by Tim Waggoner
Sam was calm as he spoke, and the werewolves exchanged uneasy glances. Sam supposed they were used to their prey pleading for their lives, terrified at the thought of what the werewolves would do. Sam was glad to disappoint them.
“That’s about it,” Crowder said.
“What if I decide not to run?” Sam asked. “After all, you’re just going to kill me eventually. Might as well get it over with now and save myself a lot of effort and false hope.”
“But it’s not false,” Sylvia said. “If you manage to find your way out of the woods, you’re free to go. You win, we lose. People need a strong motivation if they’re to run their best.”
“And there’s no stronger motivation than survival,” Crowder said.
“Clay Fuller got out of the woods,” Sam pointed out. “But that didn’t seem to stop you from killing him and taking his heart.”
“You have my word that, in the unlikely event you make it out of the woods alive, you’ll remain that way,” Crowder said.
Sam knew he was lying. Crowder would never allow any of their prey to live long enough to go to the authorities. But there was no point in saying so.
“So what now?” Sam asked. “Does one of you fire a starter’s pistol or do you just shout, ‘Ready, set, go!’”
Crowder gestured to the yard beyond the deck.
“Just start running,” he said, “or we’ll tear you to pieces right now.”
Sam could tell by the man’s tone—and by the way Sylvia and the twins were looking at him—that Crowder wasn’t kidding. So he hopped off the deck and ran toward the woods, the full moon shining overhead, howls of excitement rising into the air behind him.
* * *
Near Seattle, Washington. 1992
“Look out!” Sam shouted. He had his seatbelt on, but he put his hands on the dashboard of Bobby’s pickup to brace himself anyway. Dean sat in the driver’s seat, gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white.
“I see it!” Dean said.
They were heading straight toward a light pole. Dean yanked the steering wheel hard to the left, and the pickup swerved away. Sam shouted for Dean to slow down. Dean shot him an angry glare, but he eased his foot off the gas, and Sam began to relax as the pickup slowed.
“I thought you said Dad gave you driving lessons,” Sam said.
“He did.” Dean paused, then added more softly, “Once.”
Now that they were on their way to the hospital, Sam was having second thoughts.
“I’m not sure we should be doing this,” he said.
“You heard Bobby. If we don’t stop the werewolf tonight, it will be a whole month before it comes back. We have to kill it before it attacks someone else! He can’t do it, and Dad’s not here. That leaves you and me.”
“But we’re just kids,” Sam said.
Dean shrugged. “So what? Dad’s taught me how to shoot… a little. And we got Bobby’s gun, which is loaded with silver bullets. Besides, werewolves don’t eat kids’ hearts. They’re too small, and they’re not ripe yet. They taste awful, like green bananas.”
Sam frowned, fairly certain Dean was making this last part up.
Sam would rather have stayed in the motel room with Bobby. The idea of hunting a werewolf terrified him, and it didn’t help that they’d watched part of that stupid movie, Night of the Blood Moon. But in the end, Sam had agreed to accompany Dean for one simple reason. He loved his brother and couldn’t let him go into danger alone.
Dean nearly got them into several accidents on the way to the hospital, but he avoided them all—if only just. They continued driving around lost for a while until they found signs directing drivers to the hospital. They pulled into the visitors’ lot and looked for a place to park.
A thought occurred to Sam then. “Have you ever parked before?”
“Sure I have,” Dean said. “Nothing to it.”
But he looked nervous, and Sam figured he was lying.
They found a space between an SUV and a van, and Dean painstakingly attempted to park between the two vehicles. There wasn’t a lot of room between them, and Dean had to back up several times and make another attempt to fit the pickup in. During his final try, he scraped the side of the van, but the pickup was parked, more or less, and he turned off the engine.
“See? Nothing to it,” Dean said.
Sam rolled his eyes. The pickup was squeezed in so tightly between the SUV and the van that they couldn’t open the pickup’s doors wide enough to get out. They had to roll down the windows and crawl out that way.
