“Ah, Jesus, the whole building - " Tackett began.
The explosion cut him off, a double-thump that shattered walls and cut the number of Prowlers down further.
“Now!" Jack shouted, throat dry, blood pumping hard. His whole body felt hot, as though the sun burned him.
But it was the darkest of nights.
Bill Cantwell let loose the animal in his soul. This was what he was. What he was always meant to be. Peace was what he wanted, but he would bathe in the blood of his enemies if they would not leave him to that peace.
With a howl that made him shiver with pleasure, Bill led the way into the ruined station house. He leaped over the rubble, with Tackett close behind him. The sheriff was shouting something, but Bill was not listening. He snarled a challenge in the oldest language on earth, a guttural, primeval voice that came up from deep within him.
The first of the Prowlers to attack him was a simple thing, already injured. Bill broke his neck with a quick twist. Others appeared in the hall. Tackett fired a burst from the assault rifle and three of them did a death dance and tumbled to the floor, bleeding out. Bill tried to figure how many were left.
Ten?
Fewer?
From a side corridor, one of them lunged at him, got a claw across his ribcage, and Bill hissed with the pain of it. He slammed the beast into the wall hard enough to shake plaster loose, but the Prowler came back at him immediately. He was strong.
Behind him, another went for Tackett. The sheriff tried to shoot at him, but the clip jammed in the assault rifle. Tackett jammed the weapon into the beast's face and the thing lashed out at him. Claws raked the side of the sheriff 's head, drawing blood, and Tackett staggered back against the wall.
Bill tore open the chest of his attacker, then went to Tackett's aid. He got there just in time, got his claws under the creature's jaw and tore his head right off his body with a grinding of bone and a thick, wet, tearing sound of tendons and muscles and skin being rent.
He glanced back at Tackett. The sheriff held a hand to one side of his skull, blood seeping between his fingers.
“Can you keep up?" Bill asked.
“I'll have to," Tackett replied.
“Stick with me then."
Jack ran up behind Bill and fired at several more approaching figures. He saw Tackett's bloody scalp and cursed loudly.
Molly pumped the shotgun and waited.
The figures disappeared back up the hall.
“Follow them. We're going to end this!" Jack roared.
Bill careened down the corridor ahead of them, toward the sheriff 's office where it had all begun. Tackett followed, hand still clapped to his head. As he and Molly followed, weapons at the ready, Jack reminded himself that scalp wounds were supposed to bleed a lot, but he was concerned for Tackett regardless.
Bill was much faster than they were, and he reached the office first. When he came even with the door and turned to go in, the Alpha was waiting for him.
Henry Lemoine, lord of this Prowler pack, surged from the open doorway with his claws slashing down, and ripped bleeding furrows in Bill's chest.
Bill cried out in pain, voice sounding almost human. Tackett staggered back and away from them, swearing angrily at his own uselessness.
Tackett was out of the way, leaning on the wall, but the Alpha was too close to Bill for Jack to get a clear shot at him.
“Watch it!" Molly shouted.
Jack looked up even as she pulled the trigger. It stopped one Prowler cold but before she could even begin to pump the shotgun again, five of them were rushing from the room.
Bill and the Alpha continued to snarl and slash at each other, in a tussle on the floor. Molly tried to pump the shotgun and one of the Prowlers lunged at her.
Tackett grabbed her arm and hauled her out of the way. The monster slammed hard into the wall on the other side of the corridor. Then Jack was with them, propelling Tackett and Molly along, the soles of their shoes slapping loudly on the floor as they ran down the hall toward the rear of the station, where the cells were. Tackett's blood was dripping, leaving a trail behind them.
“We can't leave Bill behind!" Molly shrieked.
With a backward glance, Jack saw that all the others were following them. They had left Bill to the Alpha, confident in their leader's strength. He only prayed that they were wrong.
“No choice!" he told her. “Tackett, tell me you've got your keys!"
The sheriff glanced at him, one side of his head matted with blood. Understanding dawned on his face, and he reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys.
Jack snatched them out of his hand.
“Molly, help him!"
Jack ran on, just ahead of them. At the end of the hall, he skidded on the linoleum as he raced around the corner, and saw the long line of jail cells. Even in those desperate seconds, his mind had been scrambling for a plan, a way to get out of this alive. The cells were their last chance.
He worked the keys in the lock of the first cell. When he hit the third key, Molly and Tackett stumbled up. The sheriff looked pale and shaky. The fourth key turned in the lock and Jack hauled the cell door open.
“In there!"
The Prowlers roared and loped along the hall toward them. Jack fired one shot over his shoulder, enough to make the Prowlers hesitate for the one second he needed to buy them. Enough. Just barely. When he slammed the metal-barred door behind them, one of the Prowlers hit the bars so hard, face-first, that it fell, dazed to the floor.
He barely moved.
A female paced tiger-like in front of their cell.
“Those bars won't save you!" she snarled.
Molly laughed, a mad, bitter sound. “What are you, stupid?" Then she pulled the trigger, and the female's head disappeared in a shower of bone and gray matter. Fur stuck to the wall in splatters of blood.
Jack opened fire, cutting down the other three that were still standing.
