The Curse of Moose Lake (International Monster Slayers Book 1)

by Bethany Helwig

  The trip back to the cabin is done in silence apart from the roar of the engine. I watch the trees flicker by out my side window, keeping a hand on my wounded arm. We pull into the driveway and Jefferson backs into the barn. I walk outside to a cool breeze in my face as Jefferson shuts the big doors.

  A rumble comes up the driveway moments later and a black SUV emerges from the tree line. I can make out a man driving and a woman in a black coat in the passenger seat. They’re expressionless but their eyes lock on Jefferson and me instantly.

  “That’s them?” I ask.

  Jefferson leans in really close until his mouth is at my ear, freaking me out a little, and whispers, “Don’t say anything about being bitten or about your blood or a cure. Don’t mention a word of it to them.”

  I jerk back, startled. “What? Why?”

  “To protect you.”

  “From what?”

  His eyes are deadly serious and he straightens to his full height, hands shoved into his jacket pockets. His gaze drifts to the SUV as it stops in front of us.

  “From them,” he says.

  Chapter 21

  I don’t even get a chance to ask Jefferson what on earth he meant about not trusting the IMS before the agents exit their SUV and introduce themselves. I’m so distracted by Jefferson’s last comment that I miss their first names and just remember two of them are Agent Smith and one’s Agent Moore. I don’t even know which are the two Smiths.

  They aren’t a happy bunch and I get the distinct impression they’re looking down on Jefferson and me. They aren’t polite either but Jefferson glosses right over it and gets to business. He leads them into the loft of his barn and gives them the rundown of what’s been happening in town—the agitation stirring through the werewolves, the cattle mutilations, the disappearances, Deputy Graham vanishing in the woods, the high number of bites, and the possibility that Dr. Rosewell has vanished as well. When Jefferson finishes, the team doesn’t seem impressed and the woman sits there cleaning something from underneath her fingernails with a pocket knife as if she couldn’t care less. I wait for her to accidently cut herself and can’t look away.

  “Okay, the situation seems straightforward enough,” their leader sighs—Agent Moore, I think. Everything about his appearance says average—average height, regular cropped brown hair, not too skinny, not too muscular. He’s someone easy to forget.

  Jefferson lets the first crack of irritation show through his polite mask. “Oh, really? Nothing about this seems odd to you?”

  “Werewolves are a low key problem. This isn’t as bad as you think it is,” the agent assures him like he might a small child. I want to punch him. Jefferson catches my eye and shakes his head a fraction of an inch.

  Agent Moore waves to the other two agents to get their attention back on track. “Okay, let’s get this taken care of. Agent Smith, I need you to go to the Carlton County Sheriff’s Office and see where they are in their search for Deputy Graham as I’m sure they’ve already figured out he’s missing. We need to know how involved they are so they don’t interfere or come across something they shouldn’t.” His eyes flicker back to Jefferson, clearly accusing him of bringing cops into the mess. “Agent Smith, go through Barnes’ files and trace the point of origin. I’ll go to the site of these disappearances and do some first-hand investigation.”

  I note they don’t call Jefferson Agent Barnes. Just Barnes. I’ll admit, I wasn’t Jefferson’s number one fan in the beginning by a long shot but what can I say? He’s grown on me, and when people pick on those I care about, I don’t like sitting by and doing nothing. Not speaking out takes all of my self-control.

  “We’ll go with you,” Jefferson says. “Phoenix and I can help with the door to door stuff. I know the area and Phoenix is getting the hang of the place. People will talk to her.”

  I’m touched by the vote of confidence on my behalf but Agent Moore cracks a smile that is in no way friendly.

  “No offense, Barnes, but I think you’ve done enough already. Stay here and help Agent Smith go through the files.” His gaze turns to me and he gives me a crude up and down. “And there’s no way I’m letting the girl who blew the Werevine operation go anywhere near my investigation.”

  It’s a slap in the face. I probably deserve that insult but Jefferson certainly doesn’t.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” I snap. That gets everyone’s attention fast. “There are a lot more werewolves out there than three people can manage. You—”

  “Obviously,” Agent Moore interrupts, and I realize I just kind of dismissed my own team of three. We haven’t exactly been handling things very well ourselves and I inadvertently pointed that out.

