yelling out a warning, wondering what she would discover in the darkness. The shadows enfolded her, dimming Molly’s solar lamp until she was alone in the shadows.
No, wait, there was something else here. Glowing eyes waited for her back where it was darkest, and she froze, her body struggling to wake or flee. An instant later, there were more eyes, all glowing in the lantern’s light. They encircled her, the only way out the way she had entered. She trembled, sensing that her body was desperately trying to wake her from this dream or vision, whatever it was. A voice rolled out of the darkness, echoing around in her head and filling the space around her. It was deep and hoarse, as if it had been unused for a long time.
She didn’t understand the words. But her bewilderment must have come across to whoever was speaking, because something changed in the way the voice spoke and the words suddenly began to make sense. Not all of them, especially since some of the sounds seemed to be in wolf, rather than any human language. But that was enough to wake her wolf brain up until she was conscious of the smell of other wolves, a sense of kinship with whatever it was that waited in the darkness. After what felt like forever, her wolf brain took over, driving her human self into the back of her brain, there to be overwhelmed by sleep.
When Molly shook her shoulder to wake her up, dawn was just beginning to light the mountaintops outside. “Hey, Erin, you okay? Sounds like you’re having a nightmare.”
Erin rolled over, her mouth full of sand and her eyes full of sleep. Her first glance fell not on Molly, but on the back of the cave, searching for glowing eyes and creatures she hadn’t been able to see clearly. She scrubbed one hand across her face and swallowed to clear her throat. Her shoulders ached a little from sleeping on the stone floor and she could feel other aches and pains making their presence felt as she stretched. Not that it mattered too much. They’d be gone once she was up and about, a long-term benefit of the valley’s magic riding her once a month, but waking up could still be a bear. So to speak.
She wrinkled her nose at the thought. What had happened to Jim and Kari while they were all running around after Annie or guarding Becca? “Hmmm…did you have any weird dreams last night? Oh, hey, is that coffee?” She knew it was, of course, but she wasn’t quite ready to unpack her dream, not yet. It felt like she’d gotten some marching orders and she wanted to process that feeling a bit before she brought it out into the daylight.
“Weird dreams? I think you were having enough for both of us! You kept making these tiny howls and growls, like your wolf was scared or something. What’s going on? No, wait, tell me after coffee and breakfast. I remember what you’re like in the mornings.” Molly gave her an amused grin and went back to the camp stove on the ledge outside the cave entrance.
Erin wrinkled her nose and got up slowly, making her first stops to the latrine and then the water bucket for washing up. She wanted a hot shower and a chance to wash her clothes so badly, she could almost taste it. But it was a bit too cold to go skinny-dipping in the nearest stream, even if it had been safe in daylight, so she washed as much of herself as she could before dumping the water out and heading back to the ledge.
Molly handed her a cup of coffee and a plate of eggs and veggies, fresh from the frying pan. “Remember anything about those dreams you were having?”
Erin gave the back of the cave a quick glance, almost expecting to see glowing eyes looking back at her. But this morning there was nothing there except paintings and darkness. She sighed and took a gulp of coffee, then nearly spat it back out. Molly made engine fuel; she’d forgotten a lot since their brief fling a few years back. Erin sighed and sipped more cautiously before putting her mug down.
She ate a forkful of eggs before she responded, “It was weird. I thought something was watching me from the back of the cave, then a lot of somethings, all with glowing eyes.” She shivered a little at the memory. “They started talking to me but it wasn’t in English, from what I can remember, at least not at first. Or even all in human.”
“You had a vision in the cave? Whoa, Erin, that’s a big deal! We need to tell Shelly, send you over to talk to the Circle. Gotta get our elders in on this one. But…” Molly’s excitement trailed off, along with her voice, as she clearly realized what Erin already knew: that talking about the dream would mean telling everyone where Erin was.
“Don’t think that’s an option right now. But yeah, I do think I should run it past Shelly when she stops by tonight. But I want to think about it a little bit more, try and figure out what they were saying to me, if I can.” Erin ran her fingers through her short gray hair. “This fugitive thing sucks. I want a shower and clean clothes and a good night’s sleep in my own bed.”
