Laws of Nature -2

by Christopher Golden

  There's a Prowler around that office. Probably him. But I'd be lying if I said I was sure."

  "I think we need to go on the assumption that it is him," Jack put in. "Hate to say it, but those gun charges could have been pretty bad. Especially if he searched the Jeep. Maybe it's true he just doesn't care right now. Or maybe he wanted to let us out, wanted us to be roaming around."

  In the front seat, Molly turned to look at him, eyes haunted. "You mean, so they could kill us?"

  Jack did not answer. He did not have to.

  "We killed a couple of them at the library last night," Molly told Bill. "The sheriff was the first one there, but when Deputy Vance got there, the bodies were gone. The sheriff had to have moved them. He was only a couple of minutes behind us, and the Prowlers were all ahead of us."

  Bill turned on School Street, jaw set in a grim line. "Sheriff of a town like this. What better position to be in if you're the Alpha of a Prowler pack? You decide what evidence gets paid attention to, and if a couple of hikers disappear, you get to play dumb without the law poking their noses in. It makes a nasty kind of sense."

  Jack felt his sadness over Deputy Vance's death mingle with his fear for himself and his friends and grow into a new resolve. This could not go on any longer.

  Now that Bill had arrived, it was time to act.

  "We're going to have to go forward assuming the sheriff 's one of them," he said. "That's bad because he knows all about us, now. But it's good because we know where he is. We've got a lot of questions, and now we know who to ask."

  "He's not going to want to answer," Bill reminded him.

  "It's too late for what he wants," Jack said gravely. "Now it's about what we need to stay alive. What really pisses me off is that they can move during the day if they want to, but we can't exactly raid the police station in broad daylight. Tonight, though - tonight, we go after answers."

  He turned to gaze out the window at the passing trees and his stomach grumbled. "In the meantime, is anyone else hungry?"

  Hate flowed through Tina, trying to fill her up, and she let it in if only because it helped to force out her grief. Dust rose up from the dirt road that cut across her father's farmland as she drove toward his house. The house she had grown up in. Off to her left a tractor was stopped in a cornfield, probably broken down.

  Several hands were standing around staring at it as though it would fix itself. As the sound of her engine reached them they turned to wave, almost in unison.

  Daddy, she thought.

  A tear slipped down her cheek.

  Her lips curled up in a soft growl.

  The moment Sheriff Tackett told her what had happened to Alan, she began to rehearse the confrontation that was about to come. Now, though, as she drew closer to the huge, rambling farmhouse, she knew that she would never be able to speak those rehearsed words.

  The tires bounced through ruts in the dirt road, and then she was there, the house looming up in front of her. Tina hit the brakes, threw the car into park, and killed the engine. She sprang from the car and hurried toward the door. By the time she reached it, she was running.

  "Daddy!" she shouted as she tore the door open and rushed into the foyer. "Daddy!"

  "In here."

  The voice came from the sun-filled parlor to the left of the front door. It had been her favorite room as a child; her mother's favorite room. Until her mother had died. Now, even from the corridor, she could see her father in the antique rocker that sat in the far corner, its back to the windows. His face was partially in shadow, his gray hair turned halo-golden by the sunshine streaming in around him.

  " Henri Lemoine, you are a monster," she said, pronouncing his name with the accent of his native French.

  "Christina," he replied softly, gazing up at her with an expression of sadness that she almost believed.

  Tina shuddered and shook her head. "No, Daddy. You killed him! You killed Alan, or had one of the others do it for you."

  Her father stood at last and crossed the room toward her. "Christina," he said again, reaching out for her. "He gave me no choice. Alan was always a curious young man. Things had progressed too far. It would have been impossible to erase what he had seen from his mind."

  Though fury rippled through her, made her want to change, to give herself over to the wild, Tina refused to allow it if only to deny him that one small thing. He would have wanted her to give reign to the beast within her, but she would not. Just as Henry Lemoine now wore his human face in an attempt to mollify his daughter's sorrow.

  "Don't try to tell me that Alan was responsible for his own murder!" she yelled. "You killed him, you old bastard. You animal!"

  "Yes, I am an animal. And yes, I had him killed. But he left me no choice."

  Fuming, her chest heaving with her rage, she slapped her father across the face, long nails scratching him and drawing blood. Henry touched the wounds and then licked his own blood from his fingers.

  "You could have prevented it, you know," her father said.

  A chill went through her. Unable to believe she had really heard those words, she shook her head. "What are you talking about?"

  "I tried to talk to you about what was happening, but you did not want to hear it. Ever since you came of age, daughter, you have vexed me whenever possible.

  You embraced the human world, spurned your heritage here, this sanctuary for your kind. You left us - "

  "I went to college!" she shouted.

  Henry nodded sadly. "And you only came home because your mother was ill and I promised to buy you that old hotel. But I did that to keep you close to the Pack, hoping that one day you would see that you were mistaken. That one day you would become part of the Pack again, that you would at last understand the importance of sanctuary and the dream behind it. Even when you became involved with a human, I indulged you."

  "I loved him," Tina whispered, on the verge of fresh tears.

  Her father scowled. "He was kind, Tina. But he was human."

