Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3

by McGregor, Tim

  Marisol rolled her eyes. “We had another transfer, so we’re short-staffed again. It’s killing everybody but what can we do? Bide our time until they staff up again. What about you? How’s the rescue team?”

  Lara attacked her meal, mulling over whether or not to tell her sister that she’s about to lose her job. Marisol had enough on her plate without worrying about her big sister too. “We found a survivor in the desert two nights ago. Little girl, curled up under a rock. She was barely breathing.”

  “God. Is she all right?”

  “She didn’t make it.” Lara lowered her fork. “It was awful, Mar. She was nine.”

  Marisol visibly shuddered. “I don’t know how people can do that. Drag your kid through the desert in the middle of the night? Jesus Maria.”

  “I guess if you’re desperate enough, you’ll try anything.” Lara sat up and glanced through into the living room. “Where’s Sean?”

  “In the backyard. Where he always is.”

  Marisol’s husband had rotated back Stateside after serving in Afghanistan. Sean was a sergeant with the 25th Infantry, stationed in the hotspot of the Kunar province. He’d been home for three weeks now, after months of Marisol and Jackson praying for his safe return. The yellow ribbon was taken down off the pinon tree in the front yard but something other than gratitude had crept into Marisol’s countenance. A dimness to her eyes that Lara picked out despite the forced cheer and bright smile. Sean had come back to them physically unscathed but not exactly whole.

  Lara took up her water glass. “Has he said anything yet? About his tour?”

  “He says there’s nothing to talk about,” Marisol said, eyes on the floor.

  “Mmm. Has he gone to the VA services?”

  “Says he’s fine. Doesn’t need it.”

  Lara reached out and covered her sister’s hand with her own. “Give him time. He’ll come around.”

  “I know. It’s just—” Marisol’s voice hitched and she took a breath to compose herself. “It’s like living with a ghost sometimes. He’s gone whole days without saying a single word. Not even to Jackson.”

  “Tia!” Jackson came bounding around the corner dressed in Spiderman pajamas, mask included. “All done.”

  Lara pulled the boy in for a hug. “Hey, it’s our friendly neighborhood Jackson! Can you see in that thing?”

  “Yup.”

  “Did you brush your teeth?”

  Spiderman said nothing. Lara tugged the mask off, riffling the boy’s hair into a tussled mess. Jackson smiled thinly.

  “Even superheroes have to brush their teeth,” Marisol said, rising from her chair. “Let’s go.”

  Lara motioned for her to stay put. “I got this. Come on, Spidey.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yup. I get to do story-time, right?” Lara took the boy’s hand and let him lead her down the hallway to the bathroom.

  If it was up to Jackson, they would have read every book on his shelf. Lara lay next to him on the bed, her head tucked against his as she turned the pages of the oversized storybooks. She made up funny voices for the characters and he interrupted every story to tell her knock-knock jokes. After the seventh story, she closed the book and kissed the top of his head and said it was time to go to sleep.

  Jackson groaned then looked at her. “Are you staying over tonight, tia?”

  “Yeah. That okay with you?”

  “You can sleep in my bed. I’ll squish over.” He wiggled to the edge of his bed to show how her how much room he could accommodate.

  “Oh thanks, honey, but I’ll stay in the guestroom. I snore.”

  “I don’t care,” the boy said, meaning every word. “Stay with me.”

  She sat up and tucked the blankets up to his chin. A flash image of the little girl curled up in the desert streaked through her mind as she smoothed the blanket over his tiny shoulders. She had to push the image away. “I’ll be down the hall, okay? Will you wake me up in the morning?”

  “Okay.”

  She smoothed the hair from his brow. “Must be nice to have your dad back after all this time, huh?” The boy nodded but didn’t elaborate. Lara watched him burrow into the pillow. “Do you guys have fun together? Playing Spiderman or reading stories and stuff?”

  “Yeah,” he said quickly, almost defensively. “Well, we don’t play a lot. Not like before. Daddy’s tired. He worked really hard over there.”

