But now, blind, cold, defenseless, unable to change and fight tooth and claw, unable to outrun a hungry lupine…now was not a time Lupo wanted to come face to face with a single wolf. Or a pack…what if this was an alpha male, with a pack for back-up?
He or they would sense his helplessness. His own lupine nature was no help, it wasn’t on display at all.
The growling intensified as the creature approached. Lupo imagined the displayed fangs, the drooling snout. The cold, predatory eyes. He did respect his wild cousin, but was that respect mutual? He didn’t think so.
He debated. Should he stand still, wait for the wolf to lose interest? Or should he redouble his efforts to put as much distance as possible between him and—
The wolf’s growl rose in pitch suddenly and Lupo was startled. It was much closer than he expected.
It was only feet away.
The beast’s paws scrabbled for purchase on the cold, hard ground, and Lupo tried to twist away, knowing the wolf’s body was hurtling toward him, pouncing on the intruder.
He was the intruder. And for once he wasn’t the strongest of the match-up.
He braced for the impact of heavily muscled body and tearing fangs that would come at any second…
DiSanto
When he pulled up behind Jessie’s old Pathfinder, he was startled to see her sitting on her tailgate looking very dejected.
“Doc, you okay?” he called out, jumping from the car while the engine still ticked.
She slid off her perch, her lovely face lighting up at the sight of him. “Dee! Thanks for coming! I don’t know what I would have done otherwise…”
DiSanto flinched. She looked terrible. Her eyes were swollen. She’d been crying, and her classic beauty was marred by lines of preoccupation he didn’t remember seeing there before.
She hugged him briefly but warmly, tightly, and he felt a stirring as her body touched his.
Christ, man, what’s wrong with you?
It was still a good hour before dawn, but a filigree of light was beginning to spread from the horizon, though still mostly hidden behind the tall tree line.
He also felt her shivering. She was freezing.
“Jesus, Jess, you been out here all night?”
They broke their embrace and she nodded. “I didn’t know what else to do.” Her teeth were chattering.
“Wait,” he said and went back to his car. He brought back a tall to-go coffee container. “It’s hot ‘cause I drove through the joint in Three Lakes. I figured we might need it.”
She nodded her thanks but was already slurping up the hot, sweet liquid. “I can feel it warming me up,” she said when she stopped after downing half of it. DiSanto knew how hot it had been. The woman was cold.
Afterwards he asked her to recount what had happened. By the time she finished the dawn was announcing its arrival with occasional glimpses of light touching the treetops, slowly moving downward.
“Good thing there’s just no traffic up here right now,” she said, then drank more coffee. “Sorry, I think I left you just a few drops.”
He shrugged. “Jessie, why don’t we just call the sheriff? I mean, it was self-defense. Everybody up here knows you and Nick, and everything that’s happened before. This would be a done deal, the guy attacked you and you did what you had to do, right?”
Jessie half-smiled. Color had returned to her cheeks. “I thought about it, Dee. But listen, the guy? He was naked. Any M.E. worth his salt’s gonna figure that out even if we tried to dress him. I shot him when he was about to change into his wolf form. I used silver, and it…burned him. Badly. There’s just no way I can figure out to explain it all, so we have no choice but to just…make him disappear.”
“Yeah, I get it. Makes sense.”
She was crying now, suddenly. “I can’t take this any more, Dee. I’m a doctor. I’m sworn to save people, not kill them. I went a little crazy there for a minute.”
DiSanto touched her arm awkwardly. “But he was a monster. He was going to kill you.”
“Sure, but if he’s a monster…what is Nick?”
He said nothing for a beat or two. He’d been having the same thought, and it hurt to think it. He didn’t really want to think these things, but what the hell had Lupo dragged them into now? On top of everything else? Sure, it wasn’t all his fault, but…
He shook his head to clear it of these destructive thoughts. He was having a lot of destructive thoughts lately.
