She put on the water in an old-fashioned tea pot.
When it started whistling she went to fetch her favorite mug, a large black Yes mug Nick had given her. One of his bands, a great classic Roger Dean design. She just liked it.
While the tea steeped, she puttered in her kitchen.
She barely had time for one short, hot sip of tea. The sound, when she heard it, came from out back.
Gravel shifting under a light foot.
She had good ears. That was somebody sneaking around out there.
Nick had rubbed off on her. Under the large, rustic table she had clipped a Remington 870 tactical shotgun with a pistol grip and short barrel. It was a devastating weapon in close quarters, Nick had explained, and it would be the best and most effective self-defense weapon she could brandish—plus it would frighten most in-the-know attackers.
Now with barely a thought she plucked the loaded Remington off its clip and gently opened the front door, which faced the water’s edge at the bottom of a slight slope. She snuck out into the darkness and closed the door gingerly behind her.
There it was again, gravel disturbed behind the house. She made her way up the slope along the dark side of the cottage, shotgun held at the ready. There was a shell in the chamber—whenever Nick wasn’t around she kept it that way. He’d told her there was no reason to have the gun if she couldn’t use it at a moment’s notice. She rounded the corner with caution, careful to avoid making the same mistake as her intruder, but she knew every dip in the terrain, every loose stone, every stray tree root, and her feet didn’t betray her.
There he was, a light-colored blob against the darkness. The intruder was skulking around the back door now, looking as if he might be trying to break in.
But that wasn’t the worst part. Her heart skipped and the breath caught in her throat.
He was naked.
That was why he seemed so light-colored.
Naked. That meant only one thing to her.
Werewolf.
She steeled herself for confrontation. If the guy was ready to shape-change right at her door, whoever he was he wasn’t here to just have a spot of tea and conversation. No crumpets, no scones. He was here to kill.
She felt the beginnings of an unfamiliar rage building way down in her soul, or whatever organ passed for a soul. It was almost a blind rage, an uncontrollable urge to do the opposite of what she had done all her life. She felt no connection to any physician’s oath right then. She felt no compassion, no mercy, no sense of ethical fair play. As it was, she still gave him a chance.
“Stop right there!” she said, raising her voice enough to startle him into complying.
Instead, he turned toward her with a deep growl in his throat.
She couldn’t make out his features, but the sound of the growling frightened her deep down in the pit of her stomach.
“I mean it,” she said, much more quietly. She hoped it was more menacing.
He wasn’t buying it.
He must have thought he still had the element of surprise on his side. Maybe he hadn’t been well-briefed. He advanced, a half-chuckle, half-growl emerging from deep in his throat. She could just make out his enormous erection, aimed at her like a weapon. He was turning toward her, and when he did his thing, she was ready.
At exactly the moment he blurred and turned into a muscular wolf, planting his rear paws to leap, she stepped back and let him have a full blast from the shotgun. No regrets.
She knew her way around guns and didn’t miss.
He let out a half-scream, half-screech that she knew would haunt her nightmares.
Silver shot pellets.
The impact tossed him violently backward, bleeding from a dozen wounds throughout his torso. He flickered from wolf to human and back with incredible speed, screaming and trying to put himself out where the silver pellets caused fires to spring up. With human hands he beat at himself, temporarily causing the flames to do their work inside his body. His penis was flaccid now, no longer menacing.
Rolling around as if he could stop the burning silver that coursed through his system, he shrieked loud enough to obscure her voice as she asked him repeatedly, “Who do you work for?”
His growls were menacing, but his silver-poisoned body was no longer.
Or so she thought.
He was getting up. Painfully, but still he was working through the pain of the silver poison in his system to get himself back in position to attack his tormentor.
Jessie Hawkins had had it. She was no longer the country doctor with a Hallmark Channel heart of gold. She’d been battle-hardened more often than she could count. She felt almost as if she herself had transformed into some other kind of creature.
“Last chance!” she screamed, approaching him. “Tell me who you work for and what you want!”
She thought she heard him say it between the shrieking. “Fuck you, bitch!”
The rage born of so much stress rose up in her, overwhelmingly frightening, further blinding her.
She shot him again at point-blank range, and she could see bloody chunks of his flesh blown off by the silver shot, turning part of him into hamburger.
He was still rolling like a man on fire when she set the shotgun aside, drew the Vatican dagger, leaned in as if possessed by some kind of monster in her soul, and slit his throat as if she’d done it all her life.
Barely avoiding the great fountain of dark red—almost black—blood that reached out to her, she closed in again and, having lost all semblance of control, drove the dagger into her attacker’s heart.
She felt him seize up as the silver blade further scorched his insides, and she knew he was gone when he went limp, even though she could see him fluttering between his two faces, monster and man.
Shaken, suddenly aware of what she had done, she stepped back and vomited up her crappy dinner.
After she was empty of everything except thin, reeking bile, she straightened and stumbled back to look at her would-be killer’s remains.
