The wolf shrieked as the blade carved into its side and made its blood sizzle. Franco’s grip never faltered as he slit the beast open, cutting through ribs and organs both. A bath of its blood exploded from the wound and Franco followed the body to the deck, never letting go of the dagger’s grip.
They ended up against the bulkhead, sliding around in the blood and gore from the wolf’s torso, as it attempted to bring its snout around to snap at Franco, eyes blazing with pain and rage, but mostly pain. Franco lay across the wolf’s body, his dagger still buried inside its chest cavity, evading the snout’s frantic snapping jaws.
“Now, priest, now!” Franco shouted.
Tranelli recovered from his near-miss and lunged into the corner, landing atop the writhing monster and managing to avoid the fearsome and deadly jaws long enough to drag his own blade across the wolf’s thick neck. The fur and flesh parted like lard under his attack and the stench of scorched hair and flesh enveloped them as did a gout of the unholy creature’s horrible blood.
The red haze slowly faded from its eyes as both men twisted their blades into the awful wounds they had inflicted. It squealed as it died, shuddering, then flickered between its wolf and human forms almost faster than the eye could see.
They withdrew the blades from the human form of Tomas, and stumbled away in near fatigue to sink down in the cabin’s opposite corner, chests rising and falling.
Franco sheathed his dagger and wiped sweat from his eyes.
But now he smiled, a grimace of hate. He enjoyed killing the monsters. He caught the priest staring at him and felt his face color under the scrutiny.
He turned away. “Let’s get to it.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jessie
As soon as they turned into the curvy drive that led to Sam’s—now Lupo’s—cabin, they knew.
“Jesus!” said DiSanto. “Look at the place.”
“What…what happened?” Jessie’s face was plastered to the side window.
DiSanto stopped the car a ways from the damaged, still smoldering cabin. The whole rear wall of the place was blown out, the kitchen ruined, parts of the roof collapsed. Water had spurted from a broken connection and half-flooded the kitchen floor, which had probably helped keep the rest of the place from burning down. Debris was strewn in a semi-circle the radius of a hundred feet or more, but most within twenty feet.
They left the car doors open in their haste and raced up to look for signs of Lupo, avoiding the larger chunks of debris.
Jessie had never known so much dread.
She heard her own voice, far away, screaming a mantra:
“Jesus!-Nick-Nick-Nick-Nick-Nick!”
It was as if she were calling him and reminding herself about him at the same time, her brain empty except for his name and an image of him, his rough and tumble dark brown hair uncombed, a smile wide on his expressive face.
She reached the cabin’s damaged rear deck before DiSanto, looking around desperately. Tears tugged each other out of her eyes, spilling down her cheeks unheeded.
“Nick!” she screamed, voice cracking.
But he wasn’t there.
She searched desperately, flipping chunks of paneling and drywall that still smoked a little into the early morning chilly air.
There was no body.
DiSanto had reached her by now, and stopped her from entering the blasted hole of the back of the house.
“Wait, Jessie, it’s dangerous!” He grabbed her and she tried to shrug him off, but he held her captive. “Listen to me, that roof’s gonna collapse all the way. And it’s still hot.”
She could barely hear him, but his grip was steel. She tried once more to break it, but then gave up. She felt tears gushing down her face and didn’t wipe them away.
DiSanto was talking and she had to focus to hear his voice past the roaring in her ears.
“Looks like a device set to blow when he opened the back door,” he said. Then: “Look!”
He was pointing to a splash of blood like a Rorshach inkblot, but it wasn’t large. And it was outside the worst blasted portion of the house.
Her heart slowed its thumping and she felt as if she could be almost rational again. DiSanto must have felt it, too, because he released her.
Jessie bent over and her doctor’s experience took over, also helping to quell her panic. “If that’s it, it’s not much,” she observed. “You’re right, he never went in. If we don’t find any more blood, then he didn’t get hurt all that badly.”