It had started to rain again, although it wasn’t much more than a sprinkle. They’d put motel towels on the driver’s seat because of how much Bobby had bled on the drive back from the hospital. But some blood had soaked through anyway, and Dean’s pants had a few splotches on the bottom. Ordinarily, Sam might have teased his big brother about this, but not now, not here.
Dean carried Bobby’s gun in his right jacket pocket. The pocket wasn’t deep enough to conceal the whole weapon, and its handle stuck out. It didn’t look secure in the pocket, and Sam was afraid the gun would fall out if Dean wasn’t careful. Sam carried Bobby’s silver knife. He didn’t have the sheath for it—he had no idea where Bobby kept it—and no way was he going to stick this sharp thing in one of his pockets. Sam knew that, like Bobby, they’d have to keep an eye out for hospital security making the rounds. Two adults hanging out in the visitors’ parking lot in the middle of the night would’ve been suspicious enough, but two kids? If security spotted them, the guards would come running to make sure they weren’t lost or in some kind of danger.
We are in danger, Sam thought. But not the kind any security guard can help us with.
The moon was hidden by the cloud cover overhead, and Sam was grateful. He knew werewolves didn’t need to see the moon to be affected by it, but as scary as being here was, it would’ve been worse if a full moon hung in the sky above them. It would’ve been too much like Night of the Blood Moon. He was also glad they were in a well-lit parking lot instead of an eerie forest, like in the movie. But then he realized that the lot was kind of like a maze. They couldn’t see between the vehicles, not until they stood close to them, and anything could be hiding in the spaces between. Suddenly, a spooky old forest didn’t sound so bad.
“What do we do now?” Sam asked Dean, whispering.
Sam was surprised when his big brother didn’t answer right away. He was used to Dean always knowing what to do, or at least pretending to know. But Dean had to think a minute.
“I guess we go slow through the lot and see if we find the werewolf.”
“Or it finds us,” Sam said.
“Or that,” Dean agreed.
So they began walking, keeping close to the vehicles, crouched low. Dean took the lead, but Sam was right behind his brother, so close that he bumped into him several times. But Dean didn’t complain. He just kept moving forward, attention focused and sharp. Sam periodically glanced behind them to make sure they weren’t being stalked from the rear. Each time he turned to look, he expected to see a wild-eyed creature with fangs and claws racing toward them, but he saw nothing. He listened for any sounds of movement but the rain had picked up, making it difficult to hear any other sounds.
Sam told himself that the werewolf probably wasn’t in the area anymore, that Bobby had scared it away when he’d wounded it. Like Bobby had told them, the werewolf would move to a new hunting ground, and it wouldn’t be heard from until next month. They were wasting their time. On the one hand this was reassuring, as Sam didn’t particularly want to tangle with a werewolf. But on the other hand, he couldn’t stop thinking about what Dean had said back at the motel. If they didn’t stop the werewolf here and now, more people would die next month. Maybe a lot more. He’d never considered the responsibility that rested on a hunter’s shoulders. Every action they took had the potential to save lives or lose them, depending on how things went down. No wonder his father and Bobby worked so hard and rarel
y took time off. Every moment they weren’t hunting was another moment when someone was potentially dying at the hands of a supernatural creature.
The rain grew worse, coming down faster and harder now, accompanied by lightning flashes and booms of thunder. Sam figured they’d been at it for at least an hour, maybe longer. He was cold, wet, and tired, but one thing was good: he was too irritated and uncomfortable to be scared anymore.
“Let’s go back to the truck and sit inside until the rain lets up,” Sam said. He would’ve preferred they ended their stakeout and returned to the motel room. The warm, and above all, dry room. But he didn’t trust Dean to drive in the rain. Better to sit in the truck and wait for the storm to blow over than end up wrapping Bobby’s truck around a telephone pole on the way back to the motel.
Dean scowled, clearly unhappy with the idea of giving up. But he said, “Okay.”
