Mustapha staggered to a stop to watch, his chest heaving, body aching.
Twelve men had been there.
Now a pack of jackals faced him.
And with a chorus of mocking cries, they charged.
“Shit,” he breathed. He whirled and ran as fast as he could.
There was a winding trail that spurred off from the firebreak and snaked its way through the forest. Mustapha reached the trail one hundred fifty paces in front of the pack.
One hundred fifty paces was no distance at all.
The jackals were fast. Damn fast. In bursts they could run thirty-five to forty miles an hour, and they could run at ten miles per hour all damn day.
“Catch me if you can, assholes,” growled Mustapha as he crumpled to the ground, his bones grinding within him as he changed. His mouth opened to scream, but that sound changed as the shape of his throat and jaw, neck and teeth changed. The colors of the day changed, the visible spectrum broadening as man became werewolf and werewolf became dire wolf. It happened fast. So much faster than ever before. Maybe, if these drugs were going to pass through him, this was the fastest it would ever be for him. If so, what a rush. His hands became paws as they struck the ground.
The jackals were almost on him.
If he could have laughed, he would have as the wolf launched itself forward.
His speed increased. Forty-five miles an hour.
Fifty.
The jackals howled as they fought to catch up.
The wolf ran on, delighting in its own power, however temporary. Drawing on resources Mustapha could not even guess at. The dire wolf tore through the forest, miles burning away beneath its feet.
The jackals barked and cried as they struggled to keep their prey in sight. They knew—as the wolf knew—that if they caught up, their numbers would matter more than speed or purity of nature.
In the end it was always numbers.
The wolf ran on.
Above the forest, the rays of the sun slashed at the clouds, soaking the morning with blood.
Then the wolf began to slow.
As it ran up the side of a steep mountain, it slowed.
Its mass and speed warred against gravity, and lost. And it slowed.
Exhaustion that was too deep, too comprehensive for even its power dragged at it, and it slowed.
And the jackals caught up.
The wolf staggered into a clearing that was already splashed with blood. A man lay sprawled against a fallen log, his body crusted with dried gore.
The wolf finally stopped, sides heaving, spit flecking the corners of its mouth.
With howls of delight the jackals burst into the clearing and raced toward the two weak and spent victims.
High on a tree above them, a camera saw it all.
That should have been the first warning.
The camera should not have been there.
The camera belonged to a different tree in a different part of the woods.
It was here now, though. Watching. Recording. Transmitting. Everything.
The man.
The wolf.
The pack of jackals.
The microphone mounted on the camera could capture every yip and gasp and grunt and hunting cry as the jackals closed in for the kill.
Just as it captured—with excellent clarity—the words spoken by the man as he, despite apparent injuries, suddenly rose to his feet. The words were spoken in the split second before man became werebear and werebear became primal bear.
The words were spoken with deliberate clarity and projection. The man wanted each word recorded.
“Payback’s a bitch,” he said. “Take ’em, boys.”
The woods suddenly burst apart in a fury of snapping branches and torn leaves as body after body lunged out.
Fox and puma.
Warthog and coyote.
And bear and wolf.
The camera captured it all with its unblinking eye.
The screams. The blood. The pieces that flew everywhere.
The camera missed nothing.
Around the world, on big-screen TVs, on tablets and laptops, and in a private theater belonging to the leader of this pack of jackals and the humans who clung to them and followed them, the video feed played with high-definition clarity and perfect audio.
It was not the show they had paid for.
It was not the show they wanted to see.
But, damn if it didn’t make for an exciting fifteen seconds of reality TV.
Worth every penny of that million dollars.
Mustapha hoped the sons of bitches enjoyed it.
He sure as hell did.
And he was damn sure going to collect every single penny owed to him.
Yes, indeed. Even if he had to bring his pack along to make sure those jackal sons of bitches paid up. Not the Long Tooth pack.
This pack. Temporary, sure. Strange and unlikely, absolutely. But for now, this was his pack.
He let thoughts of money drift inside his head as the wolf howled out its killing cry and joined in the slaughter.
BORDERLINE DEAD
NICOLE PEELER
Nicole Peeler became interested in Desiree Dumas, whom I introduced in Living Dead in Dallas through the memories of her friend Bethany Rogers. Bethany and Desiree were roommates and colleagues at the Bat’s Wing, a vampire bar in Dallas. In this story, Desiree attempts to escape that life and the person it made her.
—
As if trying to commit suicide by Chevy, a giant, hairy shape hurled itself out of the darkness directly in front of my truck and collapsed. I stomped on the brakes, squealing to a stop inches from the twitching body.
Taking a deep breath, I tasted burning rubber and the old-Dorito tang of my own fear.
“Goddamn it!” I shouted, unsure whether to be angry or scared. After a second, I decided I was angry. Hella angry. “What the fuck?”
Peering over my hood, unsure of what I’d nearly hit, I was relieved to see fur—lots and lots of tan fur.
Not a person.
But also not moving. I waited another minute, my eyes never leaving the bits of animal illuminated by my headlights. When it didn’t budge, I shifted my battered pickup into reverse just enough to see the thing fully.
“You have got to be shitting me,” I said, to no one in particular. For the creature on the pavement still shimmering-hot from an Arizona day was a coyote, but larger than any I’d seen. It was the size of a small bear, although unmistakably a coyote with its lean legs, tan and gray pelt, and long, sharp features.
It was also absolutely beat to shit.
Savage cuts marred its flanks and neck, as did deep bite marks. Something had given tearing out the animal’s throat the good old college try, and had damned near succeeded. Down south, a huge hunk of flesh was missing from its haunch, and one hind paw looked mangled.
I knew what I had to do when I saw the coyote’s bleeding sides rise once and then again in breaths full of pain. My cranky Cajun father had taught me everything I knew about the wild and about survival. And since, except for the odd Sunday church service his momma had dragged him to by the hair, he’d grown up as undomesticated as one of those feral children, his knowledge was considerable. One of his first lessons had been about never leaving an animal in pain when a body had the power to end its misery.
“Sometimes killing is a mercy,” I heard my daddy say, his voice as clear as if he were sitting in my cab with me rather than lying in a crypt perched atop his beloved Louisiana bayou. Grabbing my shotgun from the gun rack behind my head, I opened my glove box to take out the box of regular ammo I kept stashed alongside the silver shot. Kicking out the expensive silver shells for regular, I cracked open my door. When the coyote didn’t stir, I hopped down from the cab, shotgun trained on it.
The coyote opened one golden eye, filmy with pain. It fixed on me just as my finger found the trigger.
And then the fucking thing shimmered, leaving in its place a naked man. One whom I recognized.
“Desiree?” he croaked in accented English through bloodied lips, before passing out cold.
I considered shooting Enrique Garcia anyway, for a number of reasons. One, for scaring the shit out of me. Two, for nearly fucking up my truck by running into it. And three, for forgetting ever to mention he was a motherfucking shapeshifter.
Instead, I loaded Ricky’s bloody, unconscious body into the back of my truck, swearing at him the whole time. It took forever, what with him being so heavy, bloody, and naked. It was like wrestling a lubricated gator.
I really hated supernaturals.
That morning, Ricky had looked a lot prettier. As usual, he was waiting for me when I pulled in to the Super Gas-n-Go catty corner from the Mission. It didn’t say much for our Arizona town of Milagro, so small it was known by locals as Migas, that our entire main street consisted of the Mission where Ricky lived, the gas station and convenience store at which I’d worked for the past year, and a small cafeteria that had closed about ten years before.
“Desiree Dumas,” Ricky greeted me in his lilting English, pronouncing my full name as he did every morning. He’d told me once he liked the shape of it in his mouth, to which I’d responded with an eye roll, air-jacking an imaginary penis at him.
While my daddy had been a fine teacher when it came to survivalism, I’d missed out on the whole Miss Manners debutante thing.
But Ricky only laughed at the rude gesture, the tanned skin at the corners of his coffee-brown eyes crinkling in amusement.
That morning I’d pushed past Ricky to unlock the Gas-n-Go’s door, surprised as I always was at the heat of him where he brushed against my arm. Another thing I’d had to get used to in the desert was how cool the nights were, despite the redonkulous temperatures of the day. But Ricky never seemed cold.
“I bring you chaqueta,” he said, “for tonight.”
I narrowed my eyes at his offer of a jacket. “You don’t have to,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
He smiled, that wide wolf’s grin of pleasure I saw in my dreams nowadays, more often than not. He had the teeth of a hunter, and it made the little girl-rabbit in my heart want to run so he would chase me all the way to bed. Not that I’d ever let him know I had a thing for boys with sharp teeth.
That had already gotten me in hella trouble, after all.
“I bring you chaqueta,” he insisted. “I’ll see you later.” The last sentence was said carefully, Ricky practicing one of the new English phrases he’d picked up. He gave me another sharp smile before walking back to the Mission.
And I’d refused to feel any guilt as my eyes roamed down to his muscular ass, perfectly framed in a pair of tight jeans. A girl could look even if she had no intention of touching.
I put thoughts of Ricky aside as I made the coffee and unwrapped the shitty pastries we sold at the counter, placing them in the warming case that never got them very hot even as it managed to dry them to dust. I made sure there was toilet paper and soap in the bathrooms, turned on the television sets, did some light cleaning, and stocked the few shelves still empty from yesterday. Finally, I unlocked the door, flipping the Closed sign to Open before taking my place behind the counter.
Then I waited. And once again, my thoughts turned to Ricky.
Not getting involved, I reminded myself, after dwelling on his damned hands. They were huge—disproportionately large, like Hulk hands. I remembered them disturbingly well.
You’re moving on again as soon as you have the money, I reminded myself.
But those hands, whimpered my ever-traitorous lady business.
Keeping my thoughts of Ricky from veering into X-rated, our usual morning customers finally made an appearance. Most were locals, picking up a pint of milk and a newspaper or a pack of smokes. They nodded at me but didn’t take too much time to chitchat. Milagro, like many border towns, was a place of transience.
“Morning, Desiree,” said Father Bryan McMahon, one of my favorite early visitors. He always came in to buy the paper and a chocolate milk, a little indulgence I appreciated in the otherwise straitlaced priest.
I rang up his purchases, looking up in surprise when he swore lightly.
“Damn vampires,” he said.
I followed his gaze behind me to one of the televisions mounted in the corner. It showed the beautiful, undead countenance of Grace Ortega, the Arizona representative for the Bureau of Vampire Affairs, speaking animatedly into the camera. A few taps on the remote control taped to the counter beside the register and we could hear her cool, slightly accented voice explaining the BVA’s newest endeavor.
“. . . America’s borders are our borders, Steve. We’re citizens of this great nation, just like you and your viewers. We want to help the U.S. stay American, in accordance with our laws and the will of our fine people.”
The camera cut to a lean blond man with a shark’s smile and shiny Ken-doll hair.
“But what can a vampire do patrolling our nation’s borders that a human patrolman can’t?” Suddenly Grace and Steve were in split screen, indicating that now was the time on Fox News when someone had a showdown.
But instead Grace laughed, a preternatural tinkling that raised the hairs on my arms. “Oh, Steve,” she said, as if he were the most charming creature she’d ever encountered. “Vampires can see in the dark, without needing any expensive night vision equipment. We are swift and silent, as you know. But we are not perfect. We can’t work a day shift.” Grace leaned forward coquettishly, and Steve, in his own studio millions of miles away, leaned forward as well.
Who can resist a vampire?
“We would never seek to take anyone’s job, or to burden our government. Instead, we are offering our services free of charge to the American people, as a thank-you to our country that has welcomed and accepted us. Let us help our great nation keep her borders safe.”
In his split-screen box, Steve’s face had slowly morphed from tight-lipped and narrow-eyed to smiling and nodding. Grace had him hooked. Not so much Father Bryan.
“Those assholes,” he muttered. I nodded my agreement, but he was on a roll. “What garbage logic is that? You’ve been welcomed into a society so you’ll help cut off others? That’s bullshit!”
“Easy, Father. This is on the house,” I said, passing him a Danish. He blinked at it. “You know the vamps don’t give a shit about the borders. They’re just courting the Righties. Elections are coming up.”
“Strange bedfellows,” Father Bryan said, biting savagely into the Danish.
“There ain’t nothing like hate to bring people together,” I said. “And the vampires know the only thing almost as hated as them by the Righties are illegals. So the real bogeymen promise to keep out the imagined. It’s sorta genius, really.”
Father Bryan chewed through his Danish with the grim face of a soldier eating an MRE, watching me thoughtfully. Then he took a long pull from his chocolate milk, probably wishing it were something stronger.
“I didn’t know you were interested in politics, Desiree. That was a very astute analysis.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got layers, Father. Like an onion. But I try to smell better.” I knew I should probably be offended at Father Bryan’s surprise that I wasn’t a complete idiot, but being underestimated wasn’t a bad thing. Especially when it came to getting one over on a man, or surprising an enemy, or running away from the insane vampire king who owned the bar in Texas where you’d been employed.
Father Bryan raised his chocolate milk in a toast. “You definitely don’t smell like an onion. More like gasoline and coffee.”
I shook my fist at him in mock anger, and he grinned. “Not to change the subject, but Lupe would like you to come to dinner tomorrow night. She’s making enchiladas.”
My mouth watered. Ricky’s younger half sister made the best enchiladas I’d ever tasted. She also knew I was less likely to tell her no than I was her brother. I liked Lupe. She was shy and sweet, and very obviously lonely.
“Sure,” I said. “I can fix that sink while I’m there, too.”
Father Bryan smiled gratefully. “You’re a good lass, Desiree.”
“Not really,” I said, feeling Father Bryan’s compliments like a cut, as I always did. “But I can fix your sink. Tell Lupe I’ll be there.”
Father Bryan said good-bye and walked back to his Mission. For the next few hours, I told myself I was only looking forward to Lupe’s enchiladas and finally getting that sink fixed, not spending time with Ricky.
That had been this morning. But damned if I wasn’t disappointed, despite telling myself I shouldn’t care, when, for the first time since I’d met Ricky, I had closed the gas station alone. That evening he forgot to bring me his jacket.
Apparently, Ricky had also forgotten to mention he was a supe, which was a whole ’nother crawdad to boil. I only hoped I’d get the chance to put him in a little hot water, as I drove his broken body back to Father Bryan and the Mission they both called home.
Father Bryan answered the door after only a few minutes of my knocking, a pistol clenched in his white-knuckled grip.
“Delivery,” I said, indicating the open flatbed behind me.
“Ricky?” Father Bryan ran to the young man. The Mission’s two young Korean nuns, known by their Anglicized names of Maggie and Kate, stood in the doorway.
“What happened?” asked Sister Maggie, her English clipped but clear.
“He ran out in front of my truck, but I didn’t hit him. He was like this already.”
Father Bryan assessed Ricky with careful blue eyes, his once-red hair—now mostly silver—standing up like the quills of a put-upon porcupine. He was wearing pajamas under his buttoned-up black coat, a priest’s collar working its way loose from underneath the lapels.
Dead But Not Forgotten Page 18
