The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told

by Martin H. Greenberg

  Without that little moment of recognition, Kale’s satisfactionmeter would register zip.

  With it, that sucker would notch off the scale. The werewolf’s claws snaked through Barlow’s hair and gave his head an attentive yank. At the same time, Kale raised his other hand, and moonlight caught the chrome skull rings circling his black fingers.

  Those fingers danced before Glen Barlow’s eyes.

  Fanged teeth sparkled with rictus smiles.

  Hollow-eyed skulls filled with moonlight.

  Barlow stared as if hypnotized, pupils dilating into deepening pools of realization. Kale howled in triumph, but Barlow wasn’t even looking at him. He just kept staring at those rings.

  And why wouldn’t he stare?

  It was a hell of a thing to figure out a few seconds before you died.

  It was a hell of a thing to realize that the monster crouching over you was the man you’d come to kill.

  So Glen did the only thing he could do.

  He looked the monster dead in the eye.

  The switchblade he’d hidden in his boot snicked open in the moonlight.

  The werewolf caught the gleam a second too late. Glen jammed the knife between Kale Howard’s ribs, burying the blade to the hilt before ripping it to the side. Black blood spilled over Glen’s right hand. He pulled back and stabbed the creature again, lower this time. Kale roared as if his guts were about to spill out of his belly.

  But they didn’t. The werewolf’s wounds were already healing. His left hand plunged downward, razor claws splayed in a driving arc that split the skin of Glen’s right forearm. Muscle shredded as Kale dug those nails deep, burying four long fingers between Glen’s bones.

  Glen dropped the knife, and the well-honed blade dug into the floorboards as Kale closed his fist around Glen’s ulna. Glen would have screamed if he could have sucked a breath. The werewolf’s other hand snaked through Glen’s hair, then deeper—claws digging tunnels between scalp and skull until they found purchase in the tendons at the back of Glen’s neck.

  The monster jerked Glen’s head back, stretching his neck into the kill zone, trapping him between hands buried in neck and wrist. Wounds spilled blood across the corded length of Glen’s neck. Kale’s black lips drew back. A mouthful of spit slapped Glen in the face, and then Kale’s jaws closed around his neck.

  Savage teeth tore into muscle. Arterial blood geysered against the werewolf’s pelt. Halogen headlights cored the jagged plywood hole across the room. It seemed the light would swallow Glen faster than Kale could. He closed his eyes against it, but he couldn’t escape its stark power.

  Outside, a car door slammed.

  There were voices. The werewolf’s ears perked, and he turned toward the light.

  For Glen, the reprieve didn’t seem to matter.

  If the Marines had arrived, they were too goddamned late.

  Of course, it wasn’t the Marines.

  And it wasn’t J. J. Bryce, either.

  There were three of them, and every one looked just a little bit like Kale Howard—even the one who didn’t have a set of cojones hanging between her legs.

  Glen had never met any of Kale’s siblings.

  But all it took was one glance, and he knew this bunch fit the bill.

  The Howards were all over brother Kale in a matter of seconds. Dwayne—the largest of the boys—waded in first, backhanding the wolf with a handful of silver rings. Kale howled as if doused with acid, but he didn’t turn tail. No. He spit blood and bared his teeth, but he never got the chance to test his game on his eldest brother. Joe—shorter, faster, and meaner—had already closed in from one side, skinning his belt from his jeans. Before Kale could make a move, Joe had looped that thirty-two-inch length of snakeskin around his brother’s neck in one well-practiced motion.

  The belt whispered through hammered silver as Joe yanked it tight. The buckle closed over Kale’s windpipe like a pair of channel locks, the horrible metal burning its brand into his flesh. Unable to breathe, Kale blacked out for an instant and started to drop.

  In the second it took for him to make the trip to the floor, Kris—the oldest and roughest of Kale’s siblings—stepped forward. Tanned, cougar-lean, and dressed in black jeans and a tank top, she looked like the kind of woman who should be demo-ing combat knives at a survivalist convention in Vegas. She jammed the barrel of a nickel-plated .45 against her baby brother’s temple and tore a strip off him with a voice seasoned by whiskey and cigarettes.

