Blue Howl (Blue Wolf Book 3)

by Brad Magnarella

  “She’s away,” he called.

  The missile’s impact rumbled through the ground.

  “Damn,” Rusty said, “he took the brunt of that, but he’s still going full tilt boogie. Do you want me to hit him again?”

  “I’m almost there,” I said, smelling wood smoke and the first traces of the person inside the cabin—the creature’s target.

  I lowered my head and charged on until I was breaking onto a road covered in a half foot of snow. Powder flew as I veered toward a pair of windows glowing warmly through the snowfall and trees. I could feel the creature I was on a collision course with—its strength, its size, its insatiable hunger. It seemed to resonate with a part of my own makeup, but in a much darker way.

  Still, I wasn’t ready for what I saw.

  With the cabin fast approaching, the Prod burst from the trees. It was as tall as the meat cache that stood over our lodge, putting it at almost twenty feet. Its body was pitch black, its arms and legs lean bundles of tendon that met at an emaciated torso—stomach sunken, chest muscles drawn drum-tight above twin racks of flaring ribs. When it stopped and swung toward me, I found myself staring at a gaping mouth of razor-sharp teeth. Its head was a massive bull-like skull with segmented horns and skin stretched into every pit and hollow.

  Thing’s a demon, I thought. Has to be.

  It regarded me from two swirling pits for eyes—starving, soulless eyes—while the surrounding air shimmered like heat from a blacktop in mid July. Only instead of radiating from the creature, the distorted air seemed to draw toward it. The demon reared back its head and released a piercing roar that felt like every nerve ending in my body being sand-papered at the same time.

  I responded with a burst of automatic fire. The demon staggered back as silver-laced incendiary rounds detonated against its torso. But the holes being blown into its taut skin sealed instantly, as if by magic.

  It roared again.

  Demon or not, the being was made to consume—fangs for rending flesh, brick–sized molars for crushing bone. I had no doubt it was our Prod 1. Switching triggers, I sent a volley of grenade rounds at its mouth. The demonic thing flailed as the rounds exploded. Fragments of flesh and bone flew from its head before twisting into wisps of black smoke and dissipating. When the creature straightened after the final flash and thud, its head was fully intact.

  Let’s see how you like salt, I thought, switching mags on the rifle.

  But the salt rounds that blasted into the demon’s starved body seemed to do even less damage than the silver. With another roar, the creature lowered its head and charged toward me.

  The door to the cabin opened. “The hell is going on out here?” a man shouted.

  He couldn’t have seen deep into the driving snow, but there was no way he could miss a twenty-foot-tall monstrosity bearing down on an armed figure with a wolf’s head. I didn’t need to tell him to go back inside. He did that on his own, uttering a string of profanities before slamming and bolting the door.

  The motion, and probably the fresh scent of human flesh, caught the demon’s attention. It veered from me and arrived at the cabin steps in two bounds. It shot an arm forward and, with jagged talons, clawed around the door frame. There was an imprecision to it that told me the creature relied more on smell, or some other sense, than its sight.

  Unwilling to risk a shot from where I was standing, I switched to the flamethrower and unleashed a whooshing jet of napalm. The demon’s prior roars had sounded like anger or frustration. This one was pain. The sound drove into my ears like steel picks, my eyes watering from the intensity. I clenched my jaw and sustained the assault, advancing toward the cabin.

  So you can be hurt, you son of a bitch.

  The demon retreated from the door, its body a suit of fire. It rounded toward me, flames crackling in the pits of its eyes and mouth. Raising an arm to shield itself from the blazing stream, it staggered toward the driveway, where a Land Rover was parked.

  It can’t sense me inside the flames, I realized. Can’t sense anything.

  The Land Rover rocked sideways as the creature’s knee slammed into its side. Stooping over, the demon felt over the vehicle and then lifted it as if it were a battery-operated model for a kid. I swept the bottom of the Land Rover, hoping to catch the fuel line. Fire broke across the undercarriage. With another roar, the creature heaved it toward me. I leapt to one side. The vehicle crashed off to my right, and that’s when the fuel line caught.