  A sharp tug and Lara suddenly found her heart in her throat. The boy was five years old but already sticking up for his papa. She gave him another kiss. “He sure did. Goodnight, little man.”

  She left the boy’s bedroom door open by an inch and went out to the living room. Marisol sat with her feet propped up and a book cradled against her chest. The TV was still on but her eyes were closed. Lara took the remote, lowered the volume by a few degrees and placed the remote back next to her sister. Turning to the window, she tried to peer into the backyard but couldn’t see past the reflection of the living room.

  If asked, Lara would have to admit that she had never been close to her brother-in-law but they got along well enough. A few common interests and a little shared history had translated into relaxed family visits. Not anymore. Sean Sparks was withdrawn and sullen since returning home. God only knew what he had been put through overseas but he wasn’t the same man.

  Lara stepped out to the backyard, easing the screen door home so it would bang against the frame. Sean sat in a patio chair, staring out at the night sky. He was a big man, a linebacker on his high school football team but he had lost a lot of weight during his last tour. Most of it in his eyes.

  Lara drew up to the patio table. Empty beer bottles stood at attention on the tabletop, along with an ashtray and the rag end of a joint. Sean didn’t move, made no indication that he was aware of her at all. “Nice night,” she said.

  He nodded slowly without looking her way.

  Lara dropped into the stiff patio chair and stretched her legs out. Bone tired, she had little strength left to prop up a one-sided conversation about the weather. “I just put Jackson to bed but he’s probably still awake if you want to say goodnight.”

  “I’ll give him a kiss later.” Sean’s words were slow and drawled, as if each one was difficult to spit out.

  A dog was barking somewhere down the street. Lara shifted in her chair. “You doing okay?”

  “Never better.”

  The silence crept back and Lara felt herself sinking into the chair. She was too tired to dance around any issues so she put the hammer to the nail. “Marisol’s worried about you, Sean. So am I. You should go to the VA hospital and talk to someone.”

  “There’s nobody there I wanna talk to.”

  “I know. I can’t begin to understand what you’ve been through but I know that keeping it inside doesn’t help. I used to see some nasty stuff in my old job and I used to think I had to keep it to myself. Be tough like the other guys. But that didn’t work. That stuff festers, comes out in weird ways. The only thing that helped was talking it through with somebody. Flushing it out. There’s people at the VA who can help. Veterans who’ve been there too.”

  “Like I said, I don’t want to talk to them.” He sipped his beer and set the bottle onto the table. “I want to talk to Marisol about it.”

  Lara brightened at that, surprised. “Well good. That’s good you want to talk to her.”

  “It’s hard,” he said.

  “I know. Take it slow. Baby steps.”

  “It’s hard because you’re always here, Lara. It’s hard to sit her down to talk because she’s always got you now to talk to. I can’t compete.” He shook his head. “Words are hard. Some days I can’t even form a complete sentence.”

  Lara watched the muscles in his jaw clench and unclench, saw the effort it took for him to say even this much. She had no idea she was standing in the way. Aside from needing the comfort of her sister and nephew, Lara thought she was being supportive to the family. Not the case. Sean needed room to
heal and maybe Marisol, without realizing it, needed some space too. To put back the pieces of her family.

  Lara brushed a fleck of lint from her knee then stood. “Okay. I’ll give you some space. But promise me you’ll talk to Marisol. She needs comfort too.”

  “Thank you.”

  Lara turned to go, then stopped. “Jackson’s expecting me to be here in the morning. Will you tell him I had to go back?”

  “I will.”

  She crossed back into the house. Marisol hadn’t moved but the book had fallen from her hands onto the floor. Lara picked it up and tried to judge by the crease in the pages where she had left off and slipped the bookmark in. She looked at the cover then left the paperback on the coffee table and went out the front door.