They were currently on the west side of the lot, just about as far as they could be from the pickup. They turned and began heading back the way they’d come. But they stopped after only a few steps. There, standing in the middle of the lane between two rows of vehicles, stood a woman. Her long white hair was wet and plastered to the front of her brown sweater, which was soaked and hung limply on her slight frame. She wore blue slacks and a pair of open-toed brown shoes, which revealed her toenails were sharp werewolf claws. Her hands were clawed as well, and her mouth was filled with wicked-looking fangs. Her eyes were those of an animal, bestial and shining with bloodlust.
It’s an old lady, Sam thought, surprised, although he couldn’t have said why. Monsters had to get old too, didn’t they?
The sweater’s right arm had a ragged tear through the sleeve, just beneath the shoulder. Sam figured that was where Bobby had wounded the werewolf, but she didn’t appear any the worse for wear. Maybe the silver wound had healed, or maybe she was too excited by the prospect of two fresh, young hearts to care about her injury.
She bared her teeth in a half-snarl, half-grin, and then she ran toward them, claws out, ready to rend their flesh.
* * *
Present Day
“I’m really sorry I got you into this mess,” Garth said. He sat next to Dean, his back to the wall.
Dean wanted to tell Garth not to feel guilty, that it wasn’t his fault. But he was too worried about Sam—out there in the night, running for his life—to think about anything but escape right now. Sammy was as smart and resourceful as any hunter ever born, but he was being hunted by a family of werewolves. And he was unarmed. Those weren’t good odds, no matter how you sliced it. Sam needed backup, and Dean was determined to get out of this damn hole in the ground and give it to him. But how? Garth had started working on loosening his bonds as soon as the Crowders had closed the basement door, but he’d made little progress. At the rate he was going, Sam would be dead and his heart divided among Crowder’s pack before Garth managed to break out of his chains. Dean felt helpless, and he hated it.
The basement door opened, and someone started coming down. Dean felt his stomach drop. Had they already finished with Sam?
It was Crowder’s daughter, and she was alone. She hurried over and knelt next to them, an expression of guilt and concern on her face.
“You come down to take a nibble or two while the rest of your family is out chasing my brother?” Dean said.
The girl—Morgan, if he remembered right—didn’t answer. Instead, she raised her right hand and sharp claws emerged from her fingers. She swung her hand toward Garth, and at first Dean thought she meant to attack him. But instead she cut the duct tape away from his chains with a few quick swipes. Then she transformed completely and pulled on the chain around Garth’s wrists while he struggled to break them from the inside. Together, they were successful. The chain broke, and Garth’s hands were free. The first thing he did was rub the dried blood—Melody’s blood—from his mouth and chin. Then they broke the chain wrapped around his legs. Working swiftly, the pair moved onto Dean, broke the handcuffs around his wrists, and then freed his legs.
When they were all standing—and Garth and Morgan were human again—Dean looked at the girl and said, “Not that I’m complaining, but why did you free us?”
“I’m not like the rest of my family,” Morgan said, her words coming out in a rush. “I don’t like hurting people, and I won’t eat their hearts. I want to go with Garth and join his pack. I want to live like them. And I want to take my baby brother with me. I want him to grow up in a good place, surrounded by good people.”
Dean looked at her a moment before turning to Garth.
“I’ll be damned. It looks like you made a convert after all.”
Garth smiled.
TWENTY-TWO
Nathan drove the ancient station wagon and Greg rode in the passenger seat. It was the middle of the night, and the streets were mostly deserted. Not only was Bridge Valley a sleepy little Midwestern town, it was a weeknight, and it felt to Greg like he and Nathan were the last people on Earth.
“It’s late,” Greg said. “What if he won’t let us in?”
“Don’t worry. We pay him well enough that he’ll do whatever we ask—within reason. He will allow us entrance.”
Jakkals might have been scavengers by nature, but that didn’t mean they were poor. They simply didn’t believe in wasting things. But the extended family of jakkals—which Nathan had once told Greg numbered in the hundreds—had acquired a significant amount of wealth over the centuries, primarily by selling gold (which they handled very carefully) and jeweled artifacts they’d carried out of ancient Egypt. They kept their funds stored in various banks throughout the world, and all the packs could access this money when needed. The jakkals mostly did odd jobs to earn whatever money they needed and saved their bank funds for their most vital expense: bribing funeral home owners and morgue attendants. Dead human hearts weren’t easy to come by— unless you were willing to kill the humans yourself, remove their hearts, and allow them to age until they were ready to be eaten. Nathan had once admitted to Greg that in times of great need, and only when there was no other choice, jakkals had been known to procure their sustenance through violent means. But jakkals weren’t predators, and they preferred to acquire their food peacefully. This had the added benefit of drawing less attention to themselves, which was why they were practically unknown to those who studied supernatural lore—a fact the jakkals took great pride in.