  I spun from the explosion and landed hard, ears ringing. My right side was smoking and singed. When I tried to orient myself, everything wavered. The Land Rover was upended and spewing flames. Fire wrapped the front porch from my earlier assault, its tendrils starting to climb the walls.

  Off to my left, I caught another flash of flames—the demon fleeing back into the forest.

  I pushed myself to my feet. My MP88 was still slung around my body, but the duffel bag had come off in a trail of spilled mags. I grabbed the bag. Though I’d lost a lot of the ammo, there was no time to backtrack and scoop it up.

  With my wounds healing in a prickling wave, I took off after the creature. Each stride felt surer, and by the time I hit the trees, I was nearing full strength again. The demon had a good lead. I could just see it through the trees, the flames over its body guttering out as if suffocated by the ravenous energy that surrounded it. And it was pulling away. By the time the flames extinguished entirely, I couldn’t see the demon at all.

  “Do you have eyes on the Prod?” I asked Rusty, before realizing I’d lost my headset in the explosion.

  My nostrils flared. For the last half mile, I’d been trailing the harsh scent of burning napalm—and something else. Less a smell than a primal feeling. The hunger Yoofi had described. But with the fire out, I wasn’t picking up anything.

  I looked at the snow-covered ground. Where there should have been prints was pristine snow. Only by peering into the distant gloom could I see a line of tracks, but they were closing in on themselves, like the wounds over the demon’s body. They were also pulling away.

  I’d never, in all of our training, heard of anything doing that.

  I peered around. My pursuit of the demon was taking me in the direction I’d come from—toward the van, where I had left Sarah, Yoofi, and Nadie. A charge of adrenaline went off in my chest. I had denied the creature one victim, and now it was after another. And I had no way to warn them.

  I picked up the sound of the drone high overhead. Unless Rusty was playing online poker, he would see where the creature was going. He would alert the others that it was bearing down on them. Just had to hope Sarah could get the van up to speed in time to outmaneuver it.

  But in the next moment, the drone’s engine rose in pitch. It zipped back and forth in an erratic pattern and plummeted. Within moments it was whacking through branches off to my left. It landed hard enough to detonate its remaining payload, which flashed through the trees.

  The hell’s going on?

  Ears flattened, eyes squinted to the inrushing snow, I pounded on. If I couldn’t close the distance, I needed to keep the demon from pulling too far ahead. Though I hadn’t checked, I could smell the spare canister of fuel for the flamethrower in the duffel bag. The creature was heavy duty, but I had discovered a weakness: distaste for fire.

  I was just hitting the road we’d arrived by earlier that evening when I heard automatic gunfire and the distinct sound of a bolt shooting from Yoofi’s staff. The demon had gotten too far ahead of me, dammit.

  “Fire!” I roared. “Use fire!”

  But my call was buried beneath more gunfire and then the jagged peeling of metal. Another blast from Yoofi’s staff sounded, followed by Sarah’s shout.

  By the time the van came into view, there was only one figure. It belonged to Yoofi, and he was pushing himself up from the ground. He didn’t hear me coming. Instead, he stared into the whiteout ahead of the van.

  “Where are they?” I asked.

  I could see th
e chaos of tracks in the snow where Yoofi and Sarah had engaged the demon. The demon’s own footsteps were already gone, but what remained of the van testified to the thing’s violent presence. Amid a fury of gashes, the entire passenger door had been torn back so that it stood at a ninety-degree angle to the body.

  I thrust my head inside. Where Sarah and Nadie had been was empty space. Medical bandages and bottles littered the floor.

  I turned back to Yoofi. His helmet had come off, and he was bleeding between two lines of cornrows. He looked at me with dazed eyes.

  “Did it take them?” I demanded.

  Yoofi nodded.

  I clenched my jaw. “Which way?”

  He pointed in the direction he’d been staring when I arrived. “I’m sorry, Mr. Wolfe. I tried to stop it.”

  “Is Rusty on your feed?”

  “We lost the feed a few minutes ago. Static and then nothing.”

