Watcher in the Woods (Rockton #4)(110)

“We need to—” I begin, and then the man bites me.

This is my fault. Caught up in my thoughts, I give him the opportunity to bite, and when he does, I jump, more surprise than pain. The moment my weight shifts, he’s ready, and he fights like the cornered beast he is.

He bites and twists and kicks and hits. I try to pin him. Petra tries to pin him. Then Maryanne is on him, stabbing. Blood flies before I even realize what she’s doing. I grab at her, but she is as frenzied as he is. She howls and stabs, her face a mask of rage even as tears stream down her face.

“No!” she shouts between howls. “No, no, no!” Her cries punctuate each stab.

Finally, I haul her off him. It’s too late. The hostile lies on the ground, his chest blood-soaked, more blood bubbling at his lips. Petra takes Maryanne—or tries to, but in the handoff, Maryanne squirms free, leaping to her feet, and Petra leaves her alone as I check the hostile. I’m assessing injuries as he breathes his last.

“He’s gone,” I say.

“Good,” Maryanne whispers, and in her tear-streaked face, I see a rage and a satisfaction that confirms what I suspected from that frenzied attack—she’s had encounters with this man before.

I sit on my haunches and look up at her. “Maryanne, we—”

“Warned you,” she says. “You didn’t listen.”

“You warned me about him? I know, you said to shoot—”

“Not him. All.” She looks around. “They’re watching now. Always watching.”

She means the hostiles are watching us. That’s what she meant with that skull she gave me for Dalton. A warning. Rockton has gone decades rarely interacting with the hostiles, and then we slaughtered a hunting party of them. Killed them because they attacked us, and we tried to avoid even that—it’s Val who finished off the injured—but to them, it was a slaughter. They won’t hide in the forest anymore. They’re watching. They’re waiting. They’re attacking. I look at the two bodies. And now we’ve attacked back.

“Come to Rockton,” I say. “Eric’s there. He wants to help—”

She shakes her head.

“Maryanne, please.”

She lifts her hand with the missing partial fingers and touches her ruined ear and then her filed front teeth. Tears fill her eyes.

“Not like this,” she says.

I’m not going back like this. That’s what she means. That is the horror of her situation. Something has happened to her since we last met. Dalton made a connection, and she’d been ready for it. She wasn’t the madwoman who attacked him years ago. She’d already changed, calmed. When he made that connection, it reminded her of who she’d been and something sparked. She began rising from that pit. Her mind rising, but her body . . . Her body had already changed, and no epiphany could regrow her ear and fingers and teeth. She now had the mental wherewithal to realize that, which made it all the worse.

“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “We have a doctor. We can help. You can—”

“No,” she says, those tears spilling.

She turns and runs. Petra looks at me, poised to sprint after her, and my muscles tense, ready to do the same. I take a deep breath and shake my head.

“It can’t be like that,” I say.

She nods. Then she keeps looking in the direction Maryanne went.

“That was a . . .” Petra begins.

“Hostile, yes.”

She’s still staring. “I thought . . .”

“Thought we were lying? Exaggerating? Trying to scare people with tales of bogeymen in the forest?” I hear my voice, harsh, and I shake my head. “Never mind. I’m just tired and frustrated.”

She looks over then, meeting my gaze. “I get it now, Casey. I really do.”

I turn to the bodies. “I want to take that one,” I say, pointing at the hostile she shot. “I want to examine him. Run some tests.”

I know that’s cruel. This is not a cadaver donated to medical research. His people might want his body back. They might have burial rituals. I can’t care about that. I need answers, and this is one way to get them.

Petra doesn’t even question. She just nods and say, “He was acting like Roy. They both were.”

“I know.”

“What Roy did to himself—the hair, the beard—it’s like a stage one version of this.”

“I know.”

“Then whatever I gave Roy . . .” She looks at me. “What are you thinking?”

I don’t answer. She knows exactly what I’m thinking, and I’m not putting it into words so she can tell me I’m wrong, tell me there are other explanations. I know there are. I don’t need to have that conversation, with anyone except Dalton.

“Grab a leg,” I say. “We’re taking him back to Rockton.”

*

We don’t haul the hostile into town. That’s the last thing anyone needs to see. It’s not the “hauling” part that matters—it’s the man himself. We’re almost back when I hear a bark, and Dalton releases Storm to come find me. I hurry ahead to stop her. She doesn’t need to see a corpse any more than the residents do. I have Petra hold Storm while I take Dalton to the body and explain.