The one on the floor, nearly unconscious, was the last to die.
When all was quiet out in the hall, Jack turned to Molly, gasping for breath, and saw the tears streaming down her face. She dropped her shotgun and it clattered on the floor of the cell. He stared down at his guns in disgust, and let them fall as well. Behind them, Tackett had slumped to the floor. He sat leaning against the wall of the cell, face slack, eyes hollow. But he was alive.
They had won. Jack felt like throwing up.
But at least the monsters would take no more lives. Not in Buckton.
“Oh, God," Molly whispered.
She came to him then, and Jack took her in his arms and just held her, gently, rocking just a little. He did not try to wipe the tears from her eyes. After a moment he realized that he was crying as well.
“Bill?" Molly asked.
She lifted her gaze to him, and Jack stared at her. He bit his lip, almost afraid to wonder about the man, the monster that was their friend and ally.
Then they heard heavy footsteps out in the corridor.
The face that appeared in front of the cell was the face of the beast, but the eyes were so very human.
“Bill!" Molly cried in relief.
She snatched the keys from Jack's hands and pushed them through the bars to him. With a wince of pain from the wounds on his chest, Bill slid the key in and unlocked the cell.
The door swung open.
As Jack and Molly emerged amidst the carnage, the dead beasts all around them, Bill willed the change to come upon him again, building the false face that flowed to create skin and human features.
Then he stumbled and almost fell. Blood soaked through his torn clothing.
“Oh, my God," Molly said. She turned to Jack, eyes wide. “We've got to get them both to a hospital."
“No," Tackett groaned.
They turned to see him struggling to rise to his feet. He pushed away from the wall, expression grim but determined.
“Just go. Gather up the weapons you brought into town with you, get your things fro
m the inn, and go. Don't talk to anyone, don't stop, and don't take Cantwell to a hospital within a hundred miles of Buckton."
“I don't understand," Molly said. “You need to have those wounds stitched before you bleed to death."
“I will," Tackett countered. “But the longer you stand here, the more blood I lose. Just get me to my office."
Jack glanced up at Bill. “Can you manage?"
“I'll heal," Bill grunted, though as he walked with them every step seemed painful.
Molly helped steady Tackett as they walked back to his office, weaving around Prowler corpses and splashes of blood as they went.
“What are you gonna do?" Jack asked the sheriff. “How are you gonna explain all this?"
“I don't have to explain. All anyone has to do is look around," Tackett replied. “I think they'll get it. I've lived in this town my whole life except during my time with the Marines. Even after all this, there are people I trust here. But there are also folks I don't know so well who'd be quick to call in the state police, and I don't want that.
“I don't want the media and state investigators and curious college kids driving up and down the streets here. There are people in this town I know will feel the way I do, once they've gotten over trying to convince themselves it isn't real. So I'll make a few phone calls, and I'll get stitched up, and by dawn, all these bodies will be burned or buried somewhere and the place'll be so clean it sparkles."
“What about all the damage? People are going to ask about that," Jack cautioned him.
“After the vandalism at the diner and the library, it'll be simple enough. The hard part's gonna be explaining where the Lemoines and Bernie Mackeson went, not to mention whoever else we killed tonight without knowing it."
Tackett shuddered at the thought and shook his head sorrowfully. “Damn, Tina. She was a nice girl."
No one had a reply for that.
“They'll just be disappearances," Bill said grimly. “You'll get reporters, maybe even state police, but as long as no one says anything, eventually it'll just be a story people talk about."
Jack stopped them just outside Tackett's office. “Maybe not," he said. “People have seen us. Some of them have got to know you arrested us. There are going to be questions."
Tackett lowered his head and sighed. Then he pushed away from Molly and leaned against the door frame. “Henry Lemoine would have killed me if not for you. I'll cover for you as best I can, and no one I bring in to help me will talk about it.
“As far as I'm concerned, I picked you up because I don't like out-of-towners and had to let you go when Alan was killed. I let you out earlier this morning and you checked out of the Inn. You spent the day in town and then left Buckton after dinner. I saw you off myself, with my apologies for inconveniencing you. If you stick to that, and don't go back through town on your way out of here, this just might work."
The three of them stared at him. Jack wondered what rank Tackett had achieved in the Marine Corps, because he certainly had the makings of an officer.
“There might be a few who got away," Bill warned him.
“If they're smart, they'll keep running."
“Wow, I guess you've got it covered," Molly said softly.
Tackett pushed away from the wall. “I will if I can make the calls I need to make before I pass out."
She helped him into the office and over to his desk. The place was a shambles, dead Prowlers and shattered glass all over the floor, along with what appeared to be every book that had been on the sheriff 's shelves. They were strewn about, some of them torn up.
Tackett picked up the phone and began to dial.
Which was when Jack noticed that Tina's corpse was not where he had left it. He had shot her between the desk and the door, but now her body lay on the other side of the room beneath a broken window. It had to be her, for she was the only female Prowler they had killed in the office.
Curious, Jack stepped over a dead beast and made his way through the books that had been tossed all over the place. A trail of blood led to where she lay, face to the wall. Her fur was matted with it and it pooled all around her head.