“And he should be able to heal, right,” DiSanto said. “All he’d have to do is, what, turn into a wolf and let the thing happen that happens whenever he gets wounded.” He stopped. “Right?”
“Yeah, but then why isn’t he here?” She looked around, hoping to suddenly spot him walking toward them, grinning.
But he didn’t.
“I dunno.” DiSanto surveyed the scene. Suddenly: “Hey, there’s his phone. And keys.” They were at the far corner of the deck, but below the top surface level so they could barely be seen. He went over, picked them up. The screen was cracked, but the iPhone was operational. He touched the home button and “67 missed calls, 32 voice mails” showed on the screen, which he held up for her.
She shook her herd. The panic was threatening to return. “How long ago was this?”
“Still a little warm here. Not long. Maybe last night?”
“And the blood is fresh, I think,” she said, her voice breaking up.
She felt his hand on her arm. “I know Nick,” he said. “He’s fine. I just know it.”
Jessie stepped away, staring around them, looking for clues. Or something worse, but she didn’t want to admit it.
But then…
“Dee, look at this.”
He went back to where she was looking at the ground just off the back edge of the deck, where the steps were jagged and broken.
She said, “It looks as if he rolled down, fell onto the ground.” There was more blood they hadn’t noticed. Not much, a trace. The ground was furrowed.
DiSanto said, “He was trying to get on his feet. Maybe his knees. Hell, I’m no tracker. I don’t know.”
“No, you’re right,” said Jessie, following the furrows. “He was dragging himself. He’s hurt, Dee! I don’t know why, but whatever happened he definitely walked away, but he’s not in good shape.”
They followed the crooked, meandering path Lupo—or someone—seemed to have made through the debris field, crossing the place where they had messed it up with their running approach.
DiSanto spotted it first. “Somebody was shooting at him.” He pointed to a long white crack of raw wood on a tree trunk. The ground showed more scuff marks. “Looks like he walked away from this, too.”
“My God, what happened out here?”
DiSanto whispered a name. “Has got to be Joe Rabbioso. Guy’s old school. We thought he was on the run, but maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s out for some good old-fashioned vendetta.”
“He’s the one who—?” She stopped. “After Bastone almost got me, then he stopped his guys? He’s the one?”
“Yeah. Nick hurt him pretty bad, he says. Guy disappeared, but maybe not so much.”
They jumped as his phone went off, the poppy ring tone loud in the quiet woods.
“Colgrave,” he said as he looked at it before he answered it. “Yeah, Danni.”
Jessie could hear Colgrave’s voice, a questioning tone. DiSanto outlined the current situation in a few broad strokes.
DiSanto turned and said to her as he listened, “She’s almost here. Can you guide her in?” He handed her the phone, and Jessie gave Colgrave clear directions that would get her to the rez faster, then to the relatively remote cabin at the reservation’s far edge. DiSanto went back to the car, opened his trunk, and rummaged around until he plucked out a black composite case and hunched over it. He came back cradling an H&K MP5 submachine gun with a 30-round magazine, and another Remington tactical shotgun for her. She�
��d forgotten hers hidden in her Pathfinder.
“We can’t wait for you, Danni,” Jessie added, speaking into the phone. “We have to follow the trail. Somebody’s shooting at him. I don’t know why he’s not—well, why he isn’t in better shape, on four legs I mean, but it seems he isn’t.”
Crack!
It was far enough away that at first it barely registered as what it was.
But then they looked at each other. It was a rifle shot, with a long echo.
Then again, it wasn’t that far away.
Crack-Crack!
“Shit! Christ, let’s go!” said DiSanto urgently, setting off at a lope.
Jessie shouted almost incoherently into the phone. She told Colgrave she’d have to follow their path now. She hoped Colgrave got it, and the directions. Then she hung up and caught DiSanto as he stopped to stare at another gouged tree trunk.
He said, “Looks like Nick was headed closer to town and the shooter’s right behind him. McCoyne can get to him before we do.”