  “Make another move, dog, and I’ll splatter your brains all over this room.”

  “Better save those silver bullets, Kris.” Dwayne hovered over Glen. “Looks like this other boy’s been bit.”

  Kale’s sister swore under her breath as she turned to examine Glen’s wounds. From jawbone to wrist, Barlow’s right side was a shredded mess of meat and gristle. Any bastard suffering similar wounds under another circumstance would have slipped into shock by now, but Kris knew that wasn’t going to happen to Barlow . . . not if the werewolf virus were pulsing through his blood.

  She ignored his mangled arm, and the pistol that lay next to it, examining the flesh torn by the werewolf’s attack. Yep. This was more than a claw job. Kale had put his fangs straight into the cowboy’s arteries, but he hadn’t finished him off. The wounded man’s heart was still beating, and from the look of things the virus was already doing its work. Barlow’s wounds were beginning to heal, a cuff of scar tissue slowly knitting over the flesh of his wrist. The only upside was that Barlow was freshly infected. His metabolism was operating at a slower rate than Kale’s, so he wasn’t an immediate threat.

  “Better put a bullet in him, sis,” Joe said. “That full moon ain’t goin’ anywhere for hours yet. I don’t want to have to deal with two dogs if he turns.”

  “Brush up on your homework, idiot,” Kris said. “It takes longer than that for the virus to set. This cowboy won’t do any turning until the next full moon. The most he’ll do right now is some serious healing up.”

  She smiled down at Glen.

  “If we let him live long enough, that is.”

  But there was no way in hell Kris Howard was going to let this desert rat live. She’d made that decision as soon as she’d learned that the cowboy had been bit.

  Yep. That was the way it had to be. Kris was the one who made the decisions around here. She’d been doing that since her parents decided to crawl inside a bottle when she was just a kid. Even then, her deadweight brothers were just along for the ride.

  And Kale, hell . . . time hadn’t done him any favors. He was still her scrabble-brained little brother, half nuts even on nights when the moon was just a fingernail clipping up there in the sky. That’s why she’d cleaned up after him so many times in the years since he’d gotten his ass chewed by a werewolf down in Mexico.

  Of course, having a werewolf in a family of thieves was mostly a real plus, but Kris could see that this wasn’t going to be one of those times. Damn . . . it’d been awhile since Kale tore up that little showgirl in Reno, but this clusterfuck tonight made that mess look like a picnic. Kale had opened Kim’s brother like a can of Alpo. Anyone who watched forensic TV shows could collect enough evidence in this slaughterhouse to convict every Howard in the room . . . plus their dead-ass parents, who were back in Texas taking dirt naps.

  So the whole deal sure enough screwed the pooch, but what could she do about it? Jagged wedges of Glen Barlow’s skin stuck to the wall like some serial killer’s warped painting; his blood was soaking into the cracked floorboards; the headbutt-pitted sheetrock was clotted with hanks of his hair. Kris was sure she’d have to burn down the house before they made a permanent exit tonight. And that really bit, because the plan had been to sell the damn thing for a good chunk of cash after Kale knocked off his latest bride. But there was more chance of their parents growing fresh livers and crawling out of their plywood caskets down there in Texas than there was of her selling this house. Kris figured the best she could hope for when she fin
ished up this business tonight would be an empty box of matches. And the way she saw it, the bloody mess of a man at her feet had to have figured out the score about the whole deal—including the growling moron who at that moment was straining against a snakeskin leash.

  Kris stared down at Glen Barlow, cocking her head in Kale’s direction.

  “Guess you know the family secret,” she said.

  “Yeah . . . and I think I figured out the family business, too.”

  Kris smiled. The bloody cowboy sucked a breath. Surprisingly, only part of it whistled through his windpipe. Had to be the virus was burning a trail through Barlow’s torn-up excuse for a circulatory system faster than Kris had expected. But she wasn’t particularly worried about that. After all, she was the one holding the gun with the silver bullets.

