He gripped her hips and bore down, reaching deeper and deeper inside her, and her eyes crossed from the combination of pain and pleasure. He was still bearing down, but then she started feeling almost uplifted, as if his pressure drove her upward and she matched his trajectory. She heard her own rhythmic panting match his exactly, and then they were locked in a sort of continuous life-and-death struggle with their own pleasure, unaware of anything else. Without much warning she reached the spot, the mountaintop, the place she needed so many men to help her find.
Her orgasm rocked her to the core, and she knew she had drenched the bedspread below. When he came moments later, he spurted hot and endlessly into her, and the long moment of pleasure left both of them spent, with him lying prone over her back like a living cloak.
When she finally extricated herself from him and felt him slip—still hard—from between her buttocks, she saw that he had shed his shirt sometime while she’d faced away. She’d expected him to be hairless, but he was covered with a fine layer of silvery fur she hadn’t noticed in the heat of the sex.
“What’s wrong?” he asked roughly.
“No-nothing.” And it was nothing, as the hair she thought she’d just seen disappeared as if it had never been there. She wanted to pinch herself or check her eyes. Had there been any hair at all?
His eyes were green again. But they’d been blue earlier. She shook her head, confused. Her curiosity felt like a headache, but she tried to ignore it. That and the pain below, which left her weak and yet sated.
The wet spot under her was cold now, and the heat of their coupling dissipated. She shivered uncontrollably.
When he left, she was still shivering. She no longer knew whether it was the sex or the realization that what she’d seen might have been real. He’d looked at her one last time, his eyes now black as midnight, and she was afraid.
Yes, afraid, but she wanted him again. And she knew she would let him take her whenever he wanted.
Mr. XYZ
The farmhouse was silent, but humming expectantly.
He rubbed his hands with glee, eager to get to work. But there were a few preparations to make. First, he had to step out of his daily clothing. This he did with practiced ease.
Then he needed to find music that would match his feelings for the moment. Although there was always video. He could switch back and forth. But he decided something romantic would fit, and soon strains of a forgettable Michael Bolton album came through his tiny speakers. The video was still set up from last time, but he had TiVoed more newscasts. He fiddled with the remote until Heather Wilson was on again, doing a live report from somewhere, moving her lips while Bolton provided a soundtrack.
He liked irony.
When it was time, he went downstairs to fetch his latest conquest. She was duct-taped to his oversize hand truck. He dragged her up the steps, thump thump thump, one steep step after the other.
He liked the way her eyes bugged out of her head as she watched the ceiling slide past. Her lips were bloated around the bright red ball-gag. She wanted to shake her head, but he had pinned her in his custom-built wooden head frame.
She was spunky, though. She tried.
He’d found her at the bus station, having just missed the bus to Mankato. Because he made it his business to follow likely women to the counter, he was able to offer her a ride to the next stop on the bus route. She was so happy to get away, runaway or adventurous college student, whatever she was, that he had her seated in his SUV in five minutes, and two minutes after that he had Tasered her and dumped her in back like a sack of pinecones.
Now she was here, and she was awake.
“Melissa,” he said, “is your name as mellifluous as you look?” He waited for her answer, but none came. “Oh, of course,” he said, and loosened the gag. When she opened her mouth to scream, he Tasered her again. “No, no, no.” He waited for her to stop convulsing. “Now let’s try it again.”
This time, she waited until she thought he wouldn’t notice, but he always did. As soon as she gathered herself for the scream, he Tasered her. “You really must learn, my mellifluous Melissa.”
It was going to be a long night.
While she regained her composure, he flipped on the video of Heather Wilson and began eagerly stroking himself to hardness. When Melissa saw him, her eyes bulged again, but this time he had reset her gag. She scrunched her eyes closed.
Can’t have that! One-handed by necessity, he twirled several knobs on her head frame. Small metal appendages reached out and held her eyelids open so she couldn’t shut her eyes.
“My Melissa,” he said, scolding. “You won’t ignore me that easily, silly girl.”
Then he went back to work, making sure she knew when he was about to spill his seed by tightening the screws on her head frame. It was the only way he could get a woman to let him come on her face.
As he watched Melissa’s eyes start to bleed from the pressure of the metal scoops, he wondered about Heather Wilson.
Now, she looked like a woman who enjoyed a sperm bath. He decided he’d find out soon.
“My Melissa, now it’s time for the climax of our eve ning.”
The pressure from his genitals relieved, he had all the time in the world to explain his theories to his latest conquest. First he wiped the bloody tears from her face, then set to work with his collection of scalpels.
The duct tape kept her squirming and thrashing to a minimum.
Blood ran in rivulets down the handcart frame and into the handy drain below. He whistled as he worked. Those Michael Bolton songs were hummable indeed, weren’t they?
Lupo
The lion-haired youth slammed the door behind him but didn’t seem angry. If anything, Lupo could swear he had “smug” all over his face.
Imagine that, Lupo thought. Never would have figured—
He spotted the Altima only because it wasn’t following the normal tourist driving pattern. It was following the blond man exactly the way Lupo was, hanging back, slowing down and speeding up regardless of the streetlights, slipping into parking spaces and then slipping out moments later.