She found his clothes hidden nearby. The SUV, his black Expedition, she found stashed down the road. He had a phone, with calls made to an out of state number with some kind of code name, calls made just today.
She collected evidence in her mind, but she was already certain she had assessed the situation correctly. Now she stared at his remains. Slowly the pragmatic took over from the emotional. What to do?
She dug her own phone from a pocket, swiped it on, and dialed from her Favorites.
“Please pick up, Nick,” she said, through tears that were just beginning. “Please.”
But there was only the curt voicemail prompt.
Chapter Nine
Franco Lupo
On the Freighter Zeniča, crossing the Atlantic Ocean
December 1945
The painted metal corridors were empty of late-night traffic. Most of the crew would be asleep in their quarters one or two levels below this one, from what Franco gathered having asked a few of the roughnecks about their jobs. There would be a shift officer on the bridge, probably peering into the radar screen or steering using the ship’s wheel.
Franco stared at the door across from his, wondering what the woman was doing behind it, picturing…things. He let the hazy pictures play through his mind a few moments, then he moved away. He walked softly on bare feet, the cold floor beneath them made of painted metal, his hand on the railing mounted on one side of the corridor. The cabin doors made of polished double-layered utilitarian wood with brass fittings, but were almost an afterthought since every ten meters there was an open hatch that could be bolted closed to seal off a section of the corridor.
In case we’re sinking. He pictured them trying to hold off rising ocean waters by sealing the hatches—but then he realized it could work the other way, that someone could seal them into the flooding section and they would drown as the ship tilted and finally slipped beneath the waves to die on the ocean floor.
He shook his head, dismissing the i
mage.
The corridor hatch doors themselves were made of thick layers of metal plates with a cloudy porthole set into the upper third, their complex tumblers exposed. Turning a wheel would set all the tumblers simultaneously in their cylinders. Franco examined the first one closely.
Closing one of these might also be the difference between living and being slaughtered by some cursed man-wolf.
The monsters might be everywhere on the ship.
Should he head upward toward the bridge, or down below to where the crew’s quarters were located?
Franco had no real idea what he was trying to do. He assumed he would learn something by exploring, whereas if he simply slept he would learn nothing.
Down then. The crew’s quarters and their mess hall should be easy to find. In fact, the mess hall door was propped open and he heard the sounds of laughter and glasses clinking. The off-duty crewmen who sat at one of two long tables were engaged in a couple card games, bottles and glasses lined up next to them.
“Look,” one of the crew said when he spotted Franco at the door. “It’s the Italian boy. Come in, boy, play with us!” He smiled a gap-toothed smile and made a come-in gesture.
“What’s wrong, couldn’t sleep? Seasick?” One of the other card players asked. “Never been to sea, eh boy? Never seen land fall away? Feel the depth of the ocean under you?”
Several of the men chuckled.
“My grandfather was in the navy last war. I have been on ships and boats,” he lied. “I can handle it. I am looking for some fun.”
A glass appeared in front of him and someone poured clear liquid. “We know how to have fun. Do you have money?”
Chapter Ten
Shooter
He shivered in the stiff bedclothes, unable to warm up, waiting for the meds to start working. His mouth was desert dry and even the plastic cup of water from the bathroom tap hadn’t quenched his thirst. He tried to tuck himself into the stained sheets and the two blankets, but the cold still cut through him. His shivering exhausted him and he knew he could barely get himself off the bed to use the toilet, if he had to. Maybe he’d just piss himself, he thought.
The meds, a clozapine and ziprasidone cocktail with a risperidone chaser, were shooting through his system, setting off explosions of white light behind his eyelids.
Jesus, I’m so cold. Jesus, I’m so cold. Jesus…
The visions had stopped now, due to the light bursts, and in a minute or two the shivering slowed and he felt almost as if he could stop huddling under the blankets.
And then all of a sudden he was sweating, heat radiating off his skin like a coil in an electric heater. He threw off the bedclothes, but he was trapped in them and he tried to squirm free and fight them, but all he did was trap himself more. The sweat seemed to leak from his pores like water from tiny faucets, soaking the sheets and mattress below him for the hundredth time, maybe the thousandth.
He groaned.
Jesus, so hot, Jesus, so hot, Jesus…
He wondered where they were right now. Were they surrounding the motel? Crawling through the scraggly bushes that lined the rear parking lot? Hiding behind the end of the strip mall his window overlooked?
He could hear them getting into position. He closed his eyes and he could see them, signaling, gesturing with hands that became paws. Claws. He could sense they were near.
Or maybe they were on the bus again.
Maybe they were on the bus heading for his other hideout.
He thrashed around, attempting to free himself so he could thwart them again. He ignored the sweat dribbling off his forehead and into his eyes, ignored the burning sensation, riding the fear that had suddenly overtaken him. He could see the table, where he had lined up his defenses. He kicked and punched the bonds that prevented him from crossing the floor, and even though he heard the tearing of cloth he was still tied up, bound like a hostage, and they were just outside his door, he could hear them breathing…
He could hear them breathing…
And he screamed, his mouth wide open and the taste of sweat-salt on his tongue and down his throat, and he vomited, barely able to turn his head in time for the gush, and then he was suddenly so cold that he sought the warmth of the ruined blankets again.
