“How can you stand living in such an ugly, biped body,” Gold grabbed at her bare feet. He grinned suddenly, his teeth flared in the moonlight.
“Think you can take me in when I’m human? You were one too, at first,” Blue cupped her fingers, tempting Gold like he was Morpheus and she was Neo, both about to duel in The Matrix.
This was what he had been waiting for, Gold’s tongue flicking his tongue across his teeth, “You think I won’t?”
“Come at me. If you’re wolf enough.”
Gold barked violently, cursing at her as their brothers and sisters crossed between them. Trying to diffuse the moment, angering him more.
He knocked them to either side like gnats, hearing their whines as he leaped, slicing his nails at Blue.
Boys, Blue sighed. She stepped to the side. He slid as she observed him hydroplaning across the pine needles like he was on the surface of the Cove Bay. Gold saw the enormous pine before he could get his footing. “Sh—,” He struck the trunk headfirst and fell flat on his belly. He looked up, dazed, as Blue knelt, held his jaw and smiled.
“You’re getting better. Next time, lead with your bite, not your bark.” She nodded at Gray, the youngest but the canniest of the pack. “You and Sienna take the watch. Anybody comes,” she eyed each of them. “Eat ‘em.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Keep an eye on Gold, will you? He’s impatient, but he means well. I’ll see you again as soon as I’m able.” Gray and Sienna wagged their tails as the other wolves surrounded watching Blue head to the mill.
Chapter Four
The woman in the slinky dress picked heavy oak and pine branches from her shoulders. She’d wanted to find out who the man was when she’d heard he’d come to town. The automated call she’d sent to dial herself at the saloon had worked as she’d planned. She had been doing it to give herself a reason to go into town. She never would have had to, if the past hadn’t resurfaced.
She hadn’t planned on the bikers. They showed their heathenish faces usually when their city was quiet. Not when it rallied to choose who was going to lead the next hunt. First, it would be the wolves, then the bears.
Grumbling, she plucked needles off herself—a sure sign the first winter snowfall was coming before anyone knew. She might have time still to find out which of the two she’d encountered might be ‘the one’.
Something pushed through the trees. She spun and when Blue emerged, naked as a babe, she approached and grabbed her by the nape of her neck. “What have I told you about using your human form?”
Blue gasped, the nails of her mistress digging into her supple skin like knives. “The scream. We thought it was him, Mistress.” The stronger woman released her and she fell to the ground, gasping.
“You are to protect the city as instructed and as we agreed,” Blue watched her start for the mill.
“But, what if they come,” Blue cautioned.
Her mistress drew her close. “Defy me again and it will be the last. Like I will with our latest arrival to The Cove. He and the other who’ve been poking around are where I can watch them,” she glanced at Blue. “Get into your protective form.”
Blue did as she was commanded. “He’s here?”
“Why are you interested in him? I need to learn which of them is a shifter. If either can survive the moon after it has risen at high tide.”
Which is in a fortnight, Blue said telepathically. She and her mistress shared a bond the others didn’t possess. Yet all of them could communicate through thought.
“If anything gets out of my control, rally the pack. Tell everyone,” her mistress paused. “Go.”
Blue ran to join the others on the watch, hurt. She wanted to be remembered by her human name, not her animal one. Learning the man they were ordered to find was safe, was enough for her, for now. The man she saw at the bar tonight was more than she was able to think about, now. Besides, how could she explain what had happened to her if they ever met when she was in her human form?
*****
Seemed the winery next to the mill had many routes to the surface as it did veins of gold.
Heading down a dimly lit tunnel, the woman in the red dress descended the steps to an underground chamber. She’d seen her share of the metallic luster but there were greater concerns. Like the creature that was pinned to stone in the old miners’ cave, directly below her.
Taking a pendant from her neck, she unfolded the backing and took out a key. She slid it into the keyhole in the stone and the entrance to the cave unlocked.
The half beast she had heard screech yanked at his restraints as she crossed the cavern and stood within a hair’s breadth.
“Is that how you behave after I rescued you from a possible lynching?” The 10-foot tall creature pulled at the binds with its gnarled hands. Part animal and almost human. The pain of the transformation taking its toll, while she watched his nails stretch into claw-like talons.
“A little longer,” she said, her sultry voice soothing. “You’ll soon obtain the breadth of your power when the moon waxes full.” The long-haired man beast eyed her, wary. “There, there. This is what you said you wanted,” she whispered. Ruby red lips parted near to his newly drooling fangs. So close they could almost touch. “Then you will be mine, my pet. If, you survive.”
He scowled as she enjoyed him pleading as his back grew and his leg bones turned into hind legs. He wailed from the pain and she smiled. It seemed her conquest would survive to see his first blood moon. She would have enjoyed him not poking around, spying on her and she would have told him everything he wanted to know. He’d seen her change without her knowing it. “If you didn’t want to learn what happens when you’re scratched by my kind of bear, we could have just shared a glass a wine.”
