Love Bites (Crescent City Werewolves: The Short Stories)

Secrets Well-Lit

Cora Pennington wasn't very good at waiting. To whit, it drove her mad that she could do little but watch the moon rise over autumn-bitten trees, bringing her terror ever closer to reality. It being only minutes into dusk, she hadn't yet left for the wine cellar hastily reinforced to hold her father for when he... Well, it seemed wrong to call it a shift. That was what the werewolves in the city did, their bodies smoothly transforming from man to beast and back again. What her father suffered through each month seemed as far from that as a soothing massage was from being beaten with a club.

Cora checked her lipstick twice while dark blue filtered into the lavender-hued sky. Stars winked into existence as she lit cigarettes and stubbed them out almost immediately. She played with the pearls at her neck and fussed with the careful waves in her hair. None of the fidgeting prevented the inescapable: she needed to go down and watch over her father.

But she didn't want to, and not just because she'd already caught glimpses of what he turned into. The revulsion licking up her spine held far older roots than his recent affliction. Simply, she didn't want to be alone with him.

Movement along the peat gravel driveway drew her attention. In the last glimmers of twilight, a car pulled up and its driver got out, hat cocked at a familiar angle.

"Hayes," she breathed.

She ran down the flight of stairs, startling the maid lighting the evening lamps, and burst into the front room just as his knock came at the door. It was a breach of etiquette to answer it herself, but she did so, anyway, trying not to sound breathless. "Detective Hayes. This is a very pleasant surprise."

"Thought you'd need some support, kid." His voice was as easy as his smile, with that particular snap to his words that all inner city wolves had.

He refused to let the maid take his hat and coat, one of those wolfish peculiarities, and instead dropped them on a chair. "Is he already locked up?"

"Yes. He insisted on going down there early. He hates not being in control, you see." Cora didn't realize how her hands fidgeted until Hayes caught and stilled them with his own.

"Nervous?" His amber eyes held the same piercing quality as when he changed into a wolf, but his thumb ran over her knuckles gently.

"I didn't think it'd be this hard," she admitted. "I thought I wouldn't give a fig about his curse after what he did to me."

Unconsciously, her fingers reached for the back of her neck, sliding up to the raised scar hidden by her hair. A remnant of the binding sigil. Sometimes it still burned as a ghostly threat when her father grew angry.

Then her hand fell away. "But he's in such pain when it happens, and the thing he becomes..."

"We'll find a cure." Hayes traced the curve of her cheek, coaxing her into looking up. "I don't make promises unless I can keep them."

"You said just the same thing about breaking my binding."

He gave her that bold grin that came out whenever he tasted blood. "Maybe I don't like leashes of any kind."

They arrived at the cellar to find Cora's father waiting, straight and dignified in his dressing gown as if he were about to retire for the night. Cora had tried to make things more comfortable, lighting the walls with lamps and placing rugs on the cut stone floor, but there was no way to hide the wrought iron bars that separated her father from the rest of the world, and real sympathy slid into her voice as she greeted him. "Hello, Father."

"Cora," he said, already frowning. "Who have you brought along?"

"This is Detective Hayes. He's the one who helped me find you."