in as I fought a sudden craving for raw steak.
"It seems to me," Damien murmured, "that you have Hector at a disadvantage."
"How so?" Jessie asked.
"Leigh can get close to him. He'll trust her."
Jessie and Will both turned to me. "He's right."
Jessie holstered her gun. "I guess I can always shoot you later."
"Yeah, look at the bright side." I pushed past Damien and moved farther into the room. "Hector plans to use Damien for his sacrifice."
Damien frowned, blinked, then shrugged. "Let him try."
"You need to protect him, Jessie."
"I don't need anyone to protect me," Damien protested. "I can take care of myself."
Jessie ignored him. "We could always shoot him before they kill him."
"Would you quit with the shooting?" I said. "Sacrifice is sacrifice. He doesn't necessarily need Damien.
He just wants him."
"Because?"
"He touched me."
Jessie glanced at Damien.
"She's worth it," he said.
Her gaze went shrewd, and she turned her attention to me with a lift of her brow.
I shook my head. I wasn't going to discuss my feelings for Damien. Not now. F'robably not ever.
"Hector told me you and Will wouldn't make it back from Cora's."
"We almost didn't," Will muttered.
"What happened?"
"My car is kind of like yours now."
"They attacked."
"When we were halfway between Cora's and home. Thankfully Jessie brought a lot of guns and even more ammo."
She patted her Magnum. "Pays to be prepared."
"A regular Boy Scout," I agreed.
"We left quite a few dead ones behind."
"You didn't burn them?"
"We didn't want to get out of the car. There were more waiting."
I nodded. "Did you happen to see a crow?"
Will frowned. "It settled on the kills. Started pecking. Scavenger."
"That was Hector."
Jessie and Will exchanged glances.
"You'd better tell us everything," he urged.
When I was through, Will murmured, "Not good." He spread his hands. "But hey, if this job were easy, everyone would do it."
That startled a laugh out of me.
"Mandenauer?"
My head whipped around. Jessie held the cell phone to her ear.
"You'd better get to Crow Valley. Leigh's been bitten."
She listened for an instant, then hung up.
"Dammit, Jessie, you'll only upset him. What can he do?"
"I guess we're gonna find out. Because he's on his way, and he's bringing Dr. Hanover."
Chapter 36
I wanted to ask what Edward had said. I hoped he wasn't coming to shoot me. If I had to go, I wanted Jessie to do it, not Edward. He seemed so frail lately. My dying would not help. My dying by his hand would certainly hurt.
I wanted to ask, but I never got the chance. As we sat down to formulate some kind of plan, the room suddenly went dark and cool. I heard the trees rustle, even though the windows and the doors were shut.
I smelled leaves, evergreens.
I was hungry. Starving. My belly growled, or maybe the sound came from my mouth. I wasn't sure. I had to eat or the hunger would consume me. The madness flickered at the edge of my brain. Food. Blood.
Meat.
Dimly I felt myself slide from the couch to the floor. Damien was there, lifting me, carrying me to the bed.
I turned my mouth toward his neck, but he smelled like wolf, not man. I scented fresh meat nearby. My gaze went to Jessie.
She narrowed her eyes. "Don't even think about it."
But I did. The hunger was a living, breathing, aching thing in my stomach. I half-expected it to burst out and devour everyone near me. I placed my hands over my middle and moaned. But the sound that came out of my mouth was something else entirely.
I understood how the hunger caused sane men to go mad. I was a little crazed myself. Then the fever ripped through my body; like a fire it blazed. My skin burned, my scalp tingled, and darkness cloaked my mind.
I awoke in the woods - naked, alone, covered in blood. My hunger was gone, my belly distended. The sun was rising in the east. I had no idea where I was. I remembered nothing of what I had done.
And I didn't care.
That was the strange part. I'd in all likelihood killed, then eaten, my friends, maybe even my lover -
though I doubted Damien would have stood still and let me devour him. Literally, anyway.
But now that the hunger was appeased, all I cared about was making sure that the next time it came I had plenty of people to hunt.
I ran through the forest, felt the breeze on my skin, through my hair. I reveled in the dirt beneath my feet.
I jumped into a river and washed the blood away, then