They locked stares and she gave him a soft, wet kiss.
The half beast cried as his eyes bulged, his heart pounding, as the blood she gave him following their union roiled in his veins. Yes, she knew the feeling. It was such sweet torture.
“I’ll bring you your favorite vintage,” she went to the entrance. The beast howled loudly. “I know,” she replied without looking at him. “I could always change you back,” peeked over her bare shoulder. “Or perhaps I’ll find another. He’s here, too, you know.”
She regarded him coolly through a carved window in the wall. The anguish in the creature’s eyes betraying the lust she could smell in mere reaching distance. “Soon, my pet. Soon.”
Closing the walled cavern she saw the second creature she’d chained beside him try to free itself. When the man next to the man beast screamed.
He lunged at her and his binds affixed to the stone loosened. She hurried to twist the key when he broke the binding and rushed at the front wall. The stone gave and he thrust his mammoth paws, pushing the wall as he flew by her. His body growing to a height greater than his fellow captive. Screeching louder as his own fingers lengthened into claws. Hair spread across his chest and belly as his face colored dark as his skin, his metamorphosis changing him into a raging beast.
The woman crawled from under the fallen stone, weakened, but her regenerative strength easily returned.
Sniffing the cavern, the beast growled then he lumbered down a tunnel.
She had to stop him. She had to allow him to complete his transformation before he became a threat to himself and everything in the outside world.
Checking the restraints of the nearly-transformed spy she’d captured, she whispered. “You were better off protecting the city than coming after me. The other still has a chance. On the other hand,” she said as she left him howling and screeching, no longer human, but a dragon-like skeleton. “You will have the deepest pits of hell awaiting you and any more of your murderous, soul-eating kind, if the salve I’ve given to you hasn’t taken effect.”
She licked the side of his face as he shrilled in pain.
“Come the next moonrise.”
Chapter Five
The bar crowd murmured. Ridge overheard one side of a conversa
tion, ‘When were they going to cast lots’?
Trees on the other side of the highway shook. Their branches trembling like a stampede was pushing through them hard and wide.
A patron ran to the exit and Gus threw an arm in front of him. “Be still.”
One of the bikers grabbed a bottleneck. She smashed the mouth against the wooden wall making it jagged.
The runt biker whistled low. “Something wicked this way comes,” he giggled. The biker leader shoved the squirt out of his way.
Ridge started for the doors when Gus blocked his path. He touched a plump finger to his lips. “Never be the first that gets served,” he shook his head.
Ridge stared. He was here to work with Griff. Do the rehab and the renovations, and take his share so he could try and begin living life again. He’d let the pain of his loss consume him and he couldn’t stay trapped in the past.
The owner called over his shoulder to Brad. “Get my baby.” Ridge noticed the kid scramble sporting a toothy smile.
Gus leaned close and out of the bikers’ earshot. “Baby is my sawed-off shotgun,” he said as if he had read Ridge’s mind. “It can riddle anything from a rascally rabbit to a full-grown grizzly, guaranteed.”
The runt of the biker gang glanced at Gus and Ridge then he turned back to his gang.
Gus whispered. “You picked a hell of night, arriving in the middle of what the town thinks may be an infestation.”
“An ‘infestation’,” Ridge repeated, syllable by syllable.
“Don’t gimme that look,” Gus said.
Okay, Ridge thought to himself, wary. “Of, what?”
The lead biker hollered and the gang walked backward into the bar. An enormous beast broke through the trees and plowed across the road. It rampaged onto the parking lot grunting straight for the saloon. Cars in the lot twisted under his weight as he crushed them aside, barreling down and at the double swinging doors like a 2-story tall bull.
“Good golly,” the biker leader gasped.
Gus took the ‘Baby’ from Brad. He took another one from him and handed it to Ridge. “Know how to use one of these?”
Ridge bobbed his head as everything around him ground to slow motion.
“Good. That means you ain’t one of them.”
One of ‘them’. One of what? Ridge noticed the bar people breaking bottlenecks and picking up cue sticks and pool balls from the billiard tables. Gus told him to cock his gun.
“You ready?”
It was a regular shotgun, aside from the modification. Like target practice on the gunnery range, thought Ridge. Except he couldn’t see the bulls eye.
The creature slammed its head into swinging doors. Ridge saw its skull and it appeared half-formed. The fur on its body was matted like it hadn’t fully grown. Its gargantuan head and throat spanned almost the entire width of the lintel. “Is that a, Sasquatch?”
“Whatever it is, it picked the wrong saloon,” Gus pointed his gun at the beast.
“It looks like, a ginormous bear,” Brad wheezed.
The giant beast swung at the bikers and its gnarled paws swiped the leader against the wall. Knocking him cold.
A couple of bikers grabbed a chair and charged at the thing. The creature swooped them up and smashed them to splinters.