Jack stared. The bullet to the head had not killed her instantly. Somehow she had found the strength before she died to crawl all the way across the room.
What he didn't understand was why.
Carefully, he reached down and turned her over.
Dead, jaws gaping open, eyes glossy, the thing they knew as Tina clutched a leather-bound book in her arms, held tight against her chest. He knew right away what it had to be. Jack crouched and slipped the book from her grasp. He stood and opened it, began to read from one of the handwritten pages.
“Is that . . . ?"
Jack glanced up to find Molly beside him, staring at the book. He nodded. Bill came over to them then. He looked drawn, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped.
“You gonna be all right?" Jack asked.
“A little rest will do me a lot of good," Bill replied. “Maybe a few stitches. One of you is going to have to drive my car." His eyes went to the journal in Jack's hands. “Is that the book?"
“Yes."
“Bring it with you," Bill said. “It should make interesting reading."
After they were certain that Tackett had help on the way, they left the sheriff still on the phone and went back out to the Jeep. They drove back to the inn with the headlights off, and Molly slipped across the lot to get Bill's car. The two vehicles moved quietly through the dark until they were well outside of town.
They were exhausted, and Bill was wounded, and they were a long way from home. But Jack knew it would be all right now.
For as they drove out of Buckton, he did not see a single ghost on the sides of the road. The victims of the prowlers, the souls who had wandered lost among these mountains, had finally left Buckton behind.
EPILOGUE
On Monday Courtney let them sleep all day as business went on as usual in the pub. She counted the hours until the kitchen would close and not once did she let slip that three of Bridget's best employees were lazing around like slugs upstairs. After Jack, Molly, and Bill had rolled in that morning, just after six A.M., they had given her the wee-hours-of-the-morning version and all fallen into bed, exhausted.
At last, going on eleven-thirty that night, the restaurant area was cleared. Courtney had Matt make last call at quarter to midnight. By ten past twelve, the place was empty of patrons and staff, and Courtney locked up after Matt with a gentle smile of thanks and a hasty wave. Tired, but thrilled to finally be able to ascend once more to her apartment, Courtney limped across the pub, her cane thumping on the hard wood, and climbed the stairs.
When she opened the door, she heard tinny television voices from the living room. She locked up behind her and went in to find them lolling on chairs and sofas with some ancient black and white rerun on Nick at Nite unfolding to canned laughter on the tube.
Jack spotted her first. Courtney's heart had been so heavily burdened by fear for him in his absence, and now she felt so much lighter, in head and heart.
“Hey," Jack said.
Molly and Bill both glanced up at the sound of his voice, then smiled when they saw Courtney enter.
Her brother rose from his chair and walked over to her. He wore sweatpants and a T-shirt, and it was clear they had been his uniform all day. It had been that kind of day.
Jack took her face in his hands and kissed her forehead. Then he hugged her close and Courtney let herself lean on him.
“Gotta tell you, little brother," she said in a half-whisper, “for a minute there I - "
“Don't say it," Jack interrupted.
“I know, I know. It's over now."
A frown creased his forehead. “Over? I wish it was. Just getting started, I think."
Courtney wanted to argue, to trot out all her fears for their safety, all the reasons why it was not their problem that there were other Prowler Packs all over the country, probably all over the worl
d. But she could not, because she agreed with him. It had been she, after all, who had set them on the path to Buckton in the first place.
It wasn't over. It would never be over.
Gently, she hugged him, kissed his cheek, then limped over to Molly. The girl gazed up at her, a wan smile on her face, seeming happy and content, and yet there was a shadow over her eyes. Once they had sparkled brightly. That sparkle was still there, but Courtney thought it might have been dimmed somewhat.
She hoped it was only an illusion.
“You all right?" she asked.
Molly took the question seriously, seemed to turn it around for a moment. Then she nodded with grave sincerity. “I'm all right."
Courtney turned toward Bill. “And you," she said. “Mister ignore-those-blood-stains-I-heal-pretty-fast. You come with me."
Without another word, she turned and moved away from them, into the hall. Bill got up and followed, padding silently after her.
Jack watched, a bit taken aback, as Bill followed his sister into the hall. A moment later he heard Courtney's bedroom door open and close, and then the sound of soft music began to drift out to where he and Molly stood in the living room, gaping stupidly at nothing in the hall.
“Wow," Molly said at length.
“Yeah," Jack agreed. “I'd say we missed something."
Their eyes met then, and Jack felt his chest tighten. His breath caught in his throat, and it was as though something was tickling his stomach from the inside -
only he wasn't ticklish there.
“I don't think we missed anything, necessarily," Molly told him, a bit of a rasp to her voice. She swallowed visibly and her smile seemed uncertain. “I'd say it was there all along, like a puzzle somebody only built halfway. We just weren't paying attention when the rest of the pieces got put together."
With a tentative chuckle, Jack shrugged. “I guess. All the same to you, though, I'm going to try to block it out. She's my sister, y'know?"
Molly smiled sweetly. “Yeah. I know." With a tiny shiver, she stretched, and tried to stifle a small yawn. “I'm glad we're all back in one piece, Jack. And I'm . . .
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