by John Farris
“Help me. Do it. Spill it all out of me! I will not. Live like them.”
Instead I took the knife away from him.
“It’s not a given,” I said. “If you know anything about Lycanthropy you know the virus is unstable in unrefrigerated blood. Maybe you’ll get a break. But now I’ve got things to do if any of us are going to have a chance.”
I went back to the man sprawled on the deck. He was snoring and wheezing through his parted lips. Mal the wolfgirl snapped and lunged at us.
“Calm down, sweetheart,” I said. I undid the drawstrings of the man’s parka, pulled off the protective face shield, revealing by flashlight the face of Cale DeMarco.
I felt as if my personal gods, whoever they might be, were nudging and winking at each other.
His walkie was staticky again. I sat DeMarco up, stripped him of his parka, and laid him back down. After I hogtied him with the chain I put the parka on, then the face shield. It was tinted to cut glare without reducing visual acuity. The Sig Sauer went inside my belt, his wristpac on my wrist. In a flap pocket of the orange parka I found a package of condoms and a container of a popular vasodilator for men. That gave me another reason to dislike Cale DeMarco. He’d come back to the old warplane just before the kickoff of tonight’s mal de lune for a grungy hack at a helpless girl, no doubt inspired by the tales of just how eager and passionate young female Lycans could be during their Auras and just before the hairing-up cycle began.
I checked the Lunarium stored in DeMarco’s wristpac. We were less than an hour from peak moon.
Mallory was momentarily quiet, watching me, back on her haunches.
Something of Mal remained, vaguely, in the long stare, the dark muzzle of the distorted face. But the impression was weak now, apparitional, overwhelmed by cold diabolism. I wondered if in her new shape she might suddenly twist and squirm free of the encompassing biker’s belt and be all over me in an instant. She made a low sound in her throat and stared. Stared heartlessly. The knife I had was not silver. Nor were the bullets in the Sig auto. But DeMarco would have had full silvertip loads in the rifle he’d probably left in his vehicle.
I flashed the light on Brenta. He was motionless, suffering. His eyes were open, looking straight up. There was more blood on his lower lip.
“Get me out… of here. I’m dying, Rawson.”
I used up half a minute finding out if the wristpac I had taken from DeMarco was going to work here. But the steel fuselage of the airplane and the strong winds outside blocked access to a satellite.
I slapped DeMarco a couple of times. He groaned but didn’t open his eyes. A hard man to wake up. So I picked up the slop bucket, which was about half full, and let him have all of it in the face.
He sputtered and choked himself awake, gagged.
“Where’s Raoul Ortega?” I said.
“Rawson?” His eyes must have been stung by the urine. He was having trouble making out my face behind the amber shield. He looked anxious. “Why did you tie me up like this?”
“Did you hear the question, DeMarco?”
He struggled with the chains. “You son of a bitch!”
Behind him Mal Wolfgirl growled.
DeMarco twisted his head painfully to get a look at her.
“Oh—shit.”
“One more time before you two get cozy. Where’s Ortega?”
“The hangar. With the others. Most of the others.”
“Having themselves a swell party? Yeah, I’ll bet. Just where are we?”
“Old airfield. Ten miles from Barstow. Flight line of old World War Two junk. They get rented out to movie companies.”
“How long have you and Ortega been buddied up?”
“Awhile. I had an opportunity. I took it. Let me out of this, Rawson. Ortega is the one you want anyway.”
“Where are the wolfmakers that were trucked away from XOTECH yesterday?”
DeMarco acquired a stubborn look.
I put the flashlight down, grabbed him off the floor, and dumped him a couple of feet closer to Mal Wolfgirl.
“You two have a good time.”
“You’re not going to leave me with that?”
“Why, yes I am, numbnuts. Thanks for asking.”
“Rawson. Rawson! Please. We can deal.”
“Who’s outside waiting for you? Diamondbackers?”
“Just Vollmer and McQuarrie.”
Vollmer, I knew, was governor of the Privilege. McQuarrie was in the casino business. They would be seasoned mal de luners. I wondered how they were going to like hunting werewolves with sticks and stones.
