Page 56 of Bite of the Gargoyle

He nodded. “With a silver tip.”

“Do you remember anything else?”

“The elders burned the body.”

“Who was he?”

Miguel, who was about thirty, the same age as me, and who sported uncannily round eyes for an Inuit, glanced at me. “My brother.”

“Jesus,” I said.

Miguel looked back at the man propped up against the tree. “We must burn him, too.”

“No,” I said. “First, we find out who he is, and then we find out who killed him.”

Chapter Two

The beads of rain splashed my face, the sudden coldness shocking at first but then, strangely comforting. People always thought it was odd that I preferred a rainy day over a sunny one. Who knew? Maybe I was odd. I’d been accused of worse…

I could feel the burn in my legs as I continued jogging and before long, I found myself headed for the woods—woods that were dark, hidden.

My heartbeat started to increase as unease overcame me, though I wasn’t sure why I was feeling anxious. I ignored the feeling and continued forward. That was when I saw him—the largest animal I’d ever seen in the wild. A wolf.

He was standing maybe five feet in front of me and was completely black with the most startling gray eyes. I’d never seen eyes this color—that of steel.

I immediately stopped and my heart rode up into my throat. I took a step back but the wolf made no motion to follow me. Instead, it just stood there, watching. Waiting.

I won’t hurt you, Elodie.

It was the creature’s voice in my head. And it was plainly male—the tone deep and gruff.

I didn’t understand how it was that I was hearing the creature’s thoughts in my own mind, but there it was.

I need you, Elodie. We all do.

***

My eyes popped open at the same moment that I bolted upright. I was panting and the sweat was already beading along my hairline. It took me a few seconds to catch my breath and convince myself it was just a dream. A recurring one. But my heart continued to thump against my ribs in rapid succession as if it wasn’t convinced.

I threw off the duvet cover and reached for my fluffy white bunny slippers from underneath my bed. Their proximity was by design, considering I woke up nearly every night the same way. Yet, the dream had changed. Before I’d moved to Hope, Alaska, I woke up every night dreaming about an evening eight years ago when my fiancé, Nick, had been shot and killed, right in front of me. It was the reason I’d become a cop and the reason I’d moved to Alaska from Connecticut. Call it escaping the past or fleeing from reality, call it whatever you wanted.

Yet, ever since I’d moved to Hope, I hadn’t dreamt of Nick once. Instead, I’d had this dream or a variation of it. And it was always the same: a wolf—black and enormous and I could hear his voice in my head, telling me he needed me.

I shook my head as I put on the annoyingly fuzzy slippers and then plodded into the living room, the milky-white moonlight guiding my way. The clock on the stove revealed it was 2:00 a.m.

“One of these days,” I said with a sigh, even though I wasn’t exactly sure what it was that I was trying to tell myself. One of these days, I’d actually sleep through the night? One of these days, I’d stop having this weird dream about a talking wolf with steel gray eyes?

Gus, my overweight and overloud roommate, plunged off the couch from where he’d been napping and assaulted me with what sounded like an overture of bleating sheep. It was the sound he made when he was hungry and he was always hungry.

“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered as he weaved his white, portly body in between my ankles, nearly tripping me in the process.

He sat down next to his kitty bowl and then looked up at me with an impatient expression pasted across his flat face. I flipped on the light switch and suddenly felt like my eyes were being burned out of my head as they fought to acclimate themselves to the fluorescence overhead. Once I was able to see through the narrow slits of my squinting eyes, I pulled open the pantry door. Gus’ rows of Fancy Feast cans took prime position up front and center, outnumbering my human food five to one.

“Dr. Ivers is going to be upset with me,” I reprimanded the uninterested Persian cat. “You know we’re supposed to be watching your weight.”

Even if Gus could have understood me, he probably would have responded with something along the lines of, “I’m hungry, so Dr. Ivers can shove it.” As it was, he just licked his chops as I opened the can. I leaned down to spoon out the nasty stuff, but Gus dove for it before I had the chance to empty all of it into his bowl. The guy was serious about his victuals.

I plopped the can into the recycle bin and then stood back as I studied Gus with my arms crossed against my chest. He made a funny sort of humming sound as he vacuumed the food in his bowl. For myself, I couldn’t even remember if I’d eaten dinner the night before.

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