Chapter 28: Cormac

Once noon rolled around, Cormac went back into the main house to have lunch and talk to Tara. She looked so tense and tired when he first came in the door that he thought maybe something went wrong.

“Why you tell Joey to come in ‘ere?” she asked in a snapping tone. “The way ‘e talk. ‘E scare me and ‘e scare ‘er.” She jerked her head towards Isabelle’s door. “Ya know what he say to ‘er? ‘E say that ‘e gonna kill ‘er if you can’t do it.”

“Don’t listen to Joey. He’s got no say in this.”

“I don’t like ‘im coming in ‘ere and talkin’ this shit to ‘er.” Tara was starting to tremble. “Cormac, ya gotta make a decision.”

Cormac lowered himself to one of the chairs at the kitchen table, extending his hands towards her. “Tara, tell me what to do because I don’t know.”

“She won’t tell no one,” Tara told him, leaning close to him to whisper as if this was a secret Isabelle couldn’t overhear. “Bring ‘er to the train station and let ‘er leave. She don’t want to ‘urt any of us, and you know that.”

“I’m not gonna hurt her,” Cormac said finally. “I can’t bring myself to do it.”

Tara nodded. “I know that. I could tell from ‘ow you talk to ‘er.” She sat across from him. “Can I ask you something, Cormac? ‘Ow do you feel about ‘er?”

“About Isabelle? I don’t really feel anyway ‘bout her?”

“The way ya look at ‘er...makes me think it’s more than that.”

Cormac lay his hands flat on the table, his eyes lowered. “She’s essentially a stranger to me, Tara. True, I don’t want no more blood on my hands but it’s not because of her, ya hear me? It’s because…” He lifted his palms slightly off the table then slammed them back down. “It’s because I don’t want no more of this god damned killin’ around here. Makes me sick.”

Neither of them relished the stories of shifters having to dispatch humans that uncovered their secrets. Tara had only once admitted that she ever had anything to do with a human’s death but for all the years they’d known each other and all the time the two of them spent living under the same roof, she never explained what had happened. Or when. Cormac was left wondering if Tara had been a young child caught in the crosshairs of the real world, sprinting carelessly through her shadow world and expecting reality to turn a blind eye.

“I ‘ate the killing too,” Tara said, stretching her leathery and fine-boned hand out to touch his. Her hands were tools that had been worked to their limit but the shape of them, the elegant palm and long, graceful fingers, gave the impression of cared for claws. There was always something of the wolf in Tara.

Cormac let her hand rest on his. He wanted to yank it away. He was feeling irritable, twitchy, ants and creepers marching around under his skin. The comfort Tara wanted to impart, the sympathy and wisdom she had to lend to the situation burnt his already short fuse down to a nub. All he could think about was the woman in the room a few feet away. Not allowed to leave; sitting in the growing noontime heat and forcing thoughts of death, pain, and torture out of her head.

“So you think I should just drop ‘er off at the station and tell everyone that she’s gone?” Cormac asked, each word as staccato as he could make it. “Hope to god Joey doesn’t go after her or track ‘er down to Denver? I can’t stomach no more. I swear I can’t. But if she goes off and tells people what she’s seen here-”

“She’s not going to.”

“You don’t know that!” Cormac shouted back at her. By the blank expression on her face, Cormac knew he was more surprised by the outburst than she was. “You don’t know what she’s going to do. We didn’t know what that bastard was gonna do when he shot Maxine. Humans...are animals when they’re frightened.”

Tara cleared her throat and pressed her shrunken lips together. Her eyes were glassy for a moment but she inhaled to start speaking and they focused beautifully in a flash. “You know ‘ow I say once that I was responsible for a ‘uman’s death?”

“Yeah.”

“I was pretty young. I think younger than you.” She gave a small laugh through her nose and shrugged. “It can be ‘ard to tell these things. Time changes when you get to my age. But I was young. And in love, like some any others, ya know? It was that ‘onest, young kinda love where ya mean it even if you’re too dumb to understand what you’re sayin’.”

“Don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” Cormac remarked dryly but when Tara rolled his eyes, he allowed himself a smile. “Maybe I got some idea.”

“Well, this boy that I love was not a shifter. I know this. I don’t care ‘bout that. My father does but ‘e doesn’t try to stop me from seein’ ‘im. ‘E just says that one day, I’ll see why it’s impossible to be with a ‘uman. I’ll grow out of it, ‘e says.” Here Tara raises one finger in the air as if performing a trick. “I knew it was the real thing. I tell this boy that I ‘ave something special to show ‘im. Something ‘e won’t believe.”

Cormac sat upright in his chair, dumbstruck by where he thought this was going. “Tara, you didn’t, right? Tell me you didn’t shift in front of him.”

Tara’s eyes lowered and she nodded. “I thought ‘e would be amazed by it. That ‘e would see ‘ow incredible we are. No, ‘e was terrified. ‘E called me a monster, tell me ‘e was gonna let everyone know just what kind of creature I was. I couldn’t get ‘im to calm down.” She breathed out, the tremor of tears evident inside the gust. “When ‘e tried to run, I snapped ‘is neck. I brought the body to my father, crying. My father, ‘e just nods and says, ‘you ‘ad to find out for yourself.’”

“What are you trying to tell me with this story, Tara?” Cormac asked, rattled and uncomfortable by the whole scene. The past, the killing, the dilemma they were still facing, everything. All of it.

“That I regret that killin’ every day of my life. Even though I know I did the right thing.”

“So I should kill Isabelle?”

Tara sighed, her shoulders sloping. “Only if you really think it’s the right thing. If you don’t think that then you need to protect ‘er because Joey is the real animal ‘ere and ‘e’s out for blood.”

