by John Conroe
“Identical? Swedish?” Shorty asked, getting a nod from her on each question. “All bets are off. That’s a game changer.”
“What?” she asked.
“Universal male fantasy. Identical twins, at the same time,” Carl said. “Shorty’s saying it’s an unbelievable temptation.”
She pictured it—Erika and Britta, both scantily dressed, descending upon on frozen, trapped Declan. Her wolf did not like it. She did not like it. Then logic made an end run around the green-eyed monster that had formed in her gut.
“Britta has a boyfriend. They’re almost engaged. And Declan loathes Erika,” she said, reassuring herself.
“But what if they were all drinking together?” Shorty asked. Hutch, who had a slightly alarmed look on his face, maybe because of her reaction, turned quickly to the little guide and shook his head in warning.
“What?” Shorty rasped in his gravely voice. “Happens all the time on these campuses. Drinking games in a group turns into bedroom games.”
Instead of making her more upset, his words oddly calmed her down. “You’re right. That would be about the only way it could happen. But most witches don’t drink, and Declan never does,” she said.
“Why?” Hutch asked, like he wanted to explore any idea that made her calm.
“They can’t afford to lose control. First, witches don’t always get along among themselves. Placing yourself in a vulnerable condition where your enemies can assault you is Darwinistic. Second, a drunken witch wouldn’t stay under the radar for long, plus Declan tells me if you lose control of your magic or power or what have you, it can bounce back at you. So most avoid drugs. Certainly, the most powerful do,” she said.
“Makes sense,” Hutch agreed quickly. Shorty looked uncertain.
“But they’re beautiful, identical twins!” he protested.
“At least one of them is a nasty, vicious slut who uses people for her own advancement. If you knew my Declan, you would understand that’s the worst kind of person for him, no matter their looks,” she said.
Hutch and Carl exchanged a smile.
“What?” she asked.
“You called him my Declan,” Hutch said.
“Oh,” she said, thinking back on her words. “I guess I did.”
The lights went out, the room suddenly pitch black except for the glow of the fireplace.
Chapter 17
“What the hell, Short? Didn’t pay your bill?” Carl asked in the sudden dark silence. The reddish firelight was just enough to make out details of the room.
“Generator should have kicked on?” Shorty mused, looking in the direction of the Quonset hut garage. He started to get up, maybe to go see.
Stacia growled. A full-fledged wolfish growl. Too deep in tone to have come from such a slim girl. Shorty froze, looking her way, but she was listening, head tilted.
“Don’t go anywhere,” she said, voice deeper than normal, as she moved quickly but quietly to the closest window. She had just stopped by the window when she spun her whole body around to look at the hall off the main door.
All three men followed her look at the hallway then, almost as one, stood up.
A shape formed in the blackness of the doorframe, resolving into a giant wolf, four feet at the shoulder, fur a mix of grey and brown, lit with the reddish glow of the fire. It oozed out of the doorway, stalking on silent feet the size of salad plates, eyes fixed on the men in front of it.
Mistake one. A white blur closed on it from the side wall closest to the kitchen, moving so fast that Shorty could barely see that it rushed on four legs before leaping off two and wrapping itself around the larger beast.
Taken by surprise, the wolf pushed back into the hall, taking Stacia in her beast form with it. It roared but cut off with a sharp squeal, changing to a frantic half-snarl, half-whine. The building shook with the fury of the battle, and the three men could feel as much as hear the sheet rock and studs of the hallway walls snapping and tearing.
Claws scrabbled and ripped at the wooden flooring, splintering sounds overlaying the hair-raising roars. Then it went silent except for a low, steady growl, followed by a wet, ripping sound. A dark-furred head sailed through the door, landing with a thump on the table in front of them, blood spattering the remains of dinner. A giant, pale two-legged form, streaked with dark wetness, stalked out of the hallway, huge clawed hands gory to the elbow. Her eyes were yellow and angry and focused on them. For a long second, each of them thought they were next. Then she blinked. The yellow lost some of its glow and the massive form straightened up as she fully emerged from the shorter hallway. At least seven feet of lean, corded muscle and claw stood breathing heavily before tilting her head and sniffing. The muzzle visibly shortened and changed, enough that when she opened her mouth, actual words came out.
“Sshotguns. Ssilver,” she growled. The men were frozen for a second, then Shorty moved hastily across the room to a bulky wooden shelf that held a bear skull and a stuffed fisher. He looked nervously at Stacia as he went by her, but her attention was focused on the walls of the lodge, and she moved her head as if tracking something.
Shorty grabbed an odd, t-shaped plastic object hanging from a string on one of the shelf’s support braces and placed it in the middle of the front of the shelf. Something clicked and the whole bottom of the shelf rotated down forty degrees to reveal a short pump shotgun tucked into a foam cutout. He grabbed the gun, pumped the action. Another click and the light attached to the barrel lit up the room.
Turning to the werewolf, he kept the barrel pointed down, a puddle of light splashing on the wooden floor. He looked slightly more confident with the gun in his hands.
