My eyes snapped open. How long had I been asleep?
I lay on my sleeping bag, alone - nothing new there. What was new was the crescent moon centered in the window, a bright silver slash against an indigo sky.
"Showtime," I muttered.
I'd rather Adam were with me, wouldn't mind having him around while I spent the rest of the night in a tree with my dart gun. But he hadn't offered and I hadn't asked.
In fact, neither one of us had said a word. He'd behaved as if he were drawn to me even though it was wrong, stupid, destructive. He'd behaved like a man who couldn't help himself, and that wasn't love.
But it was something.
I dug out some jeans and a dark T-shirt. As an afterthought I tucked both gris-gris in my pocket. Alligators I didn't need, and one never could tell when the truth might come in handy.
The dart gun was loaded, but I put some extra darts into my backpack, along with a bottle of water and some cookies. I could be out there all night. Last, I opened the cooler I'd bought in town yesterday and withdrew a long white paper-wrapped package from the ice.
The trek to the clearing was uneventful. Though it would be too much to hope for that the loup-garou was poised to step into my trap, nevertheless, I approached quietly, just in case. However, when I pushed through the tall grass, the only thing I saw was an empty cage.
Not that it was easy to see it, if I do say so myself. I'd positioned the apparatus, large enough to hold ten grown men, beneath a particularly weepy-looking cypress tree. After I rearranged the moss and the ground cover, the metal was almost impossible to distinguish by the simple light of a crescent moon.
I tossed the contents of my white paper package inside. "Fresh steak ought to entice you."
Wolves preferred live prey, but they weren't against a free meal when they could find one. Me, I couldn't stomach tying up a live creature to await a bloody death. Prime rib would have to do.
Over the past few days I'd not only readied the cage, the darts, the gun, I'd also readied a second perfect cypress nearby: tall, with acres of moss. I'd placed a portable tree stand about twenty feet off the ground.
I tied my rifle to the rope I'd strung over a branch. Using the heavy-duty nails I'd pounded into the tree, I climbed to the flat metal stand.
After allowing my gaze to wander over the area, I hoisted my gun upward by way of the rope pulley, secured the safety strap around my waist - more fatal hunting accidents occur when hunters tumble out of their trees because they fall asleep, have a heart attack, or are just plain stupid than when they are actually shot - and settled in to wait.
The sounds of the swamp surrounded me. I'd thought the place loud when I was inside the mansion? I hadn't met loud yet
Birds, insects, alligators, nutrias - out there somewhere I could have sworn I heard a pig squeal. A farm animal gone wild? Or were there wild boars in the depths? I probably shouldn't have been wandering around as much as I had been without a gun.
My gaze was caught by shifting swamp grass beneath an ebbing moon. Not the wind. Something was coming.
Slowly I raised the gun. I don't know what I expected, but when the wolf stepped from the swamp into the clearing, lifting his nose and sniffing, I had to bite my lip to keep from making a sound.
His fur shone in the sliver of moonlight, glinting black, then blue, then black again. I'd been right to gauge the dosage for an Alaskan timber wolf. This thing might even be larger than that.
The animal paid no attention to the steak. Instead he trotted around and around the open area as if he knew something was there but couldn't find it.
I wasn't surprised; I didn't even consider it magic to have the wolf from my dream materialize. I'd seen a black tail. I knew what a wolf looked like. Put one and one together and I got two, even in my sleep.
But how was I supposed to determine if this was a real wolf or a werewolf?