Prowlers: Wild Things

by Christopher Golden

  And she wakes.

  Breathing hard, eyes wild as she peers around her room. Voices in the hall and how can that be? Eden rises from bed, heart still beating too fast, relieved, oh so relieved to be awake, away from the nightmare. But whose voices are these? Wary but also angry at the intrusion she throws open the door.

  The hall is full of Prowlers. They crouch on the banister at the top of the steps and lounge on the grand staircase. One of them, a male whose golden fur reminds her of the one that had tried to kill her, pisses on the carpet and the stink is acrid and nauseating.

  It looks up at her. "Our territory now. There's no waking up."

  Short of breath, pulse racing enough to nurture a blossom of pain in her chest, she slams the door, puts her back against it. And she knows she is still asleep. She raises her hands and stares at them, remembering that you're not supposed to be able to see your hands in a dream. That's how you know you're dreaming.

  A sharp rap on the door. "Little pigs, little pigs . . ." a voice begins.

  She snaps awake in her bed. It is still night outside and the window is open, a soft breeze flowing in. "Oh, my God," she whispers in the dark, and she wants to cry. A shiver goes through her as she begins to calm. Eden rises from bed, unnerved by her dreams, and goes to peek into the hallway.

  When she opens the door, it is empty.

  As she turns, she hears the rustle of bedclothes behind her. In her bed is a sleek female monster, a Prowler with jaws open, slavering, its copper fur shedding on the bedclothes and beginning to reveal a face underneath.

  "The better to eat you with," it says.

  Eden closes her eyes, yearning to wake up, pleading in silence to all the ghosts of those she has loved in her brief eternity in the flesh world. It isn't supposed to be like this, and she wonders, with mounting terror, what will happen if she can never wake up.

  Again she wakes. Cautious now, she slips from bed, afraid that this is still not real, trying to feel the floor beneath her bare feet, the cool breeze through her cotton nightshirt. She manages to hope.

  She opens her bedroom door. A dark silhouette blocks the light in the hall and she screams.

  Artie looks at her with heartbreakingly blue eyes and reaches out to take her hands. She feels the rough texture of his hands, warm in hers, and Eden pushes herself into his embrace, muttering words she cannot remember even as she speaks them. His arms slip behind her and he hushes her.

  "It's all right now. It's only a nightmare."

  "I can't wake up," she says, the horror of those four words making her chest tight, the panic in her growing despite his comforting presence.

  "You can. You will in a moment. You'll have to. We need you."

  And he whispers to her, and slowly, she wakes.

  But the memory of her nightmare stays, and his words only heighten the awful dread that still grows and lingers within her.

  Eden was curled in a tight ball when she awoke. Her eyes flickered open and she stared into the darkness of her bedroom. The texture of the sheets beneath her, the caress of cool air from the partially open window, the tick of the clock on the wall, all of it seemed a temptation, a seduction, meant to convince her that she was awake now. That the world had returned. That the nightmare was over.

  Her eyes burned and felt heavy with the burden of sleep, its allure almost too powerful. Fear forced her eyes open again and again and she knew she ought to throw her legs out of bed, to sit up, to take time before going back to sleep, for fear the nightmare would be there waiting to claim her.

  At last her mind began to clear and her body to obey her commands. The surreal quality of the air changed, no longer made malleable by the remnants of her dreaming mind, her altered perceptions.

  Awake. She had escaped the nightmare, a dream unlike any she recalled having ever had, in all her lives.

  Then she remembered. Artie's embrace, his comforting voice. His words. "We need you."And she remembered too what he had told her. With a whispered curse, Eden sat up from bed and clicked on the light on her nightstand and stared at the clock. 11:37. She had been asleep for less than half an hour.

  The phone was a white cheap plastic thing that had cost her fourteen dollars. When she picked it up, the keypad glowed a dull green. From memory she dialed the phone number for the apartment above Bridget's Irish Rose Pub, but after half a dozen rings the answering machine picked up. Eden swore softly, urgency drumming in her chest.

