Night Creatures Short Stories

by Lori Handeland

  His words hinted at a traitor in the ranks. Wouldn’t Edward be surprised? If we managed to stay alive, and non-furry, long enough to tell him.

  “It was a worth a shot.” I kept my gaze on Zachau, but part of my attention remained on the guns that still lay on the table behind him. If I could grab the doctor, smack his head into the bars, then I just might be able to sweep those guns closer with my foot. They weren’t that far away.

  “Shot,” Zachau repeated. “A very good word.” He picked up my gun and pointed it at my head. “Give me your arm or she dies.”

  Will presented his arm in a hurry.

  “Move away, Ms. McQuade,” Zachau continued. “To the far side of the enclosure, please.”

  Hell. He seemed able to read my mind, or maybe it was just my face. I’d never been much good at hiding things.

  Seeing no other way, I retreated until my back pressed against the outside wall that made up one-quarter of our prison.

  “What trouble did you go to?” I asked. Maybe if I kept him talking, he’d make a mistake. Couldn’t hurt. Besides, I was curious.

  “Hmm?” Zachau murmured, tapping Will’s arm as he searched for a vein.

  I could tell by the tension in Will’s body that he was waiting for an opening, too. Unfortunately the doctor appeared quite ambidextrous. He kept my gun aimed at me while holding the syringe in that hand as well. This left his other hand free to mess with Will’s arm.

  I had no doubt that if I made a quick movement, he would have no trouble plunging the syringe into Will’s arm before I could get close enough to stop him. If Will moved in any way that annoyed the doctor, a bullet would be dispatched for me. I wanted to avoid both scenarios.

  “You said you went to a lot of trouble to get us here. I’d like to know what you did.”

  “You must be as delusional as my boxenwolves if you think I’ll tell you.”

  “If you tell me, it’ll go no farther than this room, since you plan to kill me when you’re through.”

  “Why would I do that?” Zachau didn’t bother to look at me, which only made me more certain I was right.

  “Because if you inject that shit into Will, you’re dead the next instant.”

  “Big talk for someone without a gun.”

  More than talk but Zachau would figure that out soon enough.

  “So tell me how you did it.”

  “The usual way.” He shrugged. “I paid for the information.”

  “No one in the Jager-Suchers would dare.”

  “There’s always a price if you can afford to pay it.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  Zachau snorted, and I didn’t bother to ask again. If he knew the name of the traitor, he wasn’t going to share it with me now. Or ever.

  From the curve of his lips, he’d found a likely vein. He prepared to plunge the needle into Will’s arm, but he at last had too many balls in the air, or too many items in his hands. In the instant that he hesitated, trying to figure out how to aim the gun, steady Will’s arm and depress the syringe, Will said my name.

  He didn’t shout, he didn’t whisper just spoke that single word in a casual tone of voice. I hit the dirt; he grabbed the gun.

  The weapon went off. A bullet whizzed past my temple, leaving a scorching path of pain in its wake before plowing into the wall, sending bits of cement raining down.

  Will yanked the gun from Zachau’s grip and tossed it in my direction, even as he plucked the syringe from the doctor’s suddenly limp fingers. Will had always been quicker than the average human—another reason Mandenauer had tried to kill him. However there was nothing supernatural about his ability, just the result of hours practicing tai chi.

  Before Zachau could run, Will yanked him close. “You psychotic prick,” Will snapped, and the fury in his voice shocked me. Will Cadotte was the calmest man I knew. He had to be to live with me.

  My shock paralyzed both my body and my brain. I didn’t see Will’s next action coming until it was too late.

  He plunged the needle into the doctor’s arm. Zachau backed away, staring at the syringe.

  Will ran to me, falling to his knees, helping me sit up. “You’re hurt. This looks bad.”

  “What?” I pushed him away, moving toward the front of the cage as the doctor twitched, shuddered and mumbled.

  “Jess, you’re bleeding.”