  Back behind the wheel, the sensation of being lost was almost tactile. First the pastor’s team and now her own family. She’d been lost and isolated before but that had been of her own choosing. This felt different. Shunned and ostracized. The sting of it burned hotter with each mile and she knew she had to shut it down before it triggered something unwanted.

  When the next exit came up, Lara pulled off the highway and drove west, looking for a road that would deliver her into the scrubland of the New Mexican desert.

  10

  PAROXYSM. FOUR MONTHS AGO it had only been a word. Now it was something Amy knew through experience. A sudden onset and intensification of a pathological symptom. In her case it was a mental shutdown followed by uncontrollable trembling coupled with physical paralysis. The trigger was always the same. Fear, followed hard by panic.

  She had leapt back from the words onscreen as if jolted by an electrical shock.

  Animal attack.

  Werewolf attack.

  Same difference.

  Amy breathed through the shock, trying to logic her way out of it. Maybe it was a coincidence, maybe a misreport of the details. There were no more monsters, she told herself. They had destroyed them all. Her father had blown the damn things to pieces and left them burning in the snow. She herself had killed the last one. Grissom, writhing in torment on the snow, caught in some horrific morphing between human and wolf. She had leveled the barrel of the big .50 caliber at his eyes and blown his skull to pulp. There were no more monsters.

  It took a full six minutes before she uncurled and crawled back to the screen. She needed to read it again. Check the facts and verify her theory. A simple task. Get all the info and then determine the truth. But the text hadn’t changed, the details no less alarming. Two separate deaths, both mutilations consistent with an animal attack. Possibly a grizzly but more akin to a wolf attack. Both incidents not far from the very spot where her father had died. The awful truth settled down on her like radioactive ash.

  They hadn’t destroyed them all. One or possibly two werewolves had survived the explosion and the gunfire and the flames. Grissom had been the alpha, the pack leader. Without him, these surviving lobos were lost and running wild. Unchecked, they would kill again. Worse, they could infect any soul unlucky enough to survive an attack. The implications were numbing.

  Despite the tremors in her limbs, Amy shot out of the small office and tested the bolt on the backdoor. Still locked. The front door was boarded up and secure so she sprinted past it to the garage and slammed the roll-up door down, hammering the slide bolt home. Then she hurried back to the little office room, wary of every shadow and dark corner.

  She read through the two reports again, hoping that a sober second look might dispel her suspicions but the details remained stubbornly unmoved. The dates of the incident reports were even more troubling. The first occurred the previous month, the last was filed four days ago.

  Lara needed to know. Lara would know what to do. Digging her phone out, she dialed Lara’s cell and listened to it ring. No answer. She hung up and texted her a simple message telling her there was trouble and to call her immediately.

  A noise from upstairs sounded through the walls. Amy froze to listen for more but there was nothing. It was an old house, she told herself. It could be anything. Raccoons crawling through the attic. Or rabid lycanthropes slithering in through a second-story window.

  Time to go. She forwarded the details from the news feed to her own inbox before shutting down the machine. The two boxes of collected items were left by the front door as she hurried down her old street, tempted to sprint all the way home.

  ~

  “Some days, I could just shoot these people,” Cheryl said. Dropping her bag onto the table, she hauled up onto a stool in the kitchen and propped her elbows on the countertop. “These newbie homebuyers, they expect every place to be a turn-key dream home. It’s like dealing with spoiled children.”

  For the most part, Cheryl enjoyed being a realtor. Something about imagining the potential in an old home prepped for market or the thrill of seeing a couple fall in love with a house never failed to goose her spirits. Other times the clients, both buyers and sellers, could drive her around the bend with pretentious standards and impossible demands. “These people expect miracles every day.”

  Norm unpacked the groceries from the bags. “Bad day, huh?”

  “This one woman, I thought I was going to strangle her. After showing her four houses today, she burst into tears and told me I wasn’t fulfilling her needs.”

  “You punched your timecard for today. Put it away.” Norm opened a bottle of wine, poured a small glass and pushed it across the counter towards her. “Tomorrow will be better.”