  "Courtney, hi, it's Eden Hirsch. When you get this message call me back. It's . . . it's hard to explain on a machine, but it's important."

  She rattled off her number and hung up, then quickly dialed the number for the pub itself. It was answered on the second ring, but the girl who picked up said that Courtney was out of town for a couple of days. Questions burned through Eden's mind; where had Courtney gone? Did she already know that Jack and Molly were in trouble? She left a message with the woman at the pub and hung up, then sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the hard, gleaming plastic surface of the phone. The remnants of her nightmare, that seemingly inescapable dark dream, lingered like cobwebs not only in her mind, but in her vision, like mirages lurking in the shadows of the room.

  Her gaze went back to the phone. Artie had given her the impression that the situation was dire. If so, Jack and Molly didn't have time to wait for Courtney to call in for messages. Eden mentally calculated how long it would take her to drive to upstate New York by herself, but even if she went, what could she possibly do for them on her own? What they needed was a cadre of armed warriors on horseback, Attila and his Huns, the proverbial cavalry. Though she had been a soldier more than once in her eternal life, she was not capable of that now.

  Silent, the drumming in her chest increasing in tempo and urgency, she sat on the edge of her bed and grew angry with herself. Artie had come to her because she was the only person he could communicate with. But what could she do?

  The phone was so still it was almost an insult.

  Cavalry. The cavalry.

  Eden's eyebrows shot up. Hope rising in her, she picked up the phone.

  Jace Castillo hated domestic abuse cases. In the time he had spent as a detective with the homicide division of the Boston Police Department he had seen far too many women end up dead at the hands of boyfriends or husbands. There were more horrifying murders, bloodier and more savage killings. Certainly the domestic cases were usually a lot simpler to solve. Half the time they had the perp in custody within forty-eight hours, often far less. But inevitably, while putting together the paperwork on a case, he would have to wade through the history of a relationship, the times the victim had been abused, maybe even pressed charges. A lot of them had those worthless pieces of paper called restraining orders that were supposed to keep the abuser away.

  It twisted him up inside to read those sad, pitiful histories, to see how lost people could become within their own lives. It was going on midnight now and he rubbed tiredly at the corners of his eyes and typed the last bit of his report before saving it and shutting down the computer.

  The circumstances of his current case were so familiar, there was no secret to it, no mystery. It depressed him to know that in a situation like this there was nothing he could do to make it better. He had put the abuser in jail, but the deed was done. All Castillo could do now was add his victim to the catalog of those who stood as a horrid warning to others, a warning that seemed universally ignored.

  With a sigh he slipped on his leather jacket, slid the chair in tight against his desk, then gave a half-hearted wave to Detective Pepper on the other side of the room and wished her good night. Castillo started for the door.

  On his desk, the phone rang.

  With a roll of his eyes, he turned and glared balefully at it.

  "Want me to get it?" Amy Pepper asked.

  "Would you?" Castillo hated how pleading his voice sounded, but he just wanted to go home.

  Detective Pepper picked up his line. She spoke briefly, then clutched the
phone against her chest with her brows knitted in consternation. "Some girl named Eden Hirsch. Says you've met through the Dwyers. Said to tell you Jack's in trouble."

  Castillo forgot all about the case that was haunting him. He strode over, nodded his thanks to Pepper, and took the phone from her.

  "This is Detective Castillo," he said.

  He listened to Eden Hirsch's voice, tight with panic, and he dropped his chin to his chest and massaged the bridge of his nose, rubbing at his tired eyes again.

  "Jesus," he rasped. "When will this kid stop sticking his head into the lion's mouth?" Castillo got the details from Eden, jotted them down on a pad, then tore off the sheet and folded it once, slipping it into his pocket.

  "I'll get back to you tomorrow with an update," he told Eden.

  When he hung up, Pepper was watching him.