This guy wasn’t a great tail, but he was good enough to not have been noticed except by somebody hanging back even farther. Seeing the bigger picture.
Lupo wondered about the tail. The blond man was clearly uninterested in watching for one, but he’d just been with Heather Wilson, who was connected to the investigation—whether Jessie liked it or not—by virtue of having pushed her way into it. That connected the blond man, too, and therefore anyone interested in him.
He followed his hunch and fumbled for his cell.
“Hey,” DiSanto said on the second ring as if he’d been waiting for a call. “What’s up?”
“How you holding up?”
“Shit, everything hurts. That fucking glass was like shrapnel, man.”
“I sympathize,” Lupo said. “Look, I need a favor.”
DiSanto chuckled. “Sure, I figured you weren’t checking on my welfare.”
Lupo put a pout in his voice. “I was too! I just happened to hold off calling until I needed the favor so I could kill two—uh, make just one call and save a few cents.”
“Yeah, yeah. I hear ya. Just a sec, let me adjust my bandages here.”
Lupo whistled an old Pink Floyd tune while DiSanto made rustling sounds, trying to make him feel guilty. He kept an eye on the Altima, which was stopped in front of the theater not far from where the blond man had slipped between buildings.
“Ready. Whattya need?”
“Here’s a license number. Looks like a rental. Get me the renter’s name? It’s a dark blue Altima, late model.” He read off the letters and numbers. “Anything else attached to the car, if it’s not a rental.”
DiSanto read back the license. “Anything else?”
If he’d brought his camera, a shot of the blond man could have been useful, but his cell camera was way too low-res to handle the job unless he stood in front of the guy. �
��Maybe later. Just following a hunch.”
“Uh-oh, every time you do that we get in trouble.”
“This is just me, pal,” Lupo said.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be involved by the time it’s over. Give it time.”
“You may be right. Hang in there.”
“I’m here if you need me. Get you that info as soon as I have it. Call you?”
“Great. No, wait. I’ll call you.”
As he clicked off, the blond man was visible and on the move again. The Altima followed until he reached a small public lot and retrieved his own vehicle, a green and white Geo Tracker with a million miles all over the dented chassis.
The Altima peeled out, apparently now uninterested in the blond man.
Follow the blond man or the Altima?
Lupo weighed the two.
He glanced at his watch. He didn’t have much time before the moon would start calling.
He followed the Altima. He could pick up the Tracker again by locating Heather Wilson, provided blondie hadn’t been just a one-time fling.
The car wound its way out of town and headed east on US 70, until the road tilted north just past Catfish Lake not far from Lupo’s Circle Moon Drive cottage. Tailing the Altima was no longer simple, because there was no other traffic on the road. He hung back, sure, but as the Altima continued past Dollar Lake toward Voyageur Lake, his options thinned out along with the residences. When the Altima turned left onto Hemlock, Lupo just kept going on 70. If his quarry was on Hemlock or nearby, then Lupo could always find him. But it was likely better not to be made by the Altima’s driver just yet.
Hemlock, Lupo thought. Figures.
He looped around and headed back toward town, heedful of the time.
Prey: Clara Kee Walters
She put the tea on at exactly the same time each night. Snowy was tied up outside, presumably enjoying her evening “poopies” in the backyard.
She glanced at the old-fashioned Regulator clock on her mantel. Ten minutes till her show came on, the one with the cute, quirky English doctor. Enough time to scoop Snowy up off the porch and steep the green tea to just the right point.
To Clara, timing was everything.
That was why three minutes later, she frowned.
By now, Snowy should have been whining at the door, asking to come in for her eve ning treat, which Clara would dole out in tiny morsels during the first act of the syndicated show.
But Snowy wasn’t making a sound.
“That’s odd,” she muttered. Clara had been alone most of her life, so she talked to herself unabashedly. “Best way for me to get a good conversation,” she used to tell her friend Irene, before she died of a heart attack. Now her most social activity was the weekly council meeting. It had been quite the feat, breaking that traditional boys’ club.
She glanced at the clock again. Her tea was almost ready, the television was set, but Snowy wasn’t begging to come in and have her treat.
“Snowy, are you sick, little girl?” she cooed, opening the door and flipping on the porch light.
Snowy was there, all right. Her body hung limply from the jaws of the huge black wolf that stood at the kitchen door. Blood pooled pathetically below and slipped between the cracks in the porch planks.
Clara’s heart almost stopped, and it would have been best for her if it had.
The words wolf attacks flashed through her mind even as she began to back up and slam the door on the monstrous image of her loyal Snowy sheared nearly in two by the wolf’s jaws.
The wolf was grinning.
She paused, staring, as two other wolves, one black with a gray streak and the other mottled gray, materialized beside the one who had killed Snowy—
killed Snowy, she’s dead, she’s dead
—and then the two lunged through the doorway, knocking her back into the kitchen.
Fangs slashing, the snarling beasts latched on to Clara’s throat and face, cutting short her screams.
Tearing and swallowing whole chunks of skin and flesh, they used their clawlike forepaws to bore into her stomach and chest, fighting one another to tug out bloody swirls of intestines.
