Goddamn.
This was quite a predicament.
No eyes, no one really knew he was here, keys and phone missing in action. No police radio in the Mustang. No tools he could get to because they were in the trunk or in the blown-up cabin. Even if he found his way to the garage and the car, then what? Now he wished he’d learned to hot-wire cars, even just older ones that were easier. A new one would have been beyond his ability in any case. Plus he’d closed the garage and he could have used his phone to open it, but the phone was not letting itself be found.
No, he had to find an alternative. He had to stick with the proven.
He tried again to force a change, concentrating on visualizing himself going over as he always did, seeing himself as the wolf, the Creature inside, and then—it’s a fact, Jack!—his DNA would mysteriously realign and in a split second he would be completely over and then he’d feel his body responding to the magical healing…
But he did all that again now, and there was no change in his body.
Fuck, it isn’t working.
He growled, but it was a human growl of anger and frustration, not the growl of a wolf at all. The Creature was silenced for the moment.
He tried to quell his rising panic.
As if the pain wasn’t enough, there was the fear that he would be undone by some asshole’s bomb, just like that.
There was still fire inside the cabin. He could hear it crackle and consume some of the wood, but it seemed to be in the process of burning itself out. He sensed he wasn’t going to burn up in a conflagration. No, this bomb had been designed to do its worst to him, right there at the door, and the rest was unimportant.
Maybe concentrating on who had wanted him dead would give his system a chance to reset and he’d be back in action in no time. He didn’t believe it, but he had to keep his mind active rather than let it wallow in fear and self-pity. Even rage was better.
There were the obvious crooks and criminals he’d put in prison at one time or another, but he was fairly certain none of them knew his secret. The few who had, he’d…neutralized.
There were people who knew about him: Jessie, Heather, DiSanto.
Heather was a possibility. She was vengeful, jealous, conniving, backstabbing—and most certainly a murderer, although he’d never proved it. He suspected as a new werewolf she’d killed a raft of homeless people for sport and food. You just never knew with her—she was both dangerous and a magnet for danger. But she seemed to take her job as a journalist seriously, seeking out the criminal and the evil of Wolfpaw with singular dedication, even going undercover as an evil dominatrix—which hadn’t been that much of a stretch for her.
And she’d been obsessed with him, hadn’t she?
He glossed over this part, ignoring his own role in the obsession.
No, the bomb hadn’t been set by Heather Wilson. She’d have done her killing in person, as either a human or a wolf. No bombs for her…
It didn’t take him long to come down to Wolfpaw itself, or its backing nucleus, Wolfclaw. He’d become a target and he’d managed to thwart their plans too often, and they were surely not above a little bombing. But it seemed too petty, didn’t it? He wasn’t sure why he was tied into the Wolfpaw influence, but they’d sent alpha teams to kill him, and drones. A little contact bomb was just too unlikely an ambush for them.
So maybe that left only the Bastone family. At least this month.
Not Gus Bastone, the guy who wanted to be the Don of the Bastone family and take over the rez casino. He had been an unlikely survivor of the recent carnage at his Eagle River compound, but he might as well have been dead—he was hospitalized in a private facility and reported to be hovering near death. Even if he lived, he would not be walking or talking normally ever again. Or getting any boners, even though they’d been the basis of half his life.
But Joe Rabbioso, his one-time enforcer, looked pretty good for it. Rabbioso, who had also survived the inferno and had disappeared.
Who also happened to be a werewolf.
Rabbioso had improbably saved Jessie from being raped by a couple low-lives at the bottom of the family totem-pole, but he’d had no trouble slugging it out with Lupo, both of them in wolf form. He was a vengeful type, wasn’t he? Came with the territory, for the average mobster. Even if he was kind to old ladies and little kids and puppies, none of that mattered when it came to money and honor—his own honor.
Working thesis, Lupo thought, it’s Rabbioso.
