by Cooper, JK
“But—”
“He’s an Alpha.”
Shelby froze. “You found a pack?”
Grant nodded once.
“But,” Shelby asked, “how did you know where to look? I mean, we just got here. Awfully convenient.”
“Elias has a small but growing pack. Your mother taught me what to look for. The signs, mannerisms. Codes.”
“Codes?”
“Yes.”
“But, you’re not a werewolf. Why would they reveal themselves to you?” And then something caught in Shelby’s voice, and she wondered what else her dad could have kept from her. Had Nicholas actually bitten him? “You’re . . . not one, are you? Dad?”
“No, Shelby. Sometimes, for your sake, I wish I were, but I am not. I swear to you.”
Memories of her dad being sick with the flu two years ago came to her and also a serious bout of food poisoning several months ago just as they arrived in Odessa. Shelby, on the other hand, had never been sick that she could remember, not even a cold. Perfect attendance all through school . . . except for the past year.
“So, no disease except cancer can harm me?”
“That I know of, anyway.”
“Ebola?”
“Nope.”
“Swine flu?”
“Negative.”
“Cotard’s delusion?”
“What?”
“Zombie disease,” Shelby explained. “It’s a real thing. People believe they really are dead and spend time in cemeteries, wishing they could be with their own kind. We studied it in biology my sophomore year. . . . or . . . my friends and I looked it up while bored in class, I guess. We’re dangerous with our iPhones.”
Grant just shook his head.
“Hey,” Shelby said, “if werewolves are real—”
“We are not discussing zombies.”
“Okay, so dinner with the Alpha?”
“Elias. And his wife, Gennesaret.”
“What’s up with all the Bible names?”
“I know Elias is from the Bible,” Grant said, “but Gennesaret?”
“The place where Jesus healed a bunch of people with diseases and cast out devils and stuff. It’s in Luke.”
“How do you know that?” Grant asked.
“Kind of started reading it a lot over the past year, searching for answers and stuff.”
“So, are there werewolves in the Bible, Shel?”
Shelby raised her hands in an “I don’t know” gesture.
“I guess it’s fitting, in a way,” Grant said. “She’s a physician at the local hospital.”
“Elias’s wife?”
Her father nodded.
“Do you believe in God, Dad?”
Grant was quiet.
“I really want to know,” she said. “We’ve never really gone to church, but we’ve always had a Bible in the house. I see you reading it sometimes when you don’t think I’m watching.”
Grant inhaled a large breath and let it escape slowly. “Never was trying to hide that.”
“I know . . .”
“Shelby, I have seen so many things, even though my time with the Delta teams was short. Those things would probably make most men question whether or not there is a God. I saw many that did. For me, though, it reinforced it . . . eventually.
“I admit I went through a time wondering how God could allow such atrocity, such degradation in the world. If I described the things I saw, you would be sick. The oppression, the torture . . . I still have nightmares of several missions. And no, I can’t talk about it. Won’t.
“I guess eventually, though, I came to a clear understanding of something. There is evil. True evil. I know this just as much as I know I’m sitting here with you right now. Knowing that, it eventually came to me that there had to be a counter force to that evil, something that opposed it. Whether that’s God or something else, I’m not completely sure, but I’m sure there is something good that opposes all the evil I saw. That goodness resides in us, it’s the reason we feel revolted when confronted with evil. That’s what I believe, anyway.”
Shelby leaned against her dad’s arm. Softly, she asked, “Do I have a soul, Dad?”
“Of course you do.”
“I mean . . . is what I am . . . evil?”
“Shelby Madison Brooks, you are the daughter of the most kind, caring, beautiful person I have ever known. If she didn’t have a soul, then there is no such thing.” He headlocked Shelby with his large-muscled arm. “And you, kiddo, are just like her.” He kissed her on the head before she could push him off.
“Dad!”
“Go get ready. We need to be there in an hour.”
“Our last attempt at joining a pack didn’t end well.”
Shelby dropped her eyes to her dad’s stomach, the side that she knew bore angry scars from Nicholas.