“My rrroom. Casse,” she said, words deep and growly but understandable.
Shorty nodded, understanding what the others didn’t. “Come on you two, unless you want to stay here,” he said, heading for the stairs.
“What about Mrs. Dox?” Carl asked. They all froze.
“I gettt,” Stacia growled, turning toward the kitchen.
“Ah, let me go first. She’s not going to respond well to you,” Hutch said, moving quickly to catch up to her. She paused to let him go by, which he did smoothly, although his head and shoulders were tight with tension.
They found her in the kitchen pantry, pressed deep into the cans of tomatoes and giant jars of pickles. Hutch waved Stacia back, then went in to extract the terrified woman. She resisted, but he was stronger and in the end, he simply pulled her from the pantry, moving her toward the main room. She took one look at Stacia, screamed, and ran out, almost knocking over Carl, who stood guard near the bottom of the stairs with Shorty’s shotgun in his hands. Shorty came rushing out of Stacia’s room, trying to unzip the black case in his hands. He slowed down when he saw what was happening, then held up the case in frustration. “It’s locked.”
Stacia lifted one pawed and clawed hand and flashed two long, clawed fingers, two fingers again and then three, talons flashing. Understanding crossed the guide’s face as he twisted the luggage lock combination until the lock popped open and he unzipped the case. Hutch hurried over to join Carl on the stairs.
“What the hell is that? Space gun?” Carl asked, glancing at the stubby plastic gun that emerged from the ballistic nylon carrier.
“I think it’s a Standard Manufacturing DP-12, right?” Shorty asked Stacia. She nodded her massive furred head. “I read about it online.”
“Sssilver buck and sslugs,” she uttered.
“Bullpup design of a basic pump shotgun, times two. Basically a double-barreled shotgun married to a pump. It has two barrels, two actions, and two magazine tubes of ammo instead of one, so it carries like sixteen rounds or something. Short and handy,” the guide said, admiring it and pumping the action. “And fully loaded… and heavy.”
Glass shattered somewhere on the second floor and Shorty immediately turned to face the far end of the balcony, walking backward toward the top of the stairs.
The door to one of the r
ooms exploded in a cloud of splintering wood, a huge furred shape slamming through and stopping instantly before it could follow the door’s remains over the balcony.
Shorty fired instantly, then immediately fired again before racking the action automatically and firing again, the four shots sounding in one long string. The wolf started moving almost as soon as it emerged, turning toward the three on the stairs, but the guide’s shots were from less than twenty-five feet away. Sprays of blood spattered the wall behind it as the first wave of silver buckshot tore through it. Stacia had alternated buckshot with slugs, so the instantaneous second round blew a massive gout of gore from its midsection and the last round of buck punched into its neck and skull while the final slug crushed its left shoulder. Its front legs crumpled, the shot-blasted snout nose-diving into the western style balcony rug, body skidding to a halt five feet from Shorty.
Two of the big windows on the floor-level end wall imploded, glass crashing to the floor and dining tables, two more giant canine forms smashing through. The left-hand wolf landed on a table, which instantly folded under the massive impact. Carl’s gun boomed and the wolf, which was still adjusting its balance, took the shot on its ribs and flank. It spun, jaws biting at the wounds and thus took the second shot on its neck.
The other wolf, yellow furred, landed on the wood floor, dug its claws deep, and leapt for the balcony stairs. Shorty’s barrels were still pointed at the dead werewolf on the balcony, Carl was focused on the writhing wolf on the flattened table, and the tawny yellow wolf was going to land right between them, just about on top of the screaming Mrs. Dox and Hutch.
A muscular white missile caught it in mid-air, long arms wrapping its torso, heavy body taking it sideways across the room and into the wooden bar. The heavy log that framed the front of the bar top fractured but held under the combined mass of the two twisting, snarling forms. The yellow wolf fought from instinct, the white bipedal wolf from training and experience. The massive white and tan furball spun and writhed on the floor against the planks of the bar front before suddenly resolving into a giant canine held in a headlock by a giant monster. White-furred legs wrapped around yellow-furred body, and the massive arms tightened into a chokehold. It took a full twenty-five seconds for the yellow wolf to stop fighting and even then, the arms did not loosen for five seconds more.
The yellow form suddenly shrank in on itself, the fur disappearing and pale skin showing through. Stacia stood up and listened, ignoring the form by her feet that was popping and twisting slowly into a small, naked female form. Her senses focused on the world outside the lodge, she even ignored the silver-shot wolf on the table as it kicked out its final moments of supernatural life.
Head tilted, she stayed listening for ten whole seconds, sniffing the air. Satisfied, she turned to the four on the stairs who were watching her with shock, curiosity, horror, and grim focus, respectively. Then she too began to shrink, shifting smaller as she stalked to the pile of material that was her clothes. The light from Carl’s shotgun outlined her lithe, blood-streaked naked female form as she pulled on leggings and shirt. “You mind?” she asked.
