Amy snatched Lara's arm. “We can't just leave them out there. What if the wolf goes after them?”
“We don't have time to babysit them.”
“But they're sitting ducks out there. That thing is just gonna mow them down.”
Lara spun at Amy and the girl stepped back, almost frightened at the anger on the woman's face. “We find the wolf and put it down. Then they'll be safe.”
A growl ripped through the trees, obscene in its ferocity. The same godawful sound that ripped through her nightmares ever since the incident. Amy's eyes darted around to pinpoint its source but night had fallen and there was nothing to see but blackness. When it sounded a second time, the noise rumbled to the west, a little north of their location. The same direction that carried the voices of the ghost-hunters.
“We can't just let them die, Lara.” This time it was Amy charging out in front at a dead run, the throw of the flashlight bobbing crazily through the pines. Lara cursed and went after her.
The paranormal trackers were huddled in the middle of the path when Amy bound over the ditch. Griffin aimed a flashlight on her while Jay swung the lens of his videocamera her way, filming whatever was rushing them. Relief broke the terror on their faces when they realized it was Amy.
“Did you hear that thing?” Griffin gushed. “Did you see it?”
“Are you brain-dead?” Amy panted, trying to catch her breath. “That thing is gonna rip you to pieces. Get out of here.”
“Not if you're here to save us,” Jay said, training the camera on her.
“Get that off me.” Amy pushed the lens away. “I'm not here to save your dumb ass. Get out of here.”
Griffin shook his head. “When we're this close? No way.”
Tasha kept her eyes on the trees hemming them in. “Maybe we should listen to her.”
“No! We have a job to do.”
“Then you can be wolf bait.” Lara marched up with the shotgun in hand and contempt in her eyes. “The wolf is already circling you.”
“See?” Jay said, turning the camera lens on Lara. “You're here to save us.”
Lara slapped the camera away, snatched the young man by the collar and shook him. “Point that at me again and I will smash your teeth in.” Lara shoved him away. Jay stumbled and fell, landing hard on his ass on the gravel road. He winced at the impact and called her a bitch.
He didn't have the camera ready when the wolf charged.
It burst from the darkness with the speed of a runaway train. The beams of three lights swung up to flash the open maw of monstrous teeth. A blur of dark fur and mass arcing up as it leapt at them, its trajectory aimed at the girl in black.
The blast from the shotgun knocked it sideways, Lara already pumping another round. The monster overshot the mark with its teeth but its bulk trampled Tasha before crashing and rolling over the ground. Tasha screamed in shock and then screamed anew when Amy snatched her by the collar and pulled her away. The wolf roared at them with a fury that rumbled Amy's molars. Bringing her gunhand up fast, she fired three quick rounds at it before the creature shot away into the darkness.
Seating the shotgun against her shoulder, Lara listened to the crashing noise from the darkness and tried to triangulate the sounds. Leading her aim to allow for its trajectory, she thundered a round of twelve gauge into the darkness. A momentary stumble in the noise but she had no way to confirm the hit. Either way it was still alive, still moving.
Tasha coiled into knot and when Amy knelt over her she could feel the young woman quaking uncontrollably. She found no blood or wounds and cooed to the medium that she was okay. Amy looked up when Lara came round. “Did you hit it?”
“Yes. But it's still moving.” Lara jacked the slide on the Mossberg, spinning out the empty hull. “We have to go after it.”
Amy straightened up but Tasha clung to her, refusing to let go. “Griffin! Tasha needs help.”
Griffin wasn't listening, too busy bickering with Jay about how to activate the night-vision mode on the camera. Barking orders at his camera-man, he seemed possessed and completely oblivious to the peril he was in.
Lara stormed at him, snatched him by the ear and threw him onto the dirt before his companion. “Look after your friend. Stay here.”
Taken aback at the violence, Amy kept mum when Lara ran for the trees and barked at her to follow. She plucked her arm free from Tasha's grip and ran to catch up. Night had fallen and the thick of darkness was total. The flashlight in Amy's hand barely cut through the pitch and she stumbled over rocks and exposed roots trying to keep up. Lara zigzagged through the trees in a crazed serpentine path as if lost. Consumed in the hunt, she seemed to forget all about the girl trailing her and only stopped when Amy called out.
