They talked about E.O.’s death and mused aloud about whether or not it would turn out to be a gator or the local slasher. Nancy determined that tomorrow when went back to work she would poke around a bit to find out his exact cause of death.
Nick was adamant that it was a gator because he wanted to believe that, but Nancy wasn’t so sure. Even as he was holding forth on the likelihood that it was a large reptile, he was thinking about the footprints they’d found in the mud on Christmas Eve and about how red Wes’s blood had looked against the dry, brown grass. It shouldn’t have been that red, except there had been a lot of it. When that much blood dried in one place, it didn’t really turn to rust like a smear or a smudge would.
Nick did not finish his breakfast after his thoughts turned gory on him, but he stayed with Nancy and chatted until he absolutely had to leave or he would be late.
Work was uneventful, there was only one puddle of vomit to mop up and the rest was the usual set of chores: mop the floors, empty the sharps containers, clean the toilets; nothing to see here folks, let’s move it along. Nick clocked out on time, which was rare and headed home after checking the bed of his truck for stowaways.
He went in the house after listening to the night sounds again to determine whether or not he should get out of the truck. He’d forgotten to turn his porch light on when he left—or so he thought. His boots crunched in broken glass when he reached the door, key in hand to unlock it. Nick grimaced and took a slow, deep breath then unlocked the trailer door and walked inside, hand automatically going to the light switch to the immediate right. The living room flooded with bright light and he looked around to see if anything was out of place. Nothing was; the trailer was quiet, but not eerily so, not the kind of quiet that said someone was waiting at the end of the dark hallway.
“Fucker,” Nick said to himself.
Hell, it might not have even been Crash who knocked out his porch light. Something could have easily flown into it; there were bats out where he lived and bugs swarmed around sources of light. It was not at all a stretch to think a bat had swooped down for a mouthful of juicy moths, overshot its mark and plowed into the porch light instead. Echo location was good, but it wasn’t foolproof, especially not when the food source was packed that closely around something else.
Still, he would call Nancy the next day and ask her if she had seen or heard anything.
Nick went to the fridge and grabbed a beer, having already forgotten the promise he’d made himself over breakfast. By all rights, he should be tired, but he’d guzzled way too much coffee while he was at work in order to shake off the lingering remains of the Benadryl and now he was wired. A couple of beers and some television would help him wind down for bed and maybe he would actually be able to sleep tonight. Nick had always been an optimist.
When his phone rang a little while later, Nick didn’t jump. He was growing used to his newfound late night popularity. He still almost didn’t answer the phone, but as usual, decided to do so after a couple of rings. Just in case. It was probably what everyone told themselves when they started not to answer the phone in the middle of the night.
“Nick!” Nancy screamed. “Help me!”
“What’s wrong?” Nick asked, only to jerk the phone away from his head when Nancy screamed in his ear. His heart was thundering, but he did not panic; panic solved nothing in situations like this one.
“That thing is here. It’s trying to get in the house,” Nancy wailed. Something shattered in the background and Nancy screamed in Nick’s ear so loudly it hurt.
“Call the police,” he said. A little bug of panic crawled through him and into his voice anyway. “I’m on my way.”
“I already called—Fuck! Get away from here! Go away!” Nancy screamed as more glass shattered. “It’s breaking the windows. Oh, no, no, no. I’m scared, Nicky, I’m so scared. I…” She trailed off with a low moan of fear and Nick’s heart wrenched in his chest as he tore out of the house with the phone still pressed to his ear.
“Lock yourself in the bathroom, Nancy,” Nick said. He knew how she was; scared or not she was probably standing her ground with a butcher knife in her free hand. Nick didn’t think a butcher knife would slow down whatever that— No. Nick didn’t think a butcher knife would slow Crash down if he really wanted to end Nancy. Hunter’s rifle sure as hell had not saved him.
She shrieked again as he cranked the truck, the cry cut through with bursts of static. He was going to lose the signal entirely before he reached her house, but he didn’t let go of the phone. It felt wrong to leave Nancy alone, no matter how ineffectual his presence on the phone was.