  About the time the drone crashed, I thought. “Stay here,” I ordered. “Keep trying Rusty. If you get him, send him my way.” I set off in the direction the demon had taken Sarah and Nadie. I could have used backup, but Yoofi wouldn’t have had a chance in hell of keeping up with me. And I was having a hard enough time keeping up with the creature solo.

  Maybe the extra weight will slow it down.

  I hadn’t gone far when I noticed a fog gusting in on my right. A muscular appendage wrapped my waist and slammed me high against a tree. I tumbled to the ground. An elephant reared above me, front legs pedaling air. It trumpeted as its massive feet fell toward my head.

  Not these fuckers again.

  Fortunately, my rifle was still loaded with a salt mag. I kicked backwards and unleashed a burst of automatic fire into its belly. As the elephant’s legs crashed down in front of me, the entire animal burst apart in smoke. But like last time, more animals were arriving. And I could hear that damned drum.

  The god, Muluku, was making another go for Yoofi’s staff—and at the worst possible moment.

  As I gained my feet, two large crocodiles appeared. I blasted one into smoke and jumped as the other one lunged. I landed with a foot on its neck, pressed the barrel to its craggy head, and fired twice more. I didn’t have enough salt rounds to keep this up, but the god was in my way now.

  I plunged into the fog, toward the drumbeats. Whiteness and a sensation of displacement closed around me. I was between worlds, but I could give two craps. My only thought was recovering Sarah and Nadie and blowing apart anything that came between us.

  Animals raced past me going the other direction, presumably for Yoofi’s staff. Gorillas, lions, elephants, crocs. Those that so much as looked at me got a salt round to the face. They were Forms, as I understood them. Ideas. They could be dispersed but not destroyed, so I felt no guilt about blowing them apart.

  Slowly, the god Muluku took shape through the mist.

  I aimed at his drum. A giant gorilla landed in front of me, forcing me to use up scarce rounds to blow it out of my way. When a second gorilla appeared, I dropped it with my final two rounds.

  Dammit.

  I dug a hand into my duffel bag, but I was out of salt mags. I slotted home a mag of conventional ammo and took aim at the god again. But when I squeezed off a burst, the rounds passed through him and his drum.

  Grunting in frustration, I dropped the MP88 onto its sling and charged Muluku.

  The god was bigger than he’d appeared from a distance, and the drum Takara had shot to shreds earlier was back underneath his arm. He raised his club and brought it down in a methodical beat. I needed to take care of it, somehow. Without the incessant sound, the animals would return to their realm. Then it would be Yoofi’s job to make sure they stayed there.

  When I was within range, I leapt for the drum, talons slashing toward its taut skin. I met empty air, god and drum no longer there. I turned to where the drum continued to sound its ominous beat. Muluku had reappeared a short distance away. Judging by his hooded eyelids, he didn’t appear concerned by my presence. He stared past me, as if seeing something distant.

  The corners of his lips turned up. He brought the club down in a faster beat, eyes sparkling until they looked almost maniacal. The animals that had been emerging started to return, disappearing into the mist at his back.

  I crouched, ready for a fight, but the animals never gave me a second glance. I didn’t like what that suggested. Amid a riot of hooting, a gang of bloated chimpanzees jumped into view. The lead one pumped Yoofi’s staff overhead like a prize, while the others hopped around, clamoring to hold it. I was prepared to let them keep it—maybe that would put an end to these damned gods interfering—until I picked up Yoofi’s voice.

  “Mr. Wolfe!” he cried. “Mr. Wolfe, the staff! We will need it against what we’re facing!”

  How would he know that?

  “Mr. Wolfe!” Yoofi cried again.

  For the love of God. “On it!” I roared back.

  I sprang toward the chimpanzee pack, my talons slashing. “Sorry to break up your party, guys,” I said as I caught the chimp hoisting the prize. He screamed as smoke gusted from the wound across his chest. I grabbed for the staff, but he had already tossed it to another chimp. That chimp backed away and jutted his bristly lips at me.

  I snarled and leapt toward him, but he tossed the staff to a third chimp. They were surrounding me now, hooting and jumping up and down. I faked toward the chimp with the staff and then lunged in the direction I’d thought he was going to throw it. But he anticipated the move and held on. As I stumbled off balance, the other chimps screamed with laughter.