  She turned away. All she wanted now was to run, to leave her father, his precious sanctuary, and all the Pack behind forever.

  "None of this would have happened if you had not broken your own rules and started killing the people in town. We lived among them so long and they never knew, not for sure, that we were real. Then you throw that all away in a matter of weeks."

  Henry let out a long sigh that sounded more like a rumbling growl.

  "You would understand if you had been willing to let me speak to you of this before. I tried, Tina. Do not forget that. And you turned me away, shushed me. Will you listen now?"

  She did not respond, only kept her back to him. But she listened. He spoke to her then the way he had at bedtime when she was a child, as though they sat around the fire and he shared with her the great wisdom of his ancestors. Which was, she supposed, true enough in his mind.

  "Once, the Great Packs roamed all the continents of the world, sometimes at war with one another, sometimes at peace," Henry Lemoine told his daughter.

  "But as humanity evolved, they spread like a forest fire. Soon there were so many that the Packs found themselves hunted. The early humans had been prey, but over time, they became the enemy.

  "The Packs splintered, internecine war erupted over the hunting grounds that were free of the taint of humans. But the humans kept coming, spreading their influence. Over the course of thousands of years, we evolved the ability to appear human, we adapted. But by then it was too late. There were thousands of tiny Packs spread across the world, mostly in the dark, forgotten corners where few humans congregated.

  "During the twentieth century, many broke off from the Packs and hid themselves away within human society, became part of it. When there was no loyalty between the surviving packs, nor even any real communication, there was no society. Without that, there was no responsibility, from one of us to the other.

  "Sanctuary was created as a response to that, a place where we could come to rest, to be safe, to consider our
place in a society that barely existed any longer. Rogues or renegades, no matter what their Pack affiliation, or if they had no affiliation at all, they are welcomed here. They can join the Pack, or stay for a short while, living in the mountains, in the wild, as their ancestors did.

  "The sanctuary is a sacred thing, a memorial to the greatness we achieved in the past and a testament to our belief that we can reach those heights again.

  Society is the answer. Together we can return to the glory of an almost forgotten age.

  "But only if we do so quietly."

  He paused then. Tina swallowed hard and turned to face her father. She still did not understand what any of that had to do with the Pack's breach of its first law. They had killed people in Buckton, where they lived, drawn attention to themselves.

  "Christina," Henry said gently, "when word came to us about what had happened to Owen Tanzer and his pack, we mourned. But they were foolish. Tanzer forgot that this is their world now. If the land is to be returned to us, we will have to muster our strength quietly. It took thousands of years for things to evolve into what they are now, and it might take thousands of years to reverse them.

  "This sanctuary was meant to set an example. Serenity and caution are necessary if the dream it represents is ever to come true, but knowledge is equally important. If it could take thousands of years to usurp the humans, then that knowledge will need to be passed along."

  Again, her father paused, and there was weight to his silence.

  "I wrote it down. All of it. The history I know from oral tradition, the experiences of my own centuries of life, the purpose and philosophy of the sanctuary. I wrote it all down in a journal."

  "Oh, my God," Tina gasped, one hand flying to her mouth in astonishment.

  A journal. She had meant to ask her father about the book in Tackett's office, the scrawl of his handwriting, but in her grief over Alan's murder she had not yet gotten around to it.

  "That's what this is all about?" She stared at him, horrified. "You're not even hunting. You're killing all these people, folks I've known my whole life . . . Alan . . .

  You killed Alan over this journal?"

  All the love and warmth went out of her father then. He glared at her, cold and savage. "It's a shame you wouldn't listen to me before. You might have kept him out of it. But now we've done what we had to. If that book ends up in the wrong hands - "

  But Tina wasn't listening anymore. Her hands fluttered in the air as though she could brush the horror away, and she turned and stormed out of her father's house without another word. As her feet hit the dirt, she let the tears flow freely, and when she slid behind the wheel of the car, she slumped over the wheel and sobbed.

  Tina Lemoine was not a fool. She knew what she was, what they were, her kind. But she had never really felt a part of it. Her father was right in that she had come back to Buckton after college because her mother was ill, dying, and because he had promised to buy the inn for her. But she had stayed because, in the end, Buckton was her hometown. These were her people.

  And they were dying because for her father's pride, for his arrogant insistence upon creating a legacy that would live on after he was gone.

  Tina wiped her tears away and started the car. She did a quick U-turn and took off down the road, dirt rising up in clouds again from the road. The hands in the field were still standing around staring expectantly at the dead tractor, though one of them had climbed up on top of the machine and seemed to be taking the engine apart.

  She did not see if they waved this time. She was not looking.

  Tina would leave Buckton and never return. After this was over, she was going to stay as far away from her father as she could, for the rest of her inhumanly long life. But she would not leave until she had put a stop to these killings, and she realized now that it was within her power to do that. Her father's journal was in Sheriff Tackett's office. She had no idea if Tackett knew that, but she was determined to retrieve it, and end the violence that was tearing her town apart.

  Once the journal was in her hands, it would be over, and then she would leave Buckton - the sanctuary - and the pack behind.