  "So?" she asked.

  "Just someone who expects me to play nursemaid."

  Pepper smiled, but there were questions there. "Dwyer. That's the brother and sister who own that pub near Quincy Market, right? One of these days, Jace, you're going to have to tell me how you got so involved with them."

  "But not tonight," Castillo replied. "Tonight there's sleep."

  He waved casually and strode from the room as though he had already forgotten the entire thing. But the moment he stepped off the elevator on the ground floor and started toward the front door, Castillo had his cell phone out and was dialing. He and a handful of his fellow officers were fighting a kind of shadow war, out of the public's eye, against a race of monsters that lived and bred amongst them, a race of killers. But most people, even most cops, had no idea they existed, and Castillo had orders to keep it that way.

  Jack and Courtney Dwyer and their friends were part of that war as well, fighting on the side of the angels. Their paths had crossed a number of times, but as deep as he got himself into things, it seemed like the Dwyer kid always managed to get himself out. From the sound of things, though, he'd really stepped in it this time. Castillo had worked with them in the past, but this was the first time Jack and his girlfriend, Molly Hatcher, had really needed to be bailed out.

  The problem was, of course, that they were hundreds of miles away.

  On the sidewalk in front of the division headquarters he held the cell phone to his ear and strode quickly away from the building. The line crackled with static, but after a few rings, it was answered abruptly.

  "What?" a scratchy voice barked. It belonged to Delaney Orton, a captain at the State Police barracks in Buffalo, New York. Once upon a time, they'd worked together, but Orton's wife had wanted to move home to be near her family.

  "Del? Jace Castillo."

  "I'm sleeping, Jace Castillo," Del rumbled. "Go 'way."

  "Wake up, Del. I've got a situation in a town called Hollingsworth, a ways south of Albany on Route 89. I need your help."

  "Ever look at a map, Jace? I'm in Buffalo. Buff-a-lo. Look it up."

  "It's an animal control problem," Castillo replied, glancing around the street to make sure he was not being overheard.

  When Orton spoke again, he sounded very awake.

  "Talk to me."

  Talk to me.

  Those had been Olivia Navarre's words to them, and in the ensuing hours, that had been just about all any of them had done. Jack sat with his back against the concrete, his gaze ticking back and forth between Olivia and Molly. It was still difficult for him to accept this girl as Bill's niece when he had not even known Bill had family until a few months ago. And yet how much more difficult than the many other discoveries he had made since the spring?

  Only recently had Jack learned that his friend, this being who was his sister's lover, had never even told them his true name. Bill was a variation on Guillaume. But only in this conversation with Olivia did they come to the startling realization that Cantwell was a completely manufactured surname, that their friend's family name was Navarre.

  Olivia had also explained to them the significance of the Navarre family to the history of the packs, and the relationship of her grandfather Yves Navarre, to Owen Tanzer's father, Wade. That particular bombshell had left Jack and Molly both wide-eyed and shaking their heads that Bill had conveniently neglected to mention any of that to them in the past.

  But Jack did not blame him. When they had first discovered what Bill was, it would likely have been even more difficult for them to accept his true nature if they'd known that his lineage was so linked to Tanzer's. Still, it made him wonder what else they did not know.

  For her part, Olivia had seemed even more surprised to learn about her uncle's current situation than they had been to discover his history. When Molly explained that Bill was in a relationship with Jack's sister, the astonishment and quiet revulsion on her face had been plain, and instructive.

  "With a human?" Olivia had asked, wrinkling her nose, her features shaded by the straight black hair that framed her face.

  Jack tried not to take offense. Though he had known Bill for years and had come to term with his sister's relationship, the same sort of repugnance, though in reverse, had still been his first response.