“I’m coming,” he said as he backed up. “Do you hear me? I’m coming, all right?”
All he could hear was the static-distant sound of Nancy sobbing and cursing then screaming again. Nick floored the accelerator and gunned it all the way up to the house. The old V8 engine roared as he bounced his way toward his cousin and the madman trying to break in and kill her.
It felt like it took eons to reach the house though it really only took a few seconds. The cordless phone spat bursts of static at him from the seat, filling up the cab of the truck. He put the truck in park, killed the engine then reached for the door handle, ready to fly out of the vehicle and go to Nancy’s rescue. He stopped with his hand on the door handle; heart thundering in his ears and skin prickling with goosebumps. It took Nick a moment to place what had drawn him up. It was that special brand of silence he had become unnervingly familiar with the last few months; quiet so deep the sound of your own breathing became the roar of massive bellows in your ears.
The backyard was painted with rainbow splashes of color from the Christmas lights Nancy hadn’t yet found the time to take down. They were on a timer and every evening since the day after Thanksgiving, the lawn looked like a festive rave. The glow from Nick’s headlights canceled out the twinkling of the fairy lights directly in front of him, but past the head of the truck, the world was green, blue, pink, red and purple.
Nick shook off his uneasiness and closed his fingers around the door handle. Strange, dangerous silence or not, there was no way he was leaving Nancy inside her home alone and afraid. The latch clicked and the door began to swing open under its own weight when movement caught Nick’s eye and drew him up short. Without thinking about it, he pulled the door closed and stared into the darkness near the corner of the house where neither his headlights nor the twinkle lights reached.
Something stood in the shadows there, tall and blacker than black. It moved, smooth as liquid ink spilling across the night, quick and fluid. In two long, loping strides it was in front of Nick’s truck, staring right at him. Nick, ever-practical, thought, That right there is a fucking werewolf.
All of his denials, all of his logical and rational explanations were forgotten in that instant as he stared down the creature before him. Its jaws cracked in what Nick could only call a grin; white teeth gleaming wetly in its pink mouth, eyes shining like polished moons where they caught the light and reflected it back. It leaned forward, slapping its huge, impossible hands on the hood of his truck so hard the vehicle shook. It stretched out its long neck then tilted its head back and scented the air. Nick could hear it panting softly, claws scratching lightly against the blue hood of his truck.
He felt like he was in a dream, frozen, unable to move or react, his mind empty with fear. Fear that strong left a person paralyzed; no matter how much Nick wanted to run and scream, all he could do was stare at the thing and hope—pray—that it would go away and leave him alone. Its eyes bored into him, dancing with amusement and hunger, grey and pale as a winter morning.
That jolted Nick out of his frozen rabbit fear; he sucked in a gasping breath that was so harsh it burned down his throat. Those eyes were human and he knew them yet he could not believe that he did. He didn’t want to believe a goddamn thing he was seeing, but that was the thing about seeing: it really was believing.
The truck rocked as the werewolf ni
mbly began to crawl up onto the hood. The thing could’ve leapt up there like it was nothing, but Crash did so like to play. Nick shook his head. No. Grey eyes or not, that thing was not Crash. There was no such thing as werewolves. There wasn’t. No matter what he was seeing, it was not the product of a man morphing into a wolf. But in the back of his mind, Nick heard Wes happily nattering away about the etymology of the word “lycanthropy”. Wolf and man.
“No,” Nick whispered as the werewolf slid onto the hood of his truck, fur rustling against the metal and setting his teeth on edge. He couldn’t deny what he was seeing, but it wasn’t a wolf-man, it had to be some kind of natural animal. A freak of nature, no doubt, but an animal. Except animals didn’t smile and animals didn’t have human eyes. That scream Nick thought he couldn’t make was rising up his throat anyway.