“I know,” he said. “I don’t know, not for sure, but you need this. There are things that, as much as it pains me to say, I cannot give you. Trust me on how much that hurts, that I have to share my little girl with another family, but I know it is something you will need. Fathers pride themselves on being able to provide everything their family needs, but . . .”
He trailed off.
“How did we escape?” Shelby asked softly.
She saw it on her dad’s face. He knew what she meant. Nicholas’s pack. She had asked before and always received the same answer from her dad but she hated that she couldn’t remember.
She had blacked out just as she’d heard her dad’s gun fire. Why? Why had she blacked out? Her vision had shaken, but something . . . she had felt something in her chest, hadn’t she? Something had snapped in her head.
“You were hurt bad,” Shelby said. “I remember that. There was so much blood. I’m so sorry I brought this on you. I would change it if I could. You know that right?”
Grant swallowed. “Listen, Shel, I don’t regret you. I don’t regret who you are, nor loving your mother. Never doubt that. You hear me?”
“But—”
“I’m a good shot,” Grant said. “That’s how we escaped. I hit them enough times to slow them down. May have even killed them. I didn’t wait to see. Just scooped you up and ran.”
Something rang false in her dad’s words, as always when he answered her question about their escape, but she didn’t press him. “You know you’re my hero, right?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s cool having a superhero for a dad.”
“I’m not a superhero, Shel.”
“Yes you are. Don’t worry, I won’t tell.” She winked at him.
“Go on, get ready. We’re leaving in forty-five minutes.”
As she went upstairs to change, she saw out of the corner of her eye her dad smile in a way that wasn’t meant for others to see.
Sherman ducked low in the brush. A black film smeared his face and hands, most of his clothes, masking his scent, even from these creatures of the lowest hell that he and his team stalked. For, surely a demon or Lucifer himself had sired them.
Oh Lord, give me the strength of Sampson, the sword of Your angel in the Garden of Eden. Let my feet move swiftly, as if upon Your chariots of fire.
Puddles on the pavement reflected the amber rays of the waning gibbous moon. Across the street sat the lair of the abominations he hunted. Werewolves, but more advanced. Lycans, blessed with control of their transforming, with the same intelligence as humans, but not human. Just on the outskirts of Odessa, Texas, the manor sprawled languidly over roughly two acres. A mixture of black and gray rock, the main house cast itself as almost colonial, but the spires and stone figures on the ledges—some sort of mutated gargoyles—made the atmosphere drift more to the gothic side. A large detached garage, nearly the size of a warehouse and peeking around the side of the lair, sat in the backyard.
Lend me Your scepter, Lord, Your terrible might, that these spawns of Hell might be struck down by Your righteousness.
Beside Sherman, also crouched, his eighteen
-year-old boy, Lucas, waited nervously. This was the first mission Sherman let his son join him on. He glanced at Lucas’s marred face. The shame of his son’s scars was his to bear, for Sherman had suspected what the Brooks girl was but had foolishly allowed Lucas to flush her out. Four other hunters spread themselves out at various points with full tactical loadouts. The M4 rifle slung across Sherman’s chest sported a bladed suppressor. After all, even when ammunition ran out, a rifle should still be a weapon of consequence. On his hip, a Sig Sauer P320 with two extra magazines rested with—as Sherman would often swear each of his firearms contained a personality—impatience. He had given Lucas his Glock 17, his most trusted firearm. Its personality was a quiet confidence, something Lucas would benefit from.
The time arrived. Sherman lined up one of the two guards at the front gate in his sights and touched the mic at his throat.
“Execute.”
He squeezed the M4’s trigger, and an incendiary round struck his target in the chest. The unworthy spawn started to shift to his wolf in reflex, but flames spurted from his center as the incendiary round did its work. To Sherman’s right, a grenade shot from a launcher mounted on Chou’s M4 and exploded through the manor’s main doors. When the smoke cleared, only one piece of debris remained, hanging from a single hinge.
Sherman keyed his throat mic. “Advance.”