Gus aimed and fired.
Yowling the creature cupped its shoulder. A dark ooze seeped from its neck.
“Ooh-wee,” that got him. Gus knocked Ridge with his elbow. “Are you gonna use that thing you’re holding or play jerk-off with it?” Gus fired another round.
In the haze of gun sprays and beer glass, Ridge hefted his weapon. His memory of combat training ramping to full-throttle. He worked the weapon like he was on another tour with the Marines.
When he saw the bloodshot red of the beast’s eyes.
*****
Edging closer, from the woods, Blue howled to brothers and sisters as they neared the saloon.
Ridge froze, gun pointing at the snarling beast.
It was like he felt something was familiar about the creature.
The beast looked at Ridge and stopped its attack. It glared and the next moment, its eyes softened. Slowly, it approached him.
Ridge felt the shotgun slip from his grasp as the bar turned eerily still. Everyone inside heard a crescendo of howls that wailed from every direction.
The creature grunted, then spun and exited the nearly shattered swinging doors. He skirted to stop in front of a pack of wolves. The one with the blue eyes snipped at him, clearly the fiercest of them. She lunged and the pack attacked. The beast swung his arms at the four-legged animals. Watching from the saloon, Gus cocked his gun.
He fired again and he struck the creature’s middle. The beast teetered and then roared, fleeing into the darkness, the wolves running in vicious pursuit.
Ridge found his coat, the odor of alcohol and gunshot flooding his nostrils. Gus met him in front of the saloon. People milled around the cars, tipping them right side up as Brad worked a broom around the shards of glass and stains from what appeared to be blood.
His leg seemed better now. Maybe the assault of mammoth monster had sobered him faster than any meds or treatment could.
Phoning Griff, he left his umpteenth message.
“Yo, it’s Ridge. I made it and you’ve got some major explaining to do. You won’t believe what just went down in this sleepy little town of yours. Ring me and let’s get a coffee and you can show me around and I can fill you in before we get cracking on the rehabbing you need me for. Griff?” Ridge’s head filled with memories of him and his brother being estranged for so long. “Can’t wait to see you, bro.”
He spotted the bikers standing the Harleys and they were talking about taking the ‘beast’ down. The lead biker brushed into him with a cold gaze. Followed by Gus.
“This ain’t over,” the biker said. “We’re gonna get that freak of nature and kill him. And anyone who gets in our way,” he eyed Ridge.
“Gus stood between them. “There ain’t gonna be nothing but you leaving my bar and if you show your sorry britches here again, you better back it with cash. You got me, Orion?”
The tall biker reached inside his leather jacket and his face strained when he held his side. He pulled out a money clip and tossed the bills at the owner. “Don’t need jack piss from you, old man. You’re probably in it with the freaks that have come to this city. That’s right, I outta know,” he glanced at a trio of stragglers outside the bar. “What the hell you looking at?” He stomped his boot and the patrons ran. He looked at Gus. “I meant what I said. Get in my way and I’ll end you. All of you,” he pushed Ridge.
Ridge shoved him back.
Orion raised his fist and Ridge noticed the tattoo before he clenched his hand. Shaped like a hexagram.
A shell casing dropped to the ground.
Ridge, Orion, and Gus saw themselves staring down the barrel of a shotgun.
“You get your coke head friends out of here,” Brad aimed at Orion’s gut.
“Yeah, sure,” the biker scoffed and he got his bike. “You got until the next full moon before we get that bear and the witch. Then, it’s torturing time.” The biker sped onto the highway with the gang giving the bar ‘the finger’ as they drove into the blackening night.
The moon had arced to the western edge of the coast. Ridge thought he could see the ocean rolling at a break between the cliffs lining the city’s southern edge, feeling the sting from the cold.
“Unseasonably chilly this year,” Gus noted. Brad went to the bar as people drove from the parking lot.
Ridge heard the murmurs there was going to be a town meeting. “Want to tell me what’s going on for real,” Ridge said at his truck that had twirled 180 degrees pointing south next to Gus’ vehicle.
“You know as much as us,” the bar owner said. “Not an auspicious start to the holiday, but a rush, just the same,” the laughter rippling Gus’s belly echoed in the early hours of morning making Ridge smile.
&n
bsp; The guy’s optimism was catching, “Yeah, Smugglers’ Cove is a real hootenanny.”
Gus’ face scrunched as his stomach rumbled. “Hootenanny,” the bar owner laughed hard. “That’s a rip.”
Gus gave him the places where he could score himself some warmer clothes and maybe a mechanic. He’d need one who could give his pickup a decent shakedown.
“Thanks. For the hospitality, if you could call it that, and the directions,” Ridge paused. “Seem to be saying that a lot this morning,” Ridge and Gus pumped a handshake.
Game of Throbs Complete Series (Books 1-3) Page 43
