Prowlers: Wild Things

by Christopher Golden

  Jasmine liked that. That was the way it ought to be.

  Alec was followed a moment later by Connor, a recent addition to the pack who had proven himself invaluable in contacting other Prowlers in Manhattan and the outer boroughs of New York City. Where Alec was elegant, Connor was a pit bull, a squat, broad creature whose false human façade made him look like a fortyish ex-boxer. When he entered, Connor's eyes were upon Jasmine, but he dropped his gaze and gave her a respectful nod. He might not be used to life in the pack, but he was learning fast.

  "Good morning, love," Alec said sweetly, bright and happy as always.

  "I woke and you were gone," she replied, stretching again as she rose to her feet.

  Many of the wooden benches that had originally been in the train car had been rotten when she discovered it. She had saved the best two and had them restored, while the others had been torn out and disposed of. Now Jasmine sat upon one of the benches and waited for him to come to her. He moved to her quickly, slid next to her on the bench and kissed her temple.

  "I went in to visit our guest this morning," he confessed. "I brought him his cell phone and let him make a call back home. He didn't want to actually tell them to come, but who can blame him? He let it ring a couple of times and hung up. I'm headed upstairs now to spread the word to keep an eye and ear out for them. Once they start asking around for him, we'll have them."

  Alec seemed as if he had more to say, but instead he lay a hand on her leg and glanced away. Jasmine frowned and studied him. In her peripheral vision she could see Connor shifting awkwardly, watching them in silence.

  "There's more?" Jasmine prodded her lover.

  "Just wondering," Alec replied. He cleared his throat and sat up straighter, gazed at her again. "Cantwell's playing along. He wants his sister's kid, that's understandable. But everything we know says he cares about this Dwyer woman and her brother. How can you trust him to just go away? He's done his job now, made that call. Why not just kill him and be done with it?"

  Jasmine stiffened, felt her hackles rising. Her eyes narrowed and Alec flinched from the look on her face. As well he should, she thought. She ran her tongue out over her teeth and her gaze darted to Connor. He wore jeans and a white shirt, a navy blue jacket over it; dressed to go topside, just like Alec. They had become friends quickly, despite the vast difference in their positions within the hierarchy of the pack. Connor took a step toward the door of the train car as though he desperately wanted to leave, but he dared not go any further.

  With a flourish, Jasmine reached out and caressed Alec's face, traced her fingers along the contours of this human masque he wore.

  "Let me tell you about our guest in the next car," she said, her voice a rasp, almost a growl. From a nearby tunnel came the scream of a passing train and a rush of wind blew into the car, snuffing several of the candles and making the illumination cast upon the walls and curtains shudder. On the sound system, Billie Holiday moaned out the last notes of the final song, and the speakers went silent.

  Alec and Connor stared at Jasmine, waiting.

  Jasmine smiled. "I tried to have him killed a couple of months ago. Even before that, if I had been able to, I would have disemboweled him myself. But that was before I knew, before I understood who he was. You already know that he has been living for some time under an alias. This is nothing new. Most of our kind who attempt to blend with the human herd change their names and appearances from time to time, move to new cities, begin new lives.

  "His true name, the one he was given at birth, is Guillaume Navarre. Son of Yves Navarre."

  The name had the desired effect. Connor perked up, truly interested now, and Jasmine saw in his eyes that he was trying to figure out why he knew that name. Alec's reaction was more pronounced. He blinked and swore under his breath.

  Jasmine smiled, glanced at Connor. "You know that Owen Tanzer, who was Alpha of my pack before he was killed earlier this year, was the son of Wade Tanzer, one of the most ferocious leaders our kind ever knew. Before there was ever a United States, Wade Tanzer came to this country and gave the natives here their legends of skinwalkers. Some thought him the trickster spirit of their mythology. Wade was the greatest hunter of his pack, but he was not its Alpha until the death of the beast who was his greatest friend. Yves Navarre."

  With a sound almost like a bark, Alec swore in a guttural tongue rarely spoken by their kind any more, the language of the beast.