The damned Expedition at the gas station in New London loomed large suddenly. Maybe that was the asshole himself, or more likely a bunch of henchmen on their way home after rigging his house. But how did they know he was heading there? Or didn’t it matter, they just figured on hitting him whenever he showed up? Whatever…
Knowing who might have done the deed didn’t help in any way.
So now what?
He had managed to ignore the pain in his veins and tendons and nerves for a few minutes, but now it all came roaring back in one wave and he cried out with the severity of the jabs, like lightning searing his insides. The silver shrapnel felt as if it was moving around, scorching his tissue wherever it went, making his blood sizzle. It had been a miracle he’d managed to set it aside so long.
Maybe not a miracle.
Maybe it was working its way out, losing its strength? Maybe his system was somehow neutralizing it?
He wondered if this were true, if it was what made him somehow special. Everyone but him seemed to think so.
The wave passed, then gathered strength again and redoubled the pain.
He writhed on the ground, almost helpless.
Chapter Fifteen
Heather
Running was part of the joy of wolfing out, as she sometimes called it, and she ran until her thick fur steamed in the chilly night air.
She’d left her partner happy and sweaty, snuggled in the mussed bed in her loft.
The sex had been great, better than great—it was still a pleasant scent in her sensitive nostrils—and the result was that right now Heather lusted for blood. She had learned this about herself since her life had changed when a lovely psychopath had bitten her: wolfing out increased her need for sexual gratification, and sex itself increased her need for a kill.
She wasn’t currently into killing her sex partners (not that she hadn’t before, mind you), so it meant she had to hunt.
The hunt was all right now. There was nothing else.
Her paws came down hard yet silently on the leaf-covered floor of the wooded Lake Park. Above the thinning trees were the lights of Milwaukee’s small “gold coast,” a pale imitation of southern rival Chicago’s, but nevertheless impressive on its own. The park stretched along the same Lake Michigan shoreline, flowing down a long bluff to the beaches and marinas below. A half-moon beacon above welcomed her into its arms and she howled in delight, knowing she was warning the potential prey to keep to their lairs.
Tonight she sought different prey.
The moon’s desires would not be denied, and tonight the moon wanted a less furry meal.
Heather rode along in the wolf’s body and felt the desire course as electricity through her veins, her tendons, her muscles—the wolf’s, but she was so very aware in there, unlike Nick Lupo, who had told her he’d struggled years to bridge his human and wolf sides—and soon she was following a scent.
It was a scent even a human would have been able to follow.
More like a stench, she thought.
She came upon its source. A well-muffled homeless male had made a shallow indentation at the base of a large leafless maple, but the rancid smell of him spilled out much farther than his hollow.
The wolf didn’t find the smell objectionable. It was what it was.
The wolf that was Heather approached stealthily, but she hadn’t needed to. The man snored softly, and now Heather herself could pick out the smell of cheap wine as well as the body odor.
He would taste rather like a mari
nated roast, she thought and chuckled in the part of her mind that was separate from that of the wolf. And saliva drooled between the wolf’s jaws as she crept closer, hoping to take him quickly. She was tired from running and wanted a sit-down meal, anyway.
When he awoke his eyes snapped open despite the crusts formed in the corners. He was staring right into her wolf’s rolling eyes, colors changing like a kaleidoscope, and he opened his mouth to scream. His eyes were frozen open, inability to comprehend what was happening to him written there in broad strokes.
And she fell upon him, her jaws striking like a cobra’s head and grabbing hold of the loose skin that ringed his neck, tearing through the muffler and scarves he wore for protection from the cold. As soon as she’d bared his neck, the jaws went back in like a flash and tore into his carotid.
Blood splashed into her open snout and she lapped it up even while tearing the homeless man’s neck apart.
His screeches went unheard. If he had prayers at the end, she was sure those went unheard too.
Predator and prey were as far from the road as they could be. She saw lights rake across treetops above the decline, but their windows would be powered up and their iPods and satellite radios would blot out the sound of his screams.