Nick was his partner. Lupo was always trying to do the right thing; no matter how things ended up, his intentions were always good. He knew that Jessie agreed, but it was easy to fall prey to the darkness.
“Nick’s not like these assholes, Jessie. We both know that. He only kills when he has to, and these guys are stone cold. Hell, some of ‘em love to kill. I’ve seen the bloodlust in their eyes. I know this guy would have killed you, and he would have enjoyed it. Maybe it wouldn’t have been quick, you know. Maybe…” His voice faded. “Let’s just do what we need to do and find Nick. This guy coming after you and Nick’s disappearance are too coincidental.”
“I’ve been thinking,” she said, some pain still etched on her features, “and Nick doesn’t usually come up here without telling me, but if he did, then there’s one place he would go.”
DiSanto snapped his fingers. “Sam’s cabin!”
“That’s right, it’s not a stretch at all.”
“Okay, let’s move. Did this guy have a vehicle?”
“Yeah, huge SUV. I drove it into the woods about a quarter mile from here, far enough that you can’t see it from the road at all.”
“Well, if anyone searches for him they’ll be able to find it pretty fast from the air, especially with the thin cover. We may have to move it again. Any deep lakes around here? Ponds?”
“Man, I don’t know about doing that…”
“Jessie, we’re stuck. Either we follow through or now we get pulled into it to our necks. I’ll take care of it. Wipe it down, whatever. Maybe we can make it look like a mob hit. You think he was mob?”
“I assumed. I think the Wolfpaw guys always attack in packs, or teams, whatever they call them.”
“Okay,” said DiSanto. “We’ll deal with that later. First, the body. Then we find Nick.”
She told him. She had rolled the remains down a ditch that led to an incline down from road level. He’d gotten caught in the undergrowth that remained between the bottom of the ditch and the gentler incline. She led DiSanto down to where the swollen, scorched body had come to rest. DiSanto nodded—she was right, they never could have explained this. He had brought a shovel and a pickaxe, standard equipment when working with Lupo lately, and the two of them made a shallow incision into the incline below the gruesome body, and then rolled him in.
“Need to make sure it’s deep enough to keep scavengers from digging him out,” she had said.
He brought down a red can and sloshed it on the body, sent a match into the hole, and they stepped back as the flames finished what the silver had started. They stood well back, gagging, eyes watering. Then went about covering it up as best they could.
“Leo McCoyne still sheriff?” DiSanto asked as they cleaned up and stowed away the tools of their crime. It had taken almost two hours. Now the day had definitely come, a weak sun pouring a few beams down to the floor of the forest but heating it not at all.
“Yes. Leo’s a good man.”
“Well, let’s hope he’s both not too good, and barely good enough in this case.”
“He’s already had the wool pulled over his eyes so much…”
“And that’s best for him, Jessie. Believe me, they wouldn’t hesitate…”
“I know.”
He slammed the trunk of his car. They checked their phones, but there was no message from Lupo.
“Again, thank God there’s no traffic around here. Okay, let’s go see if Nick’s at the cabin. Maybe his phone’s fucked up and we’re all panicked over nothing. Have bacon and e
ggs with him in his kitchen.”
“Yeah,” she said, but it was obvious neither of them believed it.
Colgrave
She was making good time, driving north following DiSanto’s directions. She’d already been to Eagle River, but frankly it wasn’t a place she felt attached to, so she’d forgotten the best way to get there. Old roads vied with newer wide highways cut through the nice forests—that she remembered, that the new was squeezing out the old again. She shook her head. Maybe she’d caught that sadness from Lupo himself.
She’d gotten on the road long before dawn, spurred by another call by DiSanto filling her in and it was bad enough there was no reason to wait. Now she was edging up to 85 miles an hour, using Lupo’s trick of calling ahead and getting the State Police prowlers to back off.
Cop on the job.
Seemed to work too. She spotted cruisers here and there, slotted within the meridian, but ignoring her after a glance.