  Absently I put my hand to my head. My fingers came away slick with blood. “Oh.” In all the excitement, I’d forgotten the sharp pain. “Just a scratch. You know head wounds always look more serious than they are.”

  His lips tightened. “I thought he’d killed you.”

  “Well, he didn’t, so get over it.”

  Together we stared at the doctor. “You think he’s going to become a wolf?” I asked.

  “Might,” Will answered. I picked up my gun. “He said that wouldn’t work on a boxenwolf.”

  “Let’s find out.”

  However Zachau did not shift; he only gibbered nonsense. For hours and hours. He came close enough once for Will to grab him, then I removed the key to our cage from his pocket. We called Edward; the Jager-Suchers arrived shortly thereafter for a clean up.

  Zachau now resides in his own personal cage at Jager-Sucher headquarters. His patients are there too, along with all of his notes and potions. Elise hopes that someday she’ll be able to decipher what he did to those people and himself. With luck she’ll even be able to cure it.

  As for Will and I, there was always another werewolf around the corner. At least we have job security.

  And each other.

  If you enjoyed reading about Jessie and Will, please read BLUE MOON, the full length novel where they were introduced.

  About the author:

  Lori Handeland is a Waldenbooks, Bookscan, USA Today and New York Times bestselling author, as well as a two-time recipient of the Romance Writers of America’s RITA award.

  For more information on Lori or her books, please go to:

  http://www.lorihandeland.com

  Boxen Moon

  Lori Handeland © 2005

  Boxen Moon began as an online, interactive short story. Created over 10 months from November 2005 through July 2006, it was written by Lori Handeland with “what happens next” input from site visitors. This is the result. Enjoy!

  Chapter 1

  As a child I didn’t believe in the bogeyman. There was no monster in the closet. No dragon under the bed.

  When I was twenty-six I learned differently. The bogeyman was real. The monsters popped up in my own backyard.

  I haven’t seen a dragon yet, but that doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist.

  I was just a small town cop, doing my job—a little bored, a little lonely. Then the wolves went berserk and the people did, too.

  Once the dust settled, and I figured out who was good, who was bad and who was a psychotically evil werewolf, I was no longer a cop but a Jager-Sucher.

  My whole world changed—in more ways than one. I exchanged the relative safety of cop-hood in small town Miniwa, Wisconsin for extreme danger as a member of a secret group of government funded operatives.

  But the trade off was sleeping with Will Cadotte. The man was a sex god.

  Oh, not literally. In my new world, you never know. I had to kill my best friend after she turned into a wolf god. It wasn’t too much of a stretch that my boyfriend could be an actual sex god. Stranger things had happened. Watch a person turn into a wolf and back again, then we’ll talk.

  At any rate, both Will and I became Jager-Suchers, or Hunter-Searchers. I was the hunter, while Will was more the searcher. Though he was accomplished in tai chi and had kicked my ass on occasion, when it came time to kill things, he usually left it to me.

  When the doorbell rang late one night, not long after the incident with the wolf god, I was uneasy. My mother always said that nothing good happened after midnight. Lately, nothing good happened after sundown.

  After retrieving my weapon, checking the load�
��silver from this point forward—then taking a quick peep through the peephole, I opened the door.

  “Jessie.” The leader of the Jager-Suchers, Edward Mandenauer, stepped inside without being invited. “We must talk.”

  Will was asleep. He wasn’t a night person. However I’d been working third shift throughout my career as a cop, which worked out well now that I’d taken to hunting werewolves. They tended to come out under the moon and run around until the sun came back. Go figure.

  “Now?” I asked and followed him down the hall into my living room.

  The lines in his face deepened on a frown. “What is wrong with now?”

  “Besides it being—” I glanced at my watch. “One in the morning?”

  “Monsters do not care about the time.”

  “I bet they don’t. However I have a life.”