“How many Lycans are in the hunt tonight? Besides Mal.”
“Three more; one female. They’re just rogue trash. Nobody who’ll ever be missed. That’s how we always do it.”
“Where are they?”
“Stashed along the flight line. One to a plane, of course. They’re tied, but the rope can’t stand up to a werewolf’s strength when its time comes.”
“What kind of planes? Like this one?”
“No. One is a Liberator. There’s a Fock-Wulf Kondor sitting next to it, and a B-17 with a chin turret opposite them on the runway. Rawson? I know where the wolfmakers went. But that’s my get-out-of-jail card. Ortega has to be out of the picture, savvy? You’ve been wanting your shot at him. This is it.”
“Jail? Hell, you must be feeling lucky. What do you think is going to get you out of the garbage when Mal is finished with you?”
He started screaming at me, which set Mal off. I had DeMarco’s wallet and I silenced him by cramming it into his mouth. Then I returned to Miles Brenta.
“Do you think you can walk?” I asked him.
He licked his swollen lips. Blood had dried and looked hard as nail polish in the cracks.
“Try.”
“Your broken arm is a big problem. I can loop my belt around your neck to serve as a makeshift sling. But if you pass out on me I’ll have to leave you until I can get a MedEvac chopper in here.”
“… Be okay. Let’s just do it.”
I half carried Brenta to the middle of the plane and forced the door open against the wind. I sat him in the doorway, jumped past him to the ground. It hurt. When I had my breath back I went looking for help.
The crew cab diesel pickup that had delivered DeMarco to his anticipated tryst was idling twenty yards off the left-side wing of the Mitchell bomber. Multiple high beams sizzled through the gritty tempest battering the flight line. I saw more than a dozen antique aircraft in long-term storage, sealed against scouring winds and blistering daytime temperatures with thick coats of sprayed-on vinyl. All the engines were missing propellers. Sand had formed small dunes around the landing gear.
I thought of a couple of once-powerful eagles I had seen in a taxidermist’s dusty window.
Halfway to the heavily shocked-up truck I heard a werewolf’s howl. The sound stopped me in my tracks. But it wasn’t Mallory. The howling came from the dark beyond the flight line, out of the reach of the truck’s high-beamers. For four or five seconds I peered through the sandblast for something bounding my way. I didn’t see any immediate threat and moved on.
I wrenched open a door of the crew cab. Vollmer sat high in the front seat with McQuarrie behind him. He was loading a banana box for an Uzi semiauto with silvertips. I lit up their faces with the flashlight. Because I was wearing DeMarco’s orange parka they were appropriately jolly and foulmouthed about DeMarco’s supposed conquest until I raised the 9-mil.
“Rawson, ILC. Get out of the truck. McQuarrie, lay that chatter gun on the seat beside you.”
“R-Rawson?” Vollmer sputtered. “Now listen, Rawson, we—”
I put a bullet past his nose through the window of the door on the driver’s side.
Vollmer had short legs and a barrel chest. He fell getting down from the high cab, looked up at me on all fours, face reddening in anger and humiliation.
“Where’s Cale?” he demanded.
“Miami Beach.”
“Do you know who I am?”
That bullshit. I sneered tiredly at him.
We all heard the werewolf this time. Same one, I thought. If I hadn’t felt so bad I might have laughed at the expression on Vollmer’s face. His eyes were hectic from fear behind his shooter’s glasses.
McQuarrie was a different breed, with an acquired urbanity that hid his alley-rat origins.
“So one of them has haired-up already. Sounds close by. I think given the circumstances I should have my gun back.”
From the belly of the Mitchell bomber Mal Wolfgirl answered the other werewolf’s cry. The only difference in werewolf howls was the degree of murderous rage expressed.
“Two,” I said.
“Help me up!” Vollmer pleaded. His voice a high squeal.
I wasn’t about to lend a hand I couldn’t spare. McQuarrie assisted.
“You two get over there to the Mitchell and help Miles Brenta,” I said.
“Miles? What happened to him?” Vollmer said.
“Helicopter crash. He has a broken arm, concussion, probably internal injuries.”