  "Yes," Jasmine agreed. She gazed deeply into his eyes and ducked forward, nuzzling gently, lovingly at his throat. She licked the salt from his skin. "So now you see."

  Once more she lifted her eyes and stared at him. "If I kill Bill Cantwell . . . if I kill Guillaume Navarre . . . I will join the ranks of the most notorious villains in our history. Prowlers the world over would hate me, hunt me, lust for my blood. The wild and the underground alike would despise me. And I cannot have that."

  Slowly, deliberately, Jasmine smiled. "However, if this human rabble he cares so much for should discover his betrayal and kill him . . . that would be another thing entirely."

  Understanding sparked in Alec's eyes, followed by desire. "You really are incredible," he told her.

  Jasmine slashed her talons across his cheek and leaped to her feet. Alec cried out in pain and wonder even as she lunged across the train car at Connor. He froze, too stunned to react, and by the time he had begun to move to defend himself Jasmine had forced him down on the carpet and torn his throat out with her teeth. Hot blood fountained from his ragged neck and splashed her face and she licked it greedily from her mouth.

  Behind her, Alec snarled and she heard the popping of his bones as he changed. When she spun he was already transformed; his human clothes were too well-tailored and they tore and hung from his sleek black fur in rags.

  "What are you doing?" he growled, furious and distraught and afraid.

  Jasmine spat a piece of Connor's flesh to the ground and glared at him. "I have done nothing, Alec. You just cost this creature his life. This friend of yours. You questioned my judgment, treated me as though I were yours rather than you mine. I will have obedience and I will have respect. Connor saw and heard that conversation and so one of you had to die. You for speaking that way or him for having overheard. I chose him. This time.

  "You please me, Alec. But if ever you disrespect me again it will be your blood I wear."

  The Jeep was parked in the breakdown lane on Route 87, the passenger side tires well off the shoulder of the highway in order to give passing cars plenty of room to drift. The hazard lights were on, but Jack hoped that the blinking wouldn't bring the State Police by for a visit. Once upon a time that would have been less likely, but when so many people had cell phones, chances were there would be one Samaritan in the bunch who would want to help. Of course, once upon a time people like that would have pulled over and offered their assistance, but everyone was so afraid these days. Who knew what kind of monster might be lying in wait on the side of the road?

  The thought made Jack smile, but there was nothing funny about it. On the other hand, he also figured anyone who paid attention to the news in this area would be even less likely to stop, given the rate of strange deaths and disappearances on this stretch of highway.

  He slammed his door and dropped his keys into his pocket. Molly was already out of the Jeep and she took the lead as they scrambled down the embankment to a stand of trees that had been burnt out by a fire. The ground was black and charred and the trees themselves had been scorched before fire crews had managed to put them out. A couple of large evergreens had been brought down at the edge of the wood, but Jack figured that was from the crash of the truck, not from the blaze.

  "People are going to think we're pretty ghoulish," Molly said.

  She stood to his right, her hands stuffed in her pockets, chin tucked slightly downward, and in that moment he looked to her like a little girl. It was a reminder that she was, after all, just out of high school, not even nineteen yet. Not for another
three months. Hell, Jack himself had just turned twenty a few weeks earlier. He was like that blond Hitler youth kid in Sound of Music, thinking of her as young when he was only a year older. But right then, the way she stood, the sheepish, rather-be-anywhere-but-here look on her face . . . Jack couldn't help it.

  "We can go if you want," he offered.

  Molly glanced up in surprise. "Huh? No. I was just thinking how any time we're doing this, trying to track Prowlers, it always means we're hanging out in places where people have died horribly. Anyone driving by would think, 'check out those guys, death-site tourists.'"

  Jack laughed and after a second, Molly did too.

  "Anyone sees us down here is likely to think we're either out of gas, needing to pee, or sneaking off into the woods for some cheap thrills. Most of the people going by probably don't have any idea Chet Douglas died here. They'd see what's left of the fire, that's all. Even if they saw it on the news they might not connect the two."