  Olivia knew about her uncle's wish to live amongst humanity, to merge with human civilization. She knew he had played professional football and had confessed that her own interest in writing and performing music would not likely have been nurtured in her if not for the example he had set. But he had his own life, and she hers, and when her mother had died a few years before she had almost entirely lost touch with her uncle. By the standards of the previous six months, Olivia's story seemed almost normal. In the wake of her mother's death, she had done a great deal of soul searching and focused more than ever on her love of music. With her absentee father never available, she had returned to her mother's pack, her distant relatives, for a while. At seventeen she had set herself up in New York City with the help of other Prowlers in the underground and begun to work the music scene with some small success, spent a lot of time busking — playing out in public for tips — in places like Washington Square Park and South Street Seaport. There had been some attention from A&R execs at more than one recording label.

  Jasmine had violently interrupted that process.

  Now the stories had largely been told and Jack and Molly sat beside one another in the basement, leaning against the wall, with the delicious scents of coffee and bacon and other greasy food wafting down to them and making Jack's mouth water. As the girls talked, he had only been half listening, far more interested in the basement, in the concrete walls and the two doors off the wide, nearly empty room. The rear door, up to a bulkhead in the back of the parking lot — the door they'd been brought in — was steel, and so was the one that led up into the Blueberry Diner.

  We need to get out of here, he thought for the thousandth time. Neither one of them had life-threatening injuries, but he and Molly both had dozens of cuts that ought to be disinfected. A ridiculous thing to think about, considering that at any moment Prowlers might come down and rip their throats out, but nevertheless, his mind went there. Even if Olivia was right and the Prowlers were going to hold onto them until Jasmine arrived to witness their execution, there was no way to know exactly how long that was going to take. At first, the conversation had seemed important and necessary, but as it began to wind down now, he started to think the get-to-know-you session had been a mistake.

  "You know what?" he said suddenly, interrupting the two girls. "Maybe we can continue this later? I don't want to be here when Jasmine comes. I have a feeling she won't be interested in keepin' us alive if she has you, Olivia."

  The Prowler girl nodded and flipped her hair back away from her face. She stood, and once again Jack was struck by how tall she was. "I'm all for leaving. But I've been down here a while and it isn't like I haven't tried. No offense, but I can't see how a human can get through one of these doors if I can't."

  Jack bristled. However progressive Bill was in dealing with humanity, his niece needed a few lessons in inter-
species diplomacy. Jack had the idea that in political terms, she might be what Prowlers would consider middle-of-the-road. In other words, she might not eat small children, but wasn't likely to have much objection if her friends wanted to indulge. It was a lesson to him: don't trust the girl just because of who her uncle is. After all, Olivia's father, Dallas, had tried to kill them back in August and they had ended up punching his ticket instead. Not that he was prepared to tell Olivia that.

  "I'm not so sure we need to go through the door," he told her.

  Olivia frowned, but Molly interrupted before she could respond.

  "Wait a second, you two," Molly said, leaning forward. "There's a part of this I need to understand that isn't making any sense to me."

  Her eyes fixed on Olivia, and Jack sensed a kind of understanding between them. He realized with no small interest and surprise that while his mind had been wandering, between the lines of their conversation, these two had been forming a sort of alliance. They had connected.

  Good for them, he thought. But it gave him no feeling of warmth or comfort toward Olivia. No matter how striking her outward appearance, he knew there was a monster underneath.

  Jack and Olivia gazed at Molly expectantly.

  "Well," Molly continued, "if Jasmine didn't know Bill — our Bill — was the same person as Guillaume Navarre, why did she take you in the first place? You've been her prisoner for months and you're still alive. I don't get any of that."

  Olivia nodded, her heavy-lidded gaze moving back and forth between Jack and Molly. "I see your point. It was a hell of a game she was playing, dangerous to her and to her plans. See, at first she came to me to recruit me."

  When she grinned, Olivia's teeth looked cruel and sharp.

  "Jasmine has grand plans, I'll give her that. Tanzer must have been a charismatic son of a bitch to convince her so completely of his dream. She's shrewd and cunning, but even the smartest cur can be blinded by zealotry."