Vollmer looked at the mothballed bomber. Miles Brenta was still sitting in the doorway, legs dangling, face turned away from the stinging wind, and I was afraid he would be blown to the ground.
“Are you crazy?” Vollmer said. He was out of breath already just from falling out of the truck. “There’s a werewolf in that plane. She’s the fucking trophy!”
“I used to change her diapers. Nothing’s going to happen to Mal tonight or my wrath and my vengeance will be without equal. How many of you intrepid sons of bitches are in the competition?”
“There are six of us,” McQuarrie said calmly. “Miles was to have been the seventh.” He looked steadily at me through his face shield, ignoring the Sig that was pointed at his navel. He wasn’t out of breath, and appeared to be health-club fit in spite of his sixty-odd years. “Now, I would like to have my rifle back, Rawson.” He had the cool nerve to smile. “Be a sport. I have a very large bet tonight, and I don’t like to lose. Tonight Mal Scarlett has the opportunity to settle up for all the markers she’s left at my casinos. Besides—what’s another werewolf to a Wolfer?”
I almost slugged him with the steel barrel of the flashlight. But I needed the strength my outrage would give me for someone more deserving.
“Get over to the plane now, both of you, before I start shootng off toes.”
I put a round into the earthquake-crumbled runway for emphasis. It missed the sole of one of Vollmer’s boots by a hair. They got going. I climbed into the truck to back it up.
In the distance I saw lights coming our way, half a dozen bouncing beams of motorcycles speeding over rough terrain. Above the low whistle of hot wind blowing through the bullet hole in the window next to me I heard the roar of engines.
I had a few moments of apprehension; then I felt a strange surge of satisfaction.
Maybe I wouldn’t have to go looking for Raoul Ortega after all. It appeared that he was coming to me.
24
ollmer and McQuarrie handed Miles Brenta down to me in the bed of the pickup. I laid him on his back and turned his head to one side so that whatever came into his mouth—blood, vomit—he wouldn’t aspirate. The hot and nerve-racking wind had everybody else perspiring, but Brenta was cold to the touch and his eyes were back in his head.
McQuarrie jumped down beside me, looked at Brenta.
“He won’t make it,” McQuarrie said dispassionately.
“Brenta’s a tough guy. Let me have your safari jacket.”
He didn’t argue with me. I covered Brenta as well as I could with the jacket.
“Six hunters? How are you dispersed?”
“Pickup trucks like this one. Two to a truck. DeMarco’s just a driver, not a hunter.”
Inside the Mitchell bomber Mal Wolfgirl was putting on a show. She wasn’t just being territorial. It took a lot of energy to hair-up, she was hungry and she knew other werewolves were around, with their own claims to the food supply. Which was us.
Vollmer was standing weak-kneed in the doorway, glancing over his shoulder. Probably as close to a live one as he’d ever been.
“What about DeMarco?” he yelled.
Diamondbackers were getting closer on their big Harleys, accompanied by more lights mounted at the rooflines of the pickups. There was some hoorahing going on, a real wild-west roundup.
“What about him?” McQuarrie said to me.
I shrugged. “Go get DeMarco if you want him.”
McQuarrie smiled edgily and shook his head.
“I don’t think anyone wants him that badly. If I can’t have my chatter gun, then I’d just as soon head for home.”
“Let’s roll!” I called to Vollmer. “Get in the goddamned truck!”
He was still quaking, unable to bring himself to jump the short distance into the pickup’s bed. Maybe with all of the weight he was carrying above the beltline he had bad feet.
Hesitation cost him. He screamed suddenly, almost lost his footing, teetered in the doorway, arms windmilling. But he had to take that last look back.
I jumped from the bed of the pickup to the running board and squeezed into the cab behind the steering wheel, cracked ribs like knives in my side. I’d left the engine running, of course. I shifted to low and the oversized tires spun through the sand that covered the old runway.
McQuarrie grabbed a chrome handhold as the back end of the truck slewed away from the plane. I glanced at Vollmer.
He was still in the doorway, his mouth open in a scream. He looked rigid from fear.