She realized she would have to call for better directions once she got closer. The northern part of the state was a warren of old drives, circular and circuitous routes, and county roads that were so dark at night you might as well give up trying to see anything at all outside the range of your headlights.
Nick Lupo…
Had he gotten himself in some kind of trouble, or was he just incommunicado? She couldn’t guess, but his friends seemed to be intent on finding him. She’d caught DiSanto’s responses to Jessie Hawkins and wondered whether the fact she’d almost been attacked was why they had assumed Lupo was, indeed, in trouble.
Though she couldn’t imagine him not finding a way out of it on his own.
He was a resourceful guy, she was sure of that.
Again, there was that tingle.
She’d felt it with Brant, whom she’d helped out on occasion. Richard Brant was a Vietnam vet and post-Vietnam spook who’d gone rogue a couple times, and she’d gotten crossed with him when an old lover—a crooked cop—had tried to put the screws to Brant.
Yeah, there was a tingle for Brant, but he was probably too old for her. He’d told her that he was, regretfully.
But Nick Lupo wasn’t too old.
It was as simple as that.
Colgrave smiled as she thought of him, coming into her office and spilling his guts like that. Maybe he felt a tingle too. She knew he was in deep for the good doc, but…well, even the good ones stray.
And she’d caught a hint of some kind of history between him and that impossibly hot reporter chick, Heather Wilson. Like maybe he’d strayed with her.
She could see why people—women—found him intriguing. There was sense of tragedy about him, maybe hanging around his neck like a noose, she thought. And yet he was lusty, a drinker, a cook, a rule-bender when he needed to be, but a good guy who always had your back.
So now I have his back, she thought. We’ll see what else, down the line.
She was about an hour behind DiSanto, from what she gathered when he called her while he was getting gas and coffee. They’d still not heard from Lupo, and neither had she. He hadn’t gone into detail, but she knew they had done some bad stuff up there—stuff that law enforcement would frown upon. But law enforcement had no context for werewolves, did they?
Colgrave grinned mirthlessly. No they didn’t. But she did, now.
Lupo
Crack!
The wolf uttered a cut-off whimper and the body was flung away as if it had never been there in the first place. Seemed like a high-velocity bullet had taken it squarely in the snout. Lupo only surmised that was what had happened—he heard the wolf crash into the undergrowth somewhere off to Lupo’s left as if it had been swatted down by a giant hand, but there was still some movement there, rustling.
Crack!
The second shot made a wet smack sound and the wolf’s body lay still.
Lupo ducked as if it would save him from the next bullet, throwing himself to the ground in a sloppy evasive move that ended in a roll until his ribs violently connected with a very solid tree trunk.
“Oof!” The air was kicked out of his body as if a mule had taken aim. The pain was just one more on a long list, but he still had a hard time regaining his breath.
He kept low, expecting another slug.
Rabbioso, playing guardian angel, hadn’t wanted to share with the doomed wolf.
Lupo lay there, winded, letting his body start to respond again, and then slowly tried to roll to his knees, holding on to the trunk so he could stand.
Then a slug took out a chunk of tree above him.
Crack!
The slivers hit him like shrapnel once again, but even before the echo had died he was already in motion and he didn’t stop, rolling up on his feet and ducking to where he hoped he was covered by the tree.
Crack-Crack!
Two quick shots found the tree, but by then he was running, bent over in a crouch, keeping the trunk between him and where he figured Rabbioso had taken up a perch.
Lupo’s strength was fading fast, and he had to admit to himself that this time he might not find a way out of this predicament. Middle of the night, miles from anywhere. No Sam to help him, strength running out, bullets getting closer.
Fuckin’ drone missiles missed, alpha teams, rogue werewolves…and now one fucking psychopath with a rifle’s gonna do me.
Wasn’t fair.
Jessie.
Damn, he wanted to see her one more time.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Franco Lupo
On the Freighter Zeniča, crossing the Atlantic Ocean
January 1946
He was running, running, steps clanging loudly on the deck, then stumbling into the door of their cabin, breathless.