  A hard double drumbeat sounded, and the chimps turned toward Muluku. He was telling them to stop screwing around and bring him the staff.

  I was preparing to head them off when something crushed my ankle and twisted me to the ground. Pain speared through my leg. My foot was clamped in the mouth of one of the crocs. I kicked its rock-hard head with my other leg as the chimps scampered off. When the croc didn’t relent, I took its snout and chin in my hands and, snarling, pried its jaws open. I withdrew my mangled ankle and swung the flailing croc off into the mist.

  I pulled my weapon back around, swapped mags, and sighted on the lead chimp. I dropped him with a burst of conventional rounds, but another one grabbed the staff. I took aim, but now I was being butted and pummeled as other large animals came between me and my target. I hopped to one side and the other on my healing ankle, looking for a clear shot.

  Too much interference.

  I dropped my weapon back on its sling and made a dash for the chimps. I slipped between two gorillas and leapt over a lion that managed to rake its claws down my side. Even with the suit’s protection, I staggered. That gave a group of elephants time to lumber between me and the chimps. When I tried to skid underneath one, the elephant pinned me with a foot.

  My ribs crackled as its weight bore down on my chest. I grunted, struggling to twist its leg off me. A distant jack-hammering sounded. The elephant staggered and came apart in an explosion of smoke. I drew a painful breath. The other elephants rounded toward the sound before being chopped into oblivion.

  Salt ammo, I thought.

  The chimps paused to look back. Amid the sound of automatic fire came the revving of an engine. And now I could make out our cargo van, headlights cutting through the mist. Takara was driving. Gunfire burst from the roof-mounted machine gun. Through the window, I recognized the thick figure manning the weapon.

  “Olaf!” I shouted. “The chimps!”

  He redirected his fire. One by one the screaming chimps went up in bursts of smoke. Finally, the salt rounds lit into the chimp holding Yoofi’s staff. He grasped for it even as his hands were coming apart.

  I was already in motion, ears pinned back, determined to catch the staff before it hit the ground. Olaf continued to fire, now aiming at the god who had been striding forward to meet the returning chimps. Rounds flashed off the rim of his drum before punching through the stretched leather. Absent the beat, our space
underwent a sudden change in pressure.

  I caught the end of the staff at the same time Muluku grabbed the hilt beneath the blade. Snarling, I glared into his hooded eyes as we struggled for control. I brought my other hand beside my first and he did the same. We were at a stalemate, but it didn’t last. As the mist world collapsed around us, it felt as if Muluku had an anchor in our tug-of-war for the staff.

  I roared as the staff began to slip from my grip.

  With a final wrench, Muluku disappeared into the swirling fog, and I found myself prone in the snow, hands empty. Headlights grew over me as the van roared up and came to a stop. I got to my feet at the same time Yoofi ran up in his heavy, clinking coat. He peered all around, eyes large and desperate.

  “My staff, Mr. Wolfe?”

  I shook my head. “Muluku got it.”

  Yoofi searched the ground as if he might spot it sticking out of the snow. A part of me wanted to grab him by the coat and give him a hard shake. Twice on this mission he’d sworn Dabu wouldn’t be a problem, and twice now we’d had to deal with his shit show. But Yoofi already looked devastated enough.

  While Olaf kept his position at the gun’s controls, Takara stepped out of the van. “Where’s Sarah?” she asked.

  “The Prod took her and one of the wolf shifters that way.”

  “How long ago?”

  “A few minutes.” I burned to take off after them, but the creature had too far a head start, and I’d just be chasing blindly. I needed eyes in the sky. “Yoofi, were you able to bring Rusty up?”

  “No, Mr. Wolfe.”

  “The whole commo system went down on my way here,” Takara said.

  “The whole system?” I asked.

  When Takara nodded, I swore. Had Berglund gotten out of his confinement somehow and called Beam to cancel the contract? There was no way. Not in that amount of time. Whatever the issue, I’d no doubt Rusty was already working on a solution to get everything back up.

  I turned to Yoofi. “You said we’d need the staff against this thing. What did you mean?”