  CHAPTER 13

  It was dusk and the waning sunlight gave way to the stranglehold of darkness without a whimper. Slow, inexorable, the night swept in. The afternoon had gone by painfully slowly. Several times, they had discussed not waiting, simply going after the sheriff right then and there. But wisdom had prevailed - such things were better done under the cover of darkness.

  They had eaten lunch at the Jukebox just before two o'clock, then wandered through the few shops in town that were open on Sunday. Molly had been impatient for a shower, and Bill and Jack accompanied her back to the inn before dinner. Their fears had gone unspoken, but they were unwilling to leave her alone, even for an hour.

  By the time they had sat down for dinner, they had run out of the energy it required to pretend at being carefree. They had eaten, mostly in silence, and then returned to the inn to await nightfall.

  And now it had come.

  Molly sat in the back of the Jeep with a pair of 9mm handguns clipped to her belt at the small of her back and the remaining pump shotgun on the floor at her feet.

  Crazy, she thought. The whole world is crazy.

  The window was open, and the night air was hot and sweet. A bit of sweat trickled down her throat and chest and it felt strangely cold to her, as though her every nerve were reaching out, examining each sensation.

  This was not the first time she had gone knowingly into danger. In some ways, this was simpler. There was only the one monster to contend with. And yet, this was the first time she had had this much time to prepare for it, to roll it over in her brain as though it were a hard candy in her mouth that had to be worked at to surrender its flavor.

  Danger had a flavor all its own. And though it terrified her, Molly would not turn away. She was bolstered by her hatred for the Prowlers. It gave her strength.

  Jack shut off the headlights as they rolled into the lot behind the Town Hall. The police station was partially dark, but the light in the front reception area and several at the side windows were still burning. They were counting on the receptionist, Alice, to work only set hours. With Alan Vance dead, that meant that, if Tackett was in there, he was probably there alone.

  "Things must be quiet," Bill said. "Looks like he's still here."

  "Yeah," Jack agreed. "Or he's waiting for us."

  Molly swallowed hard. She did not like that idea. Not at all. Jack killed the engine and they got out slowly. Molly reached back into the Jeep for the shotgun.

  Given that she had very little experience with weapons, the shotgun was the best weapon for her. Big bang, a lot of damage on a wide radius.

  Bill carried a small canvas bag in which he had placed the tiny grenades that had been in the crate in the back of the Jeep. Jack had three nine millimeters, one in each hand and one clipped to his belt at the small of his back. Bill had identified the other gun in the crate as a twelve-year-old assault rifle, but they all thought it wisest to leave it right where it was.

  What they were doing was crazy enough without a weapon like that in the hands of someone who had never fired one before. Bill claimed to know how to work it, but then, after all, he hardly needed one.

  The wind seemed to die quite suddenly as they slipped along the front of the building, trying to stay out of sight. What breeze there had been dropped away, and Molly felt too warm, as if the air itself was stalking her, the humidity preying upon her.

  At the door, Jack moved ahead. Molly and Bill were side by side and she could feel the raw, animal power emanating off him. He was tensed and ready, and suddenly she understood the word wild in a way she never had before.

  Molly was concerned that the door might be locked, but Bill pulled it open and ushered them in. Jack went first, arms bent up close to himself, guns aimed at the ceiling. Back to one wall, he slid quickly up the corridor to the first junction. Molly breathed a
sigh of relief when there was no reaction within. That meant that they had been right about the receptionist; she would hate to have terrorized the woman. After a moment, she followed Jack into the building, shotgun held up straight the way Bill had shown her. She watched as Jack ducked his head around the corner, then turned back to nod wordlessly before continuing along the corridor.

  As she was about to pursue him, Molly felt Bill's powerful grip on her shoulder. Alarmed, she spun to stare at him, wide-eyed, now extraordinarily aware of the beat of her own heart in her eardrums, the rise and fall of her chest with each anxious breath. He slipped past her, made it clear to her that she was to take up the rear. Ahead, Jack moved quickly, almost stridently, down the hallway toward the door to the sheriff 's office. It stood open, a soft golden light coming from within, a counterpoint to the harsh overhead illumination in the hall. Bill caught up to him a second before Molly did, and tapped him on the shoulder.

  When Jack turned to look at them both, his eyes were wild, and Molly realized exactly how frightened he was, scared for himself, for them, and at the idea that they might not be able to stop the Prowlers. She knew him well enough to realize the latter scared him the most.

  After a moment Jack let out a long breath and stepped back just a bit to let Bill go in ahead of him.

  Unarmed.

  Bill pointed at each of them in turn, the gesture taking in their weapons, maybe emphasizing their importance - or not, Molly could not be sure - and then indicated that Jack should go to the right inside the door and Molly to the left.

  They both nodded.

  One hand up, Bill ticked off three fingers.

  Then he strode into the sheriff 's office. Jack darted in behind him and to the left, both nine millimeters raised.

  Molly swept into the room and leveled the shotgun. The sheriff was behind his desk, paperwork all over the place, a cup of soup at the edge with a plastic spoon in it, still steaming from the microwave. The large, potbellied man's eyes were hard and angry, but not afraid. He began to rise, reaching for the gun at his hip.