One jerk of the powerful head and the screeching was cut off abruptly. Then she dug into his filthy clothing with her snout—not hard because the coat seemed to lack buttons—and started to rip and tear his lower torso apart, seeking out the tender delicacies that made up his internal organs.
She gorged herself on the tasty flesh and offal.
When she was done, she changed and stood still in her magnificent naked human form, letting some of his blood dry on her skin. She stared up at the moon, as if offering a sacrifice to the one who ruled her…
Then she quickly rolled up the remains in the multiple layers of coats and shirts, and dug down further into the loose soil he’d shaped as a shelter. A scattering of soil and leaves above him made him indistinguishable from a lump of roots at the base of the tree.
She found rather a positive message in the fact that if his body went unfound his fluids would help nourish the tree.
She knew she should worry about the homeless guy, but she hadn’t taken one in a long while. By the time they did find him, his lumpy remains wouldn’t give up much information. If they tested more thoroughly they’d find that he had been attacked by a dog-like creature with strange DNA. They would just connect the dots, figuring there had been an error in the testing. Besides, chances were nobody would find him until long after the winter, and by then even the DNA would be suspect.
Heather Wilson loved living on the edge. She’d proven her confidence worked often enough that she barely bothered to question her impulses, preferring to act on them—especially if pleasure was involved.
And Heather loved mixing pleasure with business.
Lupo
Ah, fuck, why does it have to hurt so much?
He was still on the debris-strewn deck and the fire within the structure, or what remained of it, seemed to have burned out. He had blacked out for a while, he didn’t know how long, but the pain woke him and he groaned and swore aloud.
He was curled up on his side and still hurting, but the worst of the pain in his leg did seem to be fading.
Slowly fading.
Lupo rolled onto his stomach, feeling bits and pieces of sharp debris shifting under him, poking him.
He made sure his eyes were open, checking with a pair of fingers. Eyelids up. He blew out his breath in frustration.
The fact that his eyes were open but he couldn’t see was disconcerting.
Blind!
He patted the area around himself, hoping to luck onto his keys or phone, but no, it couldn’t be that easy. He widened his reach a little, but still nothing. He dragged himself a few inches in one direction and tried again. Then again, slowly traversing the deck toward the side. He had to be careful because at the far end, the deck was cantilevered above the sloping hillside that fell away, and he could drop off the open planking between railing posts and roll a long way down the hill toward the thin strip of beach. Some large pine would likely break his rolling fall first, but also break either an arm or a leg to go with his previous injuries.
Or skewer him with a sharp branch…
He was reminded that his left leg hadn’t functioned before. Now it was sore, his bones aching deeply, but he could move it. He patted both hands around on the deck, still looking for the phone or his keys. Nothing, so he slowly shifted over…
And rolled down the hard-edged steps.
He grunted as his ribs and shoulders took the brunt of his rolling. He came to a stop a couple yards past the bottom step on the gravel.
Damn it.
He must have been rolling on an angle when he thought he was parallel with the edge of the deck, so now he was confused about where he was in actuality. He threw out his arms and checked around blindly, still hoping luck would bring him to his phone and keys.
No luck.
Why couldn’t he see? And why couldn’t he force himself to change?
He tried again, with no effect.
He visualized himself running on four legs, as he often did, and then he was over—it’s a fact, Jack!—except that he wasn’t. Instead of finding himself on four strong paws he was still lying on gravel, his aching, throbbing legs below him. Not broken, but not cooperating, either.
The pain was starting to fade, that was one good thing.
There were bad things, too. No phone or keys, being blind, nightfall coming and with it a lowering of the temperature, and no shelter.
No Creature to get him out of this. No inner wolf to help him heal whatever wounds he had suffered.
Maybe it was because he was blind that he couldn’t turn, couldn’t visualize himself turning, which was the way the mechanism worked.