  He stared down his long, bony nose at me. This didn’t happen often, since I was a solid five-ten. However Mandenauer topped out at over six feet of tough, but skeletal old man. He’d spent his youth in Nazi Germany, spying for the good guys, which was how he’d discovered the monsters.

  “Any life you have, you must give up to serve me.”

  “Not likely, pal. I work for you. I live for Will.”

  It felt strange to say that. Me, who’d never had a boyfriend in her life. Dates, sure. Relationships, never. And to have one with Will—I was still getting used to it. Still waiting for him to wake up one morning, look at me and say-“What in hell was I thinking?”

  Mandenauer snorted. “Spare me the nonsense. I allow you to work together because—“

  “We’re stronger together than apart.”

  I spun around. Will stood in bedroom doorway. My throat went tight just looking at him.

  Short, dark hair all tousled, his dark eyes were still heavy with sleep. He’d yanked on his jeans, but left the button open; the buttons on his shirt were open too, revealing his honed and toned chest.

  He was the same bronze shade all over. I’ve looked. Will likes to walk around at his place—several acres in the north woods outside of town—completely nude. He says it’s an Ojibwe thing. Did I mention he’s a member of the wolf clan? One of the reasons Edward shot him, but let’s not get into that.

  The combination of beauty, grace and his great big … brain— How was a girl supposed to think when a guy looked like that?

  Will gave me a lazy smile and strolled over to join me. As soon as he was close enough, he took my hand. He was very touchy feely. For a girl whose dad had taken off before she’d known what the word meant, and whose mom’s idea of affection was not telling her daughter she was an unfeminine embarrassment for one whole day, Will’s openness had been more of a puzzlement than a revelation.

  “Why are you here, Edward?” Will was very good at getting to the point. He was also one of the few people who’d dared to call our boss Edward right out of the gate and get away with it.

  “We have a problem.”

  “We meaning Jessie, me and you? Or we the Jager-Suchers?”

  “ We in the universal sense. Humankind may be in dire trouble.”

  “Isn’t it always?” I asked. “Thwart the werewolves, save the world. That should be our motto.”

  Except mottos aren’t too common in the secret agency biz.

  “I do not have time for your humor, Jessie.”

  I guess that meant I should lay off the sarcasm. But then what would I have to say?

  “I had a call from headquarters,” Mandenauer continued. “I need the two of you to pack your things.”

  “Clothes things, or guns and bullets things?” I asked.

  “Both. And he—“ Mandenauer waved his hand vaguely in Will’s direction. “Should bring his computer.”

  Chapter 2

  “He has a name,” I said.

  Though Will had no trouble calling Edward … Edward, the old man couldn’t seem to get his tight lips around the word “Will.” I wasn’t sure if that was because Mandenauer really didn’t like him, or because he didn’t know how to be anything other than cranky.

  I suspect having your world turned upside down when you were still a young man wasn’t easy. Devoting your life to killing the monsters Hitler had ordered his good pal Mengele to make meant Edward had been on the hunt for over sixty years. I don’t know if he’d ever been married; the idea of him dating was scary enough.

  Mandenauer grunted but didn’t bother to apologize, and Will didn’t seem to care. He was the least likely person to take offense I’d ever met, which I guess was a good thing considering how annoying I could be. There were also a lot of people in small towns all over the north who didn’t much care for Indians, and weren’t shy about saying so. It didn’t take fur, claws and teeth to make some people behave like monsters.

  Will went into the bedroom and returned with his laptop. Then he sat at the table, booted up the computer and started searching for his glasses.

  “Here,” I said, snatching them off the end table where he’d left them earlier.

  Will was forever misplacing them, sometimes right on top of his head. I don’t know why I found that absentminded professor stuff both sexy and endearing. The combination of that face, the body and his wire rimmed glasses … Let’s just say I had him wear those glasses a lot, and nothing else.

  “Where, when and what?” Will asked, his long clever fingers skating over the keyboard.