“Havlav’s dead!”
Tranelli leaped up from the bunk as quickly as his aging body allowed. “Where?”
“One of the storage rooms he showed me, where we met a few times. I told him earlier I wanted to meet tonight, right after you talked to me, and I went to meet him and—God in heaven, I hate those monsters! He’s chopped into pieces, not much of him left, but they made sure to leave his head for me to find. Bastards!”
“That’s it, we must trap this Tomas.” Tranelli plucked his Vatican dagger from under the thin mattress, drawing the blade partially.
Franco thought he saw the blade glow, but it was a trick of the light. He drew his own dagger, checked his Beretta, and turned to stalk back out into the corridor.
“Wait!” said Tranelli, grabbing his arm.
Franco shrugged it off.
“Listen! You can’t just barge into his cabin and kill him!”
“Why not, we are agreed it is him. Havlav was going to confirm it. It’s why he was butchered. It’s mocking us…” Franco hadn’t realized how much the tension of the voyage had built up. He thought his head would explode.
“And what about…her?” The priest pointed across the corridor.
Franco blanched. “Leave her alone!” he hissed. “What has she to do with this, you drunken old man?”
“Where was she? When Havlav was killed?”
“How should I know?”
“You know the taste of her ass—”
Franco slapped him and knocked him back into the cabin.
For a moment, Franco looked as though he would use the dagger on the priest, who stared at him silently, stunned.
Then he snorted and left, heading for the cabin they knew belonged to the reclusive Tomas.
Tranelli dragged himself to his feet and followed. Someone had to keep the kid from getting killed. He gave chase as quickly as he could, but when he reached the open door and rushed in, he found Franco stalking from one side of the square chamber to the other. Tomas wasn’t there.
“He’s out hunting,” Franco said. “He’s hunting us.”
Tranelli nodded. It was possible.
“We split up, walk the decks in opposite directions. See if we can flush him out.”
Franco snorted again. “And then what? A
lone, we’re vulnerable. We must watch each other’s back. We must find a way to drive him to where we can corner him, like one of those tigers in India. Once we have him trapped, we shoot him until he’s incapacitated…”
“But—”
“And then we step in and slit his throat with our blades.”
It was no plan at all, Franco knew. It was his temper, his anger, his need for revenge. Not for Havlav, not really, but because the monster had killed under their very eyes. It was the insult he couldn’t swallow.
He turned to make his final point, but his voice faltered. The priest had gone deathly silent, pale, his drinker’s complexion so white he might as well have worn a sheet like a child playing at ghosts.
“What’s wrong?”
But then out of the corner of his eye he saw a ripple, a strange rippling of the air, and he knew—knew—though it was too late, that Tomas had trapped them.
In his cabin.
The grotesque wolf-like creature stood on four gigantic paws, head down and snout displaying rows of sharp fangs. Drool was pooling under his head as he fixed them with a ravenous red-eyed stare. A low growl came from the depths of its throat and it opened its maw and licked its chops like a rabid dog contemplating a raw steak.
“Come get me, fucker!” Franco shouted, pushing the priest away and simultaneously leaping in the opposite direction, trying to divide the wolf’s attention and draw its attack.
It didn’t work. The wolf pounced without any sort of preamble, aiming for where the priest had stumbled.
“Noooooo!” Franco screamed, and he was able to only redirect his momentum to a point, but still he threw his bulk back toward where the wolf’s body was crashing into the priest.
Tranelli was saved by his last-second stumble, which changed his profile just enough so that the snarling airborne wolf was no longer centered on his chest and couldn’t recover in time.
Two of its great paws struck the priest a glancing blow; through sheer luck the razor claws didn’t connect with anything but his clothes.
Franco’s response was lightning-quick. He followed through the wolf’s trajectory with a pursuing trajectory of his own, and the unsheathed Vatican dagger flashed as he drove it home into the monster’s muscular flank.
Wolf's Blind (The Nick Lupo Series Book 6) Page 19