  "I guess you're right," Molly replied.

  Then she shrugged, pulled her hands from her pockets and walked further toward the place where the ground became charred. Jack thought of stories he had read as a boy, fairy tales about people who had crossed over into magic circles and been transported into fantastical realms. But the thought was gone the moment Molly stepped over that blackened border, the dead embers crumbling silently beneath her tread.

  "So what do you see?" she asked without turning, her attention focused on the burnt trees.

  And that was the big question, wasn't it? They had already been by the scene of Suzanne Robinson's so-called accident. Police tape was wrapped around trees and crews were still at work removing the wreckage of her rig. But there had been no ghosts there. Now here, where Chet Douglas and his mysterious passenger burned in yet another trucking accident, Jack paused a moment before he shifted his perception to look into the Ghostlands, for he knew what he was going to find.

  He cleared his mind, took a breath, closed his eyes, and when he opened them again the world had inverted. A now-familiar queasiness hit his stomach as his flesh and blood reality became a pale shadow of itself, as though it too had been burnt to lifeless ash. The Ghostlands, where the lost souls of the dead wandered, was a sea of gray mist that seemed to shimmer and swirl all around him.

  Among the trees on the side of the road, there were four that he could see perfectly well, in full color, as though they had grown right there on the Ghostlands. Jack stared at them a moment before he realized what he was seeing. These four trees were dead.

  He closed his eyes again and pinched the bridge of his nose. That small pain helped him focus, helped him come back.

  "Well?" Molly asked.

  He opened his eyes. The sun shone on her lush red hair in odd patterns where it streamed through the limbs of burnt dead trees but she shivered despite its warmth. The October wind was cold this morning. Molly gazed at him hopefully, but Jack was not certain if it was because she hoped he would find something, or because she simply wanted to leave.

  "Nothing," he confessed.

  Molly shook her head and started out of the trees and up the embankment without him. After a moment when his stomach still felt a bit unsettled, Jack followed.

  "You walk like a girl with a destination in mind," he said. "I was sort of thinking that unless you want to go by the county coroner's office, our best bet is just to wait until Artie comes back, see if he finds anything."

  "One more stop," she said as she opened the door and climbed into the Jeep. "I want to go back to that rest stop we were at last night, where they found Jared Wilkes' body."

  "There was nothing there," Jack reminded her as he walked around to his side.

  "True. But we know Suzanne didn't die in any accident, and that was the last place anybody saw her, with those other three. I'm betting Dave Krause and his obnoxious brother weren't human."

  Jack slid into the Jeep and started her up. Molly made complete sense and he felt a bit foolish for not thinking of it himself. Chances were the Prowlers had watched them go, then waited for that other trucker to leave, the jarhead who'd caught up to them and tried to help. And then they had killed Suzanne.

  He turned off the hazards and looked over his shoulder as he pulled out into northbound traffic on Route 87. Beside him, Molly was silent and grim.

  "You all right?" he asked.

  "Just thinking about the kid. And that couple who were so much older when they got married, finally finding the person they thought they were meant to be with. And Suzanne. She was really nice to us, you know?"

  "I know." Jack reached out and took her hand.

  "I hate this," Molly said. "So how come it means so much to me? It's ugly and sad, painful, never mind the danger we're putting ourselves in. So why can't I just walk away?"

  "You've said it yourself," he replied. "We can't know about them and not do something to stop them."

  Molly only nodded and squeezed his hand a little tighter.

  They drove to the next exit and reversed direction, then drove south two exits before reversing again. When they reached their destination, the ghost of Suzanne Robinson was waiting.

  And she was not alone.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Jack saw the ghosts as he was pulling into the rest stop.

  There were no trucks parked there just now, only a station wagon that he suspected was older than he was. The mom was leaned over the passenger seat trying to entertain a baby in the back, while the dad walked an older child, a boy of perhaps five, to the row of portable toilets.

