"Not to change a werewolf's form, but it works pretty damned well to curse him. If there's an Ozark Mountain magic woman nearby."
"What?"
"Mommy knew magic."
"Magic." I resisted the urge to snort. "Right."
His lips lifted, just a little. "We're discussing werewolves and you're rolling your eyes about magic?
There's a saying in the Ozarks - if you throw out the witch, you'd better throw out the Bible, too."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"If you can believe in supernatural evil, why can't you believe in supernatural good?"
He had a point. "So what did the Ozark magic woman do?"
"Not much. The most important thing had already been done. Sacrifice."
"But you said you didn't - "
"Just because I didn't kill that child doesn't make her sacrifice any less heroic. I could have run, but I was paralyzed, confused. A being that thrives on selfishness is confronted with total sacrifice. I might have been a wolf, but I still had my brain and it was on overload. I stood there while the mother yanked her child away from me. Her face was wet with tears as she cut her own wrist - "
"Blood, tears, sacrifice."
"The usual," he murmured, echoing words of my own that he'd never even heard. "Then she cursed, or maybe she blessed, me. I'm still not sure. She said, 'Damien, from this day on your soul is yours again.'"
"Huh?"
"When I became a werewolf, my soul was possessed by evil. I was myself but not myself. She gave me back my soul and my conscience."
"Ah."
"It's a terrible thing to remember what you've done and know how wrong it was."
I understood why his eyes were always sad. Why he never smiled and rarely laughed. Understood but didn't forgive.
"You chose to be one of them."
"I know."
"When did you start to hunt your own kind?"
"I left Arkansas for obvious reasons. Went to Florida, hid in the Everglades. I was haunted by fifty years of faces. Yet the next month, when the full moon came, I hunted. I had no choice. The hunger is a burning, painful thing. You can't think past it."
"Why didn't you shoot yourself before the next full moon?"
He lifted a brow. "I wasn't quite that desperate. Yet."
"Yet?"
"What do you think the gun behind the toilet tank was for, Leigh?"
"I thought it wasn't yours."
"I lied."
I blinked. He'd lied about the gun. But what was one more lie? What disturbed me was how well he'd lied. I'd believed him completely. As completely as I'd believed he loved me.
"Where is it now?"
"Somewhere safe. In case I need it."
"I used the bullet."
He shrugged. "I can always get more."
"But you can't touch silver."
"That doesn't mean I don't know someone who can."
The idea of a hidden gun with a single silver bullet, just in case, disturbed me, and I wasn't sure why. I still might shoot him myself. I pushed the thought aside for later analysis. I had enough on my plate already.
"So you went hunting in the Everglades - "
"Miami, actually. A lot more people. But despite the hunger, I couldn't do it. The very thought of killing and eating a person suddenly nauseated me. Then I came upon another like me and the sickness disappeared. I could kill them. With every werewolf destroyed I'd be saving lives, and maybe I could atone a little bit for all the deaths."
I wasn't sure if I believed him. What if he was the power eater? What if he was the white wolf and the brown? What if he was Hector? What if he wasn't? I wasn't truly certain my nemesis was here - except for the weird stinging of my back. Which just might mean I was halfway to crazy again.
I decided to try a frontal assault. "You won't get away with it."
"OK. Whatever it is."
He seemed as confused as I was, but he'd seemed a lot of things and none of them were true.
"Why are you here?" I asked. "There has to be a reason you came to Crow Valley instead of any other burg on the planet."
He blinked. "You don't know?"
"What?"
"I figured that was why you were here, too."
I started to feel uneasy. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Crow Valley. You don't know why it's called that?"
"Because there are a lot of crows, though I've only seen one."
"There were a lot of crows, back when the town began. Because this place was wolf haven."