Amy's knees were muddy from stumbling so many times. She brushed the grit from her hands. “Lara, I don't want to get lost out here.”
“Look.” Lara threw the beam of light over the ground. Blood speckled the carpet of dry pine needles, trailing off into the darkness.
Lara had finally broken a sweat, dampening her hair over her brow. She was breathing hard and her eyes had a manic glaze to them. Amy touched her arm. “Hey. Are you okay?”
“I'm fine,” Lara gritted. But she wasn't and they both knew it.
Amy couldn't imagine what it must be like, given the curse that flowed in Lara’s veins. All she knew was what Lara had told her; that she had to keep the monster locked up in her heart. The warning signs were stitched over the woman's face and Amy knew she was struggling to keep the wolf contained. “You don't look so good. Maybe we should get out of here.”
“No. Not when we're this close.”
“Lara,” Amy said, getting the woman's attention. “I don't want to be stuck out here alone with two wolves.”
“You won't.” Lara marched on, waving at her to follow. “Come on. Before we lose it.”
The tangle of forest thinned and they stomped out of the trees into a clearing. Before them spanned the high wooden fence they had seen before, every third post marked with an iron cross. Tracing her flashlight over the ground, Lara followed the trail of blood until it vanished at the fence. Had the wolf leaped over the high wall?
Amy heard a sharp crack as she caught up to Lara.
Coming up behind the woman, Amy heard the sharp crack of wood splitting. She looked up to see wind up and kick down the fence post. It cracked and timbered down, the fence rails tumbling away like dry sticks.
“What are you doing?” Amy snapped.
“Come on.” Lara clambered over the tumble of broken styles, leaping to the other side.
Amy picked her way over the timbers. Her light fell on the post with its peculiar iron cross and she could see an inscription had been carved around the circumference of the post but the words made no sense, scribed in the language of the people who had built the fence. No time to puzzle over it now, she ran on into the field but stopped when she realized Lara wasn't behind her. The woman tarried near the broken rails.
“Lara! What is it?”
Lara paced back and forth, as if unsure of what to do. “Something's wrong.”
“Hurry. Before we lose it.”
The wolf roared as it charged. Appearing out of nowhere on the outer side of the fence, the wolf came tearing through the breach in the perimeter with the force of a bullet. It bounded over the timbers, charging at Lara.
Amy swung the gun up, too late to stop the thing but she blanched when the monstrous thing crashed over Lara and kept moving, as if it had no interest in the woman. It thundered past Amy and tore down the hill.
Lara struggled to get back up, her legs wobbly, as Amy ran to her.
“Are you all right?”
“What happened?”
Amy took Lara’s arm to steady her. “I don’t know. It blew right past you.”
A scream ripped through the night, clarion in the still air. Echoing from up from the village in the valley below. Pinpricks of light flickered in the windows of the little ho
uses. Another cry rang out. A fleeting blur of the wolf as it thundered over the field for the lights of the hamlet.
21
GRIFFIN STARTLED AT THE sound of gunfire crackling through the darkened trees. He hazarded a guess to its general direction, north by northeast. “This way.”
Jay followed on his heels, one pupil in the eyepiece of his camera. He had finally resolved the glitch with the night-vision mode that he had paid so much to upgrade his equipment with. Using it as a guide to traverse the terrain, he kept pace with Griffin. “Do you think they killed it?”
“No way.” Griffin crashed through the thistlewood, praying that the two women hunting the thing hadn't killed it yet. Having spent most of his life chasing the supernatural, he didn't want to be cheated out of the biggest find of his career. “Where’s Tasha?”
“What? Shit.” Jay looked up from his camera and almost smacked into the trunk of poplar tree. In the mad rush of the chase, he had forgotten that their psychic colleague was a chimney who could barely walk fast let alone run. He swung the night-vision lens back behind him but no one appeared in view-finder. Tasha was gone. “Griffin, hold up! We lost her!”
“Where the hell did she go?” Griffin reversed course, drawing alongside his cameraman. They doubled back, calling her name.
They found her leaning against a mossy outcropping, spent and wheezing. Her hand shot up to shield her eyes from the white flare of Griffin's flashlight.