  Twenty or thirty feet along the curb from where the family had parked sat the specter of Suzanne Robinson. She had her arm around another ghost, a guy about Jack's age. He was hunched over, his face in his hands and he shuddered with the power of his sobs.

  "They're here," Jack told Molly, his voice low.

  "You see them already?"

  Jack nodded. He knew what she meant. In the city he saw ghosts often enough without even trying. If a spirit was recently dead or simply strong enough, vital enough, they left an echo on the real world, and he could easily see them without looking into the Ghostlands. But along the highway he rarely saw them, save for the occasional hitchhiker, and since they had arrived he had not seen even one of those lost souls, forever trying to reach their destination. Not seeing them did not mean they were not there, of course, which had been the whole point of his trying to look, shifting his perceptions so he could see into the Ghostlands.

  Now, though, no such effort was required. Jack kept an eye on the two phantoms as he pulled the Jeep up to the curb. "They're over by that family, just sitting there. Suzanne and a young guy. It looks like he's crying."

  "You can't talk to her with those people there," Molly said.

  Jack had already opened his door but now he hesitated. "I could. Might get them out of here faster."

  A wan smile reached her lips. "Just wait a second."

  So he did. They sat there in the Jeep and waited as the dad helped his little boy zip up and they walked back to the station wagon together. The boy was skipping happily, singing a little nonsense song, even as the baby in the backseat of the wagon wailed in baby anguish, inconsolable over some unmet desire or another. The mom had gotten out of the car and had a small cooler on the roof, and she was pouring milk or formula from a jar into a bottle.

  When Jack glanced back at the ghosts, the baby's crying made a chilling counterpoint to the silent grief of the dead teenager Suzanne's spirit was trying to comfort. Even when at last the bottle was ready and the baby was quieted, Jack heard an echo of its need in the back of his mind. The family piled back into the wagon and a moment later the car pulled away.

  For just a moment, Suzanne glanced up and watched it go. Jack could see the sorrow on her face and he realized she knew what had happened, knew she was dead. She understood. Conflicting emotions surged up within him. He was sorry for her, and yet he was also relieved. It was better for their purposes if she knew. />
  He got down out of the Jeep and walked toward the two lost souls there on the curb. As he approached, Suzanne looked up at him curiously. In the shade from the trees she seemed a bit more solid from far away but as he moved closer the illusion dispersed. Her body was little more than a swirl of vapor given form and dull color. Through her chest he could see the ragged grass behind her. Through her pelvis, the cracked curb she was sitting on. Sometimes he had to remind himself that no matter how strong their presence, they weren't really there. Suzanne was no longer in this world. Talking to her was really a lot like placing a telephone call to somewhere else. A long distance call. Very long distance, Jack thought.

  "Hello, Suzanne," he said.

  The ghost blinked her infinite black eyes several times. Then she smiled. "I was just staring at you thinking, 'he can't actually see me, it just seems like he's looking at me, he's probably just going into the woods to relieve himself just like that boy did.'"

  "I can see you."

  The other specter ceased his quiet sobbing and glanced up at Jack. "Allie. Do you know Allie?"

  His expression was both desperate and somehow hollow, mystified with everything around him. Jack had seen that same look on the face of Artie's uncle Bob, who had Alzheimer's disease. It occurred to him then that the recently dead must feel an awful lot like those poor souls, unable to recognize anything around them. And yet in some ways, once they became acclimated to the truth of their death, they were more the opposite of such people, able to recognize and speak to their loved ones but unable to get any response, as if everyone they have ever known has suddenly come down with Alzheimer's.

  "Sorry, no," Jack said gently. "I don't know her."

  "There's a monster in her," the spirit said with grave sincerity, gazing up into Jack's eyes. "Not even sure she knows it, but there's a monster in her. Asked her to go camping, and she told me — she told me it was a bad idea." He laughed madly and shook his head. "Shoulda listened to 'er, Chuck. Shoulda listened. Thought maybe being all alone in the woods, things might get romantic."