  “What I meant is that you could use our help,” I continue. “We know the area. We know what’s been going on.”

  “That may be true, but I can use a map all by myself without your help and Barnes filled us in. I think we’re good.”

  He doesn’t give me a chance to keep arguing because he walks away and the other Agent Smith follows him out. I start to storm after them but Jefferson holds out an arm to stop me.

  “Don’t,” he warns under his breath. “That’s not going to help anything.”

  The other Agent Smith, a squat man with round glasses, claps his hands together then spreads his arms wide. “Okay, where are the files? Where do I start?”

  Jefferson gestures for him to follow and we all head to the cabin. Once inside the cramped main room, he points to the stacks of boxes upon boxes Hawk and I sorted when we first got here.

  “I’ve been meaning to move them to my command center, as it were,” Jefferson says.

  Agent Smith squints at the boxes and lifts the lid off the closest to peer inside over the rim of his glasses. “Where are your digitized records?” he asks.

  Jefferson and I share a look and laugh. I move over to the dinosaur of a computer and knock twice on top of the dusty monitor.

  “We aren’t exactly high tech here,” I say.

  “You either take the hard copies,” Jefferson says and lifts a box to push into the agent’s arms, “or you point at a star and wish away into the dark.”

  Well, that’s a phrase I haven’t heard in a while. It’s one of the charming sayings of the unicorns who aren’t very mystical themselves and frown upon whimsical magic users like fauns.

  Agent Smith purses his lips and hefts the box out of the cabin. Jefferson winks at me and picks up a couple of boxes himself. I reach for one too but he shakes his head.

  “You’re going to strain that arm.”

  “I can lift a box.”

  “And if that wound starts bleeding again? Don’t draw attention to it.” He nods to my arm since his hands are full. He walks out with the boxes and I’m hot on his heels.

  “Why are you so worried about them finding out?” I whisper at his back. Agent Smith is far enough away that he can’t overhear. “They could help with a cure.”

  “Yeah, help you right into an early grave.” He stops and turns around, drawing me up short. “They’d bleed you dry for a cure, Phoenix. You’d be dead before you could see your brother cured.”

  Now I’m the one shaking my head. “They wouldn’t bleed me like a vampire.”

  “Or they’d stick you in a lab somewhere in the dark, alone and hooked up to so many machines and needles that you would wish they’d bleed you out.”

  I’ve lived among IMS agents for years. I’ve heard the stories of their bravery and the lengths they go to in order to protect their legendary charges. The picture Jefferson is painting doesn’t add up.

  “They wouldn’t. They couldn’t.”

  “You’d be surprised,” he says darkly. “Don’t say anything. Please.”

  I’m too confused for a moment to realize he’s trying to protect me. He’s been searching for a cure all this time and now he’s willing to push it aside in order to save me from all of that imagined pain. So, I shut my mouth and march behind him into the barn.

  My phone
buzzes and I see a text from Hawk wanting to know I’m okay and mentions there are several more people missing from school today. I send him a quick message letting him know it’s been uneventful. I don’t mention the creepy situation at the clinic. No point worrying him when nothing really happened.

  Jefferson goes back and forth from the barn to the cabin to bring in the rest of the boxes while I point out how the files are organized to Agent Smith. His face is tight and he kind of pushes me to the side the second I’m done explaining. I hold up my hands and walk away to stand next to Jefferson on the other side of the table. The agent has clearly claimed the space as his, despite it being Jefferson’s home, and spreads out the boxes to his liking. He licks his finger to turn pages and I cringe. It rankles my inner pet peeve and I want to slap his fingers each time he does it.

  With the table and chairs commandeered by Agent Smith, I sit sprawled on the cot in the corner dismantling a tranquilizer gun and cleaning it. Jefferson combs through the files with the agent for a while before he’s pushed aside like I was. He brings over another gun from his safe in the cabin, a Remington shotgun, and cleans it beside me. I’m almost hoping the sight of us cleaning guns will unnerve the agent but we’ve obviously become invisible to him once out of the way.