  “Thank you,” Cheryl sighed. She forced a smile. “How was your day?”

  The clatter at the front door had them both craning their necks to see Amy bursting in. They watched her slide the bolt lock in place then march past them towards the back door.

  “Hi honey,” Cheryl said.

  “Hi,” Amy said without slowing down. She disappeared down the hall.

  Norm looked at Cheryl with a raised eyebrow and they both listened to the sound of locks turning and bolts sliding home. “Someone else is having a rough day,” he said.

  When Amy returned to the kitchen, she spotted the sliding glass doors to the back deck. Norm had opened them to get some air into the house. Amy slid the door closed and turned the lock.

  Cheryl watched her daughter batten down the hatches. She’d seen this routine before. “Do you want to tell us what happened?”

  “I’m fine,” Amy said.

  “You’re having another episode, honey.” Cheryl nodded to the locked door. “What was it this time?”

  Amy stomped a hasty retreat towards the stairs. “I just feel better with the doors locked.”

  “Slow down. Come sit.” Norm nodded to the stool beside her mother. “You hungry?”

  “I’m fine,” she repeated.

  “You’re not fine,” Cheryl said. “You’re pale as a ghost and you’re eyes are all buggy. What happened?”

  Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking so she jammed them in her pockets. “I went to the house.”

  “Oh.” Cheryl leaned back, cautious now. “Are you okay?”

  “I went through it. There’s two boxes near the front door. Just the stuff I wanted. The rest can stay or go to charity.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have gone with you.”

  “It’s fine. You can put it on the market.”

  Her mother’s eyebrows shot up. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. It’s just a house.” Amy turned and took the stairs two at a time.

  Norm opened the bottle again and splashed a little for himself. “Well, what do you know?”

  Cheryl held her gaze on the stairwell long after her daughter had disappeared. “After all that fuss earlier? Something isn’t right.”

  With the door to her bedroom closed, Amy dug out her phone and scrolled through her contact list. Lara was listed in her phone under the alias Lara Quesada. Amy didn’t want to invite disaster if anyone searched her cell. Lara Mendes, former homicide detective, was wanted under an outstanding arrest warrant.
/>
  When she dialed, all she got was a beep followed by an automated voice telling her the number she was trying to reach was unavailable. No message option, no other prompts. Had Lara changed numbers without telling her? That seemed unlikely. Had something happened to her? She tried the number again, only to get the same results.

  Opening her laptop, she scrolled down her email for their last correspondence. Almost a month ago, a simple catch-up message. She said she was liking her new job but was having a hard time working on a team again. A few co-workers were duds or blowhards. There was nothing in the email trail to signal trouble of any kind. If anything, Lara Mendes had sounded content, almost happy. She hadn’t sounded happy in a very long time.

  So where was she? Amy stared at her phone, chewing a fingernail. She needed to tell Lara about what she had found, about the very real possibility that one of the wolves had survived.

  Maybe Lara’s sister knew where she was. Amy scrolled the list again until she found the name Marisol. No surname. She dialed and waited. It picked up on the third ring. The voice on the other end sounded tired.

  “Marisol? It’s me, Amy. Lara’s friend?”

  “Amy. How are you?” A moment, then Marisol’s voice crinkled with concern. “What is it, honey? Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Listen, I’m trying to get ahold of Lara but her phone doesn’t seem to be working. Did she change her number again?”

  “She might have. Sometimes she forgets to tell everybody when she does. Or sometimes she just leaves it off for days. Hang on a second, I’ll see what number I have.”

  Amy stopped pacing and looked at her reflection in the mirror. Dark lines scored under her eyes, the complexion pale. A ghost version of herself. When Marisol came back on the line and read a number to her, she checked it against the one in her contact list. “That’s the number I got. Marisol, is Lara okay?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  There was a tiny pause before Marisol had answered and Amy picked up on it. “What is it? Is she in trouble? You can tell me, Marisol.”

  “It’s nothing. I’m sure she’s just overworked.”