She nodded furiously. “Call the Sheriff,” she said. “Hurry!”
“Okay.” DiSanto took the phone and made the call after finding the sheriff in his contacts list. He identified himself without any preamble, then outlined the situation. “We’re following now, but maybe you can head them off. We think they’re coming your way.”
He made a face and hung up.
“What did he say?”
“He’s sending some squads, but he sounded pretty…neutral.”
“What?”
“I dunno, like he was just waking up.”
“We can’t wait for him, Dee. We’d better go.”
They set off in the direction they thought Lupo and his hunter had taken, and from where the shots had come.
“Fuck, look at that!” DiSanto was pointing up.
She was almost annoyed, but followed his pointing finger. There was a new-looking tree stand fastened to one of the more bare pine trunks.
“What you wanna bet he’s using deer stands to fuckin’ play with Nick?”
“They would have had to set up a bunch of them, though, right?” she pointed out.
“Maybe they never intended to leave the area. Their big compound went up, but who’s to say they didn’t leave behind a contingent? Check real estate firms later. Maybe—”
“Yeah, Dee, later! If this is true, we have to get on their trail!”
“Got that right,” he said. Grimly, he pulled back the bolt on his MP5.
She bit her lip as she made sure the shotgun was ready, safety off, and followed the cop closely through the alternately thick and thin late winter woods. Looking up occasionally, shaking her head at the folly of male humans. And male werewolves.
Her ears were attuned to the sound of shooting, almost more obvious in its absence. The silence made her nervous. Made her heart beat faster, the expectation driving her crazy. The fear making her shudder more than the cold morning air.
And then, there it was again.
Crack!
Lupo
Cold, hands still frozen from the long night of running, he thought maybe by now it was morning. The wind had shifted and maybe he felt sunlight on his face, but he couldn’t be sure. He hadn’t died of hypothermia yet, but the jury was out on how long that would last—the day wouldn’t likely get warm enough to save him.
He stumbled down the slope, bounced off a trunk he hadn’t sensed, bruising his shoulder and adding another to his long list of aches and pains.
Some were worse than others.
The silver was still smoldering inside him, but seemingly it had faded into a dull throbbing ache no worse than some of his human muscular throbs. It wasn’t sizzling anymore, at least.
He felt the hard forest floor suddenly become a pebbly surface beneath his feet.
A path of some sort.
He weaved drunkenly, feeling out its width. This meant he wouldn’t crash into any trees or bushes, not if he followed the path. On the other hand, he was more visible to his phantom hunter.
The grim reaper.
Lupo had started to visualize him that way, dealing death at the end of his high-tech scythe.
Didn’t matter whether it was Rabbioso or someone else.
Death.
For some reason Lupo hadn’t thought much about death after surviving the firefight at the Bastone compound. Maybe he’d come to believe—impossibly, he now knew—that he was leading a charmed life. He spent all his time worrying about protecting and rescuing others he loved, like Jessie and Dee, and even the reckless, sometimes murderous Heather, and had started to believe his own press when it came to his longevity.
Screw that, I could die right here, any second from now. One of those silver slugs could enter my brain and splatter it all over the ground, and instead of healing as a wolf it would scorch me from the inside out and that would be that…
But Jessie and DiSanto could find him, too, track him down and take out the Grim Reaper. They were nearby, he told himself, ready to intercept his hunter.
Shit, I’m hallucinating.
He wondered why he hadn’t yet done so. He should have been hallucinating all night.
I’m alone and I’d better face it. Get myself out of this one. No cavalry, no rescue. No Ghost Sam to hand me cryptic hints and advice.
He gave it another try.
He tried to visualize himself changing, feeling his DNA realigning and—it’s a fact Jack!—he was over.
But he wasn’t.
No shedding his useless clothes.
No coming down on four paws.
No howl from the newly-freed Creature.
Instead, he tripped over his own feet and went rolling and tumbling down the incline and suddenly he crashed headlong into a wooden barrier that stretched straight across the path, blocking his way.