  “I can’t stand this,” I mutter.

  “Yeah, well, they’re a bunch of hot shots that don’t like being called out for werewolf duty,” Jefferson says absently. “It’s like detectives being kicked down to mall cops for them.”

  I roll my eyes. “That’s just stupid. What’s going on here is not normal werewolf activity.”

  “I know.”

  “But it’s more than that.” I snap the slide on the gun back into place and set it down. “I get why they don’t like me—Werevine was not exactly my shining moment. You, on the other hand, I don’t get. What did you do, Jefferson?”

  He pumps the shotgun and pops out a shell but doesn’t answer.

  “What did you do?” I repeat. “I’m going to keep asking until you tell me.”

  At that he raises his narrowed eyes. “I inappropriately used IMS resources. That’s what’s written in my file.”

  “Okay . . . but inappropriate how?”

  “Any sign of a black wolf and I called in the cavalry,” he mutters. “I was desperate and I needed their help. One time Draco actually showed up after I sounded the alarm but it wasn’t the right wolf.” He clears his throat. “That didn’t go over well.”

  “Wait, Draco as in the Draco? Majestic class dragon? Founder of IMS?”

  He sets the shotgun down and scratches a spot behind his ear. “That’s the one. And, trust me, dragons don’t like to be summoned unless there’s a darn good reason. Pretty sure that’s why I’ve been stuck out here by myself without any of the normal resources. It’s punishment for ticking him off.”

  I can’t help but notice Draco’s interest in the case. He was the dragon that saved Hawk and me and scared off the black wolf in the first place. Then he came back again when Jefferson thought the black wolf was around? Why is a dragon so interested in a werewolf, one of the least substantial beasts out there? Dragons go after leviathans, hydra, and level five monsters, not werewolves.

  “Barnes?” Agent Smith raises his hand to catch our attention. “Could you come here a moment?”

  Jefferson’s eyebrows jump up into his shaggy hair and he puts the gun parts aside to see what the agent wants. I sit quietly polishing gunmetal and listen to the agent ask Jefferson to explain the amount of werewolf serum going out above the norm. When Jefferson tries to explain, once again, that he believes the black werewolf is behind it, the agent won’t have any of it and states the werewolves must be harboring the serum for other wolves unaccounted for as of yet. The implication is Jefferson doesn’t have a clue how to do his job.

  After the agent rudely dismisses Jefferson from the table, he marches back over to me with a sour expression.

  “I can’t stay here,” I growl. “If I do, I’m going to end up punching somebody in the face. We should be out there tracking the black wolf down.”

  “There’s not much we can do,” he says and sits on the cot next to me to inspect the tranquilizer darts in the magazine. He holds it out to me and says under his breath, “Tempting.”

  I smile at that and take it from him to snap into the gun. He returns to his shotgun on the table opposite me and finishes putting it all back together. I can’t sit still any longer so I rise and tuck the gun into the back of my waistband. So, we can’t go do our jobs but there’s no way I’m staying here either. There is one place I want to go, though.

  “Jefferson, what ever happened to my parents’ old house?”

  That catches him off guard. His beady eyes jump to me and he sets the shotgun aside. “It went into limbo. Something about legal paperwork and the IMS preventing it from selling. It’s just been sitting abandoned.”

  I shift my jaw back and forth then bite my lower lip. “I want to see it.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “I need to see it.”

  He rises and sets his hands on his waist so he can look down at me properly. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “Okay, fine. You don’t have to come. Give me the keys.” I hold out my hand.

  He holds up a finger in my face. “First off, no one drives that car except me. Two, you aren’t going anywhere alone. Not now. Three, I still don’t think this is a good idea. You don’t know what kind of memories this could trigger.”

  Any would be welcome, considering I only have two about my parents that I can actually recall. I need to see the place I spent the first four years of my life, the place my parents had called home—where a dragon gave me a gift I can never repay.

  “Well, I’ll be as stubborn as I have to in order to see it,” I say. “I’ll walk.”