  “So, you’re the guy who tossed my baby brother through a window, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Looks like tonight you’re reapin’ what you sowed.”

  “Well, it was a dirty job . . . ” he started, coughing up a thick rope of blood.

  “Yeah . . . but somebody had to do it,” she finished.

  “You know how it goes.”

  “You bet I do. But there’s a problem with that, Tex. Kale sure ain’t the most obedient pup in the kennel, but he’s my brother. And in our family, we take care of our own. I figure you can understand that.”

  Another cough, and maybe another yeah mixed in there, too.

  “Sure. Add it up, we’re not that different, you and me. I’m here to help Kale. You’re here to do right by your sister. Hell, I understand that. Some guy chews your baby sis down to the bone and leaves her in the middle of nowhere for the buzzards to peck. Plus, he ends up with everything she owned in the world. You’ve got a right to go all Charlie Bronson on him, but you’re a little late for that. To tell the truth, you’re late for anything that doesn’t include taking a silver bullet.”

  That did it. Barlow tried to rise. Just doing that, it looked like his head was going to topple off his torn-up neck and end up in his lap. Kris nearly laughed, and the only thing that stopped her were the scars closing over Barlow’s wound.

  He was healing faster now, but Kris knew there wasn’t enough fast in the world to get the job done for him before she finished saying her piece. “You wanted to fix things, Barlow, you should have done it last Christmas. It’s too late now. Your sister’s in a hole. And if there’s still a squeaky little cage turnin’ in your guts, let me tell you something: that hamster’s dead, amigo. Whatever you wanted to do, it’s way past time to do it now.”

  “You said that.”

  “Yeah. I did. But you cost me a fat bankroll tonight, so forgive me if I take a minute to show you the error of your ways before I put a hunk of silver in your brain. See, I don’t want you feeling the least little bit like a hero when you get your ass kicked into eternity. You’re not any kind of hero, amigo. Let’s get that straight.”

  Barlow was quiet now. Had to be it was sinking in. He didn’t say a word.

  Kris checked the pistol, chambered a round.

  “Let me wrap it up for you, now that you’re catching on. I’ve got a real simple way of looking at life. The way I see it, what you do is who you are . . . and what you don’t do, too. And, buddy, when it comes to your sister, and when it comes to the guy who killed her, you didn’t do much.”

  Barlow held his silence. All he gave her was a stare.

  And that was enough. Hell, that stare was plenty.

  Kris raised the pistol.

  “I see you get the message,” she said. “End of sermon. It’s time for the piper to get paid.”

  The werewolf virus had jacked Glen’s metabolism into a molten overdrive. His mind raced with quick-cut impressions, hundreds of them—Kris’ .45 . . . and her smile . . . and the other two Howard boys watching him from across the room . . . and their snarling werewolf brother straining against the snakeskin leash, eager for another taste of Barlow’s flesh—the slightest movement of each member of the Howard clan cataloged in a fraction of a second, and every image filed for action and reaction if Glen could only move.

  He had to do that. If the virus set quickly enough . . . if the full moon shone at the correct angle . . . his lupine brain understood that he could move faster than he’d ever moved before. And it was happening already. His wounds were closing as if some heathen god had decided to dam him up. Scar tissue crackled over his carotid artery. New skin covered exposed muscle and tendon, cells multiplying with an insane rapidity.

  Glen’s dropped pistol lay just a foot away. Synapses fired as his brain ordered his hand to grab the pistol . . . but, damn . . . he couldn’t even wriggle his fingers yet, let alone lift his arm.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Kris said, kicking the gun across the room.

  She bent low, pressing the .45 barrel against his temple.

  “Here we go,” she said. “Enjoy the ride.”

  Glen sucked a breath. Kris began to squeeze the trigger.

  Across the room, another pistol cocked sharply.

  A man’s voice came from the other side of the ragged plywood hole.

  “Drop the gun,” J. J. Bryce said. “And do it now.”