Nicholas sweated in his sleep. The Alpha of the diminished Odessa pack had found sleep a punishing trial since Shelby Brooks had escaped. She had done something to him. Damaged him. In his dreams, she was there, her dark amber eyes boring into him, stoking the fear she had seeded inside him.
What is she?
But his dreams did not answer. He knew he jerked in his sleep, twisting the damp sheets around him. His mistresses could not comfort him, though he had tried to drown himself in their affections, taking them night after night, sometimes more than one at a time; but even the promised relief from sating his lusts did not last, and his weariness from the constant haunting of Shelby Brooks often turned him to bouts of rage.
Those eyes . . . they burn . . .
He sensed words in those supernatural eyes. Communication.
But she did not shift! What was he seeing then, these eyes? He knew them to be hers, the eyes of her wolf. But he could not believe the communication he felt coming from her wicked glare. My mind . . . it is just in my head . . . she is not what you think.
But she was. Nicholas knew it.
Awakened by something, he shot up in bed. He brushed his matted hair from his eyes. There, the sound again. The grogginess cleared with the realization of what he had heard. Gunfire. Then growls. Then screams.
His eyes burned as he shifted.
Sherman and his team strode toward the lair, weapons raised. Green lasers lit up the front of the house, illuminating swirling eddies of lingering smoke. In the windows of the gables, dark figures appeared followed by automatic weapons’ fire. Sherman’s team responded with discipline and efficiency, lining up the targets and taking two shots. The figures fell. Sherman heard the frenzied voices in the house, people—no, the hounds of Hell—coming to life. A shadow darted through the house, barely visible through the windows.
“Dad,” Lucas said.
“I saw it,” Sherman said. He squeezed his neck mic. “Be advised, the pack has shifted.”
Another flurry of darkness darted, this time outside the house, along the side.
“They’re out,” Sherman said. “Masks. Pop silver smoke.”
Two thunks were heard as Chou and Rivera each shot a silver acetylide grenade. Mixed with a gaseous agent, the grenades spewed a mist of the acidic silver salt in a wide radius upon impact, the fumes filling the front yard and foyer in the manor.
“Switching to thermal.” Sherman pressed a button on his optical sight, and the world in front of him turned to overexposed splotches of blues, yellows, greens, oranges, and reds. A hunched form sprinted away from the fumes. Sherman fired twice. The wolf grunted but did not go down, disappearing behind the manor.
“Chou, Rivera, clear the house. Decker, Peters, Lucas, on me.”
The fire team split up. Sherman took a knee at the southeast corner of the house, and Decker and Peters stacked up behind him. Lucas crouched behind them. Sherman peeked around the corner, M4 raised. No red or orange showed up in his thermal sight.
“Clear. Diamond formation. Lucas, stay against the wall. Everyone watch their vectors.”
The unit moved in unison, north along the east side wall. Decker, at the head, ducked below a window and readied himself. Sherman nodded, and Decker popped up, his rifle’s laser piercing the glass into the house. A blur of blackness launched through the window. Sherman closed his eyes and turned away in reflex as glass shards rained down upon the men. He heard a shot—Decker’s rifle—but only one. It took a split second to open his eyes before Sherman saw the wolf’s jaws clenched around Decker’s neck and shoulder, the gape of the beast’s maw nearly as wide as a torso. Decker screamed as the wolf tore, snarling. Peters and Sherman fired. The wolf’s snarls turned to whines as it went limp. Sherman kicked it off his fallen man. Whimpering, the wolf lay on its side as it began to shift back to human form. A young woman, naked, of course, with trails of streaming blood from holes in her side.
Sherman turned to his son. “Lucas.”
With shaking hands, Lucas raised his pistol.
“In the head, son,” Sherman said. “Right here.” He pressed a gloved finger to the center of his forehead.
Lucas swallowed and lined up the head—a human head—in his sights. The woman had nearly shifted completely back to human form, but still had slightly pointed and hairy ears. Delicate features, nonetheless. Furry hands with clawed fingertips moved lethargically to cover her wounds. The amber flecks in her darks eyes, however, had disappeared.