  “No, you won’t,” he growls. He runs a hand through his hair then tugs his car keys out of his pocket. “You kids are annoying.”

  “Young adults.”

  “Teenage rebels,” he mutters and starts down the steps.

  “You know us so well,” I say and follow in his wake.

  We hop into the Green Monster, ignoring Agent Smith calling after us to find out where we’re going, and peel out. Jefferson winds off Soldier Road, down Aspen Road, then we head up north along Highway 61. A twisted knot of anxiety forms in my stomach. What will the house look like? Did the cops leave the place just as it was in the crime scene photos? Will there be furniture knocked over and bloodstains on the floor? I don’t normally chew on my fingernails but I start to worry my thumb between my teeth.

  We drive for five minutes on the old highway before Jefferson turns off onto a long gravel driveway. At least I think it used to be gravel. It’s so overgrown with wilted high grass that I can barely see the two ruts that mark where a driveway had been. We cross a large open field bordered by a wooden fence falling apart. An enormous willow tree rises before us. Its bare branches reach towards me like skeletal finger and a tire swing hangs from one of the lowest ones. When we pass I see the nest of some creature nestled in the bottom of the tire.

  Pine trees and poplars close in around the colonial style house that draws in my gaze. The front porch is sagging and the storm door hangs at an odd angle. Its light blue paneling is faded and worn. The tall grass reaches up to the front stairs and some even peeks through between the steps. It’s a lonely and ruined monument of the life I never knew and the horror I wish I could forget. I’m clutching onto the seatbelt strap for dear life, frozen in my seat and unable to move.

  “You don’t have to go inside,” Jefferson says quietly.

  That’s true. I’ve seen the outside and that could be enough. Then my hands are fumbling with the seatbelt latch and I get shakily out of the car. I force myself to walk slowly through the high grass and not trip. The front stairs groan under my weight and the storm door just about falls off its hinges when I swing it wide. I grasp the tarnished
brass door handle and push my way inside.

  For some reason I expect to hear ghostly noises, a creepy wind whistling, or sinister sounds, but it’s quiet. The front entrance is littered with leaves and debris dragged in by animals. Stairs are directly before me and the living room opens up on my left. I take careful steps into the room and recognize it from the crime scene photos. This was where my father died. Something catches in my throat. I try to swallow past it with some difficulty and stand where he fell. The floorboards are dark all around me but there’s discoloration even darker right where I am. Blood.

  I exhale sharply and keep moving to the dining room. The table is still here, the one Hawk and I hid underneath. There’s another stain where my mother died trying to protect us. I hug her bomber jacket closer to myself and crouch down to look under the table. A support beam runs down the middle and is so familiar. I duck and wiggle my way underneath to sit grasping the bar.

  I close my eyes and can hear the wolf, feel Hawk’s hands on mine, and my mother’s arms wrapped around our shoulders keeping us down and out of sight. I hear my father shout and vicious growling. My mother is whispering something, touching the bottom of the table. Then my mother being wrenched away and the explosive sound of her gun firing twice. Screaming, I’m screaming. My mother’s gone and the wolf’s head slips under the table. Black and terrible as death. It’s jaws take hold of Hawk’s side and drag him from under the table. I’m screaming for my brother and crawl out after him. Before the wolf gets too far I throw a punch into its nose with all the strength my tiny four-year-old self can muster.

  There’s blinding light and Hawk falls to the ground. I can’t see anything. Light cascades and surrounds me. The next thing I know there’s a man standing over me who touches three fingers to my shoulder where the sleeve of my shirt had ripped off. I feel pain and tingling but I ignore it to clutch my unconscious brother to me.

  My eyes snap open and I take a deep breath, still clutching the bar underneath the table but no longer that little girl. I flinch away from it and scramble backwards, surge to my feet, and trip backwards into a wall where I catch myself only to sink to the floor upon scattered leaves and dirt. I clamp both hands over my mouth to hold back the hysterical sob that wants to rip out of my chest. I breathe sharply through my nose and fight it and fight it until my chest stops shuddering. I hastily run the back of my hand across my cheeks and under my nose. I’m not allowed to fall apart. I can’t. Not ever.