A Beast In the Blood
an excerpt

It had to be some conspiracy. Jo was keeping information about Lucinda to herself and hell if I could see any good reason for it. I already agreed not to tell Mom, didn’t she trust me? I mean I wasn’t the one who snuck off and got married without telling anyone and got herself kicked clean out of the pack. I wasn’t the one living in a stupid house with a mowed lawn and stupid plastic gnomes out front. I wasn’t the one dead now because she was trying to be something that she wasn’t.
Reynolds hadn’t said where his little abode was, but it was easy enough to find. It jutted out on one side of the convent and looked like a converted storage shed. There was a separate door leading to the outside and I’d bet money that there was also an interior door that led directly into the convent area itself so that the nuns wouldn’t have to leave the complex to visit their priest. The trees clustered around the cottage almost right to its edge, a twisted wall of bark and branches. They were more than sturdy enough to hold my bulk; the branches barely made a sound as I climbed into the tangle of them. I nestled myself into a comfortable position and watched the faint Morse-code pattern of lights flick on and off. Little cracks of light leaked from inside the convent, dipping and moving, disappearing and reappearing in a slow lazy dance. The nuns must have been closing up for the night. Reynolds’ cottage remained the last lit, though I couldn’t see any movement inside through the windows.
Stakeouts get dull fast. Without a watch I couldn’t keep track of how long I spent in the trees watching absolutely nothing happen at Reynolds‘ cottage. When a trickle of moonlight finally filtered its way down to me from above I counted that as enough time for all the little penguins to be tucked into bed and a good enough time for me to risk a closer look.
I stayed just outside the pale pool of light, lurking in the shadows like a…shadowy lurking thing. Maybe the old priest had a habit of falling asleep with the lights on. Flimsy curtains blurred the contents of the interior but I could make out the rough outlines of some furniture: a tall, narrow shape that might have been a bookcase, a thick-legged table, a bone-thin frame of a couch. No Reynolds however. The only windows in the place flanked the outside door, so I couldn’t see any hint of the bedroom. Unfortunately, it was probably too late in the night to knock and invite myself inside for tea and more interrogation. I closed my eyes and slowly sucked in a long bellyful of air, rolling it over my tongue. It tasted of dirt and trees, with a faint undertone of musky fur. As I concentrated on the last, trying to pick up more details about it, something sharp and heavy crashed into my skull, knocking the world out from under me.
The first thing I became aware of again was the ground, cold and bumpy, sliding against the back of my jacket. My brain felt heavy and liquid, sloshing painfully back and forth inside my head. My wrists were numb, like I had dunked them into ice water. Leaves crackled around my legs as I moved, or was moved; my arms were wrenched over my head and I was being dragged along like a sack of dirty laundry. Whoever was dragging me didn’t seem to notice that I was awake yet. I didn’t feel anything binding my legs or hands; I guessed they figured that the initial blow would be enough to keep me down for the count.
Sucker.