Lord, give him the strength, Sherman prayed. Even though it was his son, and would pain him, Sherman would not hesitate to do what was necessary to protect the clandestine nature of the hunter brotherhood if Lucas proved unworthy. The Lord’s errand is one done in the night, apart from His children’s view.
Lucas fired, and the woman’s head jerked back from the impact of the 9mm round.
Sherman simply nodded. “Let’s move.”
“Wait,” Decker wheezed. “Don’t leave me like this. It bit me. Don’t let me change.” Blood poured from his wounds and trickled from his mouth. “I feel it. Already I can feel it.”
Sherman pulled his sidearm. “Bless your servant, who has perished in Your service, Lord. Take him unto Yourself.” He put two rounds in Decker’s chest. The man went still.
“Grab his mags.”
Peters retrieved Decker’s spare mags from his tactical vest.
“You made me proud just then, son,” Sherman said to Lucas, his gloved hand squeezing his son’s shoulder. “You feel the calling of the Lord’s hunters, now, don’t you?”
Lucas shook a bit but sneered as he looked at the dead woman. “I . . .”
“I know what you’re thinking, Lucas. Shelby’s time will come.”
“Yeah, but—”
“It’s a wonderful feeling, isn’t it? The calling of the Lord.”
“Yeah,” Lucas said.
“You good?”
Lucas nodded.
He was, Sherman saw.
Good. It’s in him after all.
No other enemy contact came as they made their way along the east wall, now in a spearhead formation with Sherman at the point. Just as Sherman’s fire team entered the backyard, Chou and Rivera exited the back door onto the portico.
“Clear,” Chou reported over the radio.
Sherman nodded. Just ahead of him lay the two story detached garage, and Sherman decided again that it was indeed more of a warehouse. He squeezed his neck mic. “Prepare to breach.”
His men took up their positions. Rivera placed a breaching charge on the double doors.
“Set,” Rivera said.
A roar—not
the bomb—charged the night air and Rivera cried out. The sound of something wet being torn, ended his yell. Sherman spun, rigid. Lucas crouched behind his father. Rivera was gone.
Where are you, beast? Step forth from the shadows of your sin . . .
Suppressed fire sounded from Peters’s M4. Sherman pivoted, rifle at the ready. Nothing. His thermal sight revealed only greens and yellows and grays—plants and rocks.
“Peters,” Sherman called aloud, breaking protocol. There was no need for stealth any longer. He flipped his tac light on attached to his M4. Three hundred lumens lit up the darkness. His thermal scope had not misled him. Peters was gone. Crimson glistened in the harsh light on the perfectly manicured blades of grass. Something else—Sherman shifted the beam of his light. Half of Peters’s buttstock and sling lay on the ground, sheared in half.
“On me,” Sherman said.
Chou closed on his position. As Sherman let his light drift across the yard, a pair of yellow orbs cut the darkness. For a moment, fear dared to flicker within him. Get thee behind me, Satan. Sherman swallowed the momentary weakness. From his belt, he drew a six-inch K-Bar and rested it under the barrel of his M4. He expected this to get very close and personal. Chou dropped his rifle and drew two ten-inch blades. Three more sets of eyes appeared, followed by low growls.
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power . . .
“Bring it,” Sherman said.
Chou stretched out his forward leg and brought his cimeters into a fighting stance. The wolves tore forward. Sherman fired, taking one between the eyes. It fell with a muted thud. Chou aerialed into the fray, blades whirring. Claws tore across his back, but he spun and impaled the wolf’s rear leg with one blade, its back with the other, severing the spine. Two down.
Lucas fired wildly, missing his target. The wolf tackled him, jaws snapping. The boy cried out. Sherman filled the beast with silver rounds just before its jaws found his son’s face. The wolf collapsed on Lucas, heaving heavily. The breathing stopped as it returned to human form, the corpse’s tongue protruding, fat and swollen. Lucas skittered out from under it, a look of disgust on his face. Sherman and Chou circled the last wolf, the largest. Blood dripped from its fangs. This was Nicholas. The Alpha. The amber of its eyes glowed deeper than the rest.