As Cormac stood up from the table, Tara caught his wrist, her one finger raised in the air again. “There’s something else, isn’t there?” she asked.

“What are ya talkin’ about?” Cormac pulled his wrist free of her hold. “I’m tryin’ to figure out what to do to keep us safe and not kill someone for no reason. What else is there?”

“With Isabelle. There’s somethin’ else about ‘er.”

“There ain’t,” Cormac assured her in an almost menacing growl. “She’s just a reporter who got caught up in this mess, and I don’t wanna see her hurt for no reason.”

“I see ‘ow you look at ‘er,” Tara told him despite how pinched his face was getting, how heavy and angry his breathing. “You ‘aven’t looked at anyone like that since Maxine died.”

“You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Cormac snarled but he felt Tara’s eyes on him as he started down the hallway to Isabelle’s room. Tara had a way of seeing everything. From his slow gait and stooped shoulders, Cormac had given it all away.

He stood outside Isabelle’s door for longer than he meant to, hearing his own humid breathing in the empty hallway. Cormac raised his fist and knocked on the door. He wanted to at least give her a moment before he broke into her quiet. There was no response so he slowly turned the knob and poked his head in. Isabelle was sitting on the bed, a plate in her lap and her eyes completely averted from him.

“Can I come in for a moment, Isabelle?” Cormac asked tightly. He was ashamed of how he was behaving around her but he couldn’t think of any other way to act. If he was too rough, she’d never cooperate; if he was too compassionate, she’d think she was the one in control of the situation.

“It’s your house, you can do whatever you want.” Isabelle moved the plate of food from her lap and still didn’t look at him. “Is this it? Are you taking me out of here to murder me and dump my body somewhere in the desert?”

“What makes you think killin’ is what we’re gonna do?”

Isabelle turned to him, her head cocked and her eyes popped wide. “Because Joey paid me a visit and was unmistakably clear about it.”

“Joey’s just a big talker,” Cormac promised her. He sat next to her on the bed. “I don’t wanna scare ya.”

“You don’t know what to do with me, do you?” Isabelle asked. She cocked her head to the opposite side as before. “If you were going to kill me, I think you would have done it already.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“But you’re not sure what to do with me.” Cormac lowered his eyes, nodding imperceptibly. Isabelle took another deep breath. “And you’re thinking about letting me leave. Aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what we’re thinking right now, Isabelle. I truly don’t.”

She moved closer still, her fingers overlaying his. Her lips were parted then she pursed them as if she was thinking of something, concentrating very hard. “I could be very valuable to you, Cormac,” she told him. “An asset to you and Tara.”

“We don’t need no assets, thanks.”

“Then maybe just to you. Maybe there’s something you want from me.”

Cormac faced her head on, struck by how close they were to each other and how comfortable he felt right next to her. Their shoulders brushed as their weight shifted on the lumpy, worn mattress. Cormac pressed his hand deeper into the mush of it.

“This mattress is terrible,” he said, giving himself a reprieve from Isabelle’s penetrating dark eyes. “I can’t believe we’re makin’ ya sleep on it.”

“Where else would I sleep?” The corner of her mouth twitched upward. “Can you think of somewhere more...enjoyable?”

She was closer now, and Cormac didn’t move away. His eyes rose to meet hers, and she pushed forward on her knees, resting her lips lightly against his. She didn’t open her mouth or do much more than that. She merely caught his lips with hers and held the position.

It was Cormac that pulled her closer, Cormac that brought the wetness of their tongues and teeth into the situation. When Isabelle broke free from the kiss, she bit into his lip and released a faint whimpering sound.

“You don’t want to kill me, Cormac,” she whispered, their mouths just barely separated from each other. “So don’t.”

Cormac got to his feet and started towards the door. Isabelle caught him by the belt loop of his jeans, turning him to face her before he could walk out again. Before he could leave without giving her the answers he had intended to give. He hadn’t had them when he first walked into the room and he sure as shit didn’t have them right then and there. His hope had been that the decision could be made once he looked her in the face but that had only made the situation even more confusing.

“I don’t know what we’re gonna do,” Cormac told her honestly.

“You mean you don’t know if you’re going to kill me or not?”

“I truly don’t know.”

Cormac left before Isabelle could say anything else. He closed the door behind him and let his weight fall against it. His lips felt electric and tingling; his whole body felt bubbly and alive. Aside from the fact that he was still considering killing someone, he had a surge of happiness; a burst of endorphins he hadn’t experienced in a very long time. He wanted to open the door and tell Isabelle that she was right, there was no way he was going to kill her. Then he wanted to close the door and pin her to the bed with his body, listen to that whimpering noise as he dove between her legs with his tongue extended and his fingers eagerly exploring.

“It’ll be ok, Isabelle,” he said through the door, hoping it was loud enough for her to hear him. “I’m not sure what we’re gonna do but...it’ll be ok.”

Tara was watching him from the kitchen, and the sight of her staring him down lit up his nerves like nails on a chalkboard. She was seeing his weakness, seeing him stumbling. He wondered if she was thinking about his father, about the times he had made much more difficult decisions than this. A churning started in his stomach, a churning that he recognized from the first time he ever kissed Maxine.

Cormac paced quickly down the hall and out the front door even as Tara approached him, obviously still wanting to speak to him. He was out in the hot zenith of the midday sun, squinting at the horizon in the distance, before she could get a word out of her mouth. There was nowhere for him to go to be alone. The ranch hands were all over the paddock and the grounds, Tara was in the main house, and Joey was lurching everywhere and anywhere Cormac was. He spotted the dilapidated cottage not too far away. The last time he had been in there was when Maxine died but he knew one thing: it was quiet; he’d be alone.

With the heavy tread of a man unmoored, Cormac walked towards the rundown cottage and opened the splintering front door.