Griffin was furious. “Tasha, come on! We gotta catch up.”
Tasha shook her head. “This is a bad idea.”
“Snap out of it,” Jay admonished. “We're too close to quit now.”
“We need to go back,” she said. “This place is all wrong.”
Griffin marched on her. “How do you know? Do you see something?”
“Just a gut feeling. That thing almost killed us.”
Griffin sputtered. “That thing is why we're here. It's why we do this. You want to quit because it’s hard? No.”
“That thing is gonna kill us all if we keep chasing it.”
“We've never been this close before. Come on.”
The young woman gnawed her lower lip, not wanting to let her team down but, at the same time, wanting nothing more than to run in the opposite direction. She had no tangible way to express what her gut was warning her from.
Sensing her equivocation, Jay palmed her shoulder. “You can do this. The Paranormal Trackers are about to blow the truth wide open. We can't do it without you.”
She took the bait. The cornball all-for-one kind of push worked its magic on this brittle woman who had felt like a freak her entire life. The fact that they needed her was impossible to refuse.
“Okay,” she grunted and shoved off the tree that was propping her upright. “Just don't take off on me again.”
Both men promised they wouldn't and the trio bounded forth hand-in-hand.
~
A bell was ringing madly in the night, its shrill peel clanging an alarm through the village of old farmhouses. Following hard on Lara's heels, Amy saw the source of the alarm, a shuttered bell tower on the steepled roof of a tall house. Townspeople ran onto their porches, woken from their hearths by the bell ringing. The men in their dark suits, pulling on wide brimmed hats, and the women in long dresses and bonnets. Amy watched them look up in horror as she and Lara entered the town square. Two men rushed forward to block their path, waving their arms. Another man picked up a good sized stone to throw.
His aim was spoiled when a dark shape flew from the shadows and tore into him. The big man screamed in pain as the monster shook him and cries of panic rose from the townsfolk bearing witness to the slaughter.
Without breaking pace, Lara brought the shotgun to bear and blasted at the damned thing. She pumped the slide fast and aimed again. Instead of bolting, the wolf charged at her and the impact punched the wind from Lara's lungs. They tumbled and crashed over the ground, woman and wolf locked in a tangle, each furiously going for the other's throat.
The big fifty caliber gun was already in Amy's hand, her eye drawing its bead but there was no shot to take without killing Lara. The two tumbled and fought in close quarters and when Amy saw blood spatter the grass, she couldn't tell whom it belonged to, the wolf or her friend. She reached for her knife, working up the courage to join the close quarters fray when the two separated. Lara kicked free, the monster reeling back and Amy had her shot. Steadying the big gun, she fired and the recoil jarred her molars. It went wide, scorching the wolf's dorsal and blowing a hole in the timberframe house behind it. A kerosene lantern hanging from a peg on the porch exploded from the impact and as the fuel splattered, it ignited. The wooden veranda went up in flames faster than dry October leaves.
Lara rolled up but she stumbled and fell to her knees. Injured, but at this distance, Amy couldn't see how bad it was. And then the lobo swung its head towards Amy and charged.
She swung the gun up again. The magazine held only two more of the precious silver-tipped rounds but if she kept her cool and let the thing come at her, Amy knew she'd have a clear and steady shot. At this range, the impact of the fifty cal would blow the monster's head clean off.
Her shot was aborted when one of the men rushed the monster with a broadaxe. Screaming in a language Amy didn't understand, he buried his axe into the creature's flank. The thing reared and turned on its attacker with brutal ferocity, clamping its prehistoric jaws around the man and shaking him back and forth like a rag doll. The snap of bones rang out and pieces of the man fell to the ground and the great wolf loped away into the darkness with the grisly pieces in its teeth.
Robbed, Amy screamed at the monster in rage. She saw Lara stumbling after it. Then the woman pitched sideways and collapsed to the ground.
The screams of terror rose up as the townsfolk wailed in their foreign tongue. Some stood rooted in horror while others came running with buckets of water to douse the flames of the burning veranda. Amy bolted for Lara, dropping over the prone woman.
“Are you hurt? Look at me.”