What the fuck, it’s a wall…
And then he wasn’t sure whether it was a hallucination or a memory or he was just dreaming, but he thought if he looked at a map, after bouncing around the woods like a pinball all night, this could have been that boys’ camp—what the fuck was it?
Camp O-Jew-Boy.
He remembered first what the assholes called it. They’d held Jessie there, trying to lure him to their silver-loaded guns. Martin Stewart had led the chase there, hoping to trap him.
It was actually Camp Ojibway, named after the Indian tribe.
It had been closed then, and as far as he knew it was still closed.
Christ, how did I end up here again?
Maybe his Grim Reaper had led him here, placed his tree stands in advance and hoped to be able to hunt Lupo like a tiger, driving him toward the camp where he could finish him off.
Was Rabbioso that Machiavellian?
Shit, he’s Italian, isn’t he?
Lupo grinned, wondering just how terrifying his face must have looked now.
He also thought—or maybe hallucinated—that this might be the perfect place to turn the tables on his hunter.
Just like that time, so many years ago now.
Corrado
They met early in a café in the Third Ward, and he was mindful that he wouldn’t have picked it if Lupo and his partner were in town, because they often grabbed lunch or coffee in one of the many Italian-style establishments that dotted the revitalized area.
Corrado still enjoyed ordering espresso, Limoncello, an occasional Negroni cocktail, and other Italian delicacies, so he gravitated to these places in the repurposed warehouses of the district. This particular building was only a couple blocks from the Italian Community Center, so to say it helped him feel at home was an exaggeration, but still also true.
He stirred way too much sugar into his espresso as he watched the door. He’d always preferred it sweet, due to time he had spent in South America, Cuba, and Turkey—all places in which coffee was a specialty, but who tended to favor sweetening it. He added a squeeze of lemon, a completely invented American thing to which he had become accustomed in any case. I
n the end, he knew he wasn’t sipping an “authentic” espresso, but he just liked it that way.
He was blowing on the demitasse when Ari Ben-Shalom entered the long, narrow establishment and spotted him down the side, along the light brick wall. Corrado raised a hand and Ben-Shalom nodded, approaching.
Ben-Shalom was almost supernaturally handsome, Corrado thought, truly his father’s son.
Corrado had come to know the elder Ben-Shalom—Yaacov—after the war, when he and Franco Lupo had turned their weary eyes on Communist werewolves after having spent years hunting the Nazi variety. Ben-Shalom and Corrado later aided in the Adolf Eichmann abduction from Argentina, though Corrado had never documented his role in the affair. The two had formed a strong friendship, and Corrado had worked with Mossad on more than one occasion since then, although he had been forced to change his identities for obvious reasons. Though the Cold War had included a fair number of lycanthrope agents and assassins, Corrado and Ben-Shalom had spent most of their time on former Nazis and their disciples, many of whom continued to entertain Fourth Reich dreams, which included resurrecting the wartime experiments that had led to the hybrid super-wolves. Corrado knew well what all this had led to, and Wolfpaw Security Services had only been the tip of it…
Now Corrado had been working for a few years with Ben-Shalom’s son, who had followed in his father’s footsteps and taken up the mantle from within the Mossad.
“Hello, Ari,” Corrado said, lowering his still-steaming cup.
“Corrado, nice to see you.”
A waitress approached as Ari sat and asked him if he needed anything.
“I’ll have that, but leave off the lemon,” he said, pointing at Corrado’s demitasse and smiling. She walked away, charmed as usual by the younger Mossad agent’s boyish looks.
“I know, they don’t do it in Italy,” Corrado said. “But it tastes good, what can I say?”
“I’m a traditionalist.”
“Like your father.”
Sadness crossed Ari’s fine features, but then was gone. “Yes. What have you for me this time, Corrado?”
Wolf's Blind (The Nick Lupo Series Book 6) Page 20