Jesus, so cold, I’m so cold, so cold, Jesus, so cold, Jesus…
Lupo
He regained partial consciousness when the roaring in his ears threatened to make his head explode.
Not only that, there was pain coursing through his blood.
Silver. He was laying on his stomach, pinpoint jabs of silvery-hot liquid pain calling in from every square inch of his body, it seemed. He tried to move, failed, and heard a faint groan. It was his groan, an involuntary response to the sharp, crippling pains that wracked his body from head to toe, seeming to flow like fire through his veins.
But that wasn’t all.
The jumbo jet roaring inside his head and its ringing echo was circling in a hold pattern, rising and falling with the air currents.
He tried moving again, forcing himself to work past the irrational pain, and felt some sort of response. His arms worked, and he was able to bring up his right leg partially. His left leg wasn’t answering the call. His head spun as the jet engines increased RPMs, ready for take-off. He groaned again, aware that the pain was more intense than just about anything he had ever felt, and also aware that it was starting to ratchet up as his nerve endings came on-line.
Jesus, somebody blew me up.
There had to be silver shrapnel in the bomb, enough to just about paralyze me…
It was a voice in his head, but it was almost drowned out by the jet. The screaming echo was settling down in his left ear from what he could tell. His left leg was ignoring him, while his right was starting to throb in a dozen places. His left hand screamed when he tried moving his fingers, but his right was able to move. He felt the deck planks and countless tiny bits of hot and spiky debris that all lay like a carpet under him. He tried to inhale though his nose, but wetness—blood?—resulted in a snort and he gasped as it slid down his throat.
Silver shrapnel should have killed me. But it didn’t…
Now that he was certain he was still alive despite the obvious discomfort brought on by the multiple wounds and his head trauma, he was beginning to feel things, other things, and one of them was heat.
Not the same heat he still felt as the silver shrapnel did its worst inside his body’s byways and highways.
No, there was also a fire not far away. A real fire. He cleared out his nose in a rush of blood and mucous and then he smelled it: scorched flesh and hair.
His scorched flesh and hair.
Fuck.
His cabin was burning.
He was burning from the inside, and about to be burned on the outside too.
But he couldn’t move. And he couldn’t see.
Head laying sideways away from the fire’s increasing heat, he tried to gently open his eyes, but the shearing pain—a new, all-enveloping pain—made him scream as some grit, or maybe silver shrapnel debris, grated across his eyeballs under the lids like razor blades.
Jesus fuck!
He’d never felt so much sharp pain in his eyes. But if he didn’t open them and get himself out of there, the whole cabin would go up and take him with it.
He wasn’t ready to give in yet, not when he could tell a portion of his body was willing to respond despite the damage he’d suffered.
He tried again to open his eyes, felt the blades across his corneas and gritted his teeth past it, and then a new fear took him and he groaned as it became obvious to him that something else was wrong, something even worse.
His eyes were open.
But I can’t fucking see.
Marla Anders
It was late, but she was wired and couldn’t sleep anyway. She had been thinking of her grandfather, and suddenly she thought it was possible the phenomena that had been occurring around her—cryptic messages, simple mysterious warnin
gs and the like—were aimed at her by her grandfather.
He had certainly believed in such phenomena.
Hell, he had lived his life around these beliefs.
Her grandfather had been a shaman for his tribe, and even though she had gone to school in the white man’s world and distanced herself from her background in part by avoiding her mother’s side of the family, she had certainly learned a lot from him when she had been impressionable, before she had decided his tribal life wasn’t for her.
He had sought to make her in his image, and would have succeeded, but her father had put his foot down and even though it had nearly torn her family apart, she had stayed within the white man’s boundary lines. That was how her grandfather had described it, and although she had been little when the split happened, she remembered it all too well.
But now, after some years of little phenomena surrounding her, and this latest wave of them manifesting ever since she had taken her new job, she was forced to question what was happening to her.
She rolled around her bed more than usual, although she was definitely a thrasher, and finally she decided to get up and either watch some mindless TV or take a dribble of brandy, the Wisconsin state booze.
She lifted her head from the foam form-fitting pillow and gasped.
There was someone in the bedroom with her!
The outline was sitting in the straight-back armchair she kept in the corner, a seat she liked to use for reading before bed sometimes.
She reached for her nightstand drawer, where she kept a loaded Smith & Wesson .38 Special revolver, an old cop’s gun—in fact, her father’s first service piece. She had it, the old checkered grip familiar in her hand, and she aimed it at the outline.
“Whoever you are, freeze right there!”
Just because she did head-shrinking for cops and listened to Christmas music, didn’t mean she couldn’t look out for herself. She was comfortable with the gun in her hand.
Wolf's Blind (The Nick Lupo Series Book 6) Page 9