“Don’t you mean ‘our’ own bed?” Molly gave her an amused grin.
“No. We’re not there yet. Or maybe we were, almost, but we aren’t now. I’m not sure she trusts me anymore. Dammit. How did I make such a mess of things?”
“Oh, I think Becca is on her way to head over heels, but admittedly, all this isn’t helping move things along very quickly. As for what you did, want the full list or the short one? I still don’t understand why you confessed if you weren’t really sure that you killed Leroy to begin with, let alone stuffed him into your car. I mean, I know you and I get it, sort of, but even for your out-of-control sense of responsibility and guilt and all, this seems kinda excessive.” Molly leaned back against the rocks and gave Erin a narrow-eyed stare.
A bunch of responses went through Erin’s head for a few minutes, ranging from telling Molly to piss off to telling her the absolute truth. She banged her head lightly back against the rock; what was the point of lying now? “I thought I fell off the wagon, got wasted, got into a fight and killed the guy. He was in the trunk of my car. I couldn’t remember how he got there and…” She paused for a minute and closed her eyes. “There was blood on my clothes and near the car. Add that to the no memory of how that happened and you see how I came to the conclusion I did. After that, I was so damned embarrassed, I just didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Shit,” Molly murmured. “Okay, that is some compelling evidence. I see your point.”
“I didn’t start to doubt my version of events until I got kidnapped by the reality TV werebear and his partner in life and crime. Once I got to hang out with them for a bit, I realized that they probably had something to do with Leroy’s death and may have been palling around with Annie too, at some point. Now all I need is some evidence to convince the sheriff and Lizzie of that, not to mention explaining the whole jailbreak thing. And explain all of it to Becca. ‘All’,” she put the word in air quotes, “being a pretty big thing.”
“Not to mention your remaining accounting customers. You know the news about all this turned up in the Wolf’s Point Gazette, albeit in kinda vague terms? Lizzie and Shelly tried to keep it as hushed up as possible, but we just don’t get that many murders around here. Or at least ones that end up on the Sheriff’s Department’s radar.” Molly wrinkled her nose. “Eat your breakfast and we’ll make a chart or something and see if anything shakes loose.”
An hour or so later, they were both scowling at some notebook pages with lists on them. Erin thought it was still pretty confusing, but at least they were getting all the variables out where they could look at them. The possible connection between Annie and Leroy and their new neighbors was almost entirely speculation. Maybe Jim and Kari had just heard about the werewolf hunters from their site and never worked with them before. Maybe they were working together, somehow, all along, despite Annie’s condition, and had a falling out.
But someone had told them about the Pack and that wasn’t a huge list of suspects, or at least not ones who traveled outside the area much. It was clear that they’d come to the valley already knowing about the wolves and possibly Erin in particular. What had Leroy been up to since they’d defeated Annie and her men at the cave? Erin rubbed her temples, feeling a bad headache coming on.
Molly took the hint and left for work just as Carla clambered up. Erin went back into the cave for a nap, hoping for a less haunted sleep this time around. She dozed off as Carla walked around the cave, studying each of the paintings in turn.
What woke her later was the sound of voices. She rolled over to see Carla, Lizzie, Shelly and Becca huddled in the cave mouth, looking at something. They all jumped when she stood up, like they’d forgotten she was there. Erin grimaced at the thought and took a long drink from her water bottle. She scowled into the afternoon sunshine glowing from the entrance and growled her words as she walked past her friends on her way out, “Talking about me again?”
It was all bravado and she could see Shelly, at least, recognized it as such. Why had they brought Lizzie? Had they found something new that confirmed that she was guilty? Erin’s stomach sank down to the vicinity of her toes and she couldn’t bring herself to look at Becca.
“Well, yes. Of course we are.” Shelly rolled her eyes, looking just like Kira for a moment. “Go pee, then come back and we’ll tell you what’s going on.”