Suddenly aware that he’d been spotlighting her like a burlesque dancer, Carl jerked the light away.
“They gone? Or all dead?” Shorty asked.
“Gone. That one is still alive,” she said pointing to the woman on the floor. “Or at least she will be in a few minutes.”
“Is that why she turned back human while these others didn’t?” Shorty asked.
“Yup. A dead were, truly dead, stays in whatever form they died in. One that can regenerate will shift back to human to conserve energy and reduce the mass that needs to be rebuilt. We’ll need to bind her,” Stacia said.
“No, we need to check on Olsen first. He lives in one of the cabins,” Shorty said.
“I don’t hear a living thing out there, Short. If he’s alive, he’s hidden deep. If not, well then, it won’t matter if we take a few moments to assure that this one doesn’t come back to bite anyone in half,” she said as she pulled on the moccasins she’d been wearing before the fight.
“There were more?” Carl asked.
“At least two, maybe three,” she said, moving past the four still on the stairs, Mrs. Dox jerking back hard when Stacia slid by. Hutch grabbed the woman’s arm and kept her from falling backward over the railing. Stacia lithely hopped over the dead werewolf on the balcony before disappearing into her room and, a moment later, reappearing with a bundle of cable tie restraints, law enforcement style.
“These have a silver wire braided into the stainless steel core,” she said, heading down the stairs and then binding up the naked woman’s ankles and arms. When she was done, she zipped another one to the loop on the werewoman’s wrists and then down to the loop on her ankles.
“Shouldn’t we put clothes on her or something?” Carl wondered.
“Be my guest,” Stacia said, standing up and dusting off her hands. Her face was spotted with blood and her hands stained red, her shirt and tights torn in ways that would have intrigued the men ten minutes ago, before they saw what she turned into.
“Let’s go check your guy,” she said to Shorty before turning to the others. “We need to block those broken windows. Just a thought, but that smashed table might work for one.”
“This other folding table will work for the other,” Hutch said, moving over to pick up the table he was eyeing.
“Mrs. Dox, please get the tool box for them. Mrs. Dox?” Shorty said, snapping the woman out of her horrified stare at the bloody beast at the top of the stairs. She nodded and headed down, only to stop and gaze into the darkness of the kitchen in fear.
“Come on. I’ll light the way,” Carl said, still holding the shotgun and combat light combination.
“We’ll see about power too,” Shorty said, following Stacia as she walked to the doorway.
“Good luck,” Hutch said, working to get his table’s legs folded.
“Yeah, that would be good,” Shorty said, grimacing as the attached light on Stacia’s DP-12 shotgun lit up the carcass in the hall.
Chapter 18
Olson was dead, his cabin door caved in and his body strewn liberally around the interior. Shorty spewed out his dinner off the end of the porch before shaking himself and standing guard, his back to the cabin.
“He died fast,” Stacia said quietly as she came out of the little structure. “Besides the four in the lodge, there were three others. One stayed in human form. I’ve smelled him before… that Tacchino guy. All three took off to the northwest. We should see about the generator.”
He nodded, wiping his mouth and keeping his back to her as he moved toward the Quonset hut garage. Pausing, he handed her his cell phone. “Call Buck while I see what I can do with this.”
She did, filling the deputy in on the last few minutes. Buck interrupted her once to take another call, this one from the sheriff. When he came back on, his voice was grimmer, if that was possible. “Someone freed Spitzer from the cell. Killed the fed that was on security detail. I’m headed your way, but Sheriff Grable thinks the feds will be up too.”
She thanked him and hung up, filling Shorty in on the conversation. The little guide just grunted, then handed her the flashlight to hold while he rewired the transfer box that someone had pulled all the power cords out of. Five minutes and several choice curses later, he hit the start on the standby generator. It turned over immediately. Several lights, including a sodium yard light, came on.
Back inside the lodge, about a third of the lights were burning and Stacia could smell coffee brewing in the kitchen. Hutch and Carl had screwed the tables to the window frames, which blocked much of the cold October air. The dead werewolf on the balcony had been shoved over the edge through a broken gap in the railing spindles. The other weres lay where they had fallen. Stacia went into the broken hallway and dragged the headless were into the main room with inhuman strength that didn’t go unnoticed. Hutch and Carl exchanged a glance before com
bining forces to drag the one Carl had shot onto the growing pile. The naked woman was awake and staring at them with narrowed eyes.
Stacia noticed the flannel shirt she had hung on the back of her chair at dinner and put it on, more to cover her torn tee than from any sensitivity to the fall chill. Still spattered with blood, she headed into the kitchen, which promptly resulted in Mrs. Dox almost racing out of it with a full pot of coffee and five mugs.
Hutch poked his head into the kitchen to find the blonde beauty hunched over a cold tray of ziti, spooning it into her mouth as fast as she could swallow.
“Not much of an appetite myself,” he said.
Swallowing a lump of cold pasta, she shook her head. “Changing raises our metabolisms almost exponentially. I burn thousands of calories an hour in my combat form,” she said, taking another spoonful.