Then I saw Mal Wolfgirl as she loomed behind Vollmer, put a hand on his shoulder, gripped his neck with jaws that had so much more power than the bite of any other canine. She leaped from the plane with him. Vollmer hit the ground with his head half severed. The she-wolf let go of him and looked in our direction.
McQuarrie made it into the front seat the same way I had.
“Suppose we get the hell out of here,” he said.
The CB radio in the cab squawked as I accelerated.
“DeMarco? You have finish with the girl, hombre? Cut her loose. We are coming. Already there are Hairballs. DeMarco? Come back.”
I grabbed the mike and answered him.
“DeMarco’s run into a little tough luck, Ortega. You’re next.”
“Rawson? That you, amigo?”
“Mal de lune’s over, Ortega. No more ‘amuleto.’ It’s you and me tonight, asshole. Come back.”
“You and me.” He laughed. “Interesting. I accept.”
“What’s going on here?” McQuarrie said nervously. “Is this some kind of personal vendetta?”
“You bet it’s personal.”
“Listen, I don’t want any part of this.”
The headlights of half a dozen Harleys and the racks of pickup roof and side lights were in full flood inside the cab. Dazzling. They were all about a hundred yards away and, in spite of the blow, they lit up the flightline like an ancient arena. I saw a rogue Hairball scramble over the top gun turret of a Flying Fortress. One of the trucks swerved toward it and tracer rounds were fired from the bed. The Hairball wasn’t damaged but the old bomber took a beating. The Hairball drew everyone’s attention except for one biker. While bikes and trucks circled the plane with the werewolf on it, Raoul Ortega—I could be sure it was him—came straight toward us.
I looked back for Mal Wolfgirl, who was clearly visible in the throw of the headlight on Ortega’s motorcycle. She was crouched near the leftovers of the late governor of the Privilege, her eyes like liquid fire in the light. McQuarrie turned in his seat and reached behind him for the tricked-up, bright blue steel assault weapon with its night optics and thirty-round box loaded with silvertips. I suppose a gambler like McQuarrie would have called his high-powered rifle the “House vig.”
Some fucking sportsman.
As he turned around again cocking the rifle, I hit the truck brakes. He sprawled fo
rward into the dash. The rifle’s front sight hit him in the mouth and removed the veneers from his front teeth. I took the Uzi away from him. He sat back, dripping blood from a split lip, looking dazed.
I threw the pickup into reverse.
“What the hell are you doing, Rawson?”
He spat out blood as I headed backward toward Mal Wolfgirl. Raoul Ortega, tall in the saddle, was only about fifty yards distant and closing. One of the lookalike pickup trucks had peeled away from the action around the Flying Fortress and was joining Ortega’s chase.
He was back on the radio.
“Rawson? That is someone especial to you, no? I keel her first, then you, cabrón.”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” I said to McQuarrie. “I’m going back for Mal. I promised her mother.”
And still Mal Wolfgirl didn’t seem to understand the danger she was in. Or else she was paralyzed by the light show and shooting carnival careening helter-skelter her way.
In spite of the pain from his bloody lip McQuarrie managed an ironic chuckle.
“You’re going to put a werewolf in this truck? That’s an old joke.”
“Heard it. Mal may be a werewolf, but she’s my werewolf.”
McQuarrie had recovered from getting his teeth chipped. Or at least thought he was clearheaded.
“I’d like to find out how you’re going to pull this off,” he said. “But I think I should get off here.”
Without haste he opened the door and put a foot out on the running board and jumped.
But he had misjudged the speed at which we were traveling. Also he jumped straight out instead of in the direction we were going. Momentum whirled him around twice in a running, stumbling attempt to maintain balance. The wind against him, with its velocity, might have kept him from nosing down in a flat sprawl. Instead he was sideswiped by Raoul Ortega’s big flashy machine.
McQuarrie sat down hard and was getting up slowly when the oncoming pickup truck drove straight over him. Those massive chrome radiator guards can be lethal. Either the driver wasn’t able to see McQuarrie through the swirling dust and with my six-pack of halogen lights full in his face, or his reflexes were a little slow after the happy hour preceding the mal de lune.