Christ! Because I can’t see, I can’t see myself to the healing…
When he’d rolled off the deck, besides the pain of smashing his battered body onto every step edge, he’d also lost his perspective on where he was in relation to the rear of the cottage itself. If he went too far, he could still conceivably roll down the hill. It was steep enough that he’d find climbing back up difficult, unless he found the stepped path.
He shivered.
Reaction to the explosion? Maybe, but the temperature was also dropping.
He realized that the explosion and fire might have ruined the floor inside the cottage, so he was reluctant to work his way up there lest he fall through the floor into the grimy cellar and cause himself even worse trouble. Especially now that he couldn’t just turn into a wolf and take care of it.
Slowly, he gathered himself and was able to rise, teetering, onto his knees. The sharp gravel bit into his scraped-raw knees, but he ignored it and carefully raised himself to stand on two feet.
Standing, yes, but wavering.
He wasn’t very steady, and there was no wall, or railing, or even tree near enough to help him. Hell, he would have taken a scrawny bush.
He started to sweat. By the time he was mostly upright, unsteady as if he were drunk, portions of his body shook as if he had Parkinson’s.
The slap of the shot came after the slug hit one of the deck posts, close enough for splinters to act like shrapnel and poke holes in his skin.
Another shot hit the post and another slap reached his ears.
He dropped to the ground, no longer worried about the sharp debris.
Fuck, where’s the shooter?
This was a low-caliber, high-velocity rifle. A 5.56mm: maybe an AR-15, or a Ruger Mini-14. Something more exotic?
Crack!
Slap…
The third shot shattered the post into kindling and broke some glass in the remaining back window of his cottage.
He reached for his Sig, but he didn’t have it. He’d left it locked in the car, inside the garage he couldn’t get into. Along with the H&K submachine gun. And his Vatican
blade.
Goddamn it.
Another shot slapped the air just over his head and he tried to burrow his way into the gravel.
Helpless.
It was not a feeling he relished.
Chapter Sixteen
Franco Lupo
On the Freighter Zeniča, crossing the Atlantic Ocean
December 1945
When Havlav arrived with the chains, it was obvious there had been a strong discussion. The priest, Tranelli, was less than pleased to learn Franco had coerced a crewman into helping them. Franco had told the priest to butt out—and stay in his cabin.
But when the chains were unlimbered, the priest was there, helping. Although he looked at the crewman with suspicion.
“We can trust this one?” he asked Franco in Italian.
Before Franco could respond, Havlav jumped in. “Yes, I am trusting!”
The three of them manhandled the two steamer trunks from Tranelli’s cabin. The bodies were beginning to ripen, though they had yet to create a stench—but clearly they had little choice but to risk being seen and dispose of them.
Franco dropped a heavy length of chain into each trunk and spit on the bodies once more for the sake of his father and fellow partisans. Then he indicated to Havlav what they would do with them. For his part, the crewman seemed cowed by Franco, who had displayed his pistol in a nonthreatening but clearly suggestive way in case the big motorman wanted to back out.
Franco wished he’s traded Corrado his Beretta for the suppressed Mauser Broomhandle the partisan had used on the two German werewolves—if he had to shoot anyone it was most likely the reports would bring a crowd to investigate. Franco shrugged to himself, then set to shouldering the trunks and their grisly contents. It took the three nearly a half hour to maneuver the first trunk out of the ship’s superstructure, past the rank of lifeboats on davits lashed to the starboard side, down an external companionway that brought them to the main deck but out of sight of the bridge (which was almost directly above them, though facing forward), and to the rail.
With three pairs of hands working somewhat in unison, the ungainly trunk was raised high enough and tilted over the side. It slid straight down the high exterior of the hull and into the backwash of the ship’s churning progress, disappearing almost immediately into the oil-black water.
Wolf's Blind (The Nick Lupo Series Book 6) Page 13