So they paid humans who worked with the dead to harvest the hearts of their “clients” before burial or cremation. The arrangement was mutually beneficial and caused no harm to anyone. Although Greg supposed the families of the “donors” wouldn’t be pleased to discover one of their loved one’s major organs had been purchased like meat at a deli counter.
“Mr. Everton may be less than pleased to be awakened at this hour,” Nathan said, “but he will open his door to us, no questions asked.” He paused, and then added, “Although after tonight, it’s doubtful he will do business with us ever again.”
They drove until they came to a two-story house framed by a pair of large elms. A wooden sign in the front yard read Everton Funeral Home: The Best in Eternal Rest.
Greg looked at his grandfather, and Nathan shrugged. “So the man has a poor sense of humor. At least he’s open to bribery.”
* * *
True to Nathan’s word, the owner of the funeral home— middle-aged, grumpy, and wearing a robe over pajamas— wasn’t pleased to have visitors at this hour. He was, however, quite happy to see the envelope containing three thousand dollars in cash, which Nathan handed to him. With a smile on his face, Everton ushered them inside and led them to the door of his basement workroom.
“You’ll have your pick tonight,” he said. “There was a two-car accident on the highway yesterday. Two passengers in one car, three in the other. All fatalities. A terrible thing.” He shook his head. “But good for business, I suppose. As you might imagine, the bodies were not in the best condition, and my assistants and I had to do q
uite a bit of restoration work on them. Please do be careful while you’re, ah, shopping.”
Nathan smiled and patted the black leather satchel he carried. “I always am.”
The satchel contained tools for cutting into dead bodies, but they wouldn’t be needed any more than the plastic cooler Greg carried. They were merely props, meant to reassure Everton that nothing was out of the ordinary. Well, no more so than usual.
An apologetic expression came over Everton’s face. “I’ve already embalmed them. I hope that won’t be a problem.”
Jakkals might prefer their meat to be rotting, but they would never eat food that had been spoiled by chemicals. But Nathan smiled and said, “No problem. Not tonight.”
Everton frowned, but he said nothing. Greg figured that for three thousand dollars, Everton didn’t care what they did or why. He asked them to lock up after they were finished, bade them good night, and headed back upstairs to bed. Greg didn’t see how the man could sleep given what he thought his midnight visitors were about to do, but he supposed it took all kinds.
Once they were in the workroom, Nathan put his satchel on the floor and Greg set the cooler beside it. This was the first time Greg had ever gone on a harvesting run. Nathan or Muriel usually took care of the task, as they were the pack’s Elders, but sometimes his mother, father or sisters went along. Now that he was here, he was somewhat underwhelmed. He’d pictured the workroom as something out of an old-time horror film—stone walls and floor, bodies on tables concealed beneath white sheets, an assortment of sinister-looking medical instruments spread out on a gleaming steel table… Instead, it was depressingly mundane.
The bodies—five of them, as Everton had said—were laid out on wheeled mortuary cots. The bodies themselves were uncovered, evidently because they were still being worked on. Greg didn’t like this. It felt disrespectful to him. Past the cots was an embalming station: a porcelain table next to a sink with a spray nozzle attached to the end of a hose. Set against the wall near the porcelain table was a waist-high cabinet atop which rested an embalming machine—a clear plastic canister with a thin black hose emerging from it. Burial rites were the province of Anubis, and as his children, they were important to jakkals. Greg felt a curious mixture of awe at being in the presence of modern embalming equipment and repulsion at how sterile and impersonal it seemed. There was no magic or mystery here, and he found that sad.