Clara’s eyes were still alive, still registering, as the wolves systematically disemboweled her, then started in on her limbs, cracking through bone and sinew like deboning a floppy chicken.
The larger black wolf dropped the poodle carcass into the pool of gore and watched his pack make short work of their prey. The dog had been an appetizer. He would eat later.
They had a second target, and it was almost time.
Clara Kee Walters, clearly a tenacious woman, finally let go when they started ripping out her vital organs. The two smaller wolves ate their fill while their Alpha looked on with pride.
Lupo
He felt the pull of the moon even before it rose.
His clothes itched maddeningly, his skin hot where the alien Creature within would begin to manifest.
But was it really so alien? He now admitted to himself that when he and the Creature traded places, there was more of himself left in its brain than he liked. And perhaps there was more of the Creature’s brain left in him, too, logic dictated.
Perhaps this was why he sometimes acted in a way he thought was out of character, yet found himself unable to alter his own course. He had beaten down the tendencies to overreact and resort to violence all his life, thinking it a hand-me-down from Frank Lupo, but now he had begun to think it had always been there inside him, just waiting for a trigger.
The trigger had been the Corrazza boy, infected by Sam Waters’s crazed son.
All that destiny. Was it embodied in the Lupo family name?
Had his father known more about their bloodline than he admitted?
Had the silver-loaded Beretta shotgun been kept handy in case Nick himself needed to be executed? Was this knowledge the basis of their long estrangement?
Lupo sat in his car a minute longer, the thoughts playing through his head as they had many times before. As always there were no answers, only questions.
He felt the Change arriving. The itch that began in his palms and slowly walked up his forearms to his shoulders and down his back overwhelmed him. When he forced the Change himself, the process was brief and pointed. When the moon exerted its influence and took much of his control from him, he felt the Change slowly seep into each cell until he could no longer delay the inevitable and he would be over, the Creature suddenly up front and aware.
He scrambled out of the car and hastily undressed again, dropping his clothes on the seat.
He spoke to the Creature inside and gave him its instructions.
As he forced his thoughts into the shape they required, he felt the moon reach down and take him in its arms.
And then he was free, running in the woods, his nostrils open to the confusion of scents.
When he howled, it seemed every living thing stopped breathing. When he howled again, nearby humans in their houses felt a shiver of fear.
When he howled, others like him heard and understood.
The challenge was thrown down, a glove to be picked up.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lupo
1977
Nick seethed with anger.
Beth Ann had been more or less missing from his life since the week before. If Nick had been less gutless, he would have sought her out and tried to comfort her, but he knew instinctively that if he confessed his knowledge she would push him away.
Gutless, too, because he knew he should call the police and report Leo. Maybe an anonymous call! Later he could testify at Leo’s trial and watch him sentenced to hard labor on some Southern chain gang like in Cool Hand Luke.
Except Nick knew his word wouldn’t count for much. Beth Ann wouldn’t testify against Leo. And then Nick would look like a liar. And a pervert.
No, this called for vigilante justice. Like Death Wish.
Nick plotted and waited.
He stalked Leo, always aware that the
wide-bodied kid could beat him into the ground. He started taking long walks past Leo’s house, gauging his family and his life. It wasn’t much. The yard was weedy, unkempt, with hulks of rusting or rotting toys dotting its patchy surface like wrecks on the Sargasso Sea. Leo’s various siblings all looked like funhouse mirror reflections of him.
Nick considered Beth Ann the love of his life. But now he rarely saw her. She was quieter, depressed, less colorful. She walked with her head hunched over and eyes downcast.
Nick borrowed a Polaroid camera from a classmate and spent the next two weeks’ lunch money on a film packet. He stalked the Sokowski home and managed to snap several acceptable Polaroids of the bastard by riding his bike past, pedaling no-handed, juggling the camera.
Nick stared at those Polaroids daily, stoking his anger, imagining what he would do to Leo given the chance. He had read about mantras in some textbook. He created his own:
Leo Sokowski must be punished.
It was simple and concise, and he repeated it thousands of times as he stared at those pictures until his eyes burned.
Occasionally, he thought he felt something move down in the dark corners of his mind. He liked to imagine the Creature was listening, hearing, absorbing. One day he came home from school, caught sight of one of his Leo pictures, and a growl erupted from his throat.
Over time, the tenderness he had felt toward Beth Ann mutated. Leo had ruined Nick’s chances with her, had ruined her, and now it all bounced back as pure white-hot hate for Leo. Nick convinced himself he was just working up the courage to face the kid-crusher Leo without fear. Have it out, man to man. Or mano a mano, as his father would have said.
What Nick didn’t know was that Leo Sokowski was incorrigible and could fight as dirty as any adult street brawler.
The day Nick found out had begun like normal summer vacation. His multiple chores done to the old man’s grudging satisfaction, Nick embarked on his usual reconnaissance routine. He had elevated it to the level of a ritual, clinging to it with grim determination no matter how ridiculous he felt trying to shoot pictures while on the bike.
Wolf's Gambit Page 15