The woman's eyes wheeled about crazily until they fixed onto Amy. She brushed the girl away and pushed herself up. “Where is it?”
“It bolted,” Amy said. “Go easy. You got banged up.”
The woman snarled at her to let go. The look in her eyes startled Amy. Vicious and almost alien. An unnatural amber glow lit the iris around the pupils. Amy recoiled. “Lara, stop it. You're changing.”
“Get away from me!”
Not now, Amy thought. She couldn't let Lara change into the pale wolf now. Panicking at what to do, she snatched at the knife on Lara's belt and unsheathed it. Slapping the silver blade to Lara's shoulder, she cut. Not too deep, but enough to draw blood and sink the purifying metal into her flesh. “Bite it down, Lara. Push it back down.”
Lara snapped her head wildly as if waking from some bad dream. When her eyes rose to meet Amy's, the unearthly glow was gone. “Help me up.”
“I'm sorry,” Amy said,
“Don't be. Where did it go?”
As they looked up, more men were bursting from their doors. All of them armed with what appeared to be tools. Axes and hoes and machetes. One man brandished a pitchfork. Ineffective weapons against a monster broken loose from a nightmare. “Doesn't anyone have a gun in this town?”
Further mayhem sounded when the ghost hunters appeared. Griffin led the way, Tasha trailing behind with the boom mic in her hands. Jay was filming as he ran, the camera jostling crazily as he swept the lens over the village, filming the chaos. Spotting the two women, Griffin motioned for his team to follow and ran towards them.
Amy heard Lara curse but an unearthly roar rippled through the night air, cutting her profanity short. The villagers froze in their tracks, weapons gripped tight in their fists. The wolf was coming back.
It burst from behind a barn. Half a ton of muscle and berserk rage, barreling towards the villagers like a shot. Its mangy hide slathered in gore from the earlier kill,
its eyes white hot. A few of the men raised their tools to defend themselves, others simply blanched in horror at the monstrosity thundering at them. Six of the men went down as the lobo tore into them with rabid savagery. Some of the men struck back with their weapons, others ran for higher ground.
Lara hissed at the girl. “Take the shot.”
“There's too many people in the way.”
Shrugging the girl off, Lara limped forward. “I'll draw it off. Take the shot but make it count.”
Amy hated the idea but did as she was told, veering to one side of the chaos while Lara limped the other way. With two silver rounds left, the ploy had to work.
The wolf had other plans. It sprang from the bloodied wreckage of another downed villager and shot towards the figure with the camera. Jay had rushed in too close, dropping to one knee to steady the lens for a better shot. He got the shot but the monster suddenly zoomed up fast in the frame and its maw swallowed the camera.
Griffin screamed and Tasha backpedalled away as the monster's jaws locked over the cameraman and shook him violently. Amy swung the big handgun to bear but had no clear shot. Lara, armed with the shotgun that would have sprayed everyone, was in an even worse position. She aimed the twelve gauge at the sky and fired, hoping the boom would startle the lobo. All it did was send the townspeople ducking for cover.
Amy bolted towards the monster. Closer proximity would give her a clear shot. She could put the monster down before it tore Jay to pieces. Bringing the barrel up, one of the villagers rushed the beast, fouling her shot. A young man with sandy hair, no older than herself, swung at the monster with a curved sickle, slicing a red gash into the thing's neck. Jay fell from the wolf's jaws in a bloodied heap as the lobo swung its head and bared its teeth at its attacker. It struck fast, snapping its jaws but the young man feinted and swung again, burying his curved blade into its snout.
The wolf reared back taking the sickle with it. Weaponless, the youth backed away as the monster bore down on him. His fate sealed, the young man cast about for a rock or a stick but there was nothing and his death all but guaranteed until Amy shot forward and put herself between the wolf and the boy. The lobo snapped its teeth and popped its jaws, coming on fast, and Amy leveled the barrel of the big gun and fired. The boom was deafening. Blood sprayed hot as the round tore a massive hole in the beast's underbelly and gore vomited out of the wound. The great wolf faltered in its charge but reared up and came on again, heedless to the pain or destruction it suffered. Mindless in its berserk rage, it lurched at the girl before it.
Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3 Page 68