  The hard-eyed woman did as she was told. One look at the bloody man on the floor and Bryce had a serious crime scene flashback—Kim Barlow dead in the shadow of Tres Manos—but this time he was looking at her brother, soaked in his own gore on a dusty hardwood floor.

  “Get away from him,” Bryce said.

  The woman raised her hands and stepped backward, retreating from the dull illumination of the room’s single standing floor lamp. Bryce leaned through the splintery plywood gap, tracking her movement with his pistol.

  That was when he noticed that the woman wasn’t alone. Two men stood in the shadows on the other side of the room. One of them reached for a wall switch while the other slipped a loop from around the neck of a . . .

  Jesus. Some kind of hairy thing . . . a thing with claws, and teeth, and—

  It settled on its haunches.

  In another instant it would spring—

  Bryce’s brain didn’t need any more input. He fired his pistol. The slug punched the freak backward. The lights went out. The two men scrambled in the dark, but J. J. couldn’t see them. He couldn’t see anything—

  Except a pair of red eyes, low to the floor then rising, closing on him like coals shoveled by the devil himself.

  The nickel-plated .45 gleamed in a patch of moonlight. Glen was with it, his body trapped in the dead-white fire. And it seemed as if the pistol Kris Howard had used to control her werewolf brother were melting there on that same moonlight forge . . . its gleaming ivory grips scorching the silver slugs that lurked within.

  The stink of silver nearly made Glen retch. His stomach roiled at the thought of touching the weapon, but he knew that the .45 was his only chance.

  So did Kris Howard.

  She grabbed for the pistol.

  Glen did, too.

  Several shots rang out inside the house, but J. J. Bryce was barely aware of them. Gripping his own pistol tightly in his fist, he scrambled to his feet as he came out of a tumble with the red-eyed creature.

  It had rolled over the top of him, continuing across the flagstone patio before righting itself. Quickly, it launched a second attack, charging him like a freight train. Bryce wasn’t set, but he fired his pistol three times in quick succession. Every slug found its target, dead center in the thing’s chest. It didn’t matter. The monster bit off an anguished scream and kept coming, and it slammed into the deputy so hard that he was airborne in an instant.

  A glance to the side. White teeth gnashing inches from Bryce’s face. His pistol clattered against the patio. Then he started to drop. He realized he’d be coming down hard on a flagstone slab a second before his skull slammed against it, realized too that the monster would be on top of him before another second could tick off the clock.

  The cop lande
d hard.

  Kale knew he had to finish him off quickly and get back inside the house. He’d heard the gunshots. Chances were they’d come from Kris’ .45 instead of Glen Barlow’s pistol. But who had the gun? That was the question—

  “Hey, boy.”

  Kale spun toward the open doorway.

  He had his answer.

  He didn’t like it.

  The werewolf sprang. Eyes gleaming, teeth bared, claws ready to tear through Glen Barlow in a ferocious explosion of rage.

  For Glen, it was just like staring into his own heart.

  He didn’t stare long.

  He pulled the trigger.

  In a bright blast of muzzle flash, everything went away.

  PART THREE

  J. J. Bryce lay on the flagstones, out cold, but Glen ignored the fallen cop.

  The .45 still filled his hand. The silver bullets inside the weapon were encased in a steel clip buried beneath ivory grips. Glen knew that. Still, holding the pistol was like holding a live rattler, ready to sink fangs into his skin if he so much as twitched.

  But he couldn’t put the pistol down.

  The truth was, he didn’t know if he’d ever put it down.

  Behind Glen, three people lay dead in the house. He’d killed Kris first, then the other two. He didn’t even know their names. He’d killed all three of them in a matter of seconds, the animal fury of the werewolf virus surging through him as if it were in control of the gun. Kale was dead, too—his sternum shattered by a silver bullet that had torn through muscle and heart, finally burying itself in his spinal column. He lay on the flagstone patio, and looking at him there was no clue that he’d ever been anything different than the human monsters who lay within the walls of Kim Barlow’s house.