The weight of the thing on the hood was pulling the nose of the truck down, shocks groaning softly. The hood dimpled beneath its weight with the bite of metal sinking inward. The creature’s nose was pressed against the windshield, leaving a smudgy, wet print as it gazed in at Nick, glass fogging then clearing with each breath. Its ears pricked up and swiveled back on its head a second before Nick saw the back door open and felt his heart stop in his chest.
Nancy stood in the open doorway, face bone white, her eyes wild and huge. There was a shotgun hanging from her hand at her side, barrel pointed down at the threshold. She had her mouth open like she was going to call for Nick, but when she saw what was on the hood of his truck she took a stumbling step backward. Nick watched as her grip on the stock of the shotgun loosened and it drooped. He felt like his insides were liquefying as he stared and waited—fucking waited because he could no longer speak, could no longer move, could no longer do anything—for the gun to fall from her hand completely.
The werewolf slid off the hood as smooth and agile as any cat Nick had ever seen and incredibly fast. It chuffed once, Hey there, pretty lady and started for her. It had only taken a step before Nick remembered he had a voice and used it to scream, “Shoot it! Shoot the motherfucker!”
The sound of his voice jarred Nancy out of her shock and she raised the gun as the creature grabbed the porch railing to hoist itself over so it could get to her. It startled the monster as well and it turned to look back at Nick as Nancy raised the shotgun to her shoulder and pulled the trigger. The muzzle flare exploded into the night, orange and yellow and loud. Nancy flew backward from the violent kick of the gun against her shoulder and the shot went wild. It hit one of the porch posts and part of it disintegrated into splinters that flew outward like shrapnel, some of which buried itself in the side of the werewolf’s face.
Its scream was a sound that Nick would hear in his nightmares for years to come. It was deep and enraged, a pained yelp that ground its way into a snarl like the sound of rusted gears grinding their way toward Armageddon. Nick saw the hackles along its broad, muscular back rise even as it shook its head to try and rid itself of the things hurting it. It wasn’t smiling anymore; its lips were wrinkled back from its teeth in a vicious sneer as it whipped back around toward Nancy.
Nick moved before he realized he was going to do it, shoving open the door so hard it shrieked on its hinges. He grabbed the crowbar from behind his seat and flew out of the truck, stumbling under his own forward momentum. He saw what was going to happen and in his mind he saw Nancy being torn apart by those enormous teeth and dangerous claws and he couldn’t bear it. The thought of all that blood, of her screams of pain, were as real as if it was already happening and the anger he felt then blotted out the world and washed everything with red as he charged forward and swung the crowbar like a baseball bat.
It thudded against the thick muscle of the werewolf’s shoulders and knocked it off balance. Nick took another swing with the crowbar and caught the upper curve of its furred arm where it joined with the shoulder. He swung again and long, strong fingers closed around the black iron and yanked the crowbar from his hands.
Nick focused then and looked into the glaring eyes of his own death. It was right in front of him, so close he could smell the warm, clean animal scent of its fur and feel the heat radiating from its body like a furnace. Nick could see the way the lights caught in its dark fur and made it sparkle and shine like deep, cold water.
There was fight and there was flight and Nick no longer had the option of either one. He could try to run, but there was nowhere to go. He could fight, but it was a match he would lose. What he could not do was just stand there and let the thing kill him though. He thought he would run, his mad dash thoughts assuring him that he could make it back to the truck, shut and lock the door and just wait this nightmare out. Nick saw himself doing it so clearly that he wasn’t thinking about it when he lashed out and clocked the damn thing so hard he felt at least one of his knuckles crack.
The werewolf made a garbled, grating sound that seeped its way into Nick’s mind like toxic chemicals. He didn’t know what that noise was at first, but then he realized it was laughing at him. So he hit it again. The thing’s laughter cut off like water from a faucet and silence reigned in the darkness once again. It moved and Nick managed to take one short step backward before the beast was on him.
He heard Nancy scream over the sound of the monster’s growl. It gripped Nick’s sides in its huge hands as it sank its massive teeth into his shoulder. Its mouth was so large it wrapped all the way around to his back nearly between his shoulders, canine-like molars shaped like jagged mountain peaks sinking into his upper arm; the cutting teeth of a predator. It shook its head as it bit down, shaking Nick like he was made of straw and weighed nothing, rather than a six-foot-three-inch tall, well-muscled man of around two hundred twenty five pounds.
Somewhere, someone was screaming and Nick realized it was Nancy. He was silent, numb with shock as he tried to fight the thing off of him, pounding his one fist down on its thick back and neck over and over and over again. In the distance, sirens wailed and even closer the shotgun went off again. The pain was epic and never ending, so deep and brutal it was like cold electricity running through him.
Then the teeth were gone and Nick was falling to the ground on his knees. The pain found its real life then, growing hot and deep and so intense he thought he was going to be sick with it as it washed over and through him in pulsing waves that began at each entry wound and radiated throughout his body. Nick shook his head and the world spun around him as he took a shaking breath and tried to push himself to his feet. The monster was still there and it would eat him if he didn’t get up and fight or run or do something. He started to rise, shaking and soaking wet all down his left side, but then he collapsed.
“Nick, can you hear me? Look at me, Nicky, come on.”
Nick recognized Nancy’s voice and tried to answer her, but his tongue felt thick in his mouth. He licked his lips, started to speak anyway, but instead, he screamed. Nick tried to jerk away from the pressure bearing down on his shoulder, pushing the pain deeper and harder through his body. He fought against it as best he could, but he was dizzy and weak, cold all over and starting to shiver.
“Shh,” Nancy said. She eased up on the pressure long enough to push his hair out his face with cool, trembling fingers. “I have to apply pressure to it. You’re losing a lot of blood. Say something, please, Nicky, talk to me.”
“Bleh,” Nick managed. He swallowed, throat so dry it felt like the contracting walls of his esophagus were sticking together. “Where is it? Where’d it go?”
“I don’t know,” Nancy said. “It just let you go and ran off toward the woods.”
The sirens Nick had heard were drawing close, the familiar, much hated shriek of them making Nick want to hide even though he’d done nothing wrong. He was stuck where he was though, Nancy kneeling beside him, hair hanging in her face, lips pressed into a thin, white line as she put her fingers to his neck to check his pulse.
“It was… What…” Nick tried to form a sentence, but language escaped him. He was thirsty and c
old, sleepier than he could ever remember being. He thought maybe he was dying.
“I saw it,” Nancy said. “I don’t… I don’t know what I saw. I looked right at the damn thing and I can’t… I can’t really believe. Oh, God, Nicky, it bit you.”
The wail of sirens grew to a cacophony and Nick forgot about the pain in his body to wince at the pain in his ears. He closed his eyes to try and blot out the sound. Obviously if you don’t look at it then you can’t hear it. The mind is a scary place full of malfunctions and stupid ideas.
Nick coughed out a laugh that made the world behind his eyelids pulse and ripple, a curtain belling out in a breeze.
“They’re here,” Nancy said as if Nick had not heard the racket of A Police Presence. He squeezed his eyes closed tighter as she yelled, “We’re back here! Please, hurry and bring a first-aid kit!”
“Ma’am, step away,” came a deep, baritone voice.
“I will not.” Nancy sounded more like herself; authoritative and no-nonsense. “I’m a fucking doctor and he needs medical care. Now get me that first-aid kit and radio in for an ambulance. Now.”
“Rawr,” Nick muttered.
“Hush,” Nancy said. She took a shaky breath and mumbled a curse under her breath.
The world was narrowing to a pinprick, the light seeping through Nick’s eyelids going to a dim, sullen red. He was in incredible pain, but with each second that the darkness drew nearer, the pain moved farther away. It was a welcome respite and Nick opened his arms to it even as a part of him bucked and fought against the idea that this might not be mere unconsciousness, but death.
Shades of Night (Sparrow Falls Book 1) Page 34