  “The village is called Riverview,” Edward continued. “For the past several months citizens have been going insane at an alarming rate.”

  “When you say insane … “ I let my voice trail off. In our world, insane covered a whole lot of a territory.

  There were people who believed they were werewolves and those who actually were. Both were nuts, but the later had enough supernatural power to cause major death and destruction, not to mention turn normal, everyday nice people into murdering evil things.

  And that was only the werewolves. According to Edward, there were a whole host of other things out there we didn’t even know about yet.

  “In this case,” Mandenauer answered, “I am talking about normal insanity.”

  “Isn’t that an oxymoron?” Will murmured, still staring at his computer.

  Edward ignored him. “The afflicted descend into gibbering idiots. Nothing medical science has tried will stop them.”

  Will glanced up from the screen. “Has medical science been able to determine what sent them over the edge?”

  Edward shook his head. “They have tested the air, the water, the soil, the very buildings they live in, the food they eat.”

  “Mmm.” Will went back to tapping on the keys.

  “I can understand why this is a concern,” I said, “but why is it our concern?”

  Mandenauer’s influence was far-flung and powerful. Having the U.S. government behind him, albeit secretly, meant he not only had a lot of resources but a lot of funding. His spidery webs reached all over the place. Every odd report was tagged and sent to Jager-Sucher headquarters in Montana, where Edward’s right hand woman, Elise, would detach agents to check out what was happening and, if necessary, eliminate it.

  Will glanced up. “I can’t find anything on the internet about it.”

  “Of course not.” Mandenauer sniffed. “Do you think I would let something like this become common knowledge?”

  Not only was Edward sent any odd report, but he had the resources to squash the information. All we needed was for a town to be taken over by werewolves and have the

  media show up. We’d not only have a panic but some very nasty news reporters. Come to think of it, maybe Edward had slipped up a time or two already. “What is it about Riverview that got the report sent to you?” I demanded. “Though the insane gibber madly,” Edward said, “there is one word that makes

  sense.” He glanced from Will. “Boxenwulf.” He said it with a German twist. I still knew what it meant.

  “Werewolf.” “Ja.” Considering that a great portion of the population
in Wisconsin was of German

  extraction, I didn’t find it surprising that the term boxenwulf might be bandied about. However …

  “No one’s gotten up and walked out of the morgue after a horrific and bloody death? Torn out a few throats, drank some blood, started baying at the full moon through their brand new snout?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You said this has been going on for several months.”

  Mandenauer dipped his chin. “Several full moons have come and gone, but none of

  the afflicted have become a demon werewolf.”

  Though a lot of werewolf lore was B.S., that stuff about shifting beneath the full moon was true.

  “Perhaps the gibbering people only saw a werewolf, they weren’t turned into one,” Will suggested.

  I’d seen plenty of werewolves; sure they were scary, especially when they gazed at you with the eyes of someone you knew, someone you loved. But just seeing them shouldn’t

  turn a normal human being into an insane inmate of a little white room.

  “The two of you must go to Riverview and discover what is happening,” Edward said.

  “And when we do?”

  His faded blue eyes met mine; not a spec of emotion shone through. “The usual.”

  The usual meant kill it. No matter what we had to do.

  Chapter 3

  Riverview was a three-hour drive northeast from Miniwa, which put us very close to Upper Michigan.

  What Edward had referred to as a village was as big as Miniwa, maybe a little bigger. It would have to be to sport a medical facility with a large enough psych ward for over half the residents.

  We’d been told to check in at the clinic, and it wasn’t hard to find. The place dominated the town.

  The clinic was called Riverview Psychiatric.

  “I guess we don’t have to worry about the suddenly crazy mixing with the maternity ward,” I said as we drove up.

  In truth, that was a load off my mind. I always hated it when the beasties were too close to the kiddies. Bad things happened.

  But I also found it very odd to have a psychiatric hospital way out here in the wilderness. Before the sudden outbreak of the crazies